Vaccines

The recent incident of a school district in Maryland rounding up students to inject them with the almighty vaccine seems to have caused quite a stir across the country. In my life, the vaccine issue has been weighing heavily on my mind, with both outcomes (to vax or not to vax) scaring the buh-geezes out of me! What if I do and my child dies because of it? There'll be no proof that the vaccine did it, but I will always question. What and I *don't* and my child dies because of it? Again there would have been no guarantee that the child wouldn't have died from the disease anyway, since the vaccines do not prevent all cases. This is definitely the most difficult decision I've ever had to make.

It doesn't help that the information I find on vaccines all points in different directions. On the one hand, the government is pushing for us to vaccinate EVERYONE for EVERYTHING. Assuring us that the diseases are far worse and more likely than the side effects of the vaccine are. Unfortunately, as far as I've seen, their logic is weak and built on false assumptions. Truthfully, there isn't a lot of evidence proving that vaccines are safe in the long term, thus all the speculation about autism and autoimmune disorders and such. But lack of evidence isn't evidence of lack, and we really don't know either way.

On the other hand, from most of what I've read, the majority of the vaccines they give to infants are not because the disease is dangerous for the infant (and even when it is, they often don't even give the shot until the most dangerous part is over), but to protect the adults in the community. So if that's the case, why are they vaccinating the babies and not the adults? We don't know how much aluminum an infant can metabolize at a time, but we *do* know that an adult can handle quite a bit. I'm sorry, but the "for the good of the many" argument doesn't mean much when it's your child that's been injured by a vaccine.

The government (and the majority of the public) treat vaccines as some sort of magical arrangement that causes no harm and completely protects people from disease. This is not to say that vaccines don't do this, they may, indeed, but why isn't it obvious to people that a child that is ill or has had a reaction to a vaccine in the past should not be getting another? Why aren't we more cautious about giving kids second doses of the same shot when the only reason is because the school district lost the records? When threatened with jail time, how many parents do you think will stop to wonder "hmmm, my kid's been sick, maybe I shouldn't let them have the shot RIGHT NOW..." The government is doing a huge disservice to these people! Having a second dose of the tetanus shot, for instance, before the time has lapsed can be very dangerous and result in the side effects happening. This should be taken much more seriously than the school district in Maryland (and the justice system there) have been taking it.

Lastly, this is AMERICA, is it not? We're entitled to freedom of choice, in fact, our country was built on that concept. These people's rights have been violated and something needs to be done to keep this from happening again. I just hope that the children whose rights were violated all live through this experience!