Monday, February 18, 2008

chicken pox

hey hey. i am currently reading a book on vaccinations called "vaccinations: a thoughtful parent's guide: how to make safe, sensible decisions about the risks, benefits and alternatives", as i am trying to be a thoughtful parent making safe and sensible decisions about things like this.

anyway, i read an alarming fact that i thought i would share. did you you that the chicken pox vaccination, which is now on the manditory list of shots that your kids yet, is grown on human embryos?

this poses a pretty gigantic ethical problem, i would say. most other vacc's are grown on other delicious things like chicken, cow or monkey embryos, but the chicken pox (or varicella) is grown on little tiny people with souls created for medical research.

all this to say, a big lesson i am learning as a parent thus far is that we really can't just trust that what everyone tells us to do is the right thing to do regarding our kids. i mean, that might sound like a give in, but you never assume that you will need to question the authoritative medical figures in your life or the life of your child, especially (or at least i didn't). thats because you always want them to be protected and you always want what is best for them and so the easy answer would be to say that what doctor says goes... but these are serious, scary subjects to exam and to make decisions about. whats important is that parents are brave enough to get educated and to be educated enough to call the shots (no pun...) for their own babies, even if your doctor thinks your a moron.

anyway, thats what i am working at. a good, solid, education on all the things i never really thought of before...

like chicken pox shots grown on petre dish tots!

plus, we all had chicken pox! big deal!!

4 comments:

  1. I have pictures of myself as a kid with chicken pox and I look pretty happy.

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  2. I know you wrote this post a really long time ago, but I have just stumbled upon it after going back and reading through your archives. I really like your blog and have been reading for ages and just had a bit of time to flick back today and read some previous posts.
    When I read what you wrote, I was shocked and so I did a very quick bit of research my self. I'm glad you were educating your self on vaccinations, but feel you might have been a bit misled by your book.
    There are nine vaccinations, starting with the rubella vaccination that were developed using human cell strains. However, all these cell strains (which by the way is a totally different thing to a human embryo) have only ever come from the aborted foteus of two babies. Both were aborted legally, by the mothers choice in the 60's (one, because the mother had contacted rubella herself, know to cause moderate to sever defects in babies). Both foteuses were donated to medical resarch for vaccinations, in much the same way people donate organs after death.
    And please don't make light of chickenpox. A common side effect of this 'mild' childhood disease is pneumonia and hearing loss. And you have a much greater chance of a side effect from contracting the disease than you do from a side effect of the vaccination.
    I even found an antivaxx site and was reading some of their stats on rates of death in children from chickenpox. Even they couldn't hide the fact that the death rate for children who contact the disease is 1/50,000 (yes, that's pretty low, however) the death rate for vaccination is 1/700,000. So so much lower. And the rate of death in adults who contact the disease is so much higher than children too.
    Please, look at the actual scientific reports, look closely at the numbers and then make an informed decision. And only then, once you have all the pure facts, publish information on your blog for others to read.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for posting, anon. Spreading false information about anti-vaccination ideology is very harmful. If the blog owner choses that, that's her family's choice but misleading information only drowns out any real facts or correct information. Also, an aborted fetus is not "a tiny person without a soul created for medical research."

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