An Unvaccinated Woman's Perspective on the Vaccination Debate

no one is immune to anything in life. however why up your odds just to make a point? eat a good diet. excecise. get only necessary vaccinations. foreget the rest like yearly flu shots. and you will be just fine.

a reply to: superman2012

I'd like to preface this by saying I am more playing the devil's advocate here than stating my firm beliefs, for the sake of getting people to think and consider alternative concepts.

Vaccinations allow your body to be exposed to viral or bacterial cells that are foreign to it. As they are foreign, you have no antibodies that can recognize the infection, and therefore your immune system cannot efficiently eradicate the intruding cells. However, because these cells are dead/inactive, you don't display symptoms from contracting the disease. Instead, your body detects the mystery cells and tags them, sending them to special cells--T cells, perhaps? I'd have to refresh my memory. These cells copy the foreign antigens and catalog them, essentially, so that your body can immediately immobilize any cells that are found to carry that antigen. Sometimes the vaccine carries live cells that are only weakened, and you will exhibit mild symptoms as your body needs time to find and destroy the disease.

So with this in mind, vaccines do make a person's immune system stronger and more effective in combating more diseases. I won't argue that point. However, if we look at genetics: a stronger immune system cannot fix problems within one's DNA and genes. If someone has a defective allele or a mistranslated codon, they may be carriers for genetic diseases or disorders (or have the disease themselves). By upping their chances of survival with vaccines and anti-microbial everything and intensive health care, you up the chances for these detrimental diseases and disorders to continue to be passed on.

This isn't to say I think we should systematically eliminate everyone with such a disease, but I would like to point out that upping survival of all people does not necessarily better the quality of life for all people. In fact, in some cases having one defective allele is actually beneficial, one of the most famous cases being sickle cell anemia. Homozygous sickle cell is pretty deadly, and heterozygous sickle cell is disadvantageous in places like the US and Canada and Europe. But in Africa, where Malaria is a huge issue, it is advantagous above even homozygous non-sickle cell, because malaria propagates inside the blood cells, and for whatever reason doesn't like the sickle-shaped cells.

Just something to consider.

As for your children, it's great to hear you take that approach, but you are certainly the minority in that respect.

a reply to: Alexithymia

A great perspective, thanx for sharing your story. Using the attackers same reasoning we should ban people from owning diseased cats- feline enteritis I think it's called

When u enter a Drs surgery for mandated shots I have never seen a quarantined section or isolation cubicle - why do they get a free pass

a reply to: dreamlotus1111

What are necessary vaccination? you can't take shortcuts and bypass the bodies immune system barriers.

originally posted by: AlexithymiaHowever, if we look at genetics: a stronger immune system cannot fix problems within one's DNA and genes. If someone has a defective allele or a mistranslated codon, they may be carriers for genetic diseases or disorders (or have the disease themselves). By upping their chances of survival with vaccines and anti-microbial everything and intensive health care, you up the chances for these detrimental diseases and disorders to continue to be passed on.

Did you seriously just make a eugenics argument for not vaccinating people? We should let preventable diseases run rampant through society because they will wipe out the Lebensunwertes Leben, and everyone lucky enough to survive will be better off?

By the same logic, we shouldn't have any health care at all.

I've always felt anti-vaxers felt no responsibility whatsoever for their fellow humans, but never before have I seen one actually argue that masses of innocent people dying of preventable diseases was a good thing. Not so directly, anyway.

Ma reply to: ketsuko
Or you could have a shorter life span due to complications and other goodies you get from vaccine cocktails.

a reply to: chr0naut

Using that logic and the stories pedalled 20 years ago that hiv somehow jumped from monkeys and turned into AIDS you would probably have to vaccinate every primate or exterminate them to "let go of that foothold"

Seems like people who have been vaccinated have a correlation to psychopathy..

I mean if you're not vaccinated these people want you dead! and think the world will be a better place without you!

I think I'll stay away from vaccinations, at least this way I'll be able to keep my human emotions.

originally posted by: TheConstruKctionofLight
Ma reply to: ketsuko
Or you could have a shorter life span due to complications and other goodies you get from vaccine cocktails.

Life expectancy has increased consistently since vaccines were first widely distributed.
So what are you basing that statement on?

a reply to: jheated5

It's good to be able to choose not to be vaccinated in the West, where there's a high level of herd immunity and good medical care if you actually got e.g. measles that started to going awry.

However, in most countries around the world it is not really an option and where preventable diseases are still unchecked and take a high toll in life and life-chances. Take a simple preventable disease like measles and research the impact this has on some countries in Africa.

It’s good to argue that vaccinations are bad when sitting in a nice comfy armchair secure in the knowledge that if you don’t travel, you’ll never catch one of these nasty diseases. Travel broadens the mind, by the way. I dare any of the "vaccinations are bad" to travel to some poor countries unvaccinated and feel comfortable and righteous.

Here's a start... Measles and WHO

Tomorrow Ebola might spread all across the world and wipe out billions
Leaving you untouched
And even more lonely

I suffer a mosquito illness for the past 20 years it sucks to have it
no cure for it
But hey I can't get cancer
Because of it

I use to work with cattle
And never got a Q fever shot
Later they told me I didn't need it
Because I was with the cattle for long enough
To build an emune system to the virus
It was highly likely I already caught the virus
My body was full of cow germs

You know cow pox cured small pox

a reply to: FurvusRexCaeli

I'd like to preface this by saying I am more playing the devil's advocate here than stating my firm beliefs, for the sake of getting people to think and consider alternative concepts.

At the beginning of the post you quoted, I specifically said I was playing devil's advocate. I do not believe letting preventable diseases run rampant is desirable. If you wanted to refute what I posited, you could have easily made the case that a disease will just as likely kill someone with entirely normal genes, as someone with defective genes. In that vein, if we took an unvaccinated population and exposed them to a disease, the resulting bottleneck (a form of genetic drift) could yield a population where those defective genes were more common. One could even argue that, like sickle cell, the defect could in some cases be advantageous over the allele carrying fully functional genes, and that a disease would more likely kill the "healthy" individuals.

It's a more complex issue than I first presented, but all of this is neither here nor there. I was not making a eugenics argument. Rather, I was disagreeing with those that have made remarks such as:

I don't understand why vaccinated people would criticize you for not being vaccinated (and I know they often do.) If you die because of it, it's not my problem. It just gets you out of the way and out of the gene pool, which is a very good thing for humanity as a whole. Perhaps someone will nominate you for a Darwin Award.

Developing my immune system post-birth has nothing to do with my genes. The only part of our immune system that does, are the genes that code for antigens and cell membrane proteins and hemoglobin. Any two people with normal genes will have equivalent immune system function. What determines its efficiency and all the non-gene differences are then related to environmental factors such as exposure. Essentially, there are no grounds to say an unvaccinated person dying and removing their genes from the gene pool would be advantageous to humanity.

A last note: I am not an anti-vaxxer and have no strong feelings either way on people getting vaccinated. I would thank you for your contribution to the discussion, but you didn't really have any quantifiable points. Maybe next time?

First thought - why tell anyone? Its nobodies business.

Second thought - of course it is absolutely tragic when people and especially children are sick and even die. But please think beyond the vaccinations because one day, a totally new disease will pop up and people have lost the ability to manage their own health and interactions.

For instance, when polio was raging, my mother did not go out in public and didn't take her children out in public. My father went and got groceries and then stripped off and bathed out the back before he came into the house.

If you were due to attend a public function and you or your children were sick, you stayed home. And you expected other people to stay home if they were sick or suspected that they had had contact with anyone who was sick.

I get to the point where I wonder if these simple social controls are not possible because so many mums are in the workforce and their children are in the day care. The business model of health/ sickness is so vast and pervasive, it worries me more than contracting a virus. Not only do you pay through the nose for vaccinations but you are paying the daycare, you are paying tax on your job, you are consuming consuming and no one wants to stop this model by suggesting that you take responsibility for your own health.

Before you ask, no childhood vaccinations for me. I had measles at 7 and don't even remember feeling sick. Rubella at least once and was sick for about 3 days. Chicken pox at 36 and had about 12 spots and only remember having a bout of depression briefly - not sick. I'm fairly sure that we all had pertussis. But the doctor told me that there were so many different strains of pertussis he couldn't identify it fast enough to treat us to just take cough medicine. He also said that the vaccination does not guard against all strains.

Really people, don't panic but don't take risks with the health of little kids, either with vaccinations or by unwarranted contact with sick people.

a reply to: Alexithymia

My one question to you is - why even tell people you aren't vaccinated. It's not like you can spot someone who hasn't had their vaccinations. Perhaps if you wouldn't make it such a big deal, it wouldn't become one.