Vaccination – How Do You Decide ? Patty Hemingway (rmanm)



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Vaccination – How Do You Decide ? Patty Hemingway (RMANM)
It should be a simple matter to weigh up the pros and cons of vaccination, and what is in the best interests of your child, but parents tell me it is a difficult decision to make, and one that can lead to disharmony between parents and divisions in the family. How have we got ourselves into such a state when there is seemingly so much information available, and the political climate appears to favour enabling free choice in matters of health ?
When parents ask me what their choices really are, I reply that they have broadly three choices: to vaccinate; not to vaccinate but to support their child’s immune system in other ways and treat with natural remedies and therapies such as homeopathy; or to give some vaccinations and use homeopathic treatment to reduce the risks of side-effects. For example, I see many vaccinated children who are full of mucus, which can present as a runny nose, glue ear, or chesty cough, none of which are complaints your GP will normally associate with vaccination, but which can be successfully treated with homeopathy.
I do not advocate vaccinating babies and small children in general, for reasons which I will make clear, but I equally accept that there are circumstances in which vaccination may be advisable. Some years ago I remember talking to another homeopath who intended to vaccinate her children because the family was going to travel to parts of the world which had relatively poor sanitation, high infection rates and poor immunity to many common childhood diseases. Equally, the case can be made for vaccinating teenagers against Rubella if it can be shown that they do not carry the antibodies to this disease, which can be so devastating to the health of the unborn child if caught by a pregnant woman.
Vaccination can be detrimental to the child’s developing immune system, which needs sufficient time, and the stimulus of exposure to viruses and bacteria to fully develop. Exposing a child to a virus in vaccine form, administered via injection into the blood stream does not stimulate the same response from the immune system as being exposed to the disease in its natural form. In addition, healthy unvaccinated children are better able to deal with infection, and having dealt with the disease, will have life-long immunity from relatively harmless diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella. chicken pox, and whooping cough. The sad cases we hear about when one of these diseases proves fatal are usually the result of the child having an already compromised immune system, or being given the wrong treatment, for example, giving aspirin in a case of chicken pox. Interestingly, vaccination does not always confer immunity, as can be seen in the case of whooping cough, which is still turning up in vaccinated children. Although this was a killer disease in the 19th Century, better sanitation, diet and healthcare had reduced the rate to less than 400 cases per year by 1950 when whooping cough immunization began (The No Nonsense Vaccine Handbook).
Vaccines have “added ingredients” such as aluminium (which can cause constipation), formaldehyde ( to which some people can become allergic, and which has been linked to certain cancers), egg protein (another allergen), and of course thiomersal, a mercury based preservative, which until recently was routinely used as a preservative, and which will continue to be found in certain vaccines. Some of these additives as well as the vaccines themselves have been implicated in adverse reactions ranging from allergies, asthma and convulsions to autism. These reactions are much more likely if there is a family history of these conditions, but no one can predict how an individual child will react to vaccination.
If parents choose to vaccinate their child I offer homeopathic support, although I cannot give a guarantee that all will be well, as I simply do not know. However, I can offer homeopathic treatment to deal with whatever reaction the child has. I prefer to treat the child before vaccination with potentised remedies made from the vaccines themselves, as well as giving a dose afterwards. In some cases this is not sufficient, and on more than one occasion I have followed up with other remedies such as Thuja in a high potency to deal with persistent diarrhoea, or belladonna for fever and screaming. Usually, though if the child is in good health at the time of vaccination, this method helps the child recover quickly without the need for Calpol and without any long term chronic illness such as asthma or eczema.
Staying in good health is the best protection from disease. You can boost your child’s immune system naturally by breast-feeding for as long as possible, making sure their diet is nourishing and preferably organic and avoiding processed foods and sugars, getting lots of fresh air, sleep and fun time together. In the very early stages, babies need to avoid exposure to infections, and be introduced gradually to bugs and a bit of dirt! Nursing them through an illness and avoiding antibiotics, unless essential, and treating with therapies such as homeopathy, or cranial osteopathy, can also strengthen your child’s immune system.
Homeopathy also has its own system of profilaxis against disease. This involves giving the child a nosode, which is a remedy made from the disease, when they are well, and watching for any slight reaction, such as a brief outburst of bad temper, a temporary sore throat or short-lived fever. A reaction often means that the remedy has had a reaction and if the child is exposed to that disease, he or she will deal with the illness and be stronger afterwards - my son cut all his back molars after having measles. This system of profilaxis was much valued by the homeopaths of the 19th century in dealing with endemic smallpox. This account of giving Variolinum (small-pox nosode) is quoted by Robin Murphy in his Homeopathic Remedy Guide: “Vario 6C was given to the mother and children of a family, one of whose members was taken with small-pox….The patient was dangerously ill for a month. Neither the mother who nursed him nor any of the other children took small-pox.”
Still undecided ? In that case I would recommend you consult some of the books given below and talk to other parents and health workers about your concerns. It is important that you do not feel coerced into making a decision, and that you are able to consider what is best for you and your child. Individualisation is the key to making the right choice.
References
An Educated Decision; One Approach to the Vaccination Problem Using Hoemopathy, Christina Head, 1999. Also www.aneducateddecision.com
Homeopathic Remedy Guide, Robin Murphy, H.A.N.A. Press, USA 2000
Impossible Cure: The Promise of Homeopathy, Amy Lansky, RL Ranch Press, California 2003. A mother’s story of how homeopathy helped her autistic son.
The Informed Parent - provides newsletters and information. Tel: 0208 861 1022,

www.informedparent.co.uk


The No Nonsense Vaccine Handbook: A Practical Guide for Parents, Liz Bevan-Jones & Yvonne Stone, June 2004

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