I have been trying for some time to research and understand the vaccination controversy from a health perspective, rather than an illness perspective. It is sometimes difficult to adopt the health paradigm (instead of the illness paradigm: ) when reading arguments that go back and forth.
Today, Mercola posted an article on the Whooping Cough vaccine, which has tons of information, and the comments from other people provide more information. I encourage you to have a look - but the information is so complex I don't expect many people to come away satisfied. I believe this is partly because virtually ALL of the experts discussing vaccines adopt an illness paradigm, only studying a small part of the problem. We need to learn from a health paradigm, the illness paradigm is too limited to provide valuable infomation: http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/2011/01/health-paradigm.html
Here are my comments on the Mercola post:
It is important to understand that immunity, whether it is vaccine immunity or natural immunity, does not kill the virus, nor do they prevent the virus from spreading. Vaccines are designed to tune your immune system to fight the virus when it appears. Vaccines use a dead virus, so it is natural that they are less effective than natural immunity.
It is entirely possible that so called 'herd immunity' does not exist. The whooping cough virus exists in the environment. We cannot eliminate it from the environment. Even people who are vaccinated come in contact with whooping cough virus - and it reproduces in their bodies. Then, after some time, the immune system might recognize and fight the virus. Even then it is still reproducing and being spread by the person with the virus. This is the same for every virus we tackle with immunization.
Vaccine statistics measure how many people were affected by the virus, seriously enough to create a diagnoseable condition. Anyone who contracts the virus and exhibit fewer symptoms, or does not go to a doctor, is 'not counted'. People who are vaccinated, and thus suffer whooping cough at a lower level are still spreading the virus. Because their immunity is lower than those with natural immunity - they might be spreading it more.
Vaccination and the arithmetic of vaccine studies is very, very complex. Simple statements and techniques like 'herd immunity' and 'cocooning' are designed to promote vaccines, not to understand them. We need to study and understand the mechanisms, successes and failures of every vaccine individually and not make generalizations that promote mis-information. We need to use a Health Paradigm to understand vaccines, our illness paradigm is too limiting: personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/.../health-paradigm.html
Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness. tracyhttp://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/p/subject-index.html
Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: