Why The Pressure on Anti-Vaxxers is Making This Pro-Vaxxer Sick...And a Review of the Documentary BOUGHT.

I'm going to open with a review of the new documentary Bought so that anyone who doesn't care about my personal feelings on vaccines and anti-vaxxers can simply move on afterwards.  

"Medications, including vaccines are not all bad. But they're not all good. We need to bring up questions. We need to have science and data be the focus and get the money people out of the conversation." - quote from Bought.

Bought attempts to explore the link between increased illness rates and the toxins we are ingesting - mainly vaccines and GMO's in our food.

When I started writing my post below this review I was unaware of Bought and I only just watched it. While I love watching documentaries I take them all with a grain of salt because they often paint a one-sided picture of an important issue.

But I have to admit this one seems more balanced than some of the anti-vax stuff I've seen (if you can get past the opening discussion about the kid who was severely effected by a vaccine).  Of course it is obviously intended to raise concerns about vaccines which will no doubt lead to accusations of it adding to the mass hysteria. Which it probably will.

At any rate knowledge is power and I think parents should watch it anyway. I think it's important to hear the other side of the story even if you don't agree.

Read the credits on who was involved in the making of it. Write down the names of the doctors and experts who are testifying in it. Check the sources and start your own research on the information in this documentary there. I'm going to.

I think it was a poor choice to open with the family whose son suffered devastating effects from a vaccine. We all know the horror stories of the one in a million chance that something immediately goes wrong and I think using that slim-chance shot as an opener will turn off all but the people who need to see this film the least - the already anti-vaxxers. I almost stopped watching after the first few minutes because I was thinking what I think most people would, "Ya, that's really sad but we all know it can happen and it's a one in a million chance. Vaccination is still worth the risk."

But once I got past that part, the rest raises some interesting questions about what we are putting in our bodies - vaccines and food - and doesn't blame the doctors which I found refreshing.

If you live in B.C., think right now about all the calls for cumulative studies on the impacts of the various LNG and Pipeline projects proposed. It makes sense. A study on one proposal will show very different results then if you add up the environmental effects of a bunch of them being built and operating at the same time.

That's sort of the logic they are using in this film. The risks of one set of vaccines may be different then if you consider all of them and toss in the other toxins in our environments.

But if you're sick of the whole vaccine debate you can just fast forward to the halfway mark where they turn to looking at GMO's and how they could be impacting our health.

I found it a slightly more credible "alternative view" film because it's not just about how horrible vaccines might be but also explores another potential contributing factor - all the crap we eat.

Here's the link to Bought. It's not free after March 6th so watch it now, prepare to pay or hope they make it more accessible.


** I'm adding this in a later date because I found no good reviews of Bought when I originally posted this. Anyway, HERE is a review "debunking" a lot of the information and claims in the film. decide for yourself. 


And if you're totally put off by anything related to the Anti-Vaccine movement here's a funny clip for you:



There's also some clips about the tweets he received after this aired which you can find online as well.

But really, it's not funny how vicious people are getting with each other over this when really the issue is just about access to accurate information regardless of who the information validates.


Just trying to keep the discussion light!

Anyway...now my feelings on the current Vaccine Battle:

It's actually not making me physically sick, I just thought that was a catchy title. Sometimes I get annoyed with people who refuse to vaccinate too. But then I remind myself that we are all trying to make the best choices for our children.

So...

There's no way to post about this without pissing people off, especially since I'm not a doctor, scientist or researcher and therefore what I say counts for very little and is simply my opinion.

For the record, Babe is vaccinated.

I shouldn't feel the need to state that right up front but I'm afraid of the backlash I'll receive if people presume from my sympathies for the other side that we are, God forbid, anti-vaxxers. That's my point in a nutshell. I feel the need to stand up and say we are vaccinated...(read: the good guys) - and I shouldn't have to.

As far as I know she's up to date on all of her shots (I'll get to the "as far as I know" part in a second). However I have chosen for us to opt out of all vaccines of the flu shot variety. 

Vaccinating Babe was a choice that I did not make easily. I previously blogged about it HERE. I don't consider myself particularly conservative or hippy-dippy. Rather my beliefs and reasoning for decisions seems to change with the information I have to go on at the time. The reason my choice to vaccinate was so difficult for me had nothing to do with not wanting to see my baby momentarily hurt by the needles. It wasn't because as a new mother my mama-bear hormones were in overdrive. And it wasn't because I was leaning strongly in one direction or another. 

The reason taking her in was so traumatic for me was because I felt I couldn't win either way. 

Like most parents, I wanted Babe to be as protected as she could be from serious harm (read disease) and I knew I'd never forgive myself if she was injured or killed by something I could have made the choice to prevent. But that rationale wasn't enough to ease my fears about the amount and accuracy of reliable information about current vaccines. I really did feel that I was making a choice that could harm her either way. And as I watched her get her first shots I had a horrible, sinking feeling that I could be making a huge mistake. I knew no matter how much research I did on my own, it would never be enough and I would never know the whole truth.

While I believe in vaccination as a concept and its positive contributions to healthy societies I can also see that we have significantly amped up the amounts we are taking. I am not satisfied that from a pure, uninfluenced scientific standpoint we have ruled there is no serious cumulative impact from our heavy vaccine load and especially when combined with other toxins in our modern environment.

Which brings me to:

At this point I have no idea what I have been vaccinated for over the years. There's no database that I can access that will show everything I have received. I have absolutely no medical knowledge on what was in what I got, how it might react with something else I received or will receive in the future and how those vaccines may have disrupted my body's natural processes.

I know I was vaccinated as a baby/toddler for whatever was standard at the time. As I got older I became terrified of needles and my parents let me opt out of in-school vaccination programs with the intention of doing it later at the doctor's office. Sometimes I went, sometimes it got forgotten about. As a young adult I got boosters when it was recommended that I do so but I don't remember for what or by whom. I travelled and therefore received travel vaccines from various clinics and was responsible for the paperwork which is now long lost. I've lived in numerous cities and I have been through three family doctors and a ton of clinic visits. I've definitely had too many Tetanus shots because I can never remember when I had the last one.

And Babe's records aren't perfect either. We moved. She was vaccinated at a couple different places. I know I forgot her vaccination book at least once but don't know if it was filled in later or if the records were always sent to our family doctor. I know I spontaneously got her vaccinated for chicken pox after an outbreak at her first daycare but it's not written down in her vaccine booklet. We moved and I can't remember now if she ever did get her 18 month shots, so now I have to figure that out which is harder to do than you would think if your family hasn't always gone to the same source for your vaccinations.

Record keeping on Canadian vaccination is apparently pretty dim. According to media reports there's no central database and therefore no reliable numbers on how close we are to the herd immunity rate or which parts of the country are experiencing lower rates.

Check out this recent MACLEAN'S article: The Real Vaccine Scandal

Which brings me back to:

If we aren't accurately keeping track of who got how much or what and when, then how are we supposed to have reliable data on what the cumulative impacts might be?

And if vaccination is as important as most of us believe then shouldn't our governments and physicians be making a much bigger push for it - to stop the hysteria? They should be toting out all the research they can and showing us how Big Pharma isn't skewing the results. If they could make a more trustworthy push for it they could better limit the damage being done by the anti-vax movement.

"Misinformation regarding vaccines must be addressed promptly and aggressively. False or misleading information about vaccination is widely dispersed by a few influential individuals, self-described vaccine-safety advocates, and some clinicians. Public health officials and professional organizations should respond swiftly to dishonest or unbalanced portrayals of vaccination." - Douglas Diekema, New England Journal of Medicine

But part of what is getting me annoyed with us pro-vaccinators bullying the anti-vaxxers comes down to one word: Autism.

As a parent, that you could argue has the potential to become an anti-vaxxer, I get that Dr. Andrew Wakefield's research on the link between the MMR vaccine and autism was debunked. I think a lot of parents understand that by now. But of the anti-vaxxers I know, none of them made their decision not to vaccinate based on that one study or on concerns of autism alone. So I'm sick of hearing all us vaccinators push this false study in their face as the reason why anti-vaxxers are morons that refuse to accept the safety of vaccines. 

While the study likely sparked the current swell of fear over vaccination it is not what I believe most parents are now basing their decision to not vaccinate on.

It's more than a fear of Autism:

For me, and I'm guessing many other parents who want real information, the choice of whether or not to vaccinate has simply become overwhelming. For the most part I trust scientists and doctors. I believe in our family doctor and I trust her opinion. I love our doctor. I know she cares about us and I know she wants to keep us healthy. But...

I also believe it's possible that she hasn't been completely informed on all of the risks associated with vaccines. I don't trust Big Pharma (I am embarrassed to be using the term because it immediately conjures up an image of overly-paranoid conspiracy theorists). But NO, I don't believe that companies that stand to gain enormous sums of money from a product should be trusted with relaying completely accurate, unbiased information about their product. If you look at our governments, the manufactures etc. when have they ever been completely honest about what could or is going wrong? 

The majority of us are not educated enough in the matter to ever fully determine the potential links between the pharmaceutical companies (who stand to gain profit) and the scientists, doctors and researchers who are recommending our current vaccine load. And most of the people who say the links are there and that they are producing scary results are the wackjobs that no one takes seriously.

When I was on the fence about vaccines I couldn't find anything that fully convinced me either way. I understand the serious damage these now-preventable illnesses can do. I understand how many of us need to oblige in order to obtain herd immunity. I get that the current available data says the safest choice statistically is to vaccinate. 

However, I also see great benefit in our body's natural defence mechanisms and the dangers of suppressing them, especially at a young age when everything is developing. I've also seen how recommendations by doctors have changed over time as we have gained more information. What may have been prescribed thirty years ago wouldn't be now because serious risks and complications were discovered. Anyone remember Thalidomide?  I do have doubts that the information we are being provided on vaccines is entirely accurate but I can't attribute that to either a conspiracy to hide the evidence or simply that our best minds just don't know for sure yet.

But what I do know is not all anti-vaxxers are way out in left field and the pressure that the rest of us are putting on them to do the right thing is freaking me out.

We are now talking about mandatory vaccination, banning unvaccinated children from schools and parks, fines and jail time for non-complying parents and potential removal of children from their families. For what? For questioning big corporations and our governments? For desiring more information before injecting their babies with something? For standing up and saying they don't feel comfortable with being pressured to make a decision they don't have the whole story on yet?

I want vaccination for our children. I want it to work. I want everyone to have it. I want us to do what we should to protect those who can't. But I also want the ability to choose when and how to use it based on reliable data that hasn't been tampered with by companies that stand to gain financially. I get that for vaccination to work we essentially have to all be on the same page. But I don't think we should be throwing our rights and freedoms away and condemning people who are trying to protect their children as horrible parents who are putting everyone else at risk...although that last part may be somewhat true.

I made the choice to vaccinate Babe. I still believe it was the right choice. But I did choose to delay her vaccine schedule by a few months and space them out and I believe I did the right thing. Would I have felt terrible if she had gotten seriously sick in that time. Of course I would have. I also would have felt terrible if she had passed a horrible illness onto another child. But at the time I knew the risks of her contracting something when she was mostly at home and exclusively breastfed were slim and I felt the risks of injecting her with multiple shots when she was still so tiny and racked with early digestive problems were worse.

And we still don't receive flu vaccines because I don't feel they are necessary. I do believe the individual shots might be innocuous but I think she's getting too many vaccines already to start getting annual vaccines for essentially mild illnesses.

Some parents will say that I was irresponsible for spacing out her shots and some will say I remain irresponsible for not getting her vaccinated against the flu. Or maybe they will say I am naive. That all the evidence shows she was safe to get her first round of shots shortly after birth. That I risked the lives of other kids by delaying her shots or by not getting her vaccinated for the flu. But my intuition told me she couldn't handle it all.

If you're not vaccinating right now the pressure is really on. 

I'm thankful I'm not in your shoes.

Look at the comments section of any vaccine-related news story and you can see how inflamed the debate has gotten and how much hatred there is towards parents who are opting out. They're being accused of risking the lives of compromised children that can't have the vaccines. Of endangering the masses. Of being idiots, hippies or conspiracy nut jobs. That may well be and it's scary.

But the alternative to not letting people decide or shutting them down when they call for more information is a loss of our rights as a society and less accountability from above.

For me, the data on the pro side seems pretty solid. Anyone would agree that your family doctor or the CDC website are your safest bet for up to date information. But I am also willing to concede that facts and figures could have been hidden from the general public, including doctors. 

I also believe that as research advances and we learn new information, how we prevent illnesses will change - it always has in the past. and if that's true there will turn out to be regrets. Links will be found between causes and illnesses that at present we aren't aware of.

On the anti-vax side it is much harder to find credible information. So much of what is out there on why not to vaccinate comes from sources that I am trained to see as unreliable. Doctors and advocates with questionable reputations, websites and media whose motivations are hidden or aren't using credible, unbiased sources. But it paints a picture that all the reasons not to vaccinate are wrong and they aren't. Some have merit and should be investigated further.

There is no denying that for all our modern medicine we have higher rates of diabetes, obesity, autism, allergies and immune disorders. Some or most of that may be attributed to current lifestyle choices for example, obesity and diabetes. Other increased rates might be attributed to toxins introduced through pollution, GMO's or cheap plastic stuff. Increased autism rates are very likely due (at least partially) to a better understanding of the disorder, an increase in the spectrum of sufferers and improved screening measures. 

But could we please not rule out that increasing the amount of vaccinations we are giving our kids could also be playing a role and we just don't know it yet?

I don't believe that the parents who are opting out are frivolously subjecting the rest of us to potentially lethal diseases just because they are flakes. I prefer to believe most of them are like me. Intelligent and well-meaning but skeptical and afraid of making the wrong choice. Attempting to be well-informed but not satisfied with the information available. And sick to death of being lied to by our government.

While I want to see vaccination working for us I see the vilification of anti-vaxxers taking us down a road that I don't want to go. I don't want to see parents making permanent choices for their children based on a fear of punishment. I don't want to see more polarization between the two sides. I don't want to see animosity grow between us on this subject to the point where people are being threatened or hurt. I don't want to see research into alternative medicine, historic practices and more holistic approaches decrease at a time when we should be investing in it further. I don't want to see reputable doctors and scientists not want to go on record or voice concerns about a vaccine or its ingredients for fear of being labeled a wing-nut or losing their careers. I don't want to see medicines pushed on us or our constitutional rights taken away. And I don't want to see less accountability for pharmaceutical companies and our governments.

When you write off all anti-vaxxers as ill-informed idiots you are shutting down the discussion on a very important practice in our society. If we could begin to accept that people who aren't currently vaccinating may have some points that are worth exploring and some questions that deserve better answers we may actually get a lot closer to higher vaccination rates as people begin to trust again. 

Treating them like they already have the plague isn't going to get them on board with vaccination. Hearing their concerns and demanding real answers for everyone just might.