I just want the facts

[kristi96]

I've been researching vaccines and I swear everything I read is so biased. I just want to read something that gives hardcore facts. I don't want to read something telling me why I should or shouldn't vaccinate. Anyone have any good websites?

[MyBoysBlue]

I looked at the illness not the vax. I looked at how likely they were to get it. How likely that if they got it, it would be serious. What kind of complications and how likely death would be. I also looked into treatments for these illnesses. Then I decided if I was more comfortable with the illness or the vax that has it's own list of side effects.

The CDC website has good info on these illnesses. And the package inserts for the vaxs have info of side effects. Good luck

[mamakah]

I take all the biased stuff I read with a grain of salt. What I did was read up on the diseases. Dr. Sears Vaccine book is a good place to start. He leans more towards the pro vax side, but not enough to give a lot of misinformation (although I really dislike his delayed/selective schedule.) A lot of my choice came from personal experience too. For example, when I was young the only vaxs that were given to us kids were polio, mmr, dtp. Now they have added hib, chicken pox, hep b, etc. etc. etc. I got chicken pox when I was younger and knew that it was nothing to be too scared of, so I decided against that one. I asked my mom if she ever lost sleep over the fact that there wasn't a hib vax at the time and she had no idea what I was even talking about.
I have read about all the diseases, how they are contracted, likelyhood of complications, etc. then I base my decision on that. On the ones that I felt unsure about, I looked into the shot itself. The side effects, ingredients, efficiency. I read the VAERS data base and took mental note of all the parents who claimed such and such happened after such and such shot.
Most of my information has come from such websites as the WHO (world health organization), CDC (Centers for disease control) etc. I read all the anti vax websites, and I listen to what they have to say, but I don't base my decision on it.
My research led me to the decision that I am not too threatened by *most* of the diseases that we vaccinate for. I don't like the ingredients in our vaccines and don't feel comfortable injecting them into my babys system. I think every parent should come to their own decision. Don't listen to the propaganda from either side. Once you make your decision, never stop reading or researching. Knowledge is power.
ETA: Another contributor to my no vax decision was the fact that I do not trust the FDA even a little bit. Every night on the nightly news I am given a new reason to think that just because something is FDA approved does not mean that it is risk free. The recent Zicam incident is a great example. Thousands of people lost their sense of smell permanently, yet it still took forever to get the FDA to remove it...they just don't seem as on top of it as I would like.

[claddaghmom]

Originally Posted by kristi96

I've been researching vaccines and I swear everything I read is so biased. I just want to read something that gives hardcore facts. I don't want to read something telling me why I should or shouldn't vaccinate. Anyone have any good websites?

Did you pay for access to the studies yet? Are they too biased for you? Or is it the books?

I think the expose-ish websites available are more a conversation starter. If you are looking for actual research into the subject, you'll have to get a bit deeper.

Of course, even the studies and textbooks are biased themselves. And even if you wade through the bias successfully, you still have to contend with differences in perspective.

[carriebft]

I think a lot of it comes down to really knowing what you want and what your lines are. Here is an example of a study on tetanus:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.or.../full/109/1/e2

They looked at 8 years of tetanus in kids under 15. They found 15 cases. 13 were unvaccinated and the unvaccinated cases also seemed to be more severe. But this study, IMO, actually kinda goes both ways.

It supports cons of the vaccine: tetanus is so rare in under 15s that they only found 8 cases in 15 years. 2 of the cases were in vaccinated kids. There are no deaths.

It also supports pros of the vaccine: it seems to bolster the idea of vaccine effectiveness and also shows less vaccinated kids getting the disease. The disease is pretty serious for most, involving long hospital stays.

So even when you look at just studies like this and no one interpretation of them, you still find that a lot of it depends on your own thoughts, risk assessment, etc.

[ammiga]

I found the video clip on www.brainguardmd.com to be really helpful. He shows actual footage of what goes on inside of your body as a result of a vaccine. It isn't doctored to suit his prerogative, it is exact footage. It is self-produced, and he is NOT a producer, so it's a bit cheesy. But the footage is what it is.

This article is also interesting. It is a study that started out about something non-vax related, but ended up looking at vaxes.

ETA: You say you want facts, but what facts do you want? I think that most facts are subject to interpretation, so you will always find someone's interpretation of a fact. Even flat out numbers are often not that reliable, given what people do and don't report.

[xmasbaby7]

Like you, I only wanted factual data, not opinions to make my decision. The more comfortable you get reading medical studies, the more you will be surprised to see how less black and white proof comes out of them than you would think. It is actually really depressing.

The hardest facts you can find are
1) the national and state reports of vaccine preventable diseases to see what is statistically the most likely for your family to encounter
2) identifying treatments you have for resources for those diseases
3) package inserts of vaxes
4) tallying the number of autoimmune issues you have in your family.

You will have to do a lot of your own inferring with the information out there.

The information that would confirm for me that vaccines are safe enough doesn't exist, so I had to be my own detective.

[LavenderMae]

I like www.insidevaccines.com/wordpress/.

[sjsbates]

Originally Posted by MyBoysBlue

I looked at the illness not the vax. I looked at how likely they were to get it. How likely that if they got it, it would be serious. What kind of complications and how likely death would be. I also looked into treatments for these illnesses. Then I decided if I was more comfortable with the illness or the vax that has it's own list of side effects.

The CDC website has good info on these illnesses. And the package inserts for the vaxs have info of side effects. Good luck

That is the exact same thing I did. I recommend it.

[Scattershoot]

Originally Posted by kristi96

I've been researching vaccines and I swear everything I read is so biased. I just want to read something that gives hardcore facts. I don't want to read something telling me why I should or shouldn't vaccinate. Anyone have any good websites?

I'm not sure how you could find completely unbiased information regarding vaccines. If someone is putting out information, it is for a reason. I think it is more valuable to ascertain what the influences for writing are. Financial incentives are at the top of the list along with professional status/ego. Certainly the vaccine voices have much, much, much more of these types of influences.

Beyond all that what I take into consideration the most is people's actual experiences, mine included. It's very easy to create a lab environment with certain protocols looking for certain outcomes due to certain funding sources and certain professional desires. If I took the time, I could list over 100 vaccine reactions that people have personally told me about that they or a loved one experienced. Many of them extremely severe, including death. I know the stories because I ask people. The problem with the medical profession is that they refuse to ask in most instances because they have NO DESIRE TO KNOW THE ANSWER. A person will never find what he/she refuses to look for. It's that simple.

Dr. Moulden's video showing the white blood cells "sludging" the body and preventing red blood cells from delivering oxygen is as non-"biased" as a person will get. The facial indicators of stroke are pretty powerful as well.

[1littlebit]

i went into this needing to be convinced to vaccinate.. since that is the default i needed to be convinced to do otherwise. i looked at the illnesses themselves, the specific ingredients in vaccines, the studies on safety and efficacy, and i did a lot of research on our immune systems and how they work without vaccines. i talked to a couple of the dangerous disease and immunology professors at my college and i researched all of this in the university database so that i could get articles from journals and such.

i found very little about whether or not to vaccinate but tons on the subjects that make up the argument to begin with.

[Yulia_R]

If you read the ingredients, you will see a simple fact for yourself: vaccines contain some really bad stuff, things you wouldn't want to see anywhere near your child.

[SeekingSerenity]

I'm subbing to this, because I have a one-year old who has had no vaccines at all. My other children were unvaxed until 10 months and 3-1/2 years, then because of being at a state shelter, they were required to have shots. They ended up with something like 10 or 12 apiece, all at one time, and it made them extremely sick. I want to avoid that with Lil' Man. I was hoping someone had a good, comprehensive delayed vax schedule that started around one year and worked through some of the vaxes without dumping them all on him at once. (There are still some I want to avoid, such as chickenpox, which is - IMO - not needed as the natural immunity is so much better.)

Hoping for even more awesome info from all the informed mamas out there...

[Gitti]

Originally Posted by SeekingSerenity

(There are still some I want to avoid, such as chickenpox, which is - IMO - not needed as the natural immunity is so much better.)

That is true for all infections.

In my generation we had not only chicken pox but also rubella, mumps, measles, and a few others. I don't even know because we didn't go to a doctor to be diagnosed since it was considered a normal way of growing up.

Now I have life long immunity to everything and probably a much lower chance of cancer and some of the other horrific diseases that replaced normal childhood infections and fevers.

We are hoping for the same for my 3 unvaccinated grandchildren.

[Scattershoot]

Originally Posted by Gitti

In my generation we had not only chicken pox but also rubella, mumps, measles, and a few others. I don't even know because we didn't go to a doctor to be diagnosed since it was considered a normal way of growing up.

This is true. I don't recall even going to the doctor for stuff like the chicken pox. It was just understood that everyone got it and it wasn't a big deal. I've mentioned this before, but we didn't even call most conditions by a name. You were just sick. I think part of the fear factor of today is all the scary names for everything. I guess if it has a big, long hard to pronounce name it makes it worse.

[MyBoysBlue]

Like how a lot of people don't know that Varicella is Chicken Pox. Varicella sounds scarier then CP. I have friends who claimed to have skipped the Chicken Pox vax. So I asked them if they got the Varicella vax and they didn't know so they looked at their kids vax records and they had all gotten it.