This series of blogs was started because of a discussion in the forums about vaccines. I realize that vaccines can be a controversial subject. I am not an expert either. As I explained to someone in the forums, we live in the inner city where many diseases that are considered “all but extinct” are actually alive and well. So although we delay vaccines, we don’t consider them optional. This isn’t an anti-vaccination series.
However, I am never in favor of a “one size fits all” approach to medicine. This includes vaccines. What might be right for one family, may not be right for another. For example, because we home school, I delay several vaccinations that I consider “less important”. My children are simply not exposed to that many people in the same way that families with school children are.
One problem with vaccine information is that most of it is provided by manufacturers and doctors both of whom make money by giving vaccines. But I think to assume that doctors in general aren’t interested in public health may be far fetched. Another issue is that there is a lot of conflicting information and not a lot of access to scientific research to back it up.
So what I’m attempting to do in this series is to focus on all of the research I can possibly find. As I have mentioned, I’m not anti-vaccination by any means. But I do think that each case needs to be treated individually. So we’ll look at all aspects of getting vaccines: the regular vaccination schedule, the safety of each vaccine, options for receiving the vaccine, and even state laws for vaccines. If you have a question, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to find out for you.
If you are interested in discussing vaccination at length, please go to the forums.
If you have research that you’d like me to look at, please PM me. To put it bluntly, not everything that is out there is good research, and I’d like to review it before I allow it in my blog–even if it’s in the comments! This is about making informed decisions for your family. Come back later when we start to look at each of the shots individually.