But on an even broader scale, because not only are they guilty of neglecting the safety and wellbeing of their own kids, but they also exposing other children to a raft of preventable diseases.

And perhaps now is the time for serious discussions to occur about whether our legislatures make child vaccinations compulsory. Much like pool fencing or seatbelts. Or sending your child to school.

Because I have lost faith in our ability as a human race to instil logic into people whose preconceived notions surrounding immunisations will never, ever be shifted. Probably not unless one of them loses a child to a preventable disease. But even then I dare say they’d remain crackpot vaccination conspiracists.

It’s an argument that is effectively not worth having anymore as you’d get more traction from some sustained head banging against a wall.

Victoria and New South Wales have pioneered the way by introducing a No Jab No Play policy which sees children who are unvaccinated for non-medical reasons banned from attending child care or early schooling.

But given the rest of the country remains non-committal about introducing this, it seems highly unlikely the terrain of mandatory vaccinations is an area anyone would tread.

But as we stare down the barrel of yet another outbreak of a preventable disease — this time the potentially deadly measles — maybe it’s time our policies become a bit more hard-core.

Health authorities are this week accusing anti-vaccination campaigners of causing the latest outbreak of measles in Melbourne.

Measles should not exist in our society today. It is a highly infectious viral illness that can be fatal for babies in particular as it can lead to brain inflammation. But once upon a time we’d all but conquered it.

Experts say this latest outbreak is a direct correlation to anti-vaccination campaigners in the suburb of Brunswick. And because other jurisdictions tend to follow trends, it’s likely the outbreak will spread to the rest of the country.

 And anyone who says measles is a simple childhood illness that “toughens up the immune system” of children need only look to the case of a Darwin baby who became so gravely ill when he contracted measles 18 months ago he ended up in intensive care. The six-month-old likely caught the incredibly contagious illness while at a Darwin shopping centre with his mum.

This incident also serves as another vital reminder of herd immunity and should shut up those who cry “well if your kid is immunised then what do you have to worry about”.

At only 6 months of age this baby was too young to be fully vaccinated so relied on others through the principle of herd community to help keep him protected.

In Melbourne right now many parents are saying they refuse to take young babies out in public. What a sad world we’ve become if mums become prisoners inside the home for fear of their babies contracting a preventable illness because a bunch of imbeciles refuse to do what is right for the most indefensible human beings.

To think we are lucky enough to live in a country where we have access to free vaccinations yet there are people turning their noses up at this. I’d love to plonk some of these parents into a country that is seeing polio run rampant — yes a disease that was wiped out of developed countries 50 years ago because of vaccinations — to give them a good hard dose of reality.

Sadly however some views and ideologies are too far ingrained.

And on that note I leave you with a comment left by a reader on the bottom of a story I reported on last week about a mum whose 13 month old became unwell after contracting whooping cough recently — the same respiratory infection that killed baby Riley Hughes less than a year ago.

“So sorry for their loss. But, I won’t be compromising mine or my family’s immune systems or our future generation for the sake of a few that might catch it. Sorry, but God’s creation of our immune system can’t be arrogantly tampered with. OKAY?”

**Walks away and silently bangs head against a wall**

I think you need to go & put your head in a toilet, Maria.  http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/parents-who-dont-vaccinate-their-kids-are-child-abusers/news-story/a1f7b270b76123ffa7cbba7e25ded4b8?login=1
Response from Shawn Siegel : We’ll see whether they publish my comment: One of the ostensible purposes of vaccination is to protect those who can’t be vaccinated because they’re immunocompromised – like, say, a cancer patient, or others with severe, chronic disorders. Last week the USCDC offered the public an online quiz, which provided you with a list of vaccines you need, based on the answers to the health questions asked. The questions were few: age; sex; and one which asked you to choose from a list of disorders which ones you may have. As a test of the espoused tenet that the immunocompromised can’t be vaccinated, I checked the boxes for heart disease, diabetes, chronic lung disease, cancer and HIV with CD4 count greater than or equal to 200. Surely I wouldn’t be advised to vaccinate… Based on my response, I was told I need the Hep A, Hep B, flu, meningitis, pneumococcal and Tdap vaccines. It would be funny, if it weren’t such blatant evidence of the falsity of the vaccination paradigm. Everything we’re told in the mainstream about vaccination, from the threat of the associated diseases to the extent of severe vaccine injury to the effectiveness of the vaccines, is false. As blatantly, articles such as this are terribly misleading, in that there’s no mention of the thousands of cases of severe, sometimes fatal, reactions to vaccines. The equation’s simple, really: once you’re aware that your child can be permanently disabled, brain damaged or killed by a vaccine, with no way to accurately predict the probability on an individual by individual, shot by shot basis, you must look seriously at the associated diseases, to assess whether they’re actually a threat. Measles: in 1960 in the U.S., before the advent of the vaccine, the complications rate for measles was around 1 in 1,000 cases, the mortality rate, 1 in 10,000. That’s a textbook definition of a benign disease; one in which complications aren’t expected, and complete recovery is usual. Critically, parents must consider that when 9,999 out of 10,000 measles patients recover, there’s more involved in the one death than just the measles virus; that there’s serious immune system weakness involved, whether from malnutrition or other cause; that complications and death don’t follow the virus or bacterium, they follow the person; that in well fed and housed populations, the vaccine associated diseases are simply not a threat. Beware. The lion’s share of vaccine injuries occur well after the withdrawal of the syringe needle. If they occurred, instead, as the needle was withdrawn, no doctor would dare suggest vaccinating. The proposal set forth in this article is draconian, based on misinformation and a trust in supposed health authorities who even a modicum of research outside the mainstream box – and yes, outside of Google – shows are not trustworthy.

And meryl: Some responses to this article: (I suggest we start making complaints to the press council) Here is my comment on this horrible article – one in a string of horrible articles. I doubt very much that it will be approved, but you never know… This journalist appears to be as misinformed about the law as she is about the scientific evidence behind vaccination. She states that NSW passed a No Jab No Play law. They did not. In fact, the NSW Parliament during debate on proposed legislation that is similar to what was eventually passed in Victoria, stated that bringing these laws in would leave the government open to anti-discrimination lawsuits. And they were right. And hopefully, those lawsuits will be starting up in Victoria shortly. The Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network is currently awaiting a barrister’s advice regarding the possibility of taking a case to the High Court of Australia to overturn No Jab No Pay legislation that discriminates against loving and well-informed parents who have made informed choices not to follow the government’s full vaccination schedule. Visit avn.org.au to find out more about this effort. The fact is – there is no such thing as vaccine-induced herd immunity. Our vaccination rates have never been higher and our rate of pertussis (whooping cough) has been higher per capita in the last few years than it was before mass vaccination was introduced to Australia in 1953. Lack of vaccination is not the reason – the vaccine itself apparently increases susceptibility to b. parapertussis – a different form of the bacteria that causes whooping cough. In addition, it appears to have been responsible for causing the pertussis bacteria to mutate to the point where today, 87% of pertussis cases in Australia are being caused by a strain of the bacteria that is not contained in the vaccine. Yet the ignorant media is blaming the unvaccinated! And when the measles vaccine was introduced in the US in 1963, doctors said the disease would be wiped out within a decade. More than 50 years later, with a vaccination rate of well over 90%, measles is still with us – and it is affecting the fully-vaccinated. You talk about the 6 month old baby who was hospitalised with measles. Prior to measles vaccination, the disease was nearly unheard of in infants because unvaccinated parents who had contracted measles as children were able to pass on very strong measles protection to their unborn children in the womb. This protection lasted for between 15 and 18 months after birth meaning that young babies – who were the most at risk of serious problems from measles should they contract it during this time – would not do so until they were older. Then, they would also get lifelong protection from measles (a benefit the vaccine cannot provide) and they could pass this same protection on to their own children. Vaccinated parents give birth to babies who are unprotected – even if the parents themselves contracted measles after vaccination – leading to measles becoming more common in infancy for the first time in recorded history. If vaccines worked – if they truly provided the protection they promise – the vaccinated would not have to be concerned about contracting illnesses they had been vaccinated against. And since the stated vaccine effectiveness (if you can believe statistics promulgated by the drug companies that manufacture and profit from these products) is between 17% (for last year’s flu vaccine) and 80% and this supposed protection lasts from 6 months to 10 years, please explain how vaccination could EVER claim to provide herd immunity when most of those who were vaccinated are not and never were immune to disease. True immunity means lifelong protection. No vaccine can give you that. Only contracting the illness and recovering from it – something the human race has done for millennia – can make you immune. If a vaccinated child gets sick with something they were vaccinated against, that is a case of vaccine failure – nothing more and nothing less. If vaccines only protect you up to the point where you are exposed to the virus or bacteria – then they haven’t protected you at all. The title of this article should have been – refusing to obey the orders of the Murdoch media can get you charged with child abuse – because that is far closer to the truth in this matter. The government passes legislation – not based on fact or need – but based on pressure from the media that is incredibly reliant on pharmaceutical advertising money. Is this a conspiracy theory? No! This is a conspiracy – but there is nothing theoretical about it. As I send this comment, I know that it will be followed by a slew of posts from anti-freedom campaigners attacking me personally. This is a serious subject however and it deserves serious discussion with both sides given a voice and all available evidence presented to those seeking to make an informed decision. Personal attacks have no place in this debate.

Survey Results: Are Unvaccinated Children Healthier?

by Sarah

In December 2010, a comprehensive survey was initiated by the German site impfshaden.info and its counterpartvaccineinjury.info to compare the health of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children.  As far as I know, no survey or study of this kind has ever been conducted except for a compilation of statistics of the patients of Dr. Mayer Eisenstein MD, a pediatrician based in Chicago.

Nearly 12,000 surveys have been filled out so far, and while this project is ongoing, the results are starting to be published.

Please note that only the health of entirely unvaccinated children was evaluated.  Parents were also asked to review the birthing records for their children to ensure that their baby had not mistakenly received the Hep B jab before being taken home.

I am happy to report that all 3 of my children participated in this survey.  I am proud to have been part of this important, worldwide effort to help inform the public about the clear and present dangers of vaccination.

The market for vaccines is expected to surpass $36 billion dollars by 2013.  Vaccines are clearly an important growth industry for Big Pharma.  Just witness the rapid increase in the childhood vaccination schedule from 3 shots in 1950 to 68 vaccines by age 11-12 today (25 of those by the age of 6 months)!

In 1986, it cost a parent about $80 for her child to receive every government recommended vaccine.   In 2011, it cost $2200! Clearly, vaccines are one of the fastest growing sectors of the pharmaceutical industry.  $4 billion in tax dollars are spent every year purchasing vaccines for health clinics in the United States alone.

Big Pharma does not want the results of a survey like this to be published as it threatens their very reliable and growing oil well of profits:  childhood vaccination.   This is why surveys like this will never be reported objectively on the evening news or in major newspapers.

Who Participated in the Survey?

75% of the surveys were filled out in English and 25% in German.  Most of the respondents were from the USA followed by the UK, Canada, and Australia.

Slightly more completely unvaccinated children are male than female and the children are primarily between the ages of 0-2 years of age followed by 2-4 years and 5-6 years.   This makes sense as the momentum against vaccination has only gained steam in the past 5 years or so.

Most of the children participating in the survey were breastfed for longer than 6 months and their parents preferred natural or homeopathic remedies to allopathic (drugs/surgery) methods for illness intervention.

Over 99% of the parents who chose to completely unvaccinate their children were happy with their decision.  Can the same be said for those who choose to vaccinate?  I highly doubt it.  I hear from people all the time who greatly regret their decision to give into doctor or family pressure to immunize.

The biggest reasons for not vaccinating were a concern over the ingredients and that the shots would be ineffective. 25% of respondents had seen a vaccine reaction in a friend or family member and had decided not to vaccinate for that reason.

One respondent wrote:

“As a speech-language pathologist in the pediatric setting, I have seen many cases of children having seizures within 36-72 hours following routine vaccines with a traumatic regression in the child’s brain and language and overall development.  I feel in my heart, it is linked to vaccines and do not want to subject any of my children to this.”

Are Unvaccinated Children Truly Healthier Than Vaccinated?

Ok, let’s get down to brass tacks.  Are unvaccinated children really healthier?

Here are the stats:

• Less than 10% of unvaccinated children suffer from allergies of any kind.    This compares with 40% of children in the USA ages 3-17 reporting an allergy to at least one allergen and 22.9% with an allergic disease.
• .2% of unvaccinated children suffer from asthma.  This compares with 14-15% of vaccinated children with asthma in Australia, 4.7% in Germany, and 6% in the USA.
• 1.5% of unvaccinated children suffer from hayfever.   This compares with 10.7% in Germany.
• 2% of unvaccinated children had neurodermatitis.   This auto-immune disorder affects over 13% of children in Germany.
• ADHD was present in only 1-2% of the unvaccinated children.  This compares with nearly 8% of children in Germany with ADHD and another 5.9% borderline cases.
• Middle ear infections are very rare in unvaccinated children (less than .5%).  In Germany, 11% of children suffer from this problem.
• Less than 1% of unvaccinated children had experienced sinusitis.  This compares with over 32% of children in Germany.
• Only 4 unvaccinated children out of the 7,600+ total surveys reported severe autism.  In all 4 cases, however, the mother tested very high for mercury.   In the USA, approximately 1 in 100 children suffer this neurological illness and 1 in every 38 boys in the UK.

These results are no surprise to those who chose to not to vaccinate their children.  While not vaccinating is no guarantee of health for your child, the odds are certainly in your favor of far fewer problems both in the short and long term should you forgo immunization.

It seems by quite a landslide that unvaccinated children are indeed healthier than vaccinated children.

For  those parents on the fence or still contemplating their decision, the results of this survey should help bring into sharp focus the slam dunk of not vaccinating. 

Still have questions?  See all my posts on vaccination by clicking here.

To view the entire survey results, click here.

Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com

Source:  The Health of Unvaccinated Children, Survey Results

Source: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/survey-results-are-unvaccinated-children-healthier/