And now… watch my head explode!

Look back at my posts from 2005 and you’ll see a very different blog from the blah-blah-blahg posts I write now.

I used to have a great passion for outing the evils of childhood vaccinations and the over-drugging of small children with psychotropics and antidepressants. My intention had been to make a documentary about vaccinations. After far too many years beating my head against the wall with broadcasters who were in and then out, I gave up. I stopped reading about the issues about 18 months ago when income generation became more of an imperative than making change in the world.

But I still have subscriptions to a variety of news sources with the key word vaccine. 95% of the time I ignore the stories. Not today. And I’m more angry at this moment than I was when He-who-shall-not-be-named told me he was leaving the country.

The gist of the story:

Merck's chickenpox vaccine Varivax not only loses its effectiveness after a while, but it has also changed the profile of the disease in the population, U.S. researchers reported Wednesday.

The study confirmed what doctors widely knew -- that the vaccine's protection does not last long.

And with fewer natural cases of the disease going around, unvaccinated children or children in whom the first dose of the vaccine fails to work have been catching the highly contagious disease later in life, when the risk of severe complications is greater, they said.

"If you're unvaccinated and you get it later in life, there's a 20-times greater risk of dying compared to a child, and a 10 to 15 times greater chance of getting hospitalized," said Jane Seward of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, who worked on the study.

So this is where my head explodes. An idiot like me knew this six years ago. I’ve watched my friends coerced into having their 5-years olds get the chicken pox vaccine and wondered what I could have said to have been more convincing than the doctor who was pushing the shot. Nothing, apparently.

The thing that kills me is that measles used to be one disease – about as dangerous as chicken pox is, killing about 100 kids a year in the States – and typically kids who are already immuno-comprised. But today the measles virus has mutated into several strains, all of which have to be included in the shot, of course…

Vaccines are not benign. In many cases, they can cause terrible side effects. In most cases the disease for which the vaccine purports to protect the child is not a serious health risk, rather it’s a serious inconvenience for a parent to take time off work to stay home with a grumpy kid who has measles or chicken pox.

I can’t get enough oxygen to get into why and how the vaccine promoters manage to get away with convincing government and public health officials to recommend their shots – and in some American States, forcibly make every kid get the shots or be prevented from attending public school….

If you’re interested, I’ve ranted on these topics before…

Meningitis (Marketing) Can Strike Out of the Blue

Volunteers Needed for Anthrax Vaccine

Ahhh… May, June, July, August 2005… there’s stuff there abut vaccines.

And here’s the full story, Chicken Pox Vaccine Fades Over Time.