Marne
Sorry, I completely disagree with you regarding auto-immune disorders. There is no evidence of a causal relationship between vaccines and auto-immune disorders.
This book (downloadable as a PDF if you register) www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10306 highlights eight different studies, all with different designs, which found no relationship between vaccines and type 1 diabetes. There's no doubt that type 1 diabetes incidence is increasing and there are various hypotheses but immunization being causally responsible is highly unlikely.
And I also completely disagree that having chicken pox or whooping cough makes your immune system stronger. Yes, you do have better immunity than vaccine acquired but that's all. And in the meantime, you have weakened your immune system by being sick (normally temporarily unless you're one of the unlucky dead or permanently damaged). Yes, MOST children recover from measles. About 30% (in the US) have complications like secondary ear infections (1 in 10 children get it and some suffer deafness from it), diarrhea and pneumonia (which is one of leading causes of death from measles complications and 1 in 20 children with measles will suffer from it). 1 in 1,000 will have encephalitis (likely to be left deaf and/or brain damaged) and 1-2 in 1,000 (in developed countries - much more in poor countries) will die. You also have fatal subacute sclerosing panencephalitis affecting 4-11 children per 100,000 cases occuring 7-10 years after infection.
So in what way can being infected by measles possibly make your immune system stronger? A whole load of kids will have had to have taken antibiotics to save their lives or sight or hearing, another whole bunch would have had convulsiosn from encephalitis and another load will be deaf, brain damaged or blind and then there's the children who'd have died.
I find this letter by Roald Dahl incredibly moving, testament to how fatal measles can be:
^MEASLES: A dangerous illness by ROALD DAHL (1986)
Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn?t do anything.
?Are you feeling all right?? I asked her.
?I feel all sleepy, ? she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her.
That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.
On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and
all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.
It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness.
Believe me, it is. In my opinion parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk.
In America, where measles immunisation is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.
Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year.
Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another.
At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.
LET THAT SINK IN.
Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles.
So what about the risks that your children will run from being immunised?
They are almost non-existent. Listen to this. In a district of around 300,000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunisation!
That is about a million to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunisation.
So what on earth are you worrying about?
It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunised.
The ideal time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is never too late. All school-children who have not yet had a measles immunisation should beg their parents to arrange for them to have one as soon as possible.
Incidentally, I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was James and the Giant Peach?. That was when she was still alive. The second was ?The BFG?, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness
and death among other children. ^