Vaccination Myth #4:

"Vaccination is based on sound immunization theory and practice..."

...or is it?

The clinical evidence for vaccines is their ability to stimulate antibody production in the recipient. What is not clear, however, is whether or not antibody production constitutes immunity. For example, agamma globulin-anemic children are incapable of producing antibodies, yet they recover from infectious diseases almost as quickly as other children.

Furthermore, a study published by the British Medical Council in 1950 during a diphtheria epidemic concluded that there was no relationship between antibody count and disease incidence; researchers found resistant people with extremely low antibody counts and sick people with high counts.

Natural immunization is a complex interactive process involving many bodily organs and systems; it cannot be replicated by the artificial stimulation of antibodies.

Research also indicates that vaccination commits immune cells to the specific antigens in a vaccine, rendering them incapable of reacting to other infections. Immunological reserves may thus actually be reduced, causing a generally lowered resistance.

Another component of immunization theory is "herd immunity," the notion that when enough people in a community are immunized, all are protected. As Myth #2 showed, there are many documented instances showing just the opposite -- fully vaccinated populations have experienced epidemics.

With measles, this actually seems to be the direct result of high vaccination rates.

In Minnesota, a state epidemiologist concluded that the Hib vaccine increases the risk of illness when a study revealed that vaccinated children were five times more likely to contract meningitis than unvaccinated children.

Surprisingly, vaccination has never actually been clinically proven to be effective in preventing disease, for the simple reason that no researcher has directly exposed test subjects to diseases (nor may they ethically do so).

The medical community's gold standard, the double blind, placebo-controlled study, has not been used to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and so the practice remains unscientifically proven.

Furthermore, it is important to recognize that not everyone exposed to a disease develops symptoms (indeed, only a tiny percentage of a population need develop symptoms for an epidemic to be declared).

Thus, if a vaccinated individual is exposed to a disease and doesn't get sick, it is impossible to know whether the vaccine worked, because there is no way to know if that person would have developed symptoms if he or she had not been vaccinated. It is also worth noting that outbreaks in recent years have recorded more disease cases in vaccinated children than in unvaccinated children.

Yet another surprising aspect of immunization practice is the "one size fits all" aspect.

An 8 pound 2 month old baby receives the same dosage as a 40 pound five year old child. Infants with immature, undeveloped immune systems may receive five or more times the dosage, relative to body weight, as older children.

Furthermore, the number of "units" within doses has been found in random testing to range from ½ to 3 times what the label indicates; manufacturing quality controls appear to tolerate a rather large margin of error.

"Hot Lots"-vaccine lots associated with disproportionately high death and disability rates-have been repeatedly identified by the NVIC, but the FDA consistently refuses to intervene to prevent further unnecessary injury and deaths. In fact, individual vaccine lots have never been recalled due to their greater incidence of adverse reactions.

However, the rotavirus vaccine was taken off the market a few months after being introduced when it caused bowel obstructions in many recipients. Incredibly, the FDA and CDC knew about this problem prior to licensing the vaccine, but both organizations still gave their unanimous approval.

Finally, vaccines are administered with the assumption that all recipients-regardless of race, culture, diet, genetic makeup, geographic location, or any other characteristic -- will respond the same. This was perhaps never more dramatically disproved than in Australia's Northern Territory a few years ago, where stepped-up immunization campaigns in native aborigines resulted in an incredible 50% infant mortality rate.

One must wonder about the lives of the survivors, too; if half died, surely the other half did not escape unaffected.

Almost as troubling was a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine reporting that a substantial number of Romanian children were contracting polio from the vaccine.

Researchers found a correlation with injections of antibiotics. A single injection within one month of vaccination raised the risk of polio eight times, two to nine injections raised the risk 27-fold, and 10 or more injections raised the risk 182 times.

What other factors not accounted for in vaccination theory will surface unexpectedly to reveal unforeseen or previously overlooked consequences? We cannot begin to fully comprehend the scope and degree of the danger until public health officials begin looking and reporting in earnest.

In the meantime, entire countries' populations are unwitting gamblers in a game that many might very well choose not to play if they were given all the rules in advance.

Vaccination Truth #4:

"Many of the assumptions upon which immunization theory and practice are based are unproved or have been proven false in their application."