Counseling Sheet

Agatha M. Thrash, M.D.
Preventive Medicine

I have never felt it is a good idea to vaccinate children who are from privileged families. If the children were born of itinerant parents or others who were very disadvantaged, having no knowledge of good health rules, it might be justifiable. But for you, especially as long as you are breastfeeding, there is no need for you to have him vaccinated. I think your chances of injury to him are greater from the vaccinations than from not vaccinating. The section in How to Have a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Pediatrician, written by Robert Mendelson which you can get from a library on vaccination should be helpful to your father.

Mendelson was a pediatrician, head of the department of pediatrics at the Chicago University at one time. Calvin and I attended a convention on immunology at the University of Alabama last January. One of the presenters made the statement that after vaccination, children's immune systems are permanently altered in an abnormal way. He brought up the fact that some research indicates the severe cases of measles we are having in those who have been vaccinated, result from the process of vaccination. Not much research has been done in these areas, as no drug company has an interest in this kind of thing.