i know several parents who have decided against
vaccinating their newborns for a variety of reasons, and i’ve always
looked at the decision with agnostic curiosity.
i understand the merits of both arguments. by their very nature,
there is a risk with vaccines. but it’s really only because most
people give their children vaccines that it’s reasonably safe to
decide to not vaccinate your child. you reap the benefits of other
people’s risk taking. classic game-theory scenario.
but that’s all theoretical. i don’t have kids and i haven’t had to
make the tough call. i just get to sit back and cogitate on things
like
“The Not-So-Crackpot Autism Theory”
that discusses that there may have been very real risks associated with
vaccination:
“The F.D.A. team’s conclusions were frightening.
Vaccines added under Halsey’s watch had tripled the dose of mercury
that infants got in their first few months of life. As many as 30
million American children may have been exposed to mercury in
excess of Environmental Protection Agency guidelines — levels of
mercury that, in theory, could have killed enough brain cells to
scramble thinking or hex behavior.“My first reaction was simply disbelief, which was the reaction of
almost everybody involved in vaccines,” Halsey says. ”In most
vaccine containers, thimerosal is listed as a mercury derivative, a
hundredth of a percent. And what I believed, and what everybody
else believed, was that it was truly a trace, a biologically
insignificant amount. My honest belief is that if the labels had
had the mercury content in micrograms, this would have been
uncovered years ago. But the fact is, no one did the
calculation.””
that’s
30 million
potentially exposed children. stupifying. think the responsible
parties are looking at the business end of a major lawsuit?
perhaps not
, due to collateral shielding from legislative efforts intended to
protect smallpox and antrax vaccine makers:
The provision would require those who wish to sue
former makers of thimerosal such as Eli Lilly to instead pursue
their claims through a federal vaccine compensation program that
caps damages at $250,000, Carl said. Medical research has not
established a link between autism and Thimerosal, but many parents
believe the ingredient may be to blame and are suing manufacturers.”Ask a parent of an autistic child if $250,000 is going to take
care of that child’s needs for the rest of his life and you will
probably hear that absolutely not,” Carl said.”