Should I immunise my children and should I have the free influenza vaccine at work?

Hi Gary,
my work have just advised me that they will be offering free 'flu vaccinations.

Last year i did not get the flu, or a bad cold, and this year I am taking the supplements that you have been suggesting.

Will the vaccination have more probable benefits than costs?

"R" (NZ)

And:
"What's your take on immunizations? When the boys were born we had a doctor who was also a homeopath and he discouraged immunizations. I know he told us that the vaccines don't always work but they do hinder the development of the immune system so that if a person actually contracts the disease it can be much harder to treat.
We didn't avoid them completely. We've had the kids get the same immunizations I did, smallpox and polio. It seemed to me that those were both diseases that had once been very widespread and quite serious. But we backed away from measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, mumps and hepatitis B.

Some years back our original doctor moved away and the next one, not surprisingly, has a much more "mainstream" view of immunizations and has been after us to have the kids get the complete set. I'm not at all persuaded by his arguments for any of them except hepatitis B which does seem to be a pretty serious condition.

"R" (USA)
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Gary Moller comments:I knew that this topic could not be avoided! The two "R's" have forced my hand. While I am not an expert on this matter, I am a parent and have followed the immunisation debate for a long time and agonised over the pros and cons again and again. I should add that I have participated in the Flu vaccine campaigns when they first came out, offering free shots to the companies that my business was contracted to provide corporate health programme to.

All four of my children have had minimal vaccinations, including the recent NZ$200+ million meningococcal B vaccination programme. Despite my children being theoretically in the high risk demographics for this terrible disease.

Here is how I understand things: All vaccines contain tiny amounts toxic metals, principally mercury and aluminium. These are highly toxic to the nervous system, particularly the developing brain. Other organs, including the pancreas which produces insulin, is extremely sensitive to mercury. Deposits of aluminum are thought by some experts to remain as an irritant in tissues and disturb the immune and nervous system for a lifetime.

While it may be claimed that a vaccine contains "safe" or "trace" amounts of these toxic substances, we know that these metals are extremely toxic and they accumulate principally in fatty tissue, including the brain. While a single dose may, in fact be "safe" the effect is similar to what happens with x-ray imaging: The doses are cumulative and the average child may have 30, 40 or more shots of metal-laden vaccine by age 5. Besides; what really is "safe". We know that a small percentage of the population is very sensitive to mercury and what say your child is one of them?

Being cumulative, we must take into account exposure to these toxic metals from all sources, including contaminated foods, water and even cooking utensils and amalgam fillings. While no single source may be "unsafe" the sad fact is exposure from all sources can add up to being pretty damn scary!

Here is a calculator to work out how much cumulative mercury you and your children have been exposed to from vaccinations: http://www.909shot.com/Issues/HgCalculator.htm

We must also take account the synergistic interaction with other heavy metal contaminants, principally lead, and their cumulative effects on sensitive organs including the brain. Once in the body, these are not easy to get rid of and the health effects can be devastating. Incidentally, the non toxic metal magnesium is known to be a weak heavy metal chelator - freeing them so that they can be expelled from the body.

While we may not be able to do anything about many sources of contamination, it just makes good sense to reduce exposure to the "controllable sources" of contamination, including vaccinations.

Do vaccines per se cause harm, or is it the metal ingredients?
As you would gather from the above, I believe there is cause for parental concern about the metals that are found in vaccines and in increasing amounts from environmental contamination. I am not convinced that the vaccines themselves are the main risk of causing adverse effects. Having said this, there is a girl (Now a grown woman) living not far from us who is in a permanent vegetative state as a consequence of the MMR vaccine and the first patient ever assigned to me after graduating was in a wheel chair after the small pox vaccine prior to her big OE got into her spinal cord.

Should you vaccinate your child?
This is a really tough one for parents and one we agonise about constantly. In each case it is a matter of assessing the risks and making the appropriate decision. In our case, we have decided that a good diet, a warm home, good oral hygiene, hand washing, regular dental care, lots of sunlight and exercise and exposure to bugs early in life offset the risks of not being vaccinated. We prefer not to risk the brains of our children from excessive toxic metal contamination. This strategy has served us well for 24 years.

We ensured that each child received their mother's antibodies via her breast milk and we took every opportunity to expose our kids to childhood bugs including measles, mumps and chickenpox. The sooner a child is exposed to these the better. If a child's friend had chickenpox, we asked if our child could visit to play.

If, as adults, they decide to undergo vaccination for this or that, then that is their choice which we have given them. In one of our daughter's cases, she received several vaccinations when she enrolled in the army. That was her choice and the risk was presumably minimal, since she was a grown woman by then with a mature nervous system and robust immune system.

What about the free annual flu vaccine?Your first defense against influenza is a strong immune system and a vaccine should not be used to make up for the lack of one. This means (for adults measures such as):

• A fresh wholefoods diet that is rich in vitamins, minerals, protein and natural anti-oxidants.
• Plenty of natural vitamin A from natural concentrated sources including animal organs, cod liver oil, grass fed butter and free range egg yolk (Incidentally many of these are the wrongly labelled "unhealthy" foods!). Stay away from synthetic vitamin A.
• Ensuring that you enter winter with optimal vitamin D levels and ensuring that your winter diet is rich in high vitamin D foods (Generally the same foods that are rich in vitamin A).
• Taking herbal and nutritional supplements that augment natural immunity such as olive leaf extract and vitamin C 
• Taking about 2,000 mg of vitamin C per day
• Getting optimum sleep
• Avoiding excess stress that leaves you wasted
• Not over-exercising

There was a time I had the annual flu vaccines. I won't any more. I will add that I have been in great health since changing my lifestyle, including work and diet and that includes getting out in the sun which I had previously avoided. Most notably, I no longer get hammered by the bugs the kids seem to bring home from school every 2nd week.