Why I Don't Vaccinate My Children

From left to right, Lucia, Andy, Me, Yanny, Jerrica, Alicia and Jacinta

If any of you have read my vaccine damage story 'My Fight For Health After Vaccination', it may surprise you to learn that that wasn't the reason why I chose not to vaccinate, although I'm confident my children won't experience the string of nervous system disorders that I have.

My suspicion of vaccines arose in 1991 when at the tender age of 13, I recieved a BCG shot and was handed a blue card AFTER the event, detailing side-effects. I might have been a child, but I was angry and knew that I had the right to have seen that information BEFORE.

However, I put the experience to the back of my mind. I thought the theory of 'immunisation' was strange (how can one achieve wellness by injecting themselves with germs?), but I still thought that they must be 'okay' because the doctors said so. I came from a conservative family. My mother was a nurse and followed the doctor's word to the letter.

She thought nothing of dolling out the Calpol (Tylenol) for every sniffle we had, and growing up, I hadn't even heard of alternative therapy. The doctor's had saved my life with their high-tech neonatal intensive care unit when I was born 3 months early, so why shouldn't I believe what they had to say about vaccination?

I am disabled from a brain injury brought about by premature birth and in my childhood was a regular visitor to hospitals. I had surgeries during this time and was present in the room for the surgeons 'risks and benefits' speech on the particular surgery I was to have. I quickly learned that no medicine is risk free and that to be informed, you need to know both sides of the argument. I knew from being a tiny tot and listening to the conversations between my mother and the doctors.

So when I became pregnant, I knew I should have the same degree of caution with my baby's healthcare. When you're pregnant they tell you not to drink alcohol, don't take asprin or other drugs, only one paracetamol is safe 'if you're absolutely desperate', and when your little miracle arrives you must check medicine labels carefully. In fact, most medicines aren't suitable for infants under 3 months of age and just recently, the FDA in America has said that cough and cold medicines should not be used in children under 3 because of deaths associated with it.

It seemed perfectly natural, and reasonable therefore to CHECK THE LABELS of vaccinations. This was my daughter, my precious creation and the centre of my universe. I could not allow doctor's to inject her with something if I had no idea what it was. Okay, so I know it's a vaccine, but what was in the vaccine? I wasn't prepared for them to put any old rubbish into my perfect baby, no matter what their arguments for 'preventative health' were.

I didn't want to be sitting in clinic with her, getting pressured into it with zero balanced information like so many new mothers are, so I decided to find out what exactly a vaccine was while I was still pregnant. That would give me plenty of time to decide. I am also vegetarian so my thought was at the time that I could get the doctor to order me in an animal free vaccine, if necessary. I was young and nieve.

I read a booklet on vaccinations that stated the DPT vaccine had originally been cultured using horses urine. There were also things about monkey kidneys and aluminium and mercury. I have to say, I didn't believe a word of it. It resembled a science fiction novel.

My husband felt the same, and in fact, wanted to vaccinate our baby. He was particularly worried about tetanus and polio and he'd got his tetanus shot right in front of me when we first moved in together. I told him to hang on. Let me look into this first, and if you still want to vaccinate her by the time she is one year old, I'll agree.
He said okay, he'd give us time to research.

Not believing the alternative therapy booklet about vaccines, I went to what I thought was a reputable source - a pharmacy. I asked the pharmacist if he'd kindly photocopy me all the data sheets on the vaccines my child was due to have. He did so immediately.

There in black and white print for all to see was aluminium, mercury, bovine brain serum, monkey kidney's, mouse brain, formaldehyde, human fetal medium (I nearly vomited) and a host of other nasties resembling a witches cauldron.

As well as this, and probably even more importantly, was a list of side-effects from vaccination as thick as a tree trunk, including the phrase 'SIDS has occured following the administration of DPT'.

Still in shock, I telephoned Aventis Pasteur and some other vaccine manufacturer's and asked them to fax me details of what their vaccines were cultured on as well as any excipients not included in the ingredients. They did so. Pig's blood was listed on one of the faxes.

That on it's own was enough to make us decide that we weren't going to vaccinate our daughter. At that early stage in my parenting life I still believed that vaccines prevented diseases, but I wouldn't inject those ingredients into a dog, never mind my baby, so I decided to take my chance with the diseases.

I wasn't remotely alternative. I thought home birth was for hippies, I'd never heard of homeopathy and I had no qualms at that time about having my baby in a hospital. My first experience of anything alternative was when my midwife suggested using lavender oil to heal painful stitches, and no, I'd not heard of lavender oil either. My journey into the vaccination world was almost by accident.

In my young mind I thought we could just refuse the jabs, like any other medical treatment, and go about our lives. I didn't realise that to question vaccines is to question orthodox medicine, an unspoken no no.

Instead, we were instantly struck off the doctor's list, with a letter stating 'you are refusing to comply with our efforts for preventative medicine.'

And

'You seem to want healthcare purely on your terms.'

HELLO!? This was my body and my baby's body! Why should it not be on our terms? We owned our own personage, after all.

I was annoyed, but let it go. We found another doctor, but that didn't last. On the first consultation he said 'if you don't vaccinate your baby, I'm going to remove you from this practice.'

I pointed out to him all the disgusting ingredients in jabs and he denied it, saying, 'Oh, I'm sure they don't have those things in them.'
So I showed him the data sheet to prove it. I questioned him about brain damage and vaccinations. He said, 'Oh, that's only a one in a million chance.' Excuse me, but when it came to my baby, even a one in a million figure was too much. What if she was that one? (I later learned it was actually 1/1750). I knew that illness sometimes caused brain damage, and that's tragic, but at least that was nature. If it happened because of a vaccine - something I did - then that was tantamount to murder. I told him so. He wasn't impressed.

A week later we got another letter saying we'd been struck off again. We searched for another GP, but no one would have us because they knew we were the couple who didn't vaccinate, so the local authority has to assign us a practice. That didn't last either.

The new GP yelled abuse at us every time we saw him, told us our baby was going to die of whooping cough, accused us of being selfish and irresponsible and jeered at me when I told him vaccination was a choice.

We were struck off a third time, and by now my teenage brain was boiling over with rage. I would not to strapped down to a table and forcibly operated on, so why should I be forced to vaccinate when we are supposed to have freedom of choice?

I went to the newspapers, the radio, the TV. A large camera crew parked up outside the surgery, and we were suddenly and unwittingly all over the news. People saw the programme and starting writing to me to ask for photocopies of the information I had collected when researching for my daughter, and before I knew it, I was a 19 year old with a national organisation.

We continued our research and I found hundreds of medical articles in peer reviewed journals, stating horrific side-effects from vaccines, diseases in vaccinated populations, crib deaths and the opposite of everything I had previously believed about vaccination. The thing that made it so powerful was that it came from medical orthodoxy, from their own journals, and they were the ones advocating vaccines.

By the time my daughter was a year old, my husband told me that if I ever vaccinated her, he would divorce me :)

Over the past 13 years I have carried on researching and providing articles for parents because I feel that everyone should be able to make an informed choice, and it isn't informed if you only have half the information.

I went on to have another four unvaccinated babies and my knowledge in alternative health, natural birthing and parenting also grew, and I have put this website online purely as one mum to another, in the hope that it will assist someone.

Joanna.