Childhood Vaccination Part 2: Health risks of vaccination

Setting the scene
How commonly do children experience side effects? What do professionals say about the safety of vaccinations?
According the CDC’s website, most vaccines carry mainly mild risks, such as fever, soreness in the arm, itching, and redness17. Let’s take an example. With the DTaP vaccine, 1 in 4 get a fever, redness or swelling; one in three experience “fussiness;” one in ten experience tiredness; one in fifty vomit; one in 14,000 have seizures, one in 1,000 cry nonstop for three hours or more; 1 in 16,000 have a fever above 104 degrees; and one in a million or fewer experience permanent brain damage or long term seizures, coma, or “lowered consciousness”17. The DTaP vaccine is still used in America, but it is banned in most of Europe as well as Japan and other countries55.
According to another source, the pertussis vaccine alone is connected to “infantile spasms; hypsarrhythmia; aseptic meningitis; encephalopathy (including acute encephalopathy and chronic neurologic damage); deaths classified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); anaphylaxis; autism; erythema multiforme or other rashes; Guillain‐Barré syndrome (polyneuropathy); peripheral mononeuropathy; hemolytic anemia; juvenile diabetes; learning disabilities and hyperactivity; protracted inconsolable crying or screaming; Reye syndrome; shock and ”unusual shock‐like state” with hypotonicity, hyporesponsiveness, and short‐lived convulsions (usually febrile); and thrombocytopenia”43.
Between July 1990 and November 1993, 54,072 adverse vaccine reactions were reported to the FDA. The FDA itself said that this was only approximately ten percent of the real total because the majority of doctors chose not to report the reactions38. This puts the real number of adverse reactions at well over half a million.
This sort of track record has caused quite a bit of dissent over the decades. In 1981, the Journal of the American Medical Association found that ninety percent of obstetricians and sixty-six percent of pediatricians refused to take one vaccine, the rubella vaccine13. In 2000, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons unanimously agreed to a resolution calling for an end to mandatory childhood vaccination40.
The pharmaceutical companies themselves are well aware of the risks involved. Between 1982 and 1987, the price of a standard DPT shot rose from eleven cents to $11.4027. The manufacturers were putting aside $8 per shot to cover the legal fees they incurred paying damages to the parents of children who suffered brain injuries and death after vaccination27. Amazingly, vaccine production and sale continued in spite of this.

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