Vaccines: Risk versus Benefit

I've been sharing a lot of articles and links on FaceBook about vaccines primarily because I'm really concerned about the push to do away with parents legal rights to chose not to vaccinate their children. I'm also concerned about the increasing pressure to mandate vaccines for adults.

If vaccines were completely without risk, I would still object to compulsory vaccination on the grounds that people should be allowed to choose the form of medical care they desire for themselves and their families. This is not a position most people would agree with me on, but I am a libertarian who believes in the zero-aggression principle, which you can read about if you click on the link.

But, in the case of vaccines, my issue goes way beyond my believe that we should not use the violence of government to try to force social good. Vaccines are drugs, and drugs always have a risk versus benefit ratio. This means, that one has to weigh the potential benefit of the drug against the potential it has for harm. I chose to not vaccinate my children (who are all grown now) and I currently do not get flu shots. I did this because I decided that in my case, the potential for harm outweighted the potential benefits.

I plan to write an article on my personal views on vaccines, but right now I just want to make people aware that their are risks to vaccines, just like there are risks to any drug. I believe it is up to each individual (and to parents) to decide if the benefits outweight the risks in their particular case. In my case, I am very comfortable with treating acute diseases like measles, chicken pox, flu and even whooping cough with herbal remedies. Other people, who don't have the knowledge I have would see the vaccinations as more important than I do, which is why I always support people's right to chose on this topic.

However, I am not at all supportive when people feel they have the right to use the power of government to force a person to accept a medical treatment like vaccines (and its inherent risk) onto people who don't want to assume the risks. So, the purpose of this blog is to make people aware that there are serious potential risks from vaccinations. I've attached a pdf file that provides 1000 studies from peer reviewed journals about vaccine safety issues.

One of the articles in this file says, "Vaccines are sold under an extremely clever marketing strategy that encompasses not only a “must-have” scenario for each of us but included with that is absolutely no liability for harm. What do you suppose motivated the vaccine manufacturers to work so exceedingly hard through public and governmental processes to establish a “lawsuit-free zone” for vaccines? Was it to avoid any chance at all of legal challenges? The extraordinary harm you’ll read about here is directly related to seeking that discharge of legal responsibility for damage. Many of us won’t remember that years ago the lawsuits were mounting and the vaccine business was about to come to an end."

You see, the vaccine manufacturers were suffering from so many lawsuits that it was threatening to put them out of business. So, the government stepped in and protected them by setting up a "court" to compensate victims of vaccine damage through the government, instead of forcing the drug companies to have to settle the lawsuits. The federal court, however, is not a court. There is no "jury," only a federal judge who decides if the case should be compensated. Thousands of parents who feel that their children have been injured by vaccines are now prevented from suing the vaccine manufacturers, and find that the federal court for compensating vaccine-damaged victims is rigged, so very few are awarded any money.

Since the establishment of this "court," which is completely unconstituional, the number of vaccines being pushed on parents and children has skyrocked. Why? Because vaccine manufacturers no longer have to worry about being sued for damages when their vaccines cause harm. So, in the face of having removed a person's ability to seek redress of grievance through a proper legal system, I am 100% in favor of all vaccination being left as a matter of personal conscience and choice. In my mind it is criminal to force someone to accept a medical treatment (for themselves or their children) that has the potential to cause this kind of serious harm.

Again, I favor freedom of choice in health care. If you feel that the benefits of vaccines outweight the risks, you have every right to get vaccinated and to vaccinate your children. If vaccines work as they are proported to do, then you and your family are safe, because they are protecting you from the disease. However, for those of us who have the opposite believe, feeling that the risks outweigh the benefits, it is unacceptable to force a person to accept these risks when our ability to   sue in the courts has been outlawed by the federal government.

Anyway, here's a link to the file:

Click here to download the list of 100 studies from peer-reviewed journals documenting risks associated with vaccines.