To vaccinate or not to vaccinate is a debate many parents consider. It’s a question of personal versus public health, in many instances, and it is hard to muddle through all the information and rumors about vaccinations. My own personal stance on the subject changed after giving birth to a child with a congenital heart defect.
I am not a doctor. I have asked several different doctors their opinions on which vaccinations they felt were the most important. The answer has varied, but inevitably pertussis is mentioned. It’s a disease modern doctors still face.
In fact, the whooping cough rates for 2010 were the highest in 50 years despite high vaccinations rates.
The Huffington Post reports:
More than 21,000 people got whooping cough last year, many of them children and teens. That’s the highest number since 2005 and among the worst years in more than half a century, U.S. health officials said Wednesday.
They are puzzled by the sharp rise in cases. The vaccine against whooping cough is highly effective in children, and vaccination rates for kids are good.
Dr. Mercola explains why the current protocol of vaccinations is not effective:
Whooping Cough Cases Increase Despite High Vaccination Rates
Virtually every kindergartner in the United States has received all of the pertussis shots recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC data also shows that 84 percent of children under 3 have received four DTaP shots, which is the acellular pertussis vaccine that was approved in the United States in 1996.
Despite this high vaccination rate, the disease has not been eradicated and every several years a new outbreak is reported…
And according to a data analysis by the Watchdog Institute, up to 83 percent of those diagnosed with whooping cough in California this year had been immunized. Dr. Frits Mooi and other government scientists from Amsterdam believe this high failure rate is due to the pertussis bacteria having mutated almost two decades ago, and the vaccine being useless against this new strain.
The decision to vaccinate is one that should be well-researched and discussed. A friend, who is a pediatric nurse practitioner, gave the following advice: Your child is probably fine if you do; your child is probably fine if you do not. Dr. Mercola continues:
In the case of whooping cough, it is still infecting both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, and cases increase every four to five years no matter how high the vaccination rate.
Many, if not most, children and adults survive whooping cough without any complications whatsoever, but some do not. Similarly, some receive the whooping cough vaccine without a problem, while others do not, and have been harmed or have died after receiving the shot.
The partnership between government health agencies and vaccine manufacturers is moving closer and closer to discriminating against those who want to exercise their informed consent rights when it comes to making voluntary vaccination decisions, but for now you still have that choice, and should be fully informed when making it.
At the risk of a reader leaving a comment that I am a hypocrite or an idiot contradicting my own information, I will share that my children have been partially vaccinated with the DTaP shot. It’s the only vaccination they have been given. They have not received all of their boosters. This may be stupid, but I can’t seem to get over my anxiety to complete their vaccination.
Dr. Mercola is a quack. Not a good doctor to go by.
Dr. Mercola shares important information that helps all of us make better decisions in regards to our and our family’s health. Saying he’s a quack is like calling a duck a doctor. Simply ridiculous and completely ignorant.
how do you say Dr.Mercola is not a good doctor to go by???
even so, he is giving examples of the CDC data… are you trying to say the CDC data is a lie?
I love Dr. Mercola. He offers a lot of info from various studies on his articles. I was not vaccinated and neither was my daughter. We’re just fine. I know of some people who’s life changed dramatically after being vaccinated and not for the better(brain damage, nervous system issues). I’m just saying do your own research and then decide. The NVIC is also an excellent source. They are non-biased, just trying to get the facts.
Dr. Mercola is not a quack at all. He knows what he is speaking about and I agree with him and his opinions.
“Dr. Mercola is a quack. Not a good doctor to go by.
Is that ALL you have to say about Dr. Mercola?? Do you have any idea how many peoples health have been restored by his Medical practive over the years!! WOW im going to take you comment with a grain of salt.
Bedt to you,
They need to turn that child upside down and hit her on the back, not just sit there and watch her! They will probably find that gobs of mucous pour out of her mouth.
My younger brother, who was born in 1958, came down with whooping cough as a baby, after his third DPT shot. When he would start coughing, we’d turn him upside down and hit him on the back. Large amounts of mucous would come out of his mouth. He survived the whooping cough.
I have respect for Dr. Mercola. He is writing what no other doctor will.
And he is simply reporting on the research done by Dr. Mooi and others in the Netherlands have observed. Thank you for this post as I have been wondering about the California outbreak. Just to note: homeopathy has very good results in treating many cases of whooping cough in both children and adults.
In Australia, we are currently in our third year of a whooping cough epidemic – something that was unheard of before mass vaccination when whooping cough – as you so rightly said – normally went in 3-4 year cycles.
In 1991, only 71% of Australia’s children were vaccinated against pertussis and we had a total of 318 cases across Australia. Last year, our vaccination rate in the same age group was 95.1% and we had just under 30,000 cases – this year looks like it will be even higher.
What we have seen is a 100 times increase in the disease along with a 24% increase in vaccination. The vaccine has done nothing whatsoever to reduce the level of whooping cough and in fact, may even be responsible for the increase.
This is for 2 reasons:
1- use of the vaccine has caused a shift in the strain of pertussis – the bacteria that causes whooping cough – in much the same way that overuse of antibiotics cause the emergence of antibiotic-resistent strains of bacteria.
2- Use of the vaccine has caused b. parapertussis – a close relation to the b. pertussis bacteria – to come to the fore. This bacteria, which is not contained in the pertussis vaccine, causes a disease that is clinically identical to whooping cough.
So, when parents are told that vaccination is the best way to prevent whooping cough, what is that information based on?
When a huge increase in vaccination leads to a huge increase in the disease and more deaths in children, we have to question what medicine is basing its recommendations on. It certainly does not seem to be based in science.
Meryl Dorey
Australian Vaccination Network, Inc.
It’s very sad to see this child coughing. Below is a link for information that I am sure is helpful for treating whooping cough. It recommends high doses of vitamin C and also mentions a homeopathic remedy.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/whoop.html
Very high doses of intravenous vitamin C are useful for curing a variety of infectious diseases. And in my opinion, if every child could be effectively treated for infectious diseases such as whooping cough, parents would not have to be so worried that their child might die from an infectious disease.
To follow up on my previous comment, this is a link to a video on vitamin C:
http://www.vitaminccancure.org/latest-news