"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." A case against the Chicken Pox Vaccine.

Before you gratefully accept the vaccination for your children, you need to know more.

Chicken Pox can kill, that is true. Chicken Pox was rampant when we were young. <— ALSO TRUE.

One of my favorite scare tactics used by my pediatrician to convince me to vaccinate my son against Chicken Pox was when he told me that, Chicken Pox is not how I remember it. It is actually a life threatening illness. He told me I was being to remiss by just brushing it aside like we were discussing the common cold.

I resent the scare tactic.

Before 1995, it’s true that there were about 3.7 million cases of chickenpox annually.  Want to know how many people actually died from it annually though?

An average of 100 people in the US per year.

That’s less than the number of boys who die directly from circumcision. About half as many.

Let me break that 100 people down even further… About half of them were children and half of them elderly. So, we’re talking about around fifty children in the entire US used to die annually from Chicken Pox.

In 1995, prior to the Chicken Pox vaccine, our country’s  population was over 262 million…. and about 100 of those 262,764,948 people died from Chicken Pox. That’s so far less than one percent that if  we were using the same standard that vaccine companies use to prove their lack of connection to autoimmune diseases, autism, and death, we should just go ahead and say it was coincidental.

 

What constitutes a coincidental non-causal reaction?

I think we need to level the playing ground.

For example, Gardasil has been feeling the heat lately, but the FDA and CDC are trying to say that there were SO FEW deaths that they might have just been coincidental. See, according to the CDC, as of June 22, 2011 there were only a total 68 deaths reported among those who have received Gardasil compared to the 35 million shots given. Even assuming that number was accurately portrayed as the total number of people vaccinated- which it’s not since it’s usually given as a series of a few doses. But, I will go ahead and play their little game and pretend like 35 million doses equals 35 million people (even though it probably means more like 13 million people.)

 

So, I mean somewhere, someone’s not really being straight with us. I could be really smarmy and say that either the Gardasil deaths need to be given way more serious consideration and pediatricians need to talk about the vaccine as though it’s highly risky or else those same pediatricians need to start talking about Chicken Pox deaths as coincidental.

(While they’re at it, circumcision needs to stop this instant, because deaths from circumcision are more numerous than the deaths from Gardasil and the deaths from complications due to Chicken Pox combined!!!)

Besides, this vaccine has not even been tested thoroughly enough for them to state that we are not endangering our children’s future fertility or subjecting our children to a cancer causing agent. Check this out:

Either way they say it, Chicken Pox isn’t the monster they say it is.

It should be noted that by 1998 after the Chicken Pox vaccine was introduced, there were already 14 deaths reported to the VAERS (or Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) database. Keep in mind that only a fraction of adverse reactions ever get reported. Also keep in mind that in 1998, not all children were getting vaccinated yet against Chicken Pox. It was still relatively novel.  And when we’re talking about a population in the hundreds of millions, I sincerely don’t understand how a hundred deaths a year from complications caused by the Chicken Pox wild caught virus is really considered that much more than a few deaths per year from the Chicken Pox vaccine. Out of  over two hundred and sixty million people, the difference between 2 people, 15 people, 60 people and 100 people is fairly inconsequential.

Now, I’m not into survival of the fittest. I mean, I get it.  My brain gets it. The issue is my heart is far too big to accept it. I would be willing to sacrifice a great deal of my own good health if I thought I would be making a significant difference in the lives of immunocompromised children.  That’s one of the ways they pressured me. They told me it was my “social responsibility.” They brought up all the children with compromised immune systems. The thing is though, regarding the 100 children that died from Chicken Pox before vaccination was basically mandated, according to the CDC, most of them were normally healthy children.  Even if they are lying though and the 100 children were all immunocompromised, that’s still statistically vastly low considering just how many children in the US have had transplants, cancers, and other dieases.

 

What doesn’t kill you…

The fact of the matter is you can be over 99.9% sure that Chicken Pox will not kill your child if you do not get the vaccine. With the fact that around 10,000 children get diagnosed with cancer each year acquiring compromised immune systems, give that only 100 children died of Chicken Pox prior to the vaccine existing, you could even be over 99% sure you child wouldn’t die from getting Chicken Pox if your child had the unfortunate diagnosis of cancer. Your child is more likely to die from the effects of traditional cancer treatment than from being exposed to Chicken Pox. Your child is more likely to reject the transplanted organ than die from being exposed to Chicken Pox as a organ recipient. In fact, I could go the route of the vaccine manufacturers and how they define “causal” and say that Chicken Pox didn’t even necessarily cause those deaths.  Using the scientific logic, some of those 100 deaths attributed from Chicken Pox could have caused by bacterial infections introduced by a hospital staff member forgetting to wash their hands. Some of them could have been a misdiagnosis. Perhaps it was a different blistering virus like herpes. Chicken Pox is unfortunately frequently diagnosed without a blood test.  Maybe in a few of those cases, the child was just “going to die anyway.” (After all, that’s the conclusion they make with Gardasil deaths.) You see where I’m going.

Nietzsche concept seems to be making itself evident as we deal with the fallout of the mass vaccination of children against Chicken Pox.

 

Makes you stronger.

The last thing I would like you to consider before allowing your children to  get their Chicken Pox vaccine is this illness’ role in long term health and our social health. As the numbers of children vaccinated against Chicken Pox increases, the number of children acquiring Chicken Pox decreases. So, we’re supposed to consider this a huge success. Now, only a couple of children a year are dying of the illness. (Hey, that’s almost exactly how many are dying from the injection. Weird.) The thing is though, cases of Shingles is on the rise among our teenagers, adults and elderly. Anybody who has had shingles will attest to the significant pain it causes. It was proposed that given the vaccine was weaker, perhaps protection from shingles is weaker. The debate is still on about that, but what we are now understanding is that each time an adult is exposed to a child who has Chicken Pox, it acts like a little booster shot… a safe little booster shot that is. Adults have evolved (or were designed, depending on your beliefs) to be exposed to the sick children of their society while taking care of them. This exposure is good and healthy for the adults. It boosts their immunity over and over again, making them stronger… making them less likely to develop shingles. In making sure that we take care of our children as they live through Chicken Pox, we are improving our own future health and the future health of our adult neighbors and elderly.

Now who’s being socially irresponsible?

 

 

 

Works Cited

“VARIVAX® Varicella Virus Vaccine Live.” Merck. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. <www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/v/varivax/varivax_pi.pdf>.

“CDC – Reports of Health Concerns Following HPV Vaccination – Vaccine Safety.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. <http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/hpv/gardasil.html>.

“CDC – VAERS – Vaccine Safety.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. <http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Activities/VAERS.html>.

“Chickenpox Vaccine Facts National Vaccine Information Center.” National Vaccine Information Center. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. <http://www.nvic.org/vaccines-and-diseases/Chickenpox/chickenpoxfacts.aspx>.

“Childhood Cancers – National Cancer Institute.” National Cancer Institute. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. <http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Sites-Types/childhood>.

“Going to Be a Patient.” St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center of Syracuse, NY. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. <http://www.sjhsyr.org/sjhhc/stj_patient_2.asp?id=232>.

“US Historical Population, by Year.” Negative Population Growth.. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. <http://www.npg.org/facts/us_historical_pops.htm>.

“Chickenpox Vaccine Shingles Epidemic.” Dr. Mercola. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. <http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/11/02/chicken-pox-vaccine-creates-shingles-epidemic.aspx>.