You may wonder why I haven’t kept up this blog in a while.  My illnesses became very bad and then my surgeon’s secretary phoned me at the last possible minute and asked me

“Do you want your operation before or after Christmas?”

I said after because we’d booked to go to Butlins and nobody wants to be in pain at Christmas, not if they’re sane, anyway.

I couldn’t believe they were actually offering me the operation.  The last I heard, I’d got a letter from the surgeon saying he was ‘anxious’ about operating on me and I didn’t even know I’d been put on the waiting list.  Such are the communication skills of the NHS.

According to my GP I also had a fracture but the hospital didn’t tell me.  I knew that the osteoarthritis that had put me in a wheelchair needed operating on and I couldn’t continue as I was – that this was news I’d waited over a year for, but when the moment came I just wanted to wheel myself away as fast as a paralympic wheelchair racer.

The idea of them cutting through flesh, muscle and bone and then stitching me back together seemed like something out of a Mary Shelley novel.

“I don’t want to look like Mrs Frankenstein”, I said to the surgeon at my pre-operative assessment.

He looked somewhat taken aback.  Since most of his patients are 80 years old and their looks are out the window, I don’t suppose he’d come across this response before.

“Don’t worry about the scar”, he said.

Oh yeah, of course not Andy, I thought privately.

When the day came for me to be operated on, we arrived at the hospital with its long, green painted corridors and Victorian ceilings.  I’m sure they paint everything green just to scare the living daylights out of you.  It’s not a nature, grass and flowers kind of green but a sterile, operating threatre, surgeon’s mask, we’re going to torture you slowly kind of green.  I swear they hadn’t re-decorated since 1900.

We arrived at the pre-admissions ward where each patient got a cubicle with an armchair in it.  My friend then left with my children, while I sat terrified and alone.  Plenty of medical staff came to see me to do my observations or ask me questions, but other than that, I sat alone, contemplating my fate.  I felt like a lamb awaiting slaughter.

Then the surgeon arrived and told me he was going to break the top of my thigh and that he needed to do a second operation at the same time – something called a left abductor release in order to turn my leg into the correct position so my fake hip would not dislocate.  The scar would be somewhere quite unmentionable.  He told me he’d do that at the same time as the hip replacement.  When he left, I burst into tears.

My friend came back, sans kids, just as they were wheeling me away on a trolley.  I put my eye mask on so I could meditate.  I figured if I couldn’t see the hideous green and the horrible ceilings I’d relax.  They stopped my trolley in a waiting bay outside OR and this male voice spoke to me.

“What’s the mask for?  Do you have an eye problem?”

“No”, I said, “I just hate hospitals and if I can’t see that I’m in hospital, I’m not – I’m on a beach in Greece.”

When I was wheeled into the theatre, the anaesthetists started laughing at me.

“You look like something out of a Batman film with that mask on”, said one of them.

“You get sliced open then”, I retorted, “Like in a slasher movie.”

“I take it you’re scared?” he asked.

“I’m about to have a needle put in my spine and get cut to pieces, so yes, I’m scared.”

I had to temporarily remove my eye mask so that I could sit on the edge of the table and lean over for the spinal anasesthesia.  I was never more petrified in my life and my hip hurt like mad, being forced into a position it didn’t like.  By now, it didn’t like most positions.  I grabbed the doctor in front of me.

“I don’t care if you’re not supposed to, I need a hug.”

I put my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes, squeezing him in a bear hug.

“It doesn’t matter, hold onto me if it makes you feel any better.”

A sharp scratch later, my toes suddenly started tingling and the next thing I knew, a warm feeling spread up my legs until, within seconds, the whole lower half of my body was numb.  It felt like it had just disappeared – that I’d had half my body cut off and only existed just a little lower than the chest. 

“That isn’t natural”, I said to the anaesthetist, starting to freak out, “That just isn’t supposed to happen.  There’s only half of me!”

I wondered if that’s what it felt like to be paralysed from the waist down.

“There”, he said, “I’ll give you a nice sedative and see you later.”

He injected my IV with something and I was gone.

Hours later, I woke up on oxygen in the recovery room, still numb.  I learnt later that I’d suffered respiratory depression as a result of the spinal block, a relatively common side-effect.  I don’t remember anything about it, but apparently it took them three hours to stablise my breathing.

I was the proud owner of a fake hip made out of plastic and titanium, and mercifully I didn’t feel a thing.  I found it amusing that as someone who had campaigned against plastic waste for years I now had a body part made out of plastic.

“Do you suppose plastic and titanium burns?” I asked my friend later, mordidly thinking of my own funeral day when I have decided to be cremated.

Frail health naturally makes you consider your own mortality.

“I don’t know”, she replied.

I knew that when harmful items were burned they released dioxins.

“It would be rather ironic”, I joked, “that if after all these years of campaigning against hazardous waste, I actually become hazardous waste!”

My friend laughed.  Sometimes you’ve just got to, haven’t you?

My scar, at 4 weeks old.

With the recent disappearance and presumed murder of five year old April Jones on 1st October 2012, the question of how much freedom we should be giving our children was at the forefront of my mind.

As a parent who has always strived to raise my children naturally (and sometimes failed), allowing children the freedom to roam is attractive to me, but safety concerns have always prevented me from allowing it totally.

My younger children are only allowed to play in my back garden which is padlocked and fenced in.  Being a 1950′s property, the garden is quite a reasonable size and the children have a wooden playground to play on, including a swing, slide, platform, pretend pirate ship and a steering wheel.

My 10 year old is allowed to go to the corner shop just round the corner from our home and both have to be in the house before dusk, which at this time of year is before 5pm.

I have never allowed my five year old to play in the front garden unsupervised, least he go into the road.  His eldest sister who is now 16, had a healthy respect for cars and was always too nervous of them to go in the road, but my son sees them as over sized toys and when he was a baby, would point at all the traffic excitedly every time we went out.  He still isn’t entirely aware of the power of moving vehicles.

Then of course there’s the issue of child abduction and/or abuse.  Crimes such as these are extremely rare, but they do happen.  In my own street where we have lived for a decade, an elderly neighbour who was the best friend of my next door neighbour, confessed to being a paedophile and to crimes involving two children (I don’t know the details).  He had never been caught but decided in the last phase of his life that he would like to meet his maker with a clear conscience, so he turned himself in.  He was given life in prison without parole and is now behind bars.

The frightening and sickening thing was that my daughter would walk passed his house on her way to the corner shop.

Some people say that kids should be out all day, biking, playing in mud, participating in sport and only come home for food like they did in the 50′s.  They say that crime isn’t any worse than it was then, it’s just that we have 24 hour media reporting on it and it has frightened us all.

I personally think the truth is somewhere in between.  I do think that 24 hour a day, in your face media is partly responsible for making people feel unsafe in their own homes.  I used to have the local newspaper delivered but stopped after a few weeks, when I had tired of reading about the latest rape, shooting or pensioner that had been beaten up.  The newspaper was nothing more than a record of human misery that was making me feel down.

But I do think there is genuinely more crime.  Parents of my grandmother’s era could happily go out and leave their door unlocked and no one would rob them.  People walked in and out of each other’s homes and the children belonged to a collective community rather than just the parents, so if your child went out it would be the whole neighbourhood looking out for them.  I moved into my family home on the outskirts of Nottingham in 2002 and I still only know four of my neighbours on the whole street because no one talks to each other anymore.

Children of the 50′s and earlier also didn’t have the danger of cars to deal with.  There just wasn’t the same sort of traffic (looking at it from a diabolical standpoint, I’m sure the availability of the car has helped serious criminals to perpetrate their crimes as they can travel nationwide and move counties, something that was more difficult for historic killers).

So when I check twice that I’ve locked up my property every time I go out, I know it isn’t just the media that did this.  It’s society.

My daughter Alicia is always complaining to me that I don’t allow her enough freedom and she wants to sit on the wall outside the house with the other pre-teens (who smoke and play with matches).  I always cited their bad behaviour as a reason why I didn’t want her to mix with them, but since April’s sad disappearance I had a more concrete reason to discuss with her.  Even if you’re playing right outside your own front door, with people you know and trust, the unthinkable can still happen.

She says she would refuse to get into a vehicle and would tell her brother not to, but the reality is, if he did, by the time she had alerted me it would be too late.  So I’ve told her for now the corner shop in the afternoon and the back garden are her lot and for this she thinks I am a bore.

I’m not sure which one of us is right.  Perhaps we both are.

What would you do?  and how much freedom is acceptable for young children (10 and under) to have?

September passed and with it came my legal obligation to educate my son as UK law says all children shall be educated from the term after their 5th birthday.  For some strange and underhand reason, all UK schools start their foundation year at 4 years old and UK parents are expected to send their tiny, practically toddler children to school all day, in their equally tiny uniforms.  It makes me sad when I see them walking to school, dressed like they are going to a business meeting.

The parents aren’t told that foundation year is voluntary and that they don’t *have* to send their child at this age.  Oh wait, they are, but in the most microscopic small print you have ever seen at the end of an information pack from the ‘social inclusion officer’.  When I was at school you were expected to sit at a desk most of the day and if you chatted to the child sitting next to you, you’d be shouted at or given detention.  So much for socialisation.

Why school begins at 4 when the legal starting age is 5 is anyone’s guess and I think for the education authority to do this is frankly criminal.

A staggering number of parents are also unaware that school itself is voluntary.  It is only education that is complusory and that can take place anywhere.

So, why did I choose to home educate my son?  Here is a basic run down of my reasons:

1.  I disagree with the notion that 4 and 5 year olds should be away from their mothers for such long periods of time (and yes, you can still have a career and home ed your child – I am a freelance writer and still have time for my child’s education).

2. My son is very attached to me and would not be ready to separate from me for so many hours.

3. There is not enough focus on play.  At this age children learn through play and by spending such a large amount of time doing academic things at this age, I believe school robs children of their childhood.

4. Most other countries start their children at school at a later age, e.g. 7 years old.  Countries with later starting ages have better pass rates at exams but our UK government has ignored that.

5. My son has a disability and a speech impairment and in the competitive cut throat atmosphere in school (even primary schools), he may be bullied.  Groups of home educated children are usually smaller and many families are what society considers to be ‘alternative’ and their children are more open minded so there is less bullying in home ed groups.  Parents attend with young children so that if any incident occurs they can intervene.

6. The drug industry is in bed with the education authority.  Secondary schools are vaccine camps for a captive audience that have no idea they can even refuse (DTaP, MR or MMR and HPV are given at schools).  Due to gillick competancy, the child is offered the vaccines directly and can accept or reject them independently of their parents.  There have been cases where children have been bullied or pressured by school nurses into conforming and having the injections.  As I am against vaccinations and will never agree to have my children vaccinated, I will never put them into an environment where they may be coercisely vaccinated.  Yearly flu vaccinations are planned for all UK children ages 5-17 from the year 2014 and because of this my son will never go near a school and my daughter will not be going to secondary school.

7. The law says I am entitled to direct my child’s education.  If he is in school I cannot do this.  There are many aspects of state education that I disagree with, such as teaching sex ed to 5 year olds (and even to 10 year olds – that is a matter that should be taught at home by the parents alone).

8. There is much focus on conformity and believing a certain set of rules and the modern school system is in effect teaching our children to be good workers rather than teaching them how to think for themselves.  There is no room for debate or healthy discussion.  For instance, my eldest daughter in a private flexi school was told she *had to* write an essay on how great vaccines were.  There was no option to disagree or put a differing viewpoint across so even though my daughter is also against vaccines she was forced to write an essay she did not believe in.  She told me if she had written what she wanted to write she would have failed the science exam.  This is not education, it is brainwashing.

So my son now has structured home education lessons given by myself and others and he attends groups with other home educated children for true ‘socialisation’ where he will not be reprimanded for talking to another child.  He is learning English, French, German, arts and craft, playing the recorder, spiritual instruction, swimming, math, science, cookery and computers and he does it all in fewer hours than would be expected in school, with plenty of chance to play and do what he likes, and so far, he and I are loving it!

I never expected to question vaccination and as a young child believed that they prevented diseases.  After a BCG vaccine at age 13 I was handed a blue card AFTER I was injected, detailing some side-effects.  That was my first clue that something was not right with the practice of vaccination.  I had no idea that vaccines caused any side-effects, nor did I know that as a 13 year old I was entitled to accept or reject vaccination in my own right and independently of my parents if I could prove I understood the issues surrounding the intervention.  This is known as being gillick competant.  I wasn’t told this and just assumed I *had to* submit to the injection because my mother had signed her consent.  I was furious that they injected me prior to giving me information on side-effects.  Surely I should have been given that information before?

My first response was

“That is really immoral”, and I vowed to look into the vaccination issue before I had my own children because that incident made the whole thing seem suss.  Informed consent is supposed to be the foundation on which modern medicine is built.

To compound matters, I ended up suffering horrific side-effects from the vaccine and became disabled with a disability that is so rare it only affects 1 in 50,000 people.  The only way to get the disability – hyperacusis – was by head trauma, certain auto-immune diseases, exposure to bomb blasts or gunshots or drug reactions.  None of the causes applied to me except drug reactions and the only drug I had was BCG.  I later found out that hyperacusis is a documented outcome of vaccination and that scientists were using BCG to induce chronic inflammation in rats.  I was chronically ill for 11 years.

However, this only made me wary and I hadn’t discounted vaccination for my children.  Reading the manufacturer’s data sheets changed my mind.  Here’s a basic run down of why I elected to ‘Just say No’

1. I was absolutely appalled at the ingredients of vaccines.  Vaccines contain substances like formaldehyde, a known carcinogen recognised to cause throat and nasal cancers and implicated in the development of leukaemia, http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/formaldehyde , aluminium that has been linked to lower neuro-cognitive rates and Alzheimer’s disease, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20010978 , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117484/ , trace amounts of thimerosal (49% mercury) which is linked to numerous illnesses such as brain damage, http://www.springerlink.com/content/d751p01x01013627/fulltext.pdf and autism http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jt/2009/532640/ , polysorbate 80 that allows drugs (and metals in vaccines) to cross the blood/brain barrier, http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/9098875 and go straight to the child’s brain.  It has also been linked to infertility in rats  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8473002 , human fetal tissue which has been linked to the development of auto-immunity.  Children injected with ‘human diploid cell’ containing MMR vaccines and who subsequently developed autism were found to have auto antibodies to their own brain tissue http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165572804001213

Other disgusting ingredients include monkey kidney tissue, later found to have contaminated vaccines with SV40 virus that causes cancer in humans.  Post-mortem’s on autistic people have found that some are infected with SV40, only got from vaccination http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/13550281003685839  , bovine serum linked to BSE and vCJD.  Some cases of vCJD have occured in clusters of people who have recieved the same vaccine batch and vaccines have even been banned due to potential contamination with the brain eating prions http://www.bmj.com/content/314/7078/393.11 and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1371188/Polio-vaccine-withdrawn-after-mad-cow-contamination-fears.html

These are only a few of the disgusting ingredients present in vaccines and if I forced my child to drink any of those, I’d have social services and the police knocking my door down.  I was absolutely NOT prepared to inject any of that into my children, no matter what.

2.  On vaccine data sheets there are references to SIDS occuring after injection.  On the information sheet I read when my daughter was born it said ‘SIDS has occured after administration of DPT’ – see this drugs information that says: ‘ Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has occurred after DTP immunization’ -
they attempt to brush this off by saying that studies have shown vaccines are not implicated in SIDS, but similarly other studies have shown that they ARE and the studies that showed no association occured after the ones that showed a link, in an attempt to dispell concern, rather like the effect we have seen with cigarettes.  http://www.drugs.com/mmx/dtap.html

There are many studies listed on pubmed about DPT causing SIDS:

Possible temporal association between diphtheria-tetanus toxoid-pertussis vaccination and sudden infant death syndrome.

Torch, W.S., 1982. Diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) immunization: a potential cause of the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Neurology; 32(4): A169 abstract).

Torch, W.C., 1986 a. Characteristics of diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) postvaccinal deaths and DPT-caused Sudden Infant Deaths Syndrome (SIDS): a review. Neurology (suppl 1); 36: 148 (abstract).

Torch, W.C., 1986 b. Diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) imunization may be an unrecognized cause of Sudden Infant Death (SIDS) and Near-Miss Syndrome (NMS): 12 case reports. Neurology (suppl 1); 36: 149 (abstract).

Indeed, Cherry, J.D. (1988) said

‘The rate of severe reactions does not differ significantly between the acellular and whole-cell vaccines when used at 24 months of age. The decrease in severe reactions is slight, if any. The category “sudden death” is also instructive in that the entity disappeared following both whole-cell and acellular vaccines when immunisation was delayed until a child was 24 months of age. It is clear that delaying the initial vaccination until a child is 24 months, regardless of the type of vaccine, reduces most of the temporally associated severe adverse events.’

(Cherry, J.D. (1988), Brunell, P.A., Golden, G.S., Karzon, D.T., (1988), Report of the task force on pertussis and pertussis immunization, Pediatrics 81:6 Part 11 (June 1988) Supplement pp 936-984).

I.e. sudden infant death ended if vaccines were delayed to 2 years and this was ‘instructive’, meaning it was a clue that vaccines were a cause of SIDS.

The American Academy of Neurology also said at their 34th annual meeting:

“DPT may be a generally unrecognized major cause of sudden infant and early childhood death, and that the risks of immunization may outweigh its potential benefits. A need for re-evaluation and possible modification of current vaccination procedures is indicated by this study.‘

More recently, this Italian study found that there was a increased risk of death within the first 2 years of childhood after the first dose of a hexavalent vaccine http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3027668/

A study in 2005 said

‘Deaths in temporal association with vaccination of hexavalent vaccines have been recently reported….SMRs exceeded one insignificantly on the 1st day after vaccination in the 1st year of life. In the 2nd year of life, however, the SMRs for SUD cases within 1 day of vaccination with vaccine A were 31.3 (95% CI 3.8-113.1; two cases observed; 0.06 cases expected) and 23.5 (95% CI 4.8-68,6) for within 2 days after vaccination (three cases observed; 0.13 cases expected)…they constitute a signal for one of the two hexavalent vaccines which should prompt intensified surveillance for unexpected deaths after vaccination.’

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15602672/

Another review in 2011 found that the countries that had the most vaccinations had the greatest child mortality.  The more vaccines a child was given, the greater the risk of death:

‘The infant mortality rate (IMR) is one of the most important indicators of the socio-economic well-being and public health conditions of a country. The US childhood immunization schedule specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year—the most in the world—yet 33 nations have lower IMRs…Linear regression analysis of unweighted mean IMRs showed a high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates, with r = 0.992 (p = 0.0009).’

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/

3. Diseases still occur in vaccinated populations, so even though data sheets freely list SIDS, brain damage and other irreversible conditions as a consequence of vaccination, you aren’t guaranteed to be protected from the diseases.  If I am going to take my healthy child in for shots when she isn’t sick and there’s no indication for a medical intervention, I do want a guarantee that she will be protected.  The medical authorities say that if 95% of the population are vaccinated, this guarantees that the population will be free from disease.  However, lots of epidemics have occured in almost 100% vaccinated populations:

‘An outbreak of measles occurred among adolescents in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the spring of 1985, even though vaccination requirements for school attendance had been thoroughly enforced…We conclude that outbreaks of measles can occur in secondary schools, even when more than 99 percent of the students have been vaccinated and more than 95 percent are immune.’

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3821823

Investigation of a measles outbreak in a fully vaccinated school population including serum studies before and after revaccination.

‘Reported cases of pertussis among adolescents and adults have increased since the 1980s, despite increasingly high rates of vaccination among infants and children.’

The above quote also comes from a paper that states there is more pertussis in very young babies compared with the pre-vaccination era and this is something I’ll be discussing in point 4.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=197806

Hep B vaccine has not decreased the amount of Hep B:

‘Testing of participants in 2 national surveys demonstrates no significant decrease in hepatitis B virus infection, despite the availability of hepatitis B vaccine.’

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9987458

Pneumonia vaccine doesn’t prevent pneumonia in the groups of adults it was meant to help!

‘Pneumococcal vaccination does not appear to be effective in preventing pneumonia, even in populations for whom the vaccine is currently recommended.’

http://www.cmaj.ca/content/180/1/48.full

Hib vaccination of children is causing more adults to get non-vaccine strain hib disease:

‘After the introduction of Hib immunization in children, invasive Hib infections in unimmunized adults also declined, but the overall rate of invasive Hi disease in adults increased, with most infections now caused by non-capsulated strains. Physicians and microbiologists should be aware of the changing epidemiology, the high associated mortality and high risk of underlying disease. Invasive haemophilus infections in adults should be investigated and treated aggressively.’

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10982068

Hi type A increased EIGHT FOLD after introduction of hib vaccine:

‘Surveillance for Haemophilus influenzae meningitis cases was performed in Salvador, Brazil, before and after introduction of H. influenzae type b (Hib) immunization….the incidence for H. influenzae type a meningitis increased 8-fold (from 0.02 to 0.16 cases/100,000 person-years; P=.008).  Therefore, Hib immunization contributed to an increased risk for H. influenzae type a meningitis through selection of circulating H. influenzae type a clones.’

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12508153

Decline in serum antibody to the capsule of Haemophilus influenzae type b in the immediate postimmunization period.

The above journal discusses hib vaccine causing a decline in immunity that causes an INCREASE in hib disease in the week following vaccination. They don’t think that possibly the vaccine caused the hib.

‘A decrease in serum anticapsular antibody occurs in most children and adults immunized with PRP (adults and children) or PRP-D (adults). Such a decrease might transiently increase the risk of invasive disease if it occurred during a period of asymptomatic colonization with H. influenzae type b.’

There’s been a 70% INCREASE in severe lung diseases after the introduction of Prevenar pneumonia vaccine and that is why they’ve now introduced a 13 valent vaccine:

‘Among children ≤18 years of age, the annual empyema-associated hospitalization rates increased almost 70% between 1997 and 2006, despite decreases in the bacterial pneumonia and invasive pneumococcal disease rates. Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine is not decreasing the incidence of empyema.’

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/1/26.abstract

86% of people in a mumps epidemic had been vaccinated, 13% unvaccinated and 1% unknown:

‘Of the 178 (99%) patients whose sex is known, 149 (84%) are male. The median age of the 178 patients for whom age is known is 14 years (range: 8 months–84 years). Of the 141 patients (79%) for whom vaccine is recommended and vaccination status and age were reported, 113 (80%) had received age-appropriate vaccination, nine (6%) had received partial age-appropriate vaccination, and 19 (13%) were unvaccinated (Table). Of the 141 patients, 102 (72%) had received 2 doses, 20 (14%) 1 dose, and 19 (13%) zero doses.’

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm58d1112a1.htm

4. Vaccination is destroying natural immunity which means new mothers are no longer able to pass transplacental and breast milk immunity to their babies.  In the pre-vaccine era, mothers got whooping cough and measles etc when they were little girls which gave them immunity lasting 30 plus years, which was re-boosted by frequent exposures to the viruses or bacteria in their environment, effectively meaning they had lifelong immunity.  When they got pregnant as adults they were then able to pass transplacental antibodies to their babies in the womb which would last several weeks after the birth and protect them from getting the illnesses.  If they were breastfed they also got breast milk immunity that could last several years and protect them if their older siblings got ill.  Now, because mothers were vaccinated, they are getting pertussis as adults and infecting their own newborns!

The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal wrote:

‘Pertussis notification data from the prevaccine era provide indirect evidence that maternal antibodies provide short lived protection against fatal pertussis by demonstrating that the rate of pertussis deaths in the first month of life was approximately one-third of that in the second and third months of life.²⁴ In contrast, pertussis surveillance data in the vaccine era no longer demonstrate a substantial difference in pertussis-related mortality between the first and second months of life (Table 1). ²⁵ This could be the consequence of reduced levels of circulation of Bordetella pertussis in young women of childbearing age after the introduction of mass immunization.’

The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene wrote:

‘There is growing evidence that measles vaccine–induced antibody levels wane over time, raising a concern that such a decrease in antibody levels could affect maternal passive immunity when vaccinated women reach childbearing years.9,10 Thus, the window of vulnerability of an infant may be even greater in vaccinated women than in with women with natural measles infection.’

http://www.ajtmh.org/content/79/5/787.full.pdf

The Israel Vaccine Research Institute wrote:

‘We rely on herd immunity and passive immunity to protect young infants
before they can be protected directly by vaccination [26].
Diminishing maternal immunity increases the risk of infection
among the youngest age groups.’

http://www.ima.org.il/imaj/ar06may-2.pdf

So in actual fact vaccination (and bottle feeding) is the reason why newborns are now getting whooping cough and measles!  It’s nothing to do with unvaccinated children.

In the document, ‘Pertussis: Not only a Disease of Childhood’, the authors wrote:

‘In cases in which the source of infection can be traced, half of the children have been infected by their parents – usually by the mother. Older siblings are another frequent source of infection even if they have been vaccinated, because often their immunity has waned in the absence of a booster vaccination.’

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680566/

So in essence we have swapped lifelong natural immunity which was re-boosted by frequent exposures to the illness and protected our babies at their most vulnerable points, for vaccination which only delays disease and does not immunise, and severely hinders our ability to pass on transplacental immunity, thus putting our newborns at risk of infection from birth.

When researchers in Belgium studied vaccinated and naturally immune women, they found the vaccinated women lost antibodies faster and could not confer as many to their babies.  The BMJ wrote:

‘Vaccinated women had significantly fewer IgG antibodies (geometric mean titre 779 (95% confidence interval 581 to 1045) mIU/ml) than did naturally immune women (2687 (2126 to 3373) mIU/ml) (P<0.001). Maternal values were highly correlated with neonatal values (r=0.93 at birth). Infants of vaccinated women had significantly lower antibody concentrations than did infants of naturally immune women.’

http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c1626.full

5. Vaccines cause diseases to mutate and come back even stronger than the original, just like the over-use of antibiotics has led to resistant bacteria, mass vaccination has led to superbug childhood diseases that are even more deadly than before.

Increase in the prevalence of the newly discovered pneumococcal serotype 6C in the nasopharynx after introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine

‘Among NP isolates, the prevalence of 6C isolates has increased and the prevalence of 6A isolates has decreased since the introduction of PCV7 in Massachusetts in 2000. The observed increase in serotype 6C prevalence may be explained by the induction by PCV7 of low amounts of functional anti-6C antibody, compared with anti-6A and anti-6B antibodies.’

Hib has switched strains and cases are nearing those of the pre-vaccine era:

Characterization of invasive Haemophilus influenzae disease in Manitoba, Canada, 2000-2006: invasive disease due to non-type b strains.

‘In addition to the proportional increase in cases of non-type b Haemophilus influenzae disease in the post-H. influenzae type b vaccine era, the incidence of invasive H. influenzae disease was found to be approaching the rates of H. influenzae type b disease that were documented in the prevaccine period. Fifty-six percent of invasive disease now occurs in individuals aged >10 years.’

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17516405

And there’s a MUTATED whooping cough!

Changes in Genetic Diversity of the Bordetella pertussis Population in the United Kingdom between 1920 and 2006 Reflect Vaccination Coverage and Emergence of a Single Dominant Clonal Type

‘Pertussis (whooping cough) is a potentially fatal respiratory disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. Despite effective vaccination programs, there has been concern in some developed countries that pertussis cases are on the increase. We characterized 703 clinical B. pertussis isolates collected in the United Kingdom between 1920 and 2006 using multilocus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA), pertactin (prnA) and pertussis toxin (ptxA) genotyping, and serotyping. The results showed that the genetic diversity of the bacterial population decreased during periods of high vaccine coverage.’

A new aggressive form of polio has been sparked by the vaccine:

‘Sparked by concerns about a surge of poliomyelitis cases in Nigeria caused by a vaccine-derived strain of type 2 poliovirus, health officials stepped up efforts to curb its spread, according to the Global Polio Vaccine Initiative (http://www.polioeradication.org/content/general/current_monthly_sitrep.asp).

Although type 2 wild poliovirus (1 of the 3 serotypes of wild poliovirus) had been eradicated in 1999, it reemerged a few years ago when weakened type 2 virus in oral polio vaccine mutated. For reasons not well understood, circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus began spreading more aggressively in 2009. By late July, 124 cases of paralysis caused by vaccine-derived virus had been confirmed for 2009, more than 4 times the number of cases confirmed in July 2008.’

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=184599

6. Vaccines have very rarely been studied to actually see if they improve child mortality.  Considering the fantastic claims about how many billions of lives they save, you would have thought they would have rigorous science to back this up.  Apparently not.

Again, as mentioned before, it has been discovered on review that countries with more childhood vaccination had a higher infant mortality rate:

http://het.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/05/04/0960327111407644

It was also found that early DPT vaccination caused INCREASED mortality in baby girls:

‘Background Studies from low-income countries have suggested that diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine provided after Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination may have a negative effect on female survival….The death rate ratio (DRR) for DTP vaccinated versus DTP unvaccinated children differed significantly for girls (DRR 2.45; 95% CI 0.93 to 6.45) and boys (DRR 0.53; 95% CI 0.23 to 1.20) (p=0.018, homogeneity test). Adjusting for MUAC, the overall effect for DTP vaccinated children was 2.62 (95% CI 1.34 to 5.09); DRR was 5.68 (95% CI 1.83 to 17.7) for girls and 1.29 (95% CI 0.56 to 2.97) for boys (p=0.023, homogeneity test)…..Surprisingly, even though the children with the best nutritional status were vaccinated early, early DTP vaccination was associated with increased mortality for girls. ‘

http://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2012/02/13/archdischild-2011-300646.full

And in the BMJ in 2012 they make this surprising and frank admission:

‘Surprisingly, therefore, there are few observational studies and virtually no randomised clinical trials documenting the effect on child mortality of any of the existing vaccines. A notable exception is the high titre measles vaccine, which was withdrawn because an interaction with diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine resulted in a 33% (95% confidence interval 2% to 73%) increase in mortality among children aged 4-60 months in several west African randomised trials.3 ^w9 Among the newer vaccines, conjugate pneumococcal vaccine has been found to be associated with an 11% (−1% to 21%) reduction in mortality in a meta-analysis.4′

http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e3769

So there has only been one study of pneumonia vaccine that showed any positive effect on mortality and the other studies showed that vaccines kill!

This is certainly a far cry from their claim that vaccines are based on ‘science based medicine’ and I am very thankful that my mothering intuition led me in the right direction in not vaccinating my precious children.

If you want to hear my chat with radio presenter Ben Fellows, on the fascinating and complex subject of vaccination, please go to:

Ben Fellows Radio Show

I always pride myself on the fact that I get the best food for my children.  I go organic.  All our fruit and vegetables are organically grown on small independent farms in this country.  The bread is baked using all natural, organic and wholemeal ingredients and most of the time, except for when I’m ill, I cook from scratch using recipe books.

Frozen food is for emergencies only, and even then, I usually have pre-packed salads in the fridge so the kids can help themselves if I’m not up to it.

I provided the milk for my children, the last two until they were three and a half and nearly four years old (I’ll get onto that in another post).  After they self-weaned, they had organic fruit juices, a rare bit of organic cow’s milk (I’ll say why in another post!) and milk substitutes such as organic rice milk.

We’re all vegetarians.  We don’t like to kill things.

So imagine my shock this morning when I discovered an ABSOLUTELY ENORMOUS slug sitting there on my ripe avocado!!

All I can say is I’m glad my friend turned personal assistant (PA) opened the box, or they would have heard the screams in London. 

I ordered her to put him in the garden, being the peace loving vegetarian that I am.

Instead she offered him as brunch to my cat KitKat  (without my knowledge, she told me afterwards!).

KitKat looked rather bemused at the gigantic creature but thankfully had no inclination to eat him so his life was spared and he was placed happily in the foliage outside.

I emailed the organic food company:

‘Thank you for my avocado but there was a live slug in it and I don’t eat slugs as I’m vegetarian.  Attached is a photo of the magnificent beast’.

A few hours later I got an email back:

‘I’m so sorry you got such a large slug on your avocado!  That shouldn’t have got through packing.  To say sorry, we are sending you a free bag of avocados.’

Let’s just hope the slug’s wife, kids, cousins and uncles aren’t sitting on those ones!  I will be nervous to open the bag.

Still, at least I know they’re really organic!!

 

Recently, my son’s speech therapist phoned (he has a ‘speech sound defect’) and said she noticed my son’s tonsils were unusually large and she asked if he’d recently been ill.  I said no.  My son is as healthy as an ox.  The last time he was ill was Christmas 2010.  I had got a case of flu so bad I was laid up in bed.  We were in a hotel on holiday and I was unable to go home on our departure day so we had to stay at the hotel longer than planned.  I felt like I was at death’s door.  My two youngest children (unvaccinated) just felt tired for a couple of days and wanted to sleep frequently, then they bounced right back as if nothing had happened, theirs could hardly be described as ‘flu’.

The speech therapist then advised me to take my son to the GP on account of his ‘unusually large’ tonsils, as she said she thought they might be the cause of his speech difficulties.  I promised to take him to the GP (and I am going to) but alarm bells immediately rang in my head.  Let’s just say they DID find his tonsil’s were too large.  What would be their solution then?  Cut them out?

As a non-vaccinating mother who has studied basic immunology, as well as the history of vaccines and diseases, tonsillectomy would be an absolute no-no.

I will take my son for an examination but under no circumstances will I ever consent to a tonsillectomy.

Why?

Tonsils are a vital part of your immune system.  They are comprised of lymphatic tissue and not only prevent infection by trapping bacteria and viruses, they can also kill them by releasing special immune substances, a fact that was only discovered in 2002, so if you read any doctor’s websites that say tonsils aren’t that important, don’t pay any attention.  They are talking utter BS.

The   Otolaryngologia Polska journal wrote:

‘The palatine tonsils have an undoubted role in the immune defence system. After antigen contact an effective adaptive immune response by B- and T-cell lymphocytes will be released. In addition the palatine tonsils seem to exert influence to the defence by the innate immune system… Palatine tonsils express mRNA for different alpha and beta defensins and this expression suggest a newly supposed function in immune defence: the participation in the innate, non-adaptive immune system. Thus, palatine tonsils have a potentially influence in the growth and control of the physiological mouth bacteria by their bactericidal activity.’ 

(Otolaryngol Pol. 2002;56(4):409-13 – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12378798).

The adenoids also produce antibodies and other anti-infectious substances to help babies and small children stay well.  By the time the child is around six years old, they are not needed as much as his immature immune system begins to mature, so they start shrinking.  By the teenage years they have usually disappeared.

Kids Health says:

‘Adenoids do important work as infection fighters for babies and little kids. But they become less important once a kid gets older and the body develops other ways to fight germs.’

(http://kidshealth.org/kid/ill_injure/sick/adenoids.html).

Tonsillectomies CAUSED Bulbar Polio!

Back in the 1940’s and 50’s it was fashionable to have your tonsils and adenoids removed.  Doctors of the time thought they served no purpose (and some still hold this view today despite evidence to the contrary) so you were a lucky child if you escaped having your tonsils cut out.

In 1954, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that absence of the tonsils put the person at increased risk of Bulbar or Bulbospinal polio, the most severe paralytic forms of polio we are told about to get us to vaccinate.  (Bulbar polio affected 19% or less of the 5% of people who suffered symptoms with polio and bulbospinal polio affected 2% of the 19% who got Bulbar polio).

Of 85 patients who developed Bulbar Polio, 85.9% had had a tonsillectomy.  The rate of Bulbar polio in those who still had their tonsils was 14.1%.

See this newspaper report of the study:  

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=GWcKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K0sDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5466,266272&dq

Of course, the last case of ‘wild’ polio in the US was in 1979 and there has been no polio in Western countries for decades, other than that caused by the oral polio vaccine.  (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15479934).

So I’m not concerned that my son will get polio and I know that even if people do get it, 95% of cases are asymptomatic, i.e., they wouldn’t even know they had it.  The TONSILS fight it off before it takes hold.

Kid’s Health say:

‘Polio is a viral illness that, in about 95% of cases, actually produces no symptoms at all (called asymptomatic polio).’

(http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/polio.html).

But one of the reasons why the vast majority of us can fight off polio without even knowing is the fact that we have an innate immune system that includes our tonsils.

I truly believe that one of the reasons we don’t have paralytic polio in Western countries is because doctors have stopped routinely chopping off bits of people’s immune systems.  The 1954 JAMA study was not the only one to see such an association.  Here are a few more:

Studies on a long range association between bulbar poliomyelitis and previous tonsillectomy – this study said:

‘Out of 39 patients with bulbar paralysis, 35 had undergone tonsillectomy–a proportion of 90%. Of these 35 tonsillectomized patients with bulbar paralysis, only four had undergone tonsillectomy in the twelve months, and only one in the two months, prior to the onset of poliomyelitis.’

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13098558).

Tonsillectomy and Poliomyelitis – The American Journal of Public Health said

‘Early observations on tonsillectomy and paralytic poliomyelitis were reviewed and summarized by Aycock (1942). From the data then available, there appeared to be a causal relationship between the removal of tonsils and the onset of bulbar poliomyelitis within the time interval corresponding to the incubation period of the disease, approximately one month. Furthermore, it appeared that the relative frequency of occurrence of bulbar, as compared with the spinal form of poliomyelitis, was greater at all ages in persons giving a history of previous tonsillectomy. The increased frequency of the bulbar form in comparison with other forms associated with recent tonsillectomy, has been confirmed by more recent epidemiological studies (John Anderson, 1945; Gaylord Anderson, et al., 1950; Siegal, et al.,1951) and by the results of animal experiments (von Magnus and Melnick, 1948; Sabin, 1938; Faber, et al., 1951). This relationship is explained as due to the fact that virus being present in the throat at the time of the operation passes directly into the central nervous system along traumatized nerve fibers. The second hypothesis, namely, that tonsillectomy at any previous time, i.e., the absence of tonsils, predisposes to the bulbar form of poliomyelitis, is not so easily explained. Nevertheless, the association has received confirmation from several investigators (Lucchesi and LaBoccetta, 1944; Top, 1952; Southcott, 1953; Weinstein, et al., 1954). The most recent study is that of Anderson and Rondeau (1954) based upon epidemiological histories of 2,669 cases of poliomyelitis gathered during the 1946 outbreak in Minnesota. For all age groups, 71.4 per cent of 535 bulbar cases gave a history of tonsillectomy at some previous time up to many years, as compared with 28.2 per cent of 936 severe spinal; 36.2 per cent of 908 mild spinal; 34.8 per cent of 299 nonparalytic cases. The results of these studies are singularly consistent in demonstrating that a history of tonsillectomy is from two to three times more frequent in patients with bulbar than it is with patients having spinal or nonparalytic poliomyelitis.’ – (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1620872/pdf/amjphnation00361-0092.pdf).

Absence of tonsils as a factor in the development of bulbar poliomyelitis – JAMA further wrote:

‘Unfortunately no reliable data are available as to the number of children at various ages who have lost their tonsils, but it is common knowledge that there are few operations performed before the age of 5 years and that the percentage of children who have had tonsillectomies increases rapidly in the early school years…Thus the shift in age distribution has meant that more of the victims of poliomyelitis are in the age group of persons who have undergone tonsillectomy and in whom a bulbar response is more likely to develop if infected. The greater frequency with which tonsil operations are performed today than 30 years ago may be a further factor in the greater proportion of bulbar cases.’

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13174358).

Anyone who has studied the history of polio will find that prior to the 1930’s and earlier it was considered a poisoning disease that occurred sporadically in the summer months.  There were some deaths, but it was a lot milder.  Then suddenly in the 1940’s, cases shot up and so did cases of paralysis and death.  The massive epidemics we hear about that occurred in the 1940’s and 50’s were not the usual course of the disease.  It got worse, a lot worse and I think, just like Anderson and Rondeau suggested in JAMA, that one of the reasons was a fad for tonsillectomies.

So, no, I won’t ever give consent for them to chop out part of my son’s immune system.  I will continue to help him with his speech and eventually he will catch up just like my 15 year old daughter did.

My son’s ever so helpful nursery (NOT) told me I can’t take photographs of my own son and that I couldn’t get a picture of him with his friends the day they dressed him up in ‘graduation’ clothes (black cape, funny hat) to celebrate graduating from foundation year.  (I refused to let him do it at school because I felt he was too young to be away from me so long and I objected to the way UK schools make out they have to start school at 4 when in actual fact the legal education starting age is the term after their 5th birthday, in my son’s case, September).

They said group photos weren’t allowed because I couldn’t have other people’s children in the picture.  Oh for goodness sake, it’s ‘elf and safety’ and political correctness gone mad!  I used to take photos of my oldest children at playgroups (now I can’t).  My mum used to take pictures of me in the nursery school play, surrounded by other people’s children (these days that isn’t allowed).  Modern parents cannot photograph their children doing anything at at all in case another kid gets in the picture so we’ve lost out of images of real life while the nursery grabs money from all the parents to get snapshots of their children that they could have taken themselves.

Thank God I will be home educating because these type of stupid rules just get on my nerves.

Due to the ever so stupid rule I couldn’t share my son’s graduation with my friends on the computer so I asked my best friend turned PA if she’d take me to a photograph store to put it on CD.

While we were out, I noticed pictures of wine bottles everywhere, on posters in shop windows, on shelves in the shops we went into, it was even pictured on the till when I paid for a cup of tea and my brain was screaming ‘I need a drink!’ – not of the caffeine variety.

I know I’m supposed to be green minded and health conscious, but I’d had a very stressful few days and because of the morphine and other drugs I have to take because of osteoarthritis and occipital neuralgia, I cannot drink alcohol ever (I snuck in a sneaky one on holiday) and it’s been months and months and months (except for the sly one on holiday!).  I so need a chill out and if you know you can’t have something you want it even more.

Alicia just laughed at me.

“Wine, wine, wine!”, she shouted.

“Alicia!”, said my PA friend rather sternly, “Do stop that.”

Ah, just wait till she has her toe operation and can’t drink for 12 hours before.  I think I shall talk about ice cold organic lemonade just to get back at her

They sit down and I wheel myself to the table to share a brew with my friend.

“I want a glass of wine”, I complained, “but the data sheet said mixing morphine with alcohol can result in death.”

“Best not risk it”, she said.

Darn.  That was not the respond I wanted to hear.  I wanted to hear “they have to put that on to cover their backs”, or “it must be so rare”, or “a tiny one won’t matter.”  Of course I know that’s all nonsense and it IS dangerous but the desire was stronger than my common sense.

“It didn’t say how much morphine you have to take to make alcohol kill you”, I said hopefully, “Maybe a glass would be alright.”

“But maybe it wouldn’t”, she said firmly, “and you might feel sick.”

I’m sick right now, sick of taking medications I hate and sick to death of tea!!!

To all those people who moan about disabled people stealing government money and DLA payments causing the credit crunch, you ought to try being stuck in a wheelchair, being in pain every day, having to take multiple medications several times a day, having drug side-effects, not being able to leave the house without assistance (i.e. being a prisoner in your own home) and never being able to have a glass of wine.  Yeah, we really are living the life of riley!  It’s fat cat bank bosses and the Euro that has caused all this mess, not disabled people and disabled mothers like me (incidently trying to raise 2 disabled children at the same time!).

After my outing out and browsing around charity shops trying to find bargains (we found a biscuit tin in the shape of a car, a hand mirror, some honey and almond natural lotion, and a beautiful skirt for my daughter that would have cost a bomb if I bought it new – it’s RECYCLING, people!), I knew I’d have to work.

My editor told me my subject for the day was menstrual cycles.

I sighed.  I wanted something gritty like a hospital organ harvesting scandal or drug companies paying off doctors – instead I get the menstrual cycle.  Oh well, no one said my career always had to be exciting.

I decided to spice it up a bit and write about menarche.  It’s amazing how many women don’t even know what the word means.

Menarche is Greek (like most things!  Another chance to boast about my Greek origins!).  Mene means moon and Arche means beginning so menarche means the beginning of your moon cycle.  It’s pronounced Men-Ar-Kee.

My youngest daughter, the star of this blog, is 10 and not yet experienced it but when she does we will be having a moon time party (also known as blessingway or menarche ceremony) to celebrate her initiation into womanhood.

My Greek ancestors built temples just for the purpose of celebrating a girl’s first menstruation and in many other cultures it is still celebrated.  The Japanese celebrate by eating red coloured beans and red coloured rice.  In Sri Lanka it’s even more interesting.  They summon an astrologer to tell the girl’s future and then they wash her and dress her in white and everyone comes round for a party and gives her gifts and money!!

It’s such a shame that in the UK and USA it is viewed as something shameful and people hide it and there’s no celebration for the girl involved.  I haven’t decided exactly what I will do yet for Alicia, but I want it to be a cross between what the Greeks and Sri Lankan’s did and of course she will have hand made recycled re-usable pads the same as I use.  No plastic, no awful chemicals, no filling up landfills with used waste, and you don’t have to pay for new ones every month!