Vaccine Side Effects

As bad as many of the diseases we vaccinate for, the severe reactions to the vaccines themselves can be equally bad or even worse.

Standard Side Effects

According to page 15 of The Vaccine Book, the following side effects typically occur 5 to 10% of the time, but some vaccines it soars to up to 40% of the time. The STANDARD side effects are, but not limited to:

• Pain at the injection site
• Redness at the injection site
• Swelling at the injection site
• Fever
• Crying
• Vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Poor appetite
• Sleepiness
• HeadacheS
• Body AcheS
• Pea-sized nodule at injection site lasting for several weeks
• Rash over the whole body or limited to one area.

Best remedies are said to be holding a cool washcloth or ice pack to the injection site or giving ibuprofen, but it doesn't always work well. You can try Arnica for swelling. Most important is some TLC.

Serious Side Effects

The Vaccine Book (pg 181) says, "All vaccines have some potentially serious side effects. Fortunately, they are extremely rare." Based on Dr. Sears estimations, the chances of having a SEVERE reaction are approximately 4 times LESS than getting a SEVERE case of the disease. The problem is that he also said there is no way of know how off this estimate is. It could be easily be a factor of 4x off which would put it at the same likelihood as getting a SEVERE case of the disease AND we don't fully understand the long term effects vaccines have on us. We do know that having a healthy immune system is critical in reducing the chance of reactions to vaccines and reducing the chances of getting a disease. Keep in mind, the human body is subjected to millions of germs a day and only a tiny faction of 1% are for the ones that have vaccines for.

My question is, should we injecting our babies on things we HOPE will help them, but could in fact HURT them. For example, the Tetanus vaccine product insert states that there is enough evidence to say the vaccines can cause the Guillain-Barre syndrome. In the 1990's the DTP was replaced with the DTaP vaccine it had such bad reactions and may have caused permanent brain injury. Amazingly, it was once thought to be a safe vaccine, but in fact was the most "reactive" vaccines ever. The point is we can't trust what the government or the product companies believe. I'm not saying they are evil or malicious, I am just saying they will be smarter tomorrow than they are today and new safety facts are bound to come to the surface.

If that doesn't make you think twice consider these SEVERE side effects with the disease you are trying to prevent given that the chances MAY be the same of getting them.

Guillain-Barre syndrome
Dr. Sears says, "The body's immune system attacks the nervous system, causing temporary weakness and some paralysis. The effects usually wears off after several weeks, but a person must receive intensive care in the meantime to support the body system that aren't working (including respiration), and this illness is potentially fatal." Tetanus vaccine may cause this reaction / disease. To be fair, this condition also strikes for no apparent reason when no vaccines were recently given.

Encephalitis and Encephalopathy
Encephalitis is where the brain experiences swelling and irritation of the brain tissue for a brief period and is considered to be harmless. It is a lesser case Encephalopathy.

Encephalopathy is the same as Encephalitis except it is for days and can lead to dysfunction and damage to the brain tissue.

Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE)
It is a gradual and chronic swelling and irritation of the brain tissue and can cause permanent damage to brain tissue as it deteriorates over many years. The MMR and all tetanus containing vaccines (according to their product inserts) may also be linked to this reaction.. Also, certain viral infections may also cause this.

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
It is hard to say if vaccines cause SIDS or not. Mostly because nearly all babies have had vaccines. Statistically there appears to be no link in either direction.

Autism
It appears that vaccines don't cause Autism per say. However, it doesn't mean that vaccines don't make children with autism or children that are thought to have autism, but do noticeably autistic. The reason according to Dr. Sears (The Vaccine Book, pg 183) is that, "many autistic kids have a variety of similar health problem, including intestinal disease, autoimmune disease, allergies, brain inflammation, and metabolic defects, as well as genetic inability to detoxify their bodies of the host of chemical in food, water, and pollution that are part of our modern society. Their brains and bodies may be affected by the buildup of these environmental chemicals." It is theoretically possible that chemicals in vaccines could contribute to this and maybe even bring autism in a child to such a level that it is first observable.

Chronic Arthritis
According to The Vaccine Book, "The product insert cites three research studies that have shown a 12 to 26 percent chance that teenage and adult woman who get the MMR or the plain rubella vaccine may experience significant arthritis for days, months, or rarely, years. Infants, children, and adult men don't seem to have this risk."

The best remedies for Severe reactions is about the same as for mild reactions with the addition of maybe vitamin A and vitamin C.

Rating the "Reactivity of Vaccines"

Dr. Sears has concluded through observation and his reading that we can probably rate the vaccines reactivity as follows where the first ones are least reactive (5%) up to the most reactive (40%).

5%

• HIB
• Polio
• DTaP
• Pc
• Chickenpox
• Hepatitis B
• Hepatitis A
• MMR
• Meningococcal
• Flu

40%

Minimize your risk

The goal whether you vaccinate or not is to keep the body as healthy as possible so that it can fight of disease and undesired reactions. Here is some advice Dr. Sears on pg 189 of The Vaccine Book suggests:

Breastfeed
One year, but two years is better.

Minimize sugar and junk food.
Sugar weakens the immune system. Just as a doctor if the week after Halloween is their busiest week. Be particularly careful several weeks before a vaccination.

Minimize other chemical exposures
Eat organic, non-gmo foods. This includes baby good and formula. Check the labels, most mainstream products are not organic and gmo free.

Use Omega-3 oil supplements
Most children a deficient in omega-3 fats mainly because they don't eat enough fish and eggs. Luckily breast milk does contain lots of omega-3s. Watch for mercury free supplements. Can supplement toddlers over age one.

Probiotics
They play a critical role in regulating both our intestinal immune system and our internal immune system. They are particularly important if antibiotics are used since they kill all bacteria including the good stuff such as acidophilus. Probiotics can be used after two months of age.

Vitamin A
Some researchers believe it can play a role in protecting the brain from vaccine side effects. Even infants can be given this supplement, but be careful of overdosing as it can be toxic. I suggest asking your pediatrician how much is ok. A baby multi-vitamin in the form of drops may be a good way to get the needed vitamins.

Vitamin C
This antioxidant vitamin can help boost the immune system and may decrease vaccine side effects. The amount in a multi-vitamin is usually not enough. Ask your pediatrician for suggests.

 Conclusion

There are many more side effects than I have listed here. It is hard to tell how much less risky a reaction is to a vaccine verses the disease itself. I don't have any easy answers. It would be nice if there were concrete stats on this stuff, but there just simply isn't. Our best bet is to stay health through good life choices. For me, I will have to evaluate each disease and vaccine combination separately because the risk do vary greatly from vaccine to vaccine and disease to disease. My heart and brain still find it difficult to purposely inject my baby with something that will not do her good, but has a likelihood of causing harm to her. The hope is that it will save her from a terrible disease someday and I will never be the wiser of it.

Stats on Diseases and Vaccines and when to vaccinate

The sad truth is that there is not hard core statistics on vaccines or the diseases so that you can easily make a decision on whether the risks / benefit ratio for a particular vaccine or even all vaccines in general because the reporting mechanism is subjective. May minor reactions to vaccines go unreported because they are assumed to be caused by something else or because psychologically doctors subcontiously (like all humans) see things through the filters of the thing they believe most. Consider that most doctors are in favor of vaccines. This means that when presented a symptom that could be from a reaction to a vaccine or something else they will likely say it was from something else and not report it. Why, because it supports their beliefs. I don't fault them, it is human nature, but it is something to consider. The same thing would be true for parents against vaccines. They would tend to lean the other way and blame more things on a reaction to a vaccination.

The question then comes for long term effects that may not be noticed and cannot be measured easily. Considering this, the risk of vaccines could actually be higher than is thought. On the other hand it may not, so you have to decide which side makes more sense. The problem that goes along with this is that vaccines do have the same testing requirements that drugs do. They don't have to go through long term testing or even a few years. There seems to be no way to easily do the testing than to compare against previous batches of vaccines and observe through this subjective system described above. To me, it makes more sense to error on the side of caution and history. History has taught me that we don't understand the harmful effects of things we produce until it is too late and the damage is already done. The human body is no exception to this; we hardly understand how it works and reacts to everything.

Dr. Sear's stats that he come up with (some where guesstimates because hard numbers were not available). There are several ways that he looked at the stats. The important thing to realize is there is a clear line between diseases that are likely before age 2 and those that are after. Risks do vary greatly between diseases and vaccines. However, believe it or not, the data available is not really by vaccine or disease because many of the vaccines are combo shots and can't be traced because of that. But we can generalize the risk

Combines / copied from The Vaccine Book on pages 170 and 176. The first number is the number of severe cases from the disease itself for children 12 and under. The second number is for the general population (including children 12 and under).

Chances of getting a disease

• HIB: 25 / 25 hospitalizations
• Pc: 10,000 (very approximate) / 30,000 hospitalizations
• Diptheria: 5 / 5 hospitalizations (yearly max, some years are 0)
• Tetanus: 5 / 100 hospitalizations
• Pertusis: 1500 (very approximate) / 1500 (very approximate)
• Hepatitis B: 130 (all severe) / 7500 cases
• Rotovirus: 50,000 hospitalizations (approximate) / 50,0000 (approximate)
• Polio: 0 / 0
• Measles: close to 0 / close to 0
• Mumps: 10 (approximate) / 20 hospitalizations (during a recent outbreak)
• Rubella: 3 babies for with defects / 3
• Chickenpox: 200 (approximate) / 1000 (approximate) hospitalizations
• Hepatitis A: 20 (approximate)  / 200 (approximate) hospitalizations
• Flu: 20,000 (approximate) / 100,000 (approximate) hospitalizations
• Meningococcal disease: 2,750 hospitalizations / 3000 cases
• HPV: 0 / 20,000 new cases of cervical cancer each year and (very approximate) number of problematic genital wart cases each year.

As you can see many of these diseases are not tracked exactly and Dr. Sears had to guesstimate many of the numbers. Nonetheless, you can see that some diseases like Polio and Measles (almost) don't exist in the US anymore. Rubella doesn't really exist anymore either. Other diseases such as HPV are not a risk for children until they are sexually active. Some like the HIB, Pertusis, Rotovirus and Diptheria, and Meningococcal disease (for the most part)  are common in children only.

So, you may want to take your childs age into account when decided whether to get a particular vaccination or not. Keep in mind the Rotovirus vaccination can't be started after 15 weeks since its effects are unknown with those parameters.

Some stats from the The Vaccine Book pages 176 and 177.

Reaction Stats

• The risk of a reaction (mild and severe) from a single vaccine seems to be about 1 in 1000 (.1% of a reaction or 99.9% of no reaction)
• The risk that any one child will suffer a SEVERE reaction over the ENTIRE 12 year vaccine schedule is about 1 in 2600 (.0385% or 99.961% of no reaction)

Disease Stats

• The risk of any one person (child and adult) suffering a SEVERE case of a vaccine preventable disease each year in our entire population is about 1 in 1500. (.0667% or 99.933% of no disease or a mild case of the disease)
• The risk of a child (no adults) having a SEVERE case of a vaccine-preventable disease is about 1 in 600 (.1667% or 99.833% of not getting a disease or getting a mild case of it.) each year for all childhood diseases grouped together. This risk varies widely depending on the disease. Some disease risks are close to 0. Infant diseases are more risky than childhood ones.

For comparison of risk, check out these risks in life that we accept.

• Dying from Prostate Cancer (Male): 2.75%
• Dying from Testicular Cancel (Male): .02% (This is the only one that is even close to these other stats we are concerned in this post)
• Dying from being struck by lightenting: .000792%
• Dying from falls: .294
• Dying in a car incident: .92%

 Dr. Sears assumes that the risk of a SEVERE reaction is the same regardless of the number of vaccines you get at the same time. In particular, he assumes either one shot at a time, but then revises it to say most people get 3 at a time. However, this study shows that there is a linear relationship between risk of SEVERE reaction and the number of shots given at the same time. This means the risk is likely MUCH higher when getting combo shots at one time. My thought is to spread it out as much as possible to give the body a chance to process the toxic elements in these vaccines. Using Dr. Sears alternate vaccination schedule is a good start. If you want to fully vaccinate this schedule should at least minimize the risks. He does also have a selective schedule (see page 223 of The Vaccine Book) that he considers the minimum. Personally, I want to be more selective on what vaccines will be given so I will likely be coming up with my own schedule that keeps the same considerations in mind.

Risk and Time
Most of the diseases have times where the risk is substantially higher for an age group. The age of two is one of those lines. Sometimes this is just because the infant body can't protect itself well enough during this age. It does not mean that the disease only affects that age group, but in some cases that is the case.

Diseases that are of concern below or at age 2

• HIB
• Pc
• Pertussis
• Rotavirus
• Flu
• Meningococcal disease

Diseases that are of concern after age 2

• Hepatitis B
• Chickenpox
• Tetanus
• Diptheria
• Measles
• Mumps
• Rebella
• Hepatitis A
• Polio
• HPV

Other diseases the United States does NOT vaccinate for
Yellow Fever

Why? I assume because it is not in our country. Then why vaccinate for diseases such as polio that have no cases in our country. It seems the same logic should be applied to both diseases. Yellow Fever was in the US at one time. Maybe it is because it had to continually be imported in, but were would polio come from if not imported. I give up. Anyone?

 I still find the major problem with all these vaccines to be that one vaccines is for babies of all sizes, yet that is not how toxicity works. The larger the baby, child, or person, the less toxic a substance will be because it is deluted more and it is more likely the body will be able to deal with it. My baby is in the 5th perceptile, so I all vaccines have too much nastiness to them for her size. The problem is that most of the diseases are the highest risk before age 2. That is the youngest age I would think I would want to subject her body to toxins of this toxic level.

My likely choices:
This makes the decision very difficult. My preference is to reduce the bad stuff put in her body until she is of sufficient weight an can handle the toxins better. So, diseases (Measles, Polio, Rubella) that are low risk of getting because they don't exist in the country anymore, I'll probably skip because the health benefit for her is not there and the risk is too high. Rotavirus is easy for me as well since we are past the 15 week mark and thus cannot get the vaccine even if we wanted tox. The rest are less clear and I'll evaluate on an individual disease / vaccine basis.



 

Rotavirus Vaccine

The Vaccine Book says, "Rotavirus is an intestinal virus that causes vomitting and diarrhea. An infant stays contagious for two to three weeks after symptoms begin. It is transmitted by contact with the stools or saliva of an infected person. Unfortunately it is restistant to common disinfectants and antibacterial hand soaps. It takes a strong antiseptic or alcohol solution to kill the germ.This makes it easily spread in day-care, where an adult changes numerous diapers, and kids share toys and food... Rotavirus is indistinguishable from the common stomach flu in the initial stages of the illness (fever, vomiting, and diarrhea). A clue that a baby may have rotavirus is that the diarrhea lasts more than just a few days (it can last for a few weeks in some cases) and is more frequent, watery, and foul smelling than diarrhea caused by stomach flu."

To paraphrase, it is VERY common and Dr. Sears says it is not a matter of if a child will get it, but when during the first few years of life. Unfortunately, it is not treatable, but fortunately, it is not that bad either. That is the bad news. True up to twelve diarrhea diapers a day for up to three weeks would not be pleasant in any regard, but that also isn't life threatening, and it builds full or partial immunity for future cases. Consider that if you breastfeed your baby then they will likely have a milder case and they have less change of contracting it if you don't use day care. If you match those two criteria you may decide to skip this vaccine, but that is up to you. :)

The good news is that by not vaccinating you won't have the risk of these side effects:

1. Seizures that include high fever. The risk of this is migher than with most vaccines (1 in 1,300)
2. Intussusception: An intestinal complication in which part of the intestine "telescopes" into itself, creating serious and life-threatening blockage.

Personally, I will be skipping this vaccine because the two month mark has been passed, and side effects seem worse than the disease.

Animal and Human Tissues in Vaccines

The problem with having animal and human tissues in vaccines is really about contamination. For example in the past (1955 and 1963) kidney cells from a monkey that had the SV-40 virus in was used to produce the Polio vaccine. It is estimated that 30 million people where injected with this virus. This virus may be linked to cancer. After statistical analysis, it was determined that no more people got cancer that had been injected with the virus that the general population. We didn't find out about the SV-40 virus until decades later. Now tissues are checked for viruses. The problem is that we have to know what we are looking for before we can identify it. The fear is that we won't know about some other virus in tissues used to make current vaccines until it is too late to do anything about it (again).

My thought is yes, there is a real possibility that our current vaccines are contaminated also. However, the hope is that it isn't. It is kind of like eating sushi, you hope you don't have a tainted batch, but yet people each sushi all the time and hope everything will be okay. Nothing is a guarantee in this world, I see this as an acceptable risk.

Consider that among other parts of animals and humans we use Chicken embryos, chicken kidney cells, and chicken eggs. My first thought is why doesn't the body think think that the chicken and eggs we eat are a virus? I suspect if the body worked that way, we would see more chicken and egg allergies. I am dismissing this idea as not logical, but I am curious why not.

It is also important to know that not all vaccines use animal or human tissues. For example, according to Dr. Sears' book (The Vaccine Book, Pg 194), the following vaccines do NOT use animal or human tissues:

• HIB
• Pc
• Hepatitis B
• Meningococcal
• HPV
• DTaP (Daptacel brand)
• Tdap (Adacel brand)

However, the following vaccines DO use animal or human tissues:

• MMR
• Chickenpox
• Polio
• Rotovirus
• Flu
• Hepatitis A
• DTaP (Infranix and Tripedia brands)
• Tetanus and diphtheria vaccines
• Tdap (Boostrix brand)

You can read potential reason some may not want to use the vaccines that have animal or human parts and what particular tissues in what vaccines at  http://www.vaccine-tlc.org/human.html. I personally didn't find too much to convince me that the tissues are a bad things other than using aborted fetus tissue is not ethical and that by vaccinating I would be supporting it. Unfortunately, the benefits out weigh the negatives I think.

I think I heard that when animal tissues in vaccines an injected into humans it actually makes humans susceptible to animal only diseases (that without the vaccination, we would not be able to contract). I can't find anything that confirms or denies that. I wish I could find the video or article. If anyone know anything about this, please leave a comment and reference that I can go to. Thanks!