Protect Your Children from Harmful Food and Water

Excerpted from The Household Detective: Protecting Your Children from Toxins at Home, by Jan Williams Children's Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC) (book is available here with membership)

What You Can Do About Food

Shop at organic grocery stores or local organic co-ops. Some large organic chains include Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Nature's Northwest, Fresh Fields, and Bread and Circus. Also, conventional stores are increasingly carrying organic products. If your store doesn't carry organic products, let them know that you want them to.

· Join Community Supported Agriculture, or similar groups, which will supply you with organic produce in exchange for buying a share of their farm.
· Take part in an organic community garden in your neighborhood.
· Buy seasonal, local produce, such as can be found at farmer's markets and local co-ops.
· Even better, grow your own food using organic sustainable techniques.
· Beware of perfect looking produce. It often requires the use of pesticides to make something look so aesthetically pleasing.
· Thoroughly wash and peel your produce, especially if it is waxed and dyed. Discard outer leaves of lettuce.
· This reduces but does not completely remove pesticides.
· Don't pick wild berries from public roads where pesticides are often sprayed.
· Eat foods which are low in fat and trim the fat from meat, fish, and poultry - many toxics are stored in fat cells.
· Beware of meat low down in the food chain and meat from filter feeders, i.e. swordfish and shark or oysters and mussels - toxics accumulate in these organisms.

What You Can Do About Baby Food

Perhaps most frightening to many parents is the thought that pesticides might be in their infant's food. Unfortunately, many baby foods do contain pesticides. There are lots of safe alternatives though.
· Buy organic baby foods. Earth's Best baby food is available in many large grocery store chains. Organic grocery stores and co-ops usually have a couple of different options, including Organic Baby.
· Make your own baby food using organic produce. Remember to take into account the quality of your water source.
· Some manufacturers such as H. J. Heinz will no longer use produce with residues from chemicals not yet reviewed for their safety by the EPA.
· Write your baby food company and ask them to use organic produce.
· Tell your grocer you want them to carry organic baby foods.

 What You Can Do About Water

· Find out what is in your water. Ask your public water distributor. Most of us get our water from a public distributor. They are required by law to give you information on what is in your drinking water. In fact, beginning in 1999, they will be required to send out this information to everyone living in their water district.
· Ask the Environmental Protection Agency or your local public health department. Many people use well water. If you do, you may be able to get information on what is in your water from either the EPA or a local public health office.
· Get it tested yourself. If you still can't get the information you need, hire someone to do a water test for you. You need different types of tests for different types of water pollution. One convenient option is to get your water tested by mail.
· If your water isn't up to your standards, use filtration systems. More economical long-term than bottled water, using filtering systems guarantees a level of control over what you are drinking that the other options do not. There are many different types of filters in a wide price range. Each type of filtration device has a different specialty. Depending on the results of your water test, use one of the following:
· Activated Carbon System - removes organic chemicals, and chlorine. It also makes water taste better. It doesn't help with lead or nitrate.
· Distillation System - good at removing heavy metals, but is bad at removing small organic compounds.
· Reverse Osmosis System - removes metals, fluoride, nitrates, radium, and lead, but not all organics.
· Hybrid System - uses a combination of the above techniques for more comprehensive filtration.
· Consider drinking bottled water. Unfortunately, there are no regulations on bottled water so you don't really know what you are drinking. Some companies are really just using tap water. For a guide to the best and worst brands, begin with Consumer Reports (January 1987) or contact the National Sanitation Foundation.
· Protect your watershed. By using less toxic alternatives you are keeping toxics from entering our groundwater. Household toxics that are thrown in the garbage will often leak out of landfills when it rains. Most everything we use ends up in the water system one way or another. Then, the polluted water makes its way back into our houses again. Protect your kids and other people's kids too by not using pesticides, toxic cleaners, etc. Tell other people about how their behavior affects the quality of water entering your house.

Leading Pediatrician discusses Vaccines for Children

If you have the time you can find and listen to this discussion.  You can find it at http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/14/Expert-Pediatrician-Exposes-Vaccine-Myths.aspx
This is interview really changed how I viewed vaccines.


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Leading Pediatrician and Vaccine Expert discusses Vaccines for Children

Healthy Child's advisory board member, leading board-certified pediatrician, and vaccine expert, Lawrence Palevsky, MD, was interviewed by Dr. Mercola about vaccines for children. In this myth-shattering interview, Dr. Palevsky provides rational scientific justification as to why parents need to seriously reconsider allowing vaccines for their children.

I've been researching and writing about children and vaccines for 15 years and rarely have I heard anyone speak so clearly, succinctly and rationally about the lack of scientific research regarding safety and efficacy and other issues involved in vaccines.

Dr. Palevsky refutes the whole concept of herd immunity as it relates to vaccines and exposes how ludicrous it is to think that unvaccinated children put others at risk.

He clearly explains the important difference between natural immunity and vaccine-induced immunity.

If you are considering vaccines for your children, this interview is a definite must. You can listen at Mercola.com at this link:

Expert Pediatrician Exposes Myths about Vaccines for Children

Here are some important highlights of this interview:

The Difference Between What You Learn in School and What Works

Dr. Palevsky says:

“When I went through medical school, I was taught that vaccines were completely safe and completely effective, and I had no reason to believe otherwise. All the information that I was taught was pretty standard in all the medical schools and the teachings and scientific literature throughout the country. I had no reason to disbelieve it.

Over the years, I kept practicing medicine and using vaccines and thinking that my approach to vaccines was completely onboard with everything else I was taught.

But more and more, I kept seeing that my experience of the world, my experience in using and reading about vaccines, and hearing what parents were saying about vaccines were very different from what I was taught in medical school and my residency training.

… and it became clearer to me as I read the research, listened to more and more parents, and found other practitioners who also shared the same concern that vaccines had not been completely proven safe or even completely effective, based on the literature that we have today.

… It didn’t appear that the scientific studies that we were given were actually appropriately designed to prove and test the safety and efficacy.

It also came to my attention that there were ingredients in there that were not properly tested, that the comparison groups were not appropriately set up, and that conclusions made about vaccine safety and efficacy just did not fit the scientific standards that I was trained to uphold in my medical school training.”

Were Vaccines Really the ‘Savior’ Against Past Diseases?

Conventional medicine teaches that the polio and the smallpox epidemics went away because of the vaccines, and that most of the diseases that we faced in the 20th century in the United States were brought down because of the power, strength and the implementation of the vaccine policy.

Meanwhile, there are a significant number of studies in the medical literature that actually show there were many other reasons that these infectious diseases went away.

For example, one article published in 2000 in the Pediatrics Journal describes how, before the World War II, the majority of the infectious diseases the US was faced with – such as diphtheria, tetanus, polio, pertussis, measles, influenza, parapertussis, tuberculosis and scarlet fever – were all reduced before World War II and BEFORE there were antibiotics and vaccinations available to treat or to vaccinate against these diseases.

The reasons for the reductions in incidence rates and mortality of these diseases were predominantly due to the implementation of public health strategies, including:

* Clean water
* Better living conditions
* Improved sanitation
* Improved nutrition

There are many such examples.

Have the Proper Safety Studies Actually Been Done?

So, why is there such a vast difference among intelligent, scientifically oriented, committed and objective scientists and physicians about the safety and efficacy of vaccines?

Dr. Palevsky says:

“I think that if you ask most of my colleagues where they get their information, they will say that they read it from the American Academy of Pediatrics, from the AMA, from the CDC, and in their journals.

But I would like to challenge most of my colleagues to look through the studies themselves to actually see if the proper scientific studies were done using a proper study group and a proper control group.

Were the ingredients in vaccines properly studied?

Is there a difference between being exposed to a virus, bacteria, heavy metal or toxin through the air, food, your intestines and your skin, versus when it’s injected into your body?

Have we really looked at what happens to vaccine materials once injected into a child? Is an antibody sufficient to provide protection for a child against disease?

More and more studies are coming out to show that:

* The proper studies haven’t been done
* Antibodies are not the final way in which your body is protected
* There is a difference between how children process material through air and food versus through injection
* There are particles in vaccines that do accumulate in your body and cause impairments in your immune system
* There are particles in the vaccines that get into your brain, and
* There are foreign DNA particles that get into your body

For many health professionals it is a shock to discover that there is such a lack of information on the safety and efficacy, and a mounting degree of information that actually raises suspicions about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, and whether or not they have been properly studied.”

How a Conventionally Trained Physician Accepts that Vaccines Can Cause Harm

Says Palevsky,

“It is heartbreaking, because I see many of these kids who were developmentally normal, who were doing well, who were speaking, then whose voices and eye contacts were lost, who went into seizures, who developed asthma and allergies, and they had nowhere to go because they’re doctors told them that they don’t know what they’re talking about. These kids are real.

The literature is showing that there are changes in the immune system of children who are vaccinated, especially if we vaccinate them before one year of age or even at one day of age.

The literature is there. It’s good scientific literature, and it shows that more and more of these kids who are suffering from chronic illness are suffering from impairments of their immune system.

Whether vaccines are causative or contributory, the literature is showing that there is a role that vaccines are playing in creating the groundwork for these children’s immune systems to start to show signs of impairment and destruction.

… When I look at the studies that the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC put out, saying that there’s no correlation between vaccination and autism or vaccinations and asthma, I have to say that the studies just don’t hold up to the scientific standards.

You can’t have 25 children in a study and then report that this proves that no children who get autism have any correlation to being injured by vaccines. This is what the media does: they take these conclusions, put it right out in front of the newspapers and say, “Vaccines don’t cause autism.”

When you really look at the studies – and there’s not a proper control group and there’s only 25 people – you can’t make a grand, generalized statement about a general population because you’ve studied 25 children.”

The NVIC Set to Create Groundbreaking Vaccine Safety Research

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) just raised $100,000 and continues to look for donations and sponsors to allow proper safety studies to be done by independent researchers, who aren’t going to influence the outcomes.

One study that looked at the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children does exist.

Published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in April 2005, that looked at the health outcomes of children who are fully vaccinated, who are partially vaccinated, and who are not vaccinated at all.

All the investigators asked the parents to do was to report atopic illness. Atopic illness means allergies, asthma, eczema, hay fever. The investigators were blinded, meaning they didn’t know which category the participants belonged to.

When they assessed the data, they found that the largest number of reports by parents of children with atopic illness were in the kids who were fully vaccinated. The second highest reports were in the families who are partially vaccinated. And the lowest number of reports was in the children who were unvaccinated…

The investigators performed a statistical analysis to see if the data was based on chance or on real statistical differences, and found there were statistically significant differences between these groups. They couldn’t understand how this was possible, because the generally accepted consensus is that vaccines are completely safe, and completely effective.

Based on this initial finding, we clearly need to do follow-up studies to ask the same question over and over again; repeat this kind of investigation with different populations across different parts of the country, to unearth the truth!

Dr. Palevsky says:

“Certainly, the issue has been raised about the special interests, the money that’s tied, the policies, how much money the vaccine manufacturers stand to make, the doctors who make decisions on vaccines, and how much money they stand to make. But we need the science and not this conspiracy theory...

If we just stay with the science, and really start to address the need for the science, and look at the fact that there is a lack of science, we will definitely see that more needs to be done.

We have not done due diligence.”

Are Some Vaccines Safer Than Others?

Many may be surprised by Dr. Palevsky’s answer:

“… in my research of the vaccines, and of the basic microbiology and virology that we’re trained to know in our medical training, I cannot understand how a vaccine with a virus can be safe.”

What most people don’t know is that a virus is not “alive,” per se.

It is simply a piece or strand of either RNA or DNA. And even of itself, a virus can’t “do” anything.

In addition it is so tiny that it can only be seen under an electron microscope. It is much smaller than bacteria, which can only be seen in the regular microscope. So viruses cannot be isolated when you make a viral vaccine. All that can be isolated is the tissue, whether it’s human tissue or animal tissue that is believed to have been infected by that specific virus that you’re trying to isolate.

So when a viral culture or a set of cultures are made including the specific virus, you’re going to have the DNA of people or animals who were already infected. Those cells are then taken and grown on animal cells, whether it's monkey kidney cells or chicken embryo cells.

When mixed together, these cells will splice and recombine, which means that DNA from animal cells are going to mix with DNA from the known infected cells with the virus.

So by definition, a viral vaccine contains foreign animal and, even possibly, foreign human DNA. That’s why if you have an egg allergy, you shouldn’t get certain vaccines because it is known that there’s going to be egg protein in the vaccine.

So the question is, how safe is it to inject viral material that is embedded into the DNA of foreign DNA cells?

What studies have been done to actually test whether foreign DNA is getting into your body; whether it stays in your DNA; whether it gets into your brain; and whether there are foreign animal viruses that are inherently present in animal DNA to begin with?

Pushing for Informed Consent

So, does that mean you should never vaccinate against anything?

Dr. Palevsky says:

“That’s something that needs to be left up to the individual parent. I am truly a proponent of informed consent, and I’m truly supportive of families who have done their homework and who have been able to make the choice.

What is the possible risk of the illness? What is the possible health outcome if your child gets one of those illnesses?

And how much do you know about those risks versus how much do you know about the risks of the vaccines and the health outcomes of what may happen when children are vaccinated against single, or even multiple, vaccines?

And when parents are given both sides, it is up to them to make that informed choice.

It is no longer my role to tell them that they must do this vaccine but not that vaccine, because each parent has to make an informed choice based on their understanding of how diseases occur or don’t occur, what science we have available, and whether they feel comfortable with the devil that they know (the science and the outcomes of disease) versus the devil that they don’t know (science and the outcomes of the vaccine).”

What about the Swine Flu Vaccine?

He says:

“Now if you read the packaging first of the swine flu vaccine, it specifically states that the swine flu or the H1N1 flu vaccine was manufactured in the same manufacturing process as the flu vaccine. Therefore since we believe that the flu vaccine has been sufficiently tested to be safe, we can then conclude that the H1N1 vaccine is safe.

But the public should know that even though our authorities are standing there and saying that the H1N1 vaccine is safe, the proper studies have not been done.

… And it’s unfair to say to parents or to the public that if you come down with a flu-like illness, it must be H1N1. In studies that have been done, people who did get the flu had their noses swabbed, and they were found to have H1N1.

What’s missing in these data is a population of healthy people who have not had any flu symptoms – to actually see if their noses contained H1N1 – because if someone is sick and has the presence of an H1N1 virus in the nose, it doesn’t mean that the H1N1 is causing the illness.

You really have to take an appropriate control group to see if people are colonized with that virus even when they’re not sick.

So we don’t have that data; we really don’t know. I don’t think we can say with good scientific certainty that people who are getting sick from the flu and who are being diagnosed with H1N1 are actually having H1N1 as the cause.”

Other Ways to Protect Yourself Against the Flu

Again, there’s clear evidence in the medical literature that shows proper hygiene, proper sleep, proper diet, proper supplementation with things like vitamin D (making sure that you get your vitamin D level done first), and perhaps vitamin C, can actually prevent you from getting the flu.

Many insist that vaccinated individuals “protect” the unvaccinated against the flu virus – in essence, reaping the benefit of the protection they refuse for themselves, while at the same time putting others in danger.

But how does that make sense?

Says Dr. Palevsky:

“How does vaccinating against the flu virus stop you from carrying the flu virus in your nasal passages?”

And yet, this is what many believe.

The Concept of Herd Immunity and the Myth that Unvaccinated Children put Others at Risk

One of the primary arguments that is being used to justify this insane behavior is “herd immunity.”

The fact is that vaccination does NOT stop you from carrying bacteria or viruses in your nose, in your throat, in your intestines, in your airway, on your skin, or in your body.

But many do not understand the significance of this fact, and have been made to believe that if you’re vaccinated, you won’t carry viruses, and therefore, others will be protected because you’re vaccinated.

As it turns out, this belief is NOT based on scientific fact.

Dr. Palevsky explains:

“This whole concept of herd immunity is very interesting, because we were taught that herd immunity occurs because a certain percentage of a population gets an active illness. Therefore by a certain percentage of getting the active illness, they impart a protection onto the remaining part of the population that has not gotten the illness yet.

And so the herd that is getting the illness is shedding the illness and protecting those who have not gotten it.

In vaccine science, we are extrapolating or concluding that if we vaccinate a certain percentage of people, we are imparting protection on those who have not been vaccinated. And that has NOT been shown to be true, because the true herd immunity in theory is based on an ACTIVE DISEASE, and we know that despite what we’re taught, vaccination does not mimic the natural disease.

So we cannot use the same model of herd immunity in a natural disease in the vaccination policy. But unfortunately, we do use it even though it cannot be used because it doesn’t have scientific backing.

What’s most interesting to me is that the entire concept of herd immunity fails to acknowledge that there is a life cycle of the viruses and the bacteria all on their own, and that what turns them on and off may have nothing to do with the percentage of people who have been infected.

All you have to do is look at the SARS outbreak. That virus that we were supposed to fear didn’t infect 70 or 80 percent of the population, which would then impart herd immunity on the 20 or 30 percent that didn’t get the disease.

This is because the virus itself had a life cycle of its own. And so it came and went without any percentage of the population being protected. There wasn’t herd immunity, and yet the virus died out on its own.

We fail to include that viruses have a life cycle, and that they are in relationship to other organisms and to us. Something activates them and something actually stops them, and it has nothing necessarily to do with the percentage of people who would have the illness or who have been vaccinated.

… It is preposterous to think that a child who is vaccinated no longer carries the bacteria or the viruses that they have been vaccinated against. If, in fact, children are vaccinated, then why are parents and public health authorities afraid that non-vaccinated children are somehow carrying something that their children are not, when they should feel comfortable that their children are vaccinated?

You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t vaccinate believing that your children are protected and then feel that your children are not protected because somehow, some non-vaccinated child is carrying some secret organism that no one else is carrying.

It just doesn’t make any sense.”

The Difference between Natural Immunity and Vaccine-lnduced Immunity

It’s important to understand that the natural illness has greater influence on the health of your body. Says Dr. Palevsky:

“In medical school, the mentors that I had saw children in their practices in the 40s, 50s and all the way up to the 80s getting these flu-like illnesses who were properly treated with rest, fluids and proper supplementation.

Those kids had developmental growth spurts after the illnesses were over.

There is something to say for these viral illnesses that impart a certain boosting of the immune system of your children. And if we’re not letting them have these illnesses, what are we doing to their immune systems? Aren’t we actually hampering their overall health?”

You need to understand that there’s a significant difference between natural immunity and vaccination immunity.

When children are born, they develop natural immunity to hundreds, thousands, millions, and even trillions of microorganisms that they breathe in, eat, and touch through their skin. Their immune systems at the lining of their airways, at the lining of their intestines, and on their skin are actively protecting their body from the outside world.

Those immune systems that are intricately and specifically located in the linings are very important to create memory and protection to the organisms that they continue to breathe, eat, and touch.

That immune system response then has a domino effect on creating other memory and immune responses that give your body antibodies and protection.

That’s a very important step for how the immune system matures in our children. From the linings, the immune system receives information, sends out signals to all other parts of the immune system, and creates an immune response, memory, and antibodies.

On the other hand, when you inject materials into your body, you are bypassing that crucial first step called the primary line of defense.

With vaccination you are just creating an antibody. That does NOT impart long-term immunity because it does not create the kind of memory that occurs when you breathe it in, eat it, or are exposed through the skin, and then go through the course of the natural disease.

Some people will argue that this is why we have nasal spray vaccines.

However, again, you’re making the assumption that you have not already been exposed to the virus at some point, and you’re also making the assumption that exposure automatically leads to infection.

Exposure does not necessarily lead to infection. A lot of it has to do with the overall status of your immune system.

The Dangers of Combining Vaccines

One issue that is frequently ignored is the potential harm from the synergy of combinations of vaccines, which have never been studied.

No one knows whether there’s interaction between the bacteria and the viruses in the vaccines administered as part of the childhood vaccination schedule, or if there is interaction in the trace thimerosal (which is still in some of the multi-vials of certain vaccines), or the large amount of aluminum that is in many of them.

Dr. Palevsky says:

“There is a scientist named Boyd Haley, who has actually looked into some of the vaccine ingredients and (1) what happens to nerve cells when you inject them in the lab to specific vaccine ingredients, and (2) what happens to the nerve cells when you keep adding another vaccine ingredient.

He specifically showed that in the presence of thimerosal, there’s a lot of damage to nerve cells. When you add aluminum to the thimerosal, you need less thimerosal to create the damage to the immune and nerve cells in the presence of aluminum.

Then when you add neomycin – an antibiotic in some of the vaccines – it potentiates the potency of nerve cell damage with aluminum and mercury together.

And when you culture the nerve cells and testosterone, versus estrogen, and you expose them to some of the vaccine ingredients like thimerosal, you actually see that the nerve cells that are exposed to testosterone are more damaged in greater amounts than the nerve cells that are bathed in estrogen.

That raises some concern because we do see that children with neurodevelopmental disorders are 4:1, boys to girls.

So you have to question whether testosterone actually makes children more vulnerable to exposure to toxins like mercury, aluminum or their combination?

None of these studies have been done in humans. People say, “We can’t do those studies.” And I say, “Why not?” They say, “It’s unethical.”

I say, “Well, if it’s unethical to do those studies on vaccine ingredients and combining them together, then it’s unethical to give the vaccines in general.”

So we’re missing a lot of important data that we won’t believe, and we’re also missing a lot of important data that we won’t accumulate because most of the studies that are done are by the manufacturers of the vaccines themselves.”

About Lawrence B. Palevsky, M.D., F.A.A.P.

My kids don't seem to be getting better.  Both my daughter and my son have develop eye infections...yikes.  I found this article and found it quite suiting...enjoy and please I would love to hear from you, please make comments.  Thanks

By Jane Sheppard

Living in Harmony with Colds and Flu

Taking care of sick children can be a rather challenging aspect of being a parent. Waking up in the middle of the night to the sounds of your child's cough, feeling your child's feverish body, and cleaning up vomit is something you may be familiar with. We all knew there would be times like this in our parenting experience. It's inevitable that kids get sick. It's a necessary part of growing up, a normal part of childhood.
The general belief is that kids "catch" colds and flu from viruses that are circulating in the air or passed from others. Many people talk about a cold or flu "going around" as if it were making the rounds infecting every child in its path. The reality is that out of all the children exposed to the virus, only a portion of these children will get sick to some degree and others will not succumb to the disease at all. This is because viruses and bacteria are not the sole cause of disease. There is much more going on behind the scenes in your child's body. The cause of the illness is not just the virus. There are many factors involved. The internal environment of the body determines whether a child will be susceptible to colds, flu or any other illness.
Germs, such as a virus or bacteria, will only lead to illness when the body is out of balance and immunity is weakened. In order to survive and become active enough to cause symptoms, these germs first need to have an environment that nourishes them. They survive and proliferate from feeding off the wastes and toxins that accumulate in the body. The immune system responds, triggering an inflammatory response that may include rash, fever, congestion, runny nose, and coughing. These are signs that the body has begun its process of healing - dispelling the wastes, virus, and accumulated toxins from the body.
In order for the body to generate a sufficient and complete healing response, the immune system needs to be strong and functioning at its best. Factors that contribute to a weakened immune system include poor nutrition, stress, an unhealthy mental or emotional state, and excessive toxins.
There is plenty you can do to reduce the toxic load and strengthen your child's immune system and overall health and vitality. The best approach is to provide a healthy environment right from the start. A baby needs to be nourished during the entire pregnancy with organic, whole foods and lots of love, birthed in a peaceful, welcoming environment, then exclusively breastfed and nurtured immediately upon entering the world.
Long-term breastfeeding is, by far, the most important thing you can do. Breastmilk provides the nutritional and immune factors crucial to building and maintaining healthy immunity. Breastfeeding into the toddler, or even the preschool years, provides the physiological and emotional factors necessary to develop and boost the immune system.

Also vitally important is good nutrition - plenty of fresh, whole foods. Processed foods place a burden on the immune system and create more of a toxic environment within the body.
A low-toxic environment is essential. In our current world, it is impossible to avoid all toxic exposures. But we can reduce exposure to a great extent if we know how our children are being exposed through their food, homes, schools and playgrounds. Vaccines and antibiotics can greatly increase the toxic load on the body, and these substances can weaken a child's innate immunity.
Moreover, a child needs a healthy mental attitude, plenty of laughter, low stress, emotional security, and plenty of rest and exercise.
In addition to all of the above health builders, you can boost your child's immune system with herbs, homeopathy, acupuncture or chiropractic care. Certain herbs, including echinacea, astragalus, elderberry, and garlic have been found to have remarkable immune-building properties. These herbs support the body's vitality and help prevent development of disease. Homeopathy prescribed by a classical homeopath can help tremendously to release any imbalance from the body and shift it into health and vitality. Acupuncture can be great for kids to relieve imbalances and Chinese herbs can be helpful in creating strong immunity. Many acupuncturists now work with children without using needles. Chiropractic treatments can also help to strengthen the immune system and overall health.
It's our job as parents to keep our children's bodies healthy and in balance. We need to provide what they need to function properly and reduce the toxic exposures from food and the environment.
When your children do get sick, you can help facilitate and support the healing process by gently supporting the immune system and assisting the cleansing process. Keep in mind that the symptoms of cough, fever, runny nose, etc. are exactly what need to happen to dispel and heal the disease. You don't want to suppress this healing by giving them fever reducers or cough syrup. Antibiotics can also suppress the healing process and weaken the immune system. Instead of trying to control and suppress the symptoms our children are experiencing, we can try to stimulate their immune systems to enable their bodies to heal themselves.
Childhood inflammatory diseases are an essential part of the development of the immune system. Every time the immune system works to dispel a cold virus or other inflammatory illness, your child's immunity is strengthened. The more the immune system does this clearing process, the stronger it will be. Studies have shown that the more acute inflammatory diseases a child has, the less the likelihood of getting chronic inflammatory diseases, such as allergies and asthma, later in life. Another great benefit is that after successfully discharging and healing certain diseases like chicken pox, your child will most likely receive lifetime protection from these illnesses.
Childhood illnesses can certainly be demanding and frightening at times. But you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that it's a normal part of the growing process and your child's immune system and overall health is developing naturally and becoming stronger in the process.

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The immune system is very complex, and making it strong and powerful takes a multi-faceted approach. The good news is that there is much a parent can do, inexpensively at home, to improve a child's resistance to disease. Super Healthy Kids: Strengthening Your Child's Resistance to Disease is a comprehensive book about what parents can do to strengthen a child's immune system to prevent disease and create increased health and vitality. Available Here

Vaccine Toxicity and Safety of Vaccinations: A Parent's Right to Choose

By Jane Sheppard
The vaccination decision is one of the most important choices we can make as parents. However, in questioning vaccines, we open ourselves up to a great deal of criticism, disapproval and accusations of child neglect from doctors, school administrators, public health officials, family members and other parents. How, they ask, do we dare question a practice that has prevented so many devastating diseases and saved so many lives? Aren’t we putting our child and other children at risk for contracting serious diseases? After all, the government agencies designated to protect public health and most doctors say that childhood vaccines are safe.
If you dig a little deeper into the issue, you’ll find many gaps and limitations in the data and knowledge regarding vaccine safety. Vaccines are capable of causing serious damage. Because they contain lab-altered viruses, bacteria and toxic substances, vaccines have the ability to cause mild to severe neurological and immune damage, or even death, depending on the vaccine given, the combination of vaccines given, the health of the child at the time of vaccination, and the genetic or biological factors that predispose the child to this damage. Vaccines are potent and toxic drugs that contain formaldehyde, mercury, aluminum, antibiotics and other toxic components. Thoughtful parents are beginning to question the practice of injecting these toxic substances into the bodies of small babies and artificially manipulating their fragile immune systems during the crucial time of brain and immune development.

No Long-Term or Real-World Safety Studies

Pharmaceutical companies do safety testing of vaccines, but long term studies are not done. The follow-up for vaccine safety testing on individuals before a vaccine is marketed is only a few weeks, or a couple of months at the most. Pharmaceutical companies and government health officials rely on post-marketing data to see if there are reports of serious side effects and reactions after the vaccine has been released and given to millions of children. But most doctors are reluctant to report adverse reactions, and it is estimated that only between one and ten percent of vaccine reactions are ever reported. Even so, between 12,000 and 14,000 adverse reactions (including hospitalizations, injuries and death) are reported annually to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Since it may be difficult to establish causal relationship, many of the reported reactions are dismissed as coincidental with no further study.
The “control groups” for determining adverse reactions are not unvaccinated children. Instead, they are children that have received other vaccines. This makes it possible for the vaccine in question to appear safer than it actually may be. In addition, no adequate studies have ever been done on the real-world risk; the cumulative effect of multiple doses of numerous vaccines given in the first 5 years of life

Chronic Diseases Rise as Vaccinations Increase

Chronic diseases and disabilities in children have risen dramatically as vaccination rates for a growing number of vaccines climb higher than ever before. 25 years ago, children following the recommended vaccine schedule received 23 doses of 7 vaccines before age six. Today’s children get 48 doses of 14 vaccines by age six. With the additional recommendation for annual flu shots, children may now get 69 doses of 16 vaccines by age 18.
Given all these vaccinations, are our children healthier? In 1983, one in 10,000 American children had autism. Currently, there is one in 150 children diagnosed with autism. One out of six American children is learning disabled. One in nine has asthma and one in 450 is diabetic. In 2003, approximately 4.4 million children were reported to have attention deficit and hyperactivity, and this chronic condition continues to increase.
Health officials continue to insist that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. However, Dr. Bernadine Healy - the former head of the National Institutes of Health and member of the Institute of Medicine - has stated that public health officials have intentionally avoided researching the vaccine-autism link because they are afraid the answer will scare the public. She acknowledges that public health officials have failed to fully research vaccines and how they may contribute to autism. Dr. Healy, along with many other doctors, thinks that there may be a subset of children who, for genetic or other reasons, are susceptible to developing autism following vaccination.
In fact, the U.S. Government has recently conceded in “vaccine court” that vaccines contributed to the development of autism in child who is now age nine. There are thousands more autism cases in line to be heard in court in which the parents believe that vaccines contributed to their children’s autism.
In June 2007, the first ever investigation to determine the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated children was done by Generation Rescue, a parent-funded, non-profit organization. This survey of over 17,000 children compared the rates of ADHD, autism, and asthma between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Results showed that vaccinated U.S. children have a significantly higher risk of neurological disorders - including autism and ADHD - than unvaccinated children.
This was not a comprehensive enough study to show proof of a connection, but it certainly raises big red flags and shows the need for a national study comparing outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

Toxicity of Vaccines

A growing number of doctors believe that a baby’s immune system is not strong enough to handle the amount of vaccines given, and their livers and kidneys are not developed enough to metabolize or excrete the toxic chemicals and heavy metals in vaccines.
Parents should know that even though mercury has finally been taken out of most childhood vaccines, there is still a significant amount of mercury in many flu shots as well as tetanus booster shots and some meningitis vaccines. Trace amounts of mercury still remain in other vaccines. Mercury is known to be one of the most toxic substances on Earth and no amount of mercury is safe, especially when injected into a baby’s small developing body.
Even though most of the recent discussion concerning toxicity of vaccines has revolved around the mercury issue, mercury is certainly not the only toxic problem with childhood vaccines. Aluminum is used as an adjuvant to boost the immune response from vaccines. Scientific evidence of the safety of injected aluminum is sorely lacking. Aluminum can accumulate in tissues and can build up to toxic levels in the bloodstream, bones, and brain. Accumulation of aluminum in the brain is known to impair neurological and mental development. Animal studies show that aluminum causes convulsions, impaired memory, and defective learning.
The difference in the amount of aluminum that may be considered safe for babies and the amount that is actually contained in vaccines is alarming. The FDA website says that premature babies receiving injected aluminum through IV fluids at levels greater than 4 to 5 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day, can accumulate aluminum at levels associated with central nervous system and bone toxicity, and toxic build-up may occur at even lower rates. For a tiny premature baby, the toxic dose would be 10 to 20 mcg. It is estimated that a 12-pound, two-month-old full-term, healthy baby could safely receive at least 30 mcg of injected aluminum via IV per day. But it is unknown how much more aluminum a healthy baby can handle and how much can be safely injected into a baby via vaccines. The safety of aluminum levels in vaccines has never been established. No research has been done to determine a baby’s ability to excrete aluminum to prevent toxic build-up. No one has measured the levels of aluminum absorption by the bloodstream when an aluminum-containing vaccine is injected into a baby. Also disturbing is the lack of data to determine if injected aluminum interacts with other vaccine toxins to cause harm to small developing bodies.
A newborn baby receiving a Hepatitis B shot on its first day of life gets 250 mcg of aluminum from this vaccine. The total amount of aluminum that a 2-month-old baby receives from the recommended “well-baby” vaccines could vary from 295 mcg. to 1225 mcg., depending on which vaccines are given. This dose is usually repeated at 4 months and again at 6 months of age.
There are also trace or residual amounts of 2-phenoxyethanol, phenol, albumin, sucrose, lactose, MSG, glycine, formaldehyde, and antibiotics (neomycin) in vaccines. These are very small amounts, but do we want to continually inject even small amounts of these toxins directly into our tiny babies' developing bodies, given their inability to detoxify and how vulnerable they are to low levels of toxins? If trace amounts of formaldehyde, MSG, or antibiotics were in foods that were to be given to our babies, most of us wouldn't allow it. Yet, these toxins go directly into the baby's bloodstream.
Vaccines also can contain egg and yeast proteins. We delay giving our babies solid foods, mostly to avoid the proteins that can cause allergies. Why would we inject isolated proteins into their bodies at 2 months old?
Vaccines also contain various animal products and are created using both human and animal tissues. These tissues can contain viruses and other contaminants. Even though there are processes to detoxify and clean the vaccines, some viruses have still made it into the final vaccine products that were injected into babies. One well-known case was a monkey virus known to cause cancer that was found in the polio vaccine given to millions of babies during the 50s and 60s. There remains a possibility of an unknown or new virus that may not be detected with current testing.

Vaccine Reactions

Vaccine reactions can take many forms, including one or more of the following:

• rash
• hives
• itching
• swelling, redness, and pain at the injection site
• high fever
• difficulty breathing or wheezing
• paleness or changes in skin or lip color
• muscle weakness or limpness
• excessive sleepiness or lack of responsiveness
• rapid heart beat
• dizziness
• unusual irritability or other behavior changes
• prolonged crying (especially high-pitched screaming in infants)
• seizures or convulsions (shaking, twitching, jerking)
• collapse/shock
• vomiting or diarrhea
• brain inflammation
• bruising
• mental/physical Regression
• death

Many parents have reported that their baby had a high-pitched scream for many hours directly after receiving a vaccine, and then regressed developmentally until being diagnosed with autism months later. Some babies have died after being vaccinated.

Weakened Immunity

A growing number of doctors agree that weakened immunity and susceptibility to allergies, asthma, and chronic infections is another long-term consequence of the large number of vaccines given to babies and children at their most vulnerable time of immune development.
A baby’s immune system develops through breastfeeding, proper nutrition and from its complex responses to natural exposure to disease. When a baby is naturally exposed to a virus, the immune system has several layers of responses that deal with the invasion. Allowing the range of acute inflammatory responses to typical childhood diseases strengthens immunity and strengthens the child’s health overall.
Conversely, injecting multiple doses of altered viruses and toxins directly into the body bypasses many of the normal immune responses. The vaccine injection triggers antibody production, but antibodies are only one level of protection and not full natural immunity. The immune system is very complex and the different branches of the immune system require a balanced, synergistic relationship to function properly. Repeated vaccinations may over-stimulate the branch that produces antibodies, while suppressing the branch responsible for acute inflammatory responses.
Intelligent doctors and parents are beginning to question this manipulation of the immune system. Since we are seeing a huge increase in pediatric allergies, asthma, auto-immune diseases, and chronic immune deficiencies, we must look at mass vaccination policy and demand the proper studies to find out what is happening to our children’s immune systems.

Universal Vaccines for Everyone?

Does it make sense to mandate vaccines for every child given the risks involved? The public health strategy for eliminating diseases includes universal vaccines for everyone, regardless of risks to the individual child who may have biological or genetic susceptibility to vaccine damage. There are no tests that can show which babies will have serious reactions. Some children must be sacrificed in order to achieve the goal of eradicating disease in a population. They tell us that more lives will be lost to the disease if we don’t vaccinate against it. But is this statement really true in the current reality of high-tech medicine in a population with effective sanitation and knowledge about the immunology of breastfeeding?
We cannot wipe out every disease on the planet. It may be more sensible to focus on naturally strengthening our children’s immune systems to effectively deal with the increasing number of “superbugs” created by the inappropriate and massive use of antibiotics than to inject numerous toxins into their delicate, developing bodies. If we allow our children’s immunity to develop on its own as nature intended, breastfeed and use good nutrition and other natural immune-enhancing methods to keep our children’s immunity strong, then why would we want to inject foreign material and toxins into their bodies that can weaken their health, especially since safety has not been proven? An increasing number of parents are not willing to take the risk of sacrificing their child to a point of view that goes against their core beliefs about health and wellness.

The Captive Multi-Billion Dollar Vaccine Market

What fuels the ubiquitous belief that vaccines are the supreme solution to disease and that those who do not accept vaccines are putting themselves and others at risk? In America’s money-driven vaccine campaign, the vaccine industry uses the government, doctors, and school officials to effectively market their products and gain mass acceptance of their message. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepts safety data from the manufacturers and licenses vaccines used in the U.S. After licensing, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), appointed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), makes recommendations on doses and ages for the use of these vaccines in children. ACIP immunization recommendations are extremely influential and enacted into law as mandates by individual states. In the past 25 years, every childhood vaccine produced by the drug companies has been mandated for use by all American children.
Many members of both the ACIP and the FDA’s advisory committees have been found by the U.S. Government Reform Committee to have blatant conflicts of interest, with strong financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that make vaccines. The Government Reform Committee exposed these conflicts of interest, focusing on the approval of the rotavirus vaccine, which was found to cause severe bowel obstructions. This vaccine was pulled from the market after a significant number of babies were injured and required surgery, and one baby died from the vaccine. It was found that the FDA’s advisory committee members that approved the rotavirus vaccine were aware of the problems but voted to approve it anyway. Three out of these five members had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the rotavirus vaccine. This is not an isolated incident. Congressman Burton, the head of the Reform Committee remarked, “If the panels that have made the decisions on all vaccines on the Childhood Immunization Schedule had as many conflicts as we found with rotavirus, then the entire process has been polluted and the public trust has been violated.”
A mandate for every child in the country to use their product gives vaccine manufacturers a steady and constant demand for their products. And since they are protected from legal action by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program of 1986, they are rushing to bring new vaccines to market. Vaccines are the only commercial products marketed and sold for profit in the U.S. that are not subject to product liability laws.
As more parents are beginning to mistrust vaccines, money is being spent to fund pro-vaccine organizations for public relations and damage control. Vaccine “experts” are hired to manipulate public opinion by denying the severity of adverse reactions and reinforcing the belief that the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks. Instead of becoming alarmed by reports of vaccine-induced brain damage and pushing for the unbiased research needed to determine why this is happening, vaccine manufacturers and government agencies embark on intensive public relations campaigns to make sure the public trust in vaccines has not been diminished in any way. Their main goal is to keep the vaccine program moving forward at any cost. As Randall Neustaedter, OMD warns parents in The Vaccine Guide: Making an Informed Choice, “Vaccines represent consumer goods – and parents should research this product far more carefully than other purchases because their children’s lives could be at stake.”

Parents Can Make Informed Choices

At the doctor’s office, parents are given a two-page “Vaccine Information Statement” which highlights the importance of vaccines and downplays the harmful effects. Many parents are coerced into vaccinating their children by doctors who say they will no longer accept their children as patients if they are not vaccinated. Many parents are also worried that their children will be denied school attendance if they don’t vaccinate.
Informed consent means that an informed patient (or parent) has absolute freedom to accept or reject any specific medical treatment or procedure. The patient (or parent) has the right to be treated sensitively and compassionately while learning about his or her options. The doctor is both ethically obligated and legally required to participate in a communication process that helps the patient to understand risks and benefits as well as alternatives. There are informed consent statutes and case laws in all 50 states in the U.S. Why don’t these revered informed consent laws apply when it comes to vaccination, especially when this medical intervention carries the risk of brain damage and death? Parents are almost never told about exemptions to state vaccine laws. They are usually told they do not have a choice.
The Association of American Physicians is deeply concerned that vaccine policy is based on incomplete studies of efficacy and potential adverse effects of the vaccines and results in the violation of informed consent. “While we acknowledge that vaccines in the past have prevented many serious illnesses, they also have the potential to do great harm if given to the wrong individual," says Jane Orient, M.D. "That decision must be made by the patient (or parent) in consultation with their physician -- not through coercion by a government agency or school district."
We have the right to select the kind of preventive health care that is appropriate for our family. We should never be forced to accept any medical procedure that carries the risk of injury or death against our will. Making an informed decision requires that we evaluate the needs of our family and assess the pros and cons of each vaccine within this context. If we wish to take the precautionary approach and keep our children’s bodies free from harmful toxins to develop healthy immunity naturally, we have every right to say no to vaccines.
In the U.S. we have the legal right to exempt our children from vaccines in order for them to attend public school. All states have medical exemptions (these must be signed by a doctor), 48 states have exemptions for religious beliefs, and 15 states have exemptions for philosophical beliefs. Claiming the philosophical exemption in some states (California, for example) is as easy as signing the statement on the back of the school’s vaccination record or providing a letter which states that vaccination is against your personal beliefs. When you claim an exemption, there should be no questions and your child legally must be admitted to school. A religious exemption can be a little trickier, sometimes requiring a letter from a recognized church, but in many cases a parent can write a letter simply stating vaccinations are against their religious beliefs.
If you are seeking an exemption, get a copy of your state immunization law and follow exactly what it says about what is needed for an exemption. Many parents are not aware that these exemptions exist since public health officials, doctors, or school administrators usually don’t mention them.
We need to realize that our parental rights have been taken away in the process of trying to eradicate disease in a way that can have devastating consequences to our children’s health and well-being. We blindly put our faith in the medical industry and public health officials who view disease as an enemy to exterminate at all costs, regardless of the number of damaged children or deaths that may occur in the process. When we accept these policies, we give our power over to the government and vaccine industry and let them intrude in our family’s private health care choices.
We, as parents, need to take our power back and make informed choices for our children without coercion, threat, or disapproval by doctors or health officials. And we should be applauded, not shamed, by our friends, family and other parents for refusing to blindly follow “doctors’ orders” as we carefully consider all the issues that can affect the health of our precious children. In fact, thorough investigation before making vaccine decisions and parental demand for proven safety is the only thing that will ever begin to make disease prevention safe for everyone’s children.

Book Recommendation:

The Vaccine Guide: Risks and Benefits for Children and Adults, by Randall Neustaedter OMD