From Ignorant Consumer to Informed Advocate: Lifting the Curtain and Confronting Oz

Abstract

From Ignorant Consumer to Informed Advocate: Lifting the Curtain and Confronting Oz Liz Parker The beginning: We entered the realm of parenthood late, as adoptive, rather than biological parents. When adopting, you walk a knife–edge, never knowing if the birth parents change their mind, or if the State might prohibit the adoption—you spend the months of the pregnancy, ultimately terrified, and work hard to distract yourself from any thought or plan beyond the day of birth. You have baby books on a shelf, but avoid the shelf, you borrow a crib, and procure only absolute essentials for baby; the idea of not coming home with baby, or worse, having to return baby to a birth parent who changes their mind during the foster period haunts your psyche. This is, undoubtedly the worst situation possible for informed decision–making when parenthood arrives and becomes a permanent reality. Our children: Our eldest arrived in late 1999, two weeks overdue, and healthy. Her birth mother stuck to the plan, and our daughter came home with us as our foster [End Page 176] child. As foster parents, we did exactly as we were told—“well baby” visits on the recommended pediatric schedule, vaccines on and even before the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended schedule, induced lactation (birth mom did not want to provide milk), the best formula supplement, and lots of love. She got three shots at two months; her appetite declined, her nose began to run. She got four shots at three and a half months and immediately disintegrated, health–wise and behaviorally, experiencing nearly all listed “adverse events,” and ending–up at the Emergency Room. By the time the adoption was official, she was permanently brain–injured and on her way to lifelong disability. Her care, to–date tallies in the millions of dollars, she lost her childhood to therapies, and will never gain an independent adulthood. We continued to vaccinate her because we were told, with each round and associated decline, “it’s not the vaccines.” I gave birth to our second child in 2001. She was perfect—until her shots at six months; she stopped breathing and turned blue while still at the pediatrician’s office—he resuscitated her; but she ended up at the hospital a short time later, unable to breathe; five hours of breathing treatments, steroids, allergy medicines, and more finally succeeded in restoring enough air flow. She was required to continue to take steroids, allergy medicine, and hourly breathing treatments (around the clock), for years. While at the hospital, I commented she had just gotten vaccinated—they told me, “vaccines can’t cause this—it was going to happen anyway.” There is no asthma in either family tree; I finally did my research. I was horrified at what I learned. At this point, we stopped vaccinating. Our third child was a lovely surprise—he arrived in 2005. He was breach, sunny–side–up, and footling; we tried for a home birth, but finally conceded defeat after 40 hours of labor. He arrived via C–Section; he did not get the birth dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine. Our vaccination decisions: To summarize, the eldest got shots through the second year, the middle child got shots through six months, and the youngest has never received a single shot. To achieve this, our family was dismissed from two pediatrics practices—we finally found a thinking practitioner, and have been with her practice ever since. The first real decision we made about vaccinating our children was not to vaccinate. Prior to this decision, we simply did what we were told by the doctor, whom we assumed had done extensive research and whom we assumed knew how vaccines were manufactured and tested, and that the vaccines were real–world efficacious (we were tragically mistaken). Having now read the prescribing information for each vaccine, the FDA licensure applications, having performed in–depth analysis of the research purporting to prove the vaccines are safe and effective, having read textbooks regarding immunity, biochemistry, immunohematology, having researched the historic morbidity and mortality associated with the “Vaccine Preventable Diseases” (VPD’s), and understanding how little Science knows about the function of these...