Vaccine Safety

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I have had the conversation about vaccine safety with several mothers over the years. There is a big concern with many that vaccines are really unsafe to give your children and may be responsible for some of the neurological disorders in children like Autism. I remember reading a really great article in Rolling Stone Magazine by Senator Kennedy about vaccines about five years ago. It dealt with the Mercury preservative Thimerosal that has now been banned in most vaccines. However there were some links between the preservative and Autism. There was also a great follow up article called Kennedy Report Sparks Controversy. 


According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Merck & Co., the makers of several vaccines, knew in 1991 that the cumulative amount of mercury in vaccines given to infants by six months of age was about 87 times the level then thought to be safe. 


I did immunize my children but I chose not to get the flu vaccine or the pneumonia vaccines for my kids because they still contain Thimerosal in them. However, there are people that are now saying it is not the Thimerosal but the amount of vaccines that we are injecting at one time that are making kids sick. Also, there is some talk about aluminum in vaccines. I found another article in Mothering  magazine entitled Is Aluminum the New Thimerosal? 


Anyway this is all very interesting to me since I did immunize my kids. They luckily did not seem to have any side effects from the immunizations. My friend has a son that she believes may have been effected by his immunizations and now suffers from mild autistic symptoms. 


Either way the articles are at least interesting to contemplate, because knowledge is power and ignorance while blissful can be dangerous. I would love to hear what you think about the subject.

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