A question of faith - MMR vaccine

[Guest guest]

>From: " john " <whaleto4@...>

a how-to children's author no less, but an example of religious faith

A question of faith

The MMR debate is now just noisy overkill. I'd rather wallow in ignorance

than hear another word of it

Deborah

Wednesday December 17, 2003

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/parents/story/0,3605,1108387,00.html

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? The mother of all debates reached a

frenzy this week with the screening of a gloriously one-sided drama

featuring a righteously indignant t son. Unfortunately, the

acronym MMR now Makes Me Run into another room rather than stay glued to

the telly.

Many parents are now beginning to simply switch off from the debate. It is

not that we don't care, it is just that the MMR debate - and other jab

scares - have been raging for decades and they just don't seem to get us

anywhere. Inject a small child with a quantity of diseased matter and there

ought to be an effect, one way or another. Parents inevitably have to make

difficult choices and neither over-egged televisual polemic or a

patronisingly assured state do anything to help their decision.

The trouble is that the vaccination question is not merely personal but

political. Your Country Needs You to vaccinate your child in order to

protect other, vulnerable children in the community, runs the official

argument. But you won't get the whole truth when doctors are paid incentive

fees to vaccinate and drug companies are involved, goes the counter-spin.

This is not so much a discussion as a race for moral high-ground, each side

wielding childhood death and damage statistics like light sabres in the dark.

For we are in the dark. When, aged 15 months, my daughter Frances became

one of the first batch of children to be immunised with the triple MMR

vaccine - newly arrived from America! - I asked the nurse about possible

side-effects. " Your daughter will be fine, " she replied. I explained that,

since I was already committed to the principle of the jab, I wasn't seeking

reassurance, but information. " She'll be perfectly OK, " came the pursed-lip

reply.

And when, three days later, Frances fell so dangerously ill she could not

eat and was struggling to breathe, no hospital doctor was remotely

interested that she had been immunised. " She's just had her MMR! " I wailed,

" Doesn't anyone want to write that down? " Fifteen years have passed and I

am unaware that either side is writing down the data or opinions provided

by the opposition.

Ironic then, that the Channel Five drama was called Hear the Silence. On

this particular hot topic, it is not a question of hushed cover-up, but of

noisy overkill. Here is a subject so thoroughly argued that I honestly

think I would rather wallow in ignorance than hear another word of it.

So what is a modern, over-informed parent to do? Families from Africa to

the Far East have historically used the " fingers crossed " approach when

deciding whether or not to vaccinate their young. Immunisation is an

ancient intervention and it has always required the faith of those who

offer up their children for its apparently magical protection.

Some jabs are symbolic: Ancient Egyptians would tattoo cat silhouettes on

their infants' arms to enlist the protection of the cat goddess Bastet,

while Bhaca parents of southern Africa scarify their babies' cheeks at full

moon, offering a spiritual shield against disease. But other cultures

introduced diseased matter, a practice that dates back to old China. Even

Druid priests of ancient Britain ran a primitive vaccination programme

using pus from smallpox victims.

Long before Jenner and his crusade against smallpox, aristocratic

British mothers went abroad to get their children " engrafted " . In 1718,

Lady Wortley Montague, wife to the British ambassador at the court of

the Ottoman empire, submitted her six-year-old son to the process and

instantly turned inoculation into a fashion statement.

Just think of the leap of faith involved in handing over your child to be

jabbed in an 18th-century Turkish backstreet clinic. " The old woman comes

with a nut-shell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, " wrote

Lady , " and asks what vein you please to have opened... "

I cannot give - have never given - advice to parents wanting to know

whether or not to vaccinate. You will be damned if you vaccinate and damned

if you don't. I suggest you make a decision, cross your fingers and refuse

to debate the topic at dinner parties. Oh, and maybe purchase a model of

Bastet the cat goddess for good luck.

· Deborah is the author of Letting Go as Children Grow: The

Benefits of Relaxed Parenting for You and Your Child (Bloomsbury) and Baby

Wisdom: The World's Best-Kept Secrets for the First Year of Parenting

(Hodder).

--------------------------------------------------------

Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

$$ Donations to help in the work - accepted by Paypal account

vaccineinfo@... voicemail US 530-740-0561

(go to http://www.paypal.com) or by mail

Vaccines - http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm

Homeopathy On-Line course - http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/homeo.htm

ANY INFO OBTAINED HERE NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS MEDICAL

OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE

DECISION TO VACCINATE IS YOURS AND YOURS ALONE.

******

" Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down.

Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy

knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information

and religions destroy spirituality " .... Ellner