Parents seeking exemptions from vaccines - Letter from an MD

[Guest guest]

Tuesday, April 02, 2002 10:01 AM

Ltr from MD for Parents seeking exemptions from vaccines

 

 

Dear Members and Friends -

There are many states that wish to eliminate your right to abstain from

vaccinations based on religious beliefs, arguing that your religious beliefs

pose a danger to the rest of the community. The following Open Letter in support

of parents choosing to abstain from this risky form of " surgery " --breaking the

skin IS a form of surgery -- can be used by parents when challenged by the

state, school officials and/or public health officials. Dr. Buttram is a

licensed M.D. with many successful years of practice to his credit. His website

is www.woodmed.com ~Ingri

 

--Simply cut and paste the following letter into your word processing program

and save it in your documents....

You never know when you will want to use it!

 

 

Preamble:

 

In response to the multitude of parents seeking exemption from vaccines for

their families, Dr. Harold Buttram has written this open letter to help give

parents and families an extra edge. Dr. Buttram can be reached at

1.800.517.9545.

 

An Open Letter in Support of Parents Wishing to Limit or Avoid Immunizations for

their Children.

 

At the present time there are growing public and professional concerns about the

safety of currently mandated childhood vaccine programs, as reflected in by a

series of annual Congressional hearings in Washington DC that have taken place

since 1999, sponsored by the U.S. House Government Reform Committee under the

chairmanship of Congressman Dan Burton. At an annual conference of the American

College for the Advancement of Medicine during April 2001, with several hundred

physicians in attendance, when one of the speakers asked how many in attendance

had concerns about the safety of current childhood vaccines, a large majority

raised their hands.

 

The Autism Research Institute of San Diego is now widely known as an active

support group for families with autistic children and is one of the more active

organizations in this field. Its founding director, Bernard Rimland, Ph.D., has

provided the statistics that, in their experience, from 50 to 60% of parents

with autistic children believe that their children were damaged by vaccines. In

our own office we have seen many autistic children in recent years, and our own

experience has been very similar, many parents reporting that deterioration of

their children took place following vaccines.

 

As reviewed in presentations at the Congressional hearings mentioned above, the

following evidence has been brought forward by various presenters as reasons for

the growing concerns about vaccine safety:

 

Safety studies on vaccinations are limited to short time periods only: several

days to several weeks. There are NO (NONE) long term (months or years) safety

studies on any vaccination or immunization. For this reason, there are valid

grounds for suspecting that many delayed-type vaccine reactions may be taking

place unrecognized at to their true nature.

 

A meaningful basic science (scientific infrastructure) is grossly deficient for

the vaccines. (1) By way of explanation, there are two general categories which

comprise a basic science for any form of medical intervention, in this case the

vaccines: First, long-term surveillance following the vaccines it to all intents

and purposes non-existent as previously mentioned, and second, before-and-after

testing to determine the effects of the vaccines on various organ systems of the

body, especially the neurologic, immunologic, and hematologic systems, have

never been done in any definitive or systematic fashion. There are a few

isolated reports of before-and-after testing of the vaccines in the medical

literature, but as far as I am aware, these have never had proper follow up.

Although there are others, the one example given below will give some insight

into the scope of the problem:

 

As reported in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1984, tests of

T-lymphocyte subpopulations were done on 11 healthy adults before-and-after

routine tetanus booster immunizations. Tests showed a significant though

temporary drop in T-helper lymphocytes (a class of white blood cells which helps

govern the immune system) in all of the subjects. Special concern rests in the

fact that in 4 of the subjects the T-helper cells fell to levels found in active

AIDS patients. (2) If this was the result of a single vaccine in healthy adults,

it is sobering to think of the consequences of the multiple vaccines (twenty-one

at last count) routinely given to infants with their immature systems during the

first six months of life. However, we can only speculate as to the consequences,

as this test has never been repeated.

 

Dating back to the 1930s pharmaceuticals have added thimerosal (made up of ethyl

mercury) to many of the vaccines given to children. However, it was not until

1999 that the FDA was compelled by a Congressional mandate to disclose the

quantity of mercury in the vaccines. Many became gravely concerned when it was

learned that for many years infants had been routinely receiving 25 to 50 or

more times the amount of mercury in a given day than was considered safe by the

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards. (3) For centuries mercury has

been known to be one of the most toxic of the heavy metals. Very recently an

animal study has revealed a possible mechanism for this toxicity in which

mercury vapor exposures resulted in retrograde degeneration of neruonal (brain)

membranes, producing molecular lesions similar to those seen in the brains of

patients dying with Alzheimer's disease. (4)

 

The sequel to this story is very interesting. Apparently as an offshoot of the

Congressional hearings in which the thimerosal issue had been raised, the

Institute of Medicine (a scientific advisory board for the federal government)

issued a report on October 1, 2001 entitled " Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and

Neurodevelopmental Outcomes. " In essence the statement gave the opinion that,

although a causal relation between thimerosal-containing vaccines and the

increasing incidence of neurodevelopmental problems in children has not yet been

proven, " the hypothesis is biologically plausible. " In other words, the

Institute of Medicine admits that there are valid grounds for suspicion that

thimerosal-containing vaccines could be contributing to the current epidemic of

neurobehavorial problems in American children including autism, attention

deficit, hyperactivity, learning disabilities, and behavioral disorders.

However, due to deficiencies in scientific infrastructure (their own words),

there is insufficient data to prove the matter one way or the other.

 

Proceeding next from the issue of vaccine safety to the question of the need or

necessity for childhood vaccines: It is true that vaccines played a major role

in the worldwide eradication of smallpox and eradication of polio from the

Western Hemisphere, but vaccine proponents would have us believe that vaccines

have been largely responsible for controlling virtually all of the former

epidemics of killer disease in the U.S.A. With the exceptions cited above, the

facts do not bear this out. According to the records of the Metropolitan Life

Insurance Company, from 1911 to 1935 the four leading causes of childhood deaths

from infectious diseases in the U.S.A. were diptheria, pertussis, scarlet fever,

and measles. However, by 1945 the combined death rates from these causes had

declined by 95% before the implementation of mass vaccine programs. (5)

According to a report in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of July 30, 1999,

improvements in sanitation, water quality, hygiene, and the introduction of

antibiotics have been the most important factors in control of infectious

disease in the past century. Although vaccines were mentioned, they were not

included among the major factors. (6)

 

In conclusion, with such a scenario as described above for current childhood

vaccine programs. I do not feel there is any moral justification for the current

mandating of childhood vaccines at any level. It is for this reason that, for

many years, I have supported the freedom of choice of parents to accept or

reject vaccines for their children based on informed consent.

 

Harold E Buttram, MD

 

References:

 

(1) Stratton KR, Howe CJ, Johnston RB, Editors, Adverse Events Associated with

Childhood Vaccines; Evidence Bearing on Causality, Institute of Medicine,

National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1994: 211-236.

 

(2) Eibl M et al, Abnormal T-lymphocyte subpopulations in healthy subjects after

tetanus booster immunization (letter), New England J Med, 1984; 310(3):198-199.

 

 

(3) Halsey NA, Limiting infant exposure to thimerosal in vaccines and other

sources of mercury, JAMA, 1999; 282:1763-1766.

 

(4) Leong CCW, Naweed IS, Lorscheiderae FL, Retrograde degeneration of neurite

membrane structural integrity of nerve growth cones following in vitro exposure

to mercury, NeuroReport, accepted for publication Dec. 21, 2000, 12(4):

0733-0737.

 

(5) Dublin L, Health Progress, 1935-1945, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,

1948, Page 12

 

(6) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, July 30, 1999, 48:621-628.

 

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Francine Yurko (NMW)

http://www.freeyurko.bizland.com

To support the Yurko Project see...

Dr. Patrick Flanagan's Anti-Oxidant Technology.

For information and ordering visit my website at:

http://www.royalbodycare.org/yurko.asp

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Ingri Cassel, President

Vaccination Liberation - Idaho Chapter

P.O. Box 1444

Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816

(208)255-2307/ 765-8421

vaclib

 

www.vaclib.org

" The Right to Know, The Freedom to Abstain "