Dear Reader:

It's with the greatest respect that I ask you to consider changing your view on mandatory vaccines.  “Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all of the delusions current in our time” -Mahatma  Gandhi.  What Gandhi is stating is that we do not need vaccines and that people think that they are helping us when they are hurting us.  The number of children in private health plans getting properly immunized declined by as much as 3.5 percent last year, according to a recent report by the National Committee on Quality Assurance (NCQA), a nonprofit organization that tracks health care quality (Nixon). According to the CDC, all vaccines carry a risk of a life-threatening allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) in about one per million children.  Some people may say that vaccines are safe but evidence points otherwise.  I believe that no vaccination should be mandatory because though the risks of fatal side effects are close to nothing there is still a risk, the ingredients in vaccines are disgusting, and the government should not have any input on personal decisions.

Taken as a whole I believe that no vaccine should be mandatory is because they [vaccines] have a variety of non-fatal and fatal side effects.  CDC claims that the rotavirus vaccination can cause intussusception, a type of bowel blockage that may require hospitalization, in about one per 20,000 babies in the United States.  The Smallpox vaccine’s side effects vary from a mild rash that lasts a few days to loss of vision or even death; though this only occurs to 1-2 people per million, no one wants to be that one (History of Vaccines).  A mom named Bonnie brought in her two kids: Ashlee (2 years) and Harley (2 months), to get their shots.  Ashlee got her first Hib and MMR shots, as well as her third DPT and fourth polio shots and Harley got his first DPT, polio, and Hib shots.  When they got home Bonnie put them down for a nap when Ashlee woke up she cried out “Mommy, me no walk!” Bonnie checked her over and stood her up; there was no strength in either leg.  She rushed Ashlee to the hospital where she was sent home with a report stating that “child could not walk, no other problem”.  When they returned Harley was screaming the babysitter stated that he had been screaming for a good hour and a half, he adventually fell asleep out of exhaustion.  For ten days after receiving the shots Harley's behavior changed. He barely slept, hardly ate, and seemed to be getting worse. On May 17 at 9:00 a.m., Harley’s father got up, checked on Harley, and yelled out, 'Bonnie, get up, call the ambulance. Harley is dead!'  When the ambulance pulled up with the police The coroner peered into the ambulance, never examined Harley, and stated, 'SIDS’ (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), Harley was then rushed away.  2 years later Ashlee is still paralyzed in both legs the family is unsure if this will be permanent damage (Avoid Vaccine Reactions).  If the effects of vaccination didn’t seem real, how about now after reading that story of a family that lost a child because of vaccination, something that is suppose to protect you from death.

Other than the risk of side effects vaccinations should not be mandatory because the ingredients used to make vaccines are repulsive.  Some ingredients in vaccines can be potentially fatal.  Egg protein: Vaccines are prepared in eggs (certainly not organic) and may contain growth hormones, antibiotics, and salmonella bacteria (Wells).  Formaldehyde: Highly carcinogenic fluid used to embalm corpses.  Formaldehyde is ranked one of the most hazardous compounds to human health; can cause liver damage, gastrointestinal issues, reproductive deformation, respiratory distress and cancer.  Plus, formaldehyde has been known to fail to deactivate the virus the vaccine is intended to cure, thus enabling a live virus to enter your blood and infect your system (Wells).  Gelatin: Derived from the collagen inside animals' skin and bones, injecting gelatin poses the risk of infection from synthetic growth hormones and BSE infectivity (mad cow disease) (Wells).  Can you imagine injecting this stuff directly into your child’s body?  At least if you ate these ingredients, your body would have a chance to detoxify and eliminate them before any permanent damage could be done. But, to inject them deep into the body’s tissues where the toxins are absorbed directly into the blood is the most damaging and lethal approach imaginable.  How could anyone possibly think injection of such a cocktail of poison could in any way help preserve and enhance your child’s health?

If you are not convinced that vaccines should not be mandatory after seeing some of the possible side effects and what you are putting into your child’s body another reason that vaccines should not be required by law is the government should not intervene on personal decisions.  Medical decisions for children should be left to the parents or caregivers. Barbara Low Fisher, Co-founder of National Vaccine Information Center, stated, "If the State can tag, track down and force citizens against their will to be injected with biological products of known and unknown toxicity today, there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the State can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow.”  Ron Paul, MD, former US Representative (R-TX), in an Oct. 19, 2011 article, "Government Vaccines – Bad Policy, Bad Medicine," stated, "intimately personal medical decisions should not be made by government… Freedom over one’s physical person is the most basic freedom of all, and people in a free society should be sovereign over their own bodies. When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies (Vaccines).”  As U.S. citizens shouldn’t we have the right to say no, have the right to say no to what is being put into our body?

Though thousands of people take part in clinical trials to test a vaccine before it is licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (Vaccine Safety Facts for Parents) evidence still points that vaccines are not safe.  People may say that vaccines are safe but this is untrue. This is untrue because some vaccines are deemed unfit and then are unavailable to receive.  In February of  2002, GlaxoSmithKline removed the Lymes Disease vaccine from the market citing poor sales when in fact a number of folks who received the vaccine reported symptoms worse than the disease itself such as incurable arthritis or neurological impairment (6 Reasons To Say NO To Vaccination).  This is not the first time that a vaccine has had to removed-- A warning was issued concerning the second Rotavirus vaccine (Rotateq)  in 2007 as it caused the same twisting of the bowel problem in 28 infants (16 of which required intestinal surgery) (6 Reasons To Say NO To Vaccination).  People say that vaccines are safe, but, evidence points the other way. 

Nevertheless, I believe that children should not have to receive mandatory vaccinations because though the risks of fatal side effects are close to nothing there is still a risk, the ingredients in vaccines are disgusting, and the government should not have any input on personal decisions.  A preliminary study by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found children who received the HiB vaccine ... were found to be 5 times more likely to contract the disease than children who had not received the vaccine (Vaccination Statistics).  In the New England Journal of Medicine July 1994 issue a study found that over 80% of children under 5 years of age who had contracted whooping cough had been fully vaccinated (Vaccination Statistics).  Yes, most people believe that vaccines are safe but evidence show otherwise.  Though there is minor risk for a fatal or non-fatal side effect, do you really want to be the one that injects your kid with harmful ingredients and then they die, because of that vaccine that was supposed to protect them?

Sincerely,
The Author

Works Cited
"History of Vaccines — A Vaccine History Project of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia." History of Vaccines RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.
Sarah. "Six Reasons To Say NO to Vaccination | The Healthy Home Economist." The Healthy Home Economist. N.p., 25 May 2010. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.
"ThinkTwice Global Vaccine Institute: Avoid Vaccine Reactions." ThinkTwice Global Vaccine Institute: Avoid Vaccine Reactions. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.
"Vaccines ProCon." ProConorg Headlines. N.p., 16 Feb. 2016. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.
Wells, S. D. "Health Basics: The 11 Most Toxic Vaccine Ingredients and Their Side Effects." NaturalNews. N.p., 29 Feb. 2012. Web. 09 Mar. 2016.
"Vaccination Statistics." Mercola. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
"Vaccine Safety Facts for Parents." Vaccine Safety. California Immunization Coalition, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.
Nixon, Robin. "Myths Fuel Dangerous Decisions to Not Vaccinate Children."LiveScience. TechMediaNetwork, 14 Nov. 2010. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.