Do you eat organic/natural foods and vaccinate your children? - Page 8

[boongirl]

We eat as much organic as we can and dd is fully vaxed. Interesting thread.

[onthemove]

we eat organic/naturally whenever possible and do not vax. dd's are 5 and 2.5 and are very healthy.

[tayndrewsmama]

:

[sweetpeasmom]

we eat as healthy as we can and as much organics as we can afford and no vaxes

[momofelise]

organic and no vax

[lemon]

We do healthy & organic, though not exclusively organic. We also vax. Not absolutely all vaxes but almost all of them.

I agree with the pp who said that she distrusts absolutist arguments.

I believe a lot of the anti-vax arguments. I believe in vaccine injury, for example, and the ruthlessness of pharmecutical companies in marketing their imperfectly tested & constantly "improved" products. I even believe that improved living conditions & medical care make many of the diseases we vax against not very dangerous for those of us living middle-class urban American lives.

But I do believe in herd immunity. And I do believe that vaccinations, however imperfect, are an important weapon in protecting the health of all the world's children. Someday, maybe, they won't be. Because we'll figure out something better. Eradicate poverty. Give decent health care to all. Make it so we don't have to use chemicals to prevent disease.

Maybe this is a weird reason, but seriously, this is why I vax. I do think I'm doing the right thing by my kid, but this bigger issue is always looming in my mind.

[just6fish]

organic as much as possible, vax

[Pen]

Organic -yes, Vax -no more
BTW, I talked to my doc about organic food and stuff and he said : well, if it makes you feel better but it's not going to make any difference and it's not really worth the expense. Also, when I asked about me not being able to walk, difficultly with speech etc. a week after the flu shot -he said it was a coincidence. Perhaps it was

[Mama2Kayla]

We eat about 90% organic, and we don't vax. Well, she had her 2 month shots before I found MDC , but that is it.

[Trinitty]

Wow, I haven't looked at this thread for a while! I didn't realise that people were still replying.

Since some posters had asked me what I based my "how vaccines work" thinking on, and I don't think I responded, it wasn't intended to be rude, I just forgot about the thread.

I can't be an expert in everything. I can't know everything. None of us can, that's why our diversified school system and market place are such vital aspects of our prosperous society.

There are people who study and think about and test and run experiments on these issues for lifetimes, and I am very thankful for that. When it comes to my child's health, I'm going to cautiously trust the science of medicine that makes sense to me.

To use birth for an example, I don't see pregnancy or birth as a medical situation in most cases. So, if my pregnancies are "normal" and my labour is going well, I want to deliver my babies at home, without drugs and with very minimal intervention from a midwife. This makes sense to me.

To use organic food as another example, I have seen what pesticides and herbicides do to bugs and weeds, they poison and retard their growth. Scientists and doctors (who understand microbiology better than I do) do say that they are harmful to pregnant women, foetuses and children. Scientists are also learning that organic food is more nutrient-dense. This makes sense to me, so, I try to eat organically for health reasons. I also eat organically for environmental reasons.

Knowing the very basics about the immune system, I took biology in high school and my sisters all have their degrees in science, the introduction of a pathogen to the bloodstream producing antibodies and immune system memory, makes sense to me.

Here are some links I found that explain the very basics better than I can:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vac...ORCESSL=false&

http://makeashorterlink.com/?L1D25261C

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/final/immun/immun.htm


It's true that WHEN the Small Pox vaccine was developed it wasn't understood HOW it worked - it just worked. We know more about the immune system now, and we know HOW the vaccine works, that's how other vaccines were developed.

[tayndrewsmama]

Trinitty, it sounds like you have read some basics. So, what do you think about the SV40 virus and cancer then?

[Trinitty]

Can you remind me what that is?

I remember reading about that when this thread was first started, and I talked about it with the docs that I know.... and I can't remember where it went from there.

[tayndrewsmama]

Originally Posted by Trinitty

Can you remind me what that is?

I remember reading about that when this thread was first started, and I talked about it with the docs that I know.... and I can't remember where it went from there.

The SV40 virus is a simian virus that is known to cause cancer at a high rate and contaminated the polio vaccine from it's beginning up to the year 2000 and possibly still does.

[Trinitty]

Could you please post links for that?

[tayndrewsmama]

A good place to start is the book The Virus and The Vaccine. There's more info in there than any links would have.

[HerthElde]

Originally Posted by lemon

Maybe this is a weird reason, but seriously, this is why I vax. I do think I'm doing the right thing by my kid, but this bigger issue is always looming in my mind.

I don't think the concept of "herd immunity" is a wierd reason at all! My reason for not vaccinating is along the same lines - although I think there are risks to the vaccines, it's the changes in the epidemiology of diseases and the potential longrun impact on humanity that is my biggest reason to not vaccinate.

[loraxc]

We eat a lot of organics (actually, we grow quite a bit of our food) and DD is fully vaxed, though we delayed some of them.

I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out, but fears about the safety of the food are not the only reason people eat organic. I am actually not that concerned about the health effects of pesticides in my food, though I AM concerned about the health effects for those who apply them and/or drink water contaminated by them. My desire to buy organic food is much more about supporting a certain style of agriculture and about protecting the environment than fear about my family's health. As organics become more and more mainstream, this is getting interesting...at times I choose to support small local growers who may or may not be organic rather than organics from huge distant corporate farms thousands of miles away.