The Homegrown Vaccines
by liz pavek (2001)
"A growing body of medical research supports the commonsense idea that children who experience frequent infections and inflammations in early childhood will strengthen their immune systems and will be less prone to allergies and asthma than children who rarely experience such infections.
"This idea is called "the hygiene hypothesis". Research has revealed a list of factors which correlate with a decreased risk of asthma and allergies, including the avoidance of vaccinations and antibiotics and the blessings of growing up in a large family and having farm animals.
"If the hygiene hypothesis proves to be correct, it will have a revolutionary impact on medical practice. We will realize that when children experience their cold and fevers, they are challenging their immune systems and developing an inner strength which will be theirs throughout life."
--Philip F. Incao, M.D. The Reason for Childhood Diseases
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When I was a kid, lo, these many years ago, there were some diseases we simply did NOT avoid. As a matter of fact, I can remember kids telling me they and their siblings went to play with "...Joanie, because she had the chickenpox, and mom wanted us all to have them at the same time." This meant, of course, that the children would go to the sick child's house, be exposed to the virus, and at the end of the incubation period, become "Homegrown Vaccines" for their siblings, as well as the next group of kids to be exposed, who would come and play with them.
Good was served in several ways: 1. The children all had the diseases they were exposed to at an early and manageable age; 2. The diseases were common, fairly mild, and generally, had little in the way of aftereffects beyond some mild scarring; and 3. The children's immune systems were challenged frequently, and built up antibodies to numerous diseases. With the exception, perhaps, of mumps, which was generally exposed as early as possible in boys in order to prevent sterility later in life, most childhood illnesses were vaccinated against in this way. The kids were exposed, caught the diseases early, passed them on, and retained lifelong immunity to those diseases and even some related illnesses that produced similar antibodies. It was a good, sensible, practical, and inexpensive system. It worked, and it worked well, for a long time.
Kids lived on or near farms. They played with farmers' kids. They petted, rode, and fondled farm animals on a regular basis, and further built up their immune systems. They passed around their diseases until each child was vaccinated, and grew up strong and healthy--somewhat dirtier than kids today, granted, but much healthier.
Some diseases, like smallpox or tetanus, for instance, were usually vaccinated against, as were typhoid, diphtheria, and whooping cough, but the vaccines were simple and fairly "benign." They weren't loaded with chemicals, preservatives, and stabilizers like they are now. They had a short shelf-life, but they weren't chemical timebombs waiting to go off in the bloodstream of an unsuspecting child.
Smallpox, a disease that strikes terror into the hearts of modern American parents, was in the 50's a disease that was routinely vaccinated against in the second or third grade of school. Every kid got his little scratch on the upper arm, and most of them got the resulting round scab and the white, circular scar. If it didn't "take," and the characteristic blister didn't appear, the child was re-vaccinated. And smallpox was not a threat, because EVERYBODY was vaccinated.
Today, if you mention "Smallpox," parents tremble, and doctors fear it. It has become a very real threat, because nobody has been vaccinated. "Smallpox has been eliminated!" the World Health Organization crowed a few years ago. "It's no longer necessary to vaccinate your children. Smallpox is no longer a threat in the world!"
Well, it certainly wasn't a threat when everybody was vaccinated, in spite of the fact that there were fewer than 50 cases worldwide most years; but today, nobody is vaccinated, and it's a terrifying possibility, so the vaccine laboratories across the country are racing to make enough vaccine to vaccinate the country once again, before a terrorist can release the virus back into the American population. They won't have enough vaccine ready until later in 2002, if then.
The threat of smallpox would have little or no impact if the whole country had been routinely and continually vaccinated as it had been in the 50's.
Now parents have to worry about vaccinating infants, where before, children weren't vaccinated before they were 7 or 8 years old. Thanks to the arrogance and hubris of the scientists and their prideful boast that they could actually "eliminate" a disease, we are now under the threat of a nationwide epidemic of smallpox on a population so unprepared for it that instead of a few isolated cases, it will spread like wildfire among the 260,000,000 unvaccinated citizens.
THE IMMUNE "BENCH PRESS"
The immune system is like a muscle which must be exercised and challenged constantly in order to be healthy and effective. Antibodies produced by exposure to numerous viruses, bacteria, and other challenges, protect the body and the life of the individual. An immune system which is continually thwarted becomes flaccid and wasted, like a long-unused muscle, and simply cannot rise to the challenge of new and resistant microbes.
Today's medical practice of throwing antibiotics at every infection upon the demands of the parents (thanks largely to the newly-devised strategy of advertising vaccines directly to the consumer, on television and especially in women's magazines) has produced two generations of Americans with immune systems that can't fight off the slightest invasion by even the mildest of colds or allergies. We get sicker easier now than ever before. And to top it off, the bugs we are confronting are mostly mutated and resistant strains.
The modern penchant for germ-free life is the cause of a lot of the wimpy, weak immune responses in children today. The kids are simply not allowed to find a germ or contract any illness of any sort. This lack of illness is equated with health, but instead, it really is the exact opposite. These immune-compromised children are sitting ducks for even weak bacteria and viruses, let alone the resistant Frankenbugs. Hand-sanitizing gels, germicidal sprays, antiseptic wipes, and antibacterial soaps further impede the immune response, until the child is a walking petri dish in the lab of life, nice and sterile and waiting for the first culture to come along. And, believe it or not, one of the worst immune-suppressant villains out there is polyunsaturated fat. It is so good at what it does that polyunsaturated fatty acids are administered to transplant recipients to prevent the immune system from rejecting the transplant.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN
There are times, however, when vaccination of any kind is not good. A newborn infant is not a good candidate for any vaccine. And yet, newborns are vaccinated routinely, with or without the mother's permission with vaccines that often contain mercury or formaldehyde.
Newborn infants of mothers whose own prenatal nutrition is questionable are routinely vaccinated against Hepatitis B and other virulent and powerful viruses and bacteria. Are these infant systems sufficiently developed to survive this horrifying attack at such a young age? This kind of practice may sound good on the surface, but only to the administering physician, I assure you. Mothers know instinctively that their tiny babies' immune systems are unable to rise to such a challenge. Would you take your 6-year-old son and enter him in a cross-country marathon in the Andes? Of course not, no more than you should expect a newborn's immune system to be able to handle the attack of Hepatitis B vaccine.
THE IMMUNE ADVANTAGE
It's time for parents to show some backbone; time for them to begin challenging their doctors' god-like pronouncements that all vaccines are beneficial, all vaccines are necessary, all vaccines are benign, therefore, all vaccines will be mandatory. Take your kids to play with the sick neighbor again. A cold? Grab it. Measles? Caught them last year. Chickenpox? Next on the list. Feel those little immune-system muscles getting big and hard?
Mothers need to make sure their own health is good before their babies are born. Maternal antibodies give newborns a great advantage. Always nurse your baby at least six weeks to give him every possible weapon, and longer if you can possibly arrange it. Nothing succeeds like breastfeeding, nothing is better for baby's health, and it is optimum for mothers, too. Plan to succeed at it.
Then, remember that you don't HAVE to take your child to the doctor every time he gets an earache or a runny nose or runs a fever. Let his body adjust, make antibodies, and get stronger. Before you know it, you'll have a whole houseful of Homegrown Vaccines.