Researchers from the University of Missouri have uncovered evidence that taking over-the-counter pain relievers, like aspirin and Tylenol, can reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine because they inhibit the normal function of enzymes that help regulate the immune system. —Scientificblogging

This has always been the problem with testing vaccines and other pharmaceuticals: they can not possibly test for all the variations that any population presents. Much as researchers try to account for differences in lifestyle and diet, humans are too complex with too many constantly shifting variables to be able to say that a specific chemical reaction in Joe will perfectly replicate in Mary.

So now, after millions of people have already been vaccinated, we find that it may not have helped any of those taking aspirin, Tylenol and other common pain relievers, which, in over-dosed America, amounts to just about everyone.

“If you’re taking aspirin regularly, which many people do for cardiovascular treatment, or acetaminophen (Tylenol) for pain and fever and get a flu shot, there is a good chance that you won’t have a good antibody response,” said Charles Brown, associate professor of veterinary pathobiology in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine.

“These drugs block the enzyme COX-1, which works in tissues throughout the body. We have found that if you block COX-1, you might be decreasing the amount of antibodies your body is producing, and you need high amounts of antibodies to be protected.”

The only real testing of this and any other vaccine is in live populations. Give it to the people and see what happens.

If that’s the medicine folks want, go for it. Just don’t force anyone to participate.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

I can remember as a child watching a movie about that time and being struck by one scene in particular: a big man, all dressed in black, drives a cart from house to house, picking up the dead and carrying them off for burial. I remember thinking, “How is he getting away with this?” Here is an incredibly bad bug, killing one out of every two people, and this guy is going into infected households, and handling infected bodies, and somehow still managing to put in a sixteen hour day!

Since the fourteenth century, we have learned a lot about bubonic plague. We fully understand the bug that causes it: what it looks like, how it lives, how it travels, how it affects the human body, and how to kill it, which we have proven successful at doing. Yet we know little about the man driving that cart and how and why he lived on. While we have conscientiously studied the half of Europe that died we have ignored the half that survived.

Doctors now say, “The survivors just had greater resistance; they had natural immunity.” But what does that mean? How did they get it? Was it God’s will? Were they born with it? Were they just lucky? Or could it have been something in their diet, or their manner of thinking, or the way they processed their emotions, or how they prayed, or perhaps some combination of any or all of these factors? More importantly, as we come to better understand the survivor’s experience, can we successfully transfer it to others?

In fundamental ways, Western medical science over the past few hundred years has avoided addressing these questions. We have enthusiastically dissected the dead while showing little interest in the living. We have stayed away from questions of individual immunity and natural healing while focusing our intellectual energies and research on defeating specific disease symptoms, battle by battle, with an increasingly complex array of hardcare weaponry. Rather than a softcare investigation into the nature of wellness—How do some people manage to stay healthy without resorting to doctors or medicines?—we have chosen to wage a hardcare war on the real and imagined agents of disease.

The hardcare medical model posits that every ailment has a specific causative agent (the bad germ) and for every such agent we can and will eventually find a specific remedy (the magic bullet). It is a model that totally ignores the individual involved — is she under stress, is she a happy person, is she motivated to go on living, does she express her emotions, how is her family life, what was it like growing up, is she loved — these questions are dismissed as irrelevant. All that matters is figuring out which bug is causing the problem and then administering the proper remedy.

And yet, we harbor flu viruses for most of our lives without catching colds, and we are exposed to carcinogens on a regular basis without developing cancer. Half of the population of 14th century Europe contacted the plague but did not die. There is more to it than “you catch the bug and it makes you sick,” and much more to it than relying on a “magic bullet” to make things better.

The more to it resides somehow and somewhere within all human beings. Though it can not be captured in a bottle and measured out in clear dosages, nor carefully produced in a laboratory and shot into the body with pointed precision, it is more potent than any such remedies, and can surely heal any and all wounds.

While it is reassuring to know that we now have a cure for the bubonic plague, remember that the man driving the cart had a solution six hundred years ago.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

Their chief point is that mainstream American medicine is “science-based,” while the anti-vaxers are a rabble of anti-scientific fools, hysterical housewives, and idiot celebrities seeking publicity. They thrust all dissenters into the same camp as global warming deniers and anti-evolution creationists. The science is in, they say, the evidence indisputable, and anyone who disagrees or merely questions should be rounded up and shot full of the latest miracle medicine before they spread their vile condition to others.

No disagreement permitted. No thinking required, except by certified authorities, and no dissension among them from the One True Medicine. Those who express doubts are social pariahs guilty of the most horrible sins.

Medical Heresy

I do not dispute that vaccines have saved lives and played a role in eliminating certain infectious diseases. Vaccines are especially efficacious, even miraculous, in poverty-ridden, over-crowded communities facing epidemics. But they are not the only way to deal with infectious disease, and they are clearly not the best solution in more well-off communities that enjoy the benefits of modern hygiene and adequate nutrition.

In 20th century America, each of the major infectious diseases was in decline (as measured by mortality rates) before a vaccine for said disease was invented. (Go here and scroll down for US mortality charts.) Measles, for instance, killed nearly 12,000 Americans in 1901, a mortality rate that fell to a hundred or so by the 1960s when the measles vaccine was introduced. Diptheria killed 48,000 in 1901, down to less than 500 in the 1940s when its vaccine was introduced. Pertussis dropped from 33,000 in 1901 to less than 2,000 in 1946, the first use of its vaccine.

What was happening? First, as America grew in prosperity its people had access to more than adequate food, clean water, and good sanitation practices. This eliminated major disease vectors, both reducing the growth of infectious microbes and restricting their spread. This will always be the best defense against infectious disease, though lifting populations out of poverty is not as easy as sending them vaccines.

Second, since each of these diseases had been endemic in America for several generations, people had developed natural resistance, passed from mother to child. While such children were not immune to the illness, they were less at risk for serious complications and death. So, they got the measles or mumps or whooping cough, had a rough patch, got better, and then had full immunity for life, no boosters required. And the next generation had even stronger resistance.

Developing Real Immunity

If we had continued in this way without the intervention of vaccines, few people would be dying from any of these diseases, though they would linger as annoying childhood illnesses. Even better, if we had expended our medical genius and resources on how to best live through each disease, rather than trying to kill it, we would now be a much stronger, healthier nation.

Instead, we undermined the individual’s innate healing process by introducing a chemical crutch. Now children have reduced resistance to the disease – because their parents didn’t live through it — and they are at greater risk from complications if they catch it. Which raises the clamor for vaccination even higher, and places an anti-social onus on those who would prefer to deal with the infectious disease in other ways.

It is true that in the “living through” process I’ve described people were still dying in tragic numbers, which more than justifies the impetus to develop vaccines. But while they may have provided a quicker fix in the short term — a miracle for every life saved — as vaccinations became mandatory they eliminated the possibility of more natural healing. Even worse, the advent of widespread vaccinations was followed by a number of modern illnesses, including childhood cancers, neurological dysfunctions, and auto-immune disease; America is both the most vaccinated and the least healthy among developed nations.

The current H1N1 epidemic provides a textbook example of wrong-headed vaccination policy. From the outset of the disease it has been apparent that for the vast majority of people it can bring a bad, even very bad, flu. Live through it, get over it, and enjoy lifelong immunity. (In this case Nietzsche got it exactly right: if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger.)

For a small percentage of people the disease threatened serious complications, including death.

The medical establishment decided that the best and only solution was to spend a few $billion developing and administering a vaccine to most everyone. Setting aside the fact that they failed to adequately test the vaccine, and that they further failed to provide it in time — leaving millions of people extra vulnerable because they thought (were taught) that they were defenseless without vaccination — the far simpler, better, and cheaper solution was to teach people how to avoid it and, should they get it, how to live through it.

This would involve some basic lifestyle and nutritional education, neither of which are strong suits for the medical fundamentalists who are in charge in America. Like all fundamentalists, their chief mistake is thinking that their way is the only way.

Millions of healthy, rarely-if-ever vaccinated individuals say otherwise.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

We are exposed to astounding amounts of pollution. Over 80,000 chemicals have been introduced into our society since 1900, and only 550 have been tested for safety. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), about 2.5 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released yearly by large industrial facilities. And 6 million pounds of mercury are poured into our air every year.

In fact, a recent government survey — “The National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals” issued in July 2005 — found an average of 148 chemicals in our bodies. And those were only the ones for which they tested . . . The Environmental Working Group examined the umbilical cord blood of children just as they emerged from the womb. They found 287 industrial chemicals, including pesticides, phthalates, dioxins, flame-retardants, Teflon, and toxic metals like mercury. — Dr Mark Hyman

Highschool chemistry 101: chemical A mixed with chemical B results in X; chemical B mixed with chemical C results in Y; and chemical C mixed with chemical A results in Z. Most chemicals are reactive — when mixed with one or more other chemicals they result in new substances with different properties.

Chemical reactivity, of course, is the whole point of the pharmaceutical and industrial chemical industries. Scientists test specific chemicals for reactions when exposed to other chemicals, or to specific environmental conditions, or when introduced to animal and human bodies.

When a positive reaction occurs, they’ve taken a step toward a useful product or better medicine. When no reaction occurs, they move on to the next promising chemical. When a negative reaction occurs, they know to avoid such combinations or exposures in the future.

In a sane world, every new chemical would pass through extensive testing before release into the environment or (via food and pharmaceuticals) into the human organism. But even the most conscientious system could not hope to properly test 80,000 chemicals, with new ones being released all the time. Nor to test all of these new chemicals against each other, in infinite combinations.

For instance, it is well understood that the industrially-useful chemical mercury is toxic to humans. Through testing, a supposed safe level of exposure has been established, and we are told not to worry about the mercury in dental fillings or that is used as a preservative in some vaccines because they do not amount to toxic levels.

But has anyone tested mercury for reactivity to the chemical cocktail in the blood of newborns described above? Or, since mercury is one of the chemicals in that cocktail, have we tested for accumulation of mercury — start with x-amount in the blood, add some in vaccine preservatives, add some more in the air, and surely at some point the child has too much.

This is the problem I have with vaccines and other modern pharmaceuticals. Most have demonstrated positive reactions when tested on humans. When subsequently turned into medicines most have at the very least ameliorated symptoms, while some have brought about miraculous cures.

But the testing cannot possibly keep up with or account for the fast-changing chemical realities within and surrounding us. Nor the fact that individuals increasingly present unique chemical profiles.

Eighty years ago, when doctors administered the diptheria vaccine they could expect that all children would have the same reaction, with rare exceptions. Now, given the basic laws of chemistry, we should expect a range of unforeseen reactions as the medicine mixes with the different chemical realities from one body to the next, as well as with many new-to-the-world and never tested chemicals.

A wide range of unforeseen reactions is exactly what the pharmaceutical and chemical industries have brought us. Cancer, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, alzheimer’s, autism, auto-immune dysfunction — all of these modern diseases are rooted in toxic chemicals and/or poor nutrition (which is toxic chemistry via diet). When we add to this the myriad of environmental problems caused by industrial pollutants, the chemical industry clearly needs much tighter regulation and social controls.

I can’t see that ever happening, not in profit-mad America. The right of a company like Monsanto to rake in the cash while spewing untested crap into the world shall not be abridged.

But not to worry. In just a few generations we will surely adapt to the whole chemical soup. Chemo sapien here we come…..

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

The doctor didn’t include any details of that outbreak but we can safely assume that if there had been any deaths or serious complications he would have told us. In fact, as the Seattle Times reports: “Most suffered only mild illnesses, but two non-students — an adult and a teen — were briefly hospitalized.”

According to Dr. Fauci, they plan to spend $2 billion on the H1N1 vaccine. They will be recommending it for college students since several of the deaths from the spring outbreak of H1N1 were from that demographic. Fauci implied that it was bad luck for the WSU students that the flu hit before the vaccine was ready.

But they didn’t need it! A group of 2000 contacted the flu and recovered easily and without complications. For far less money than we’re spending on a vaccine we could send a team of medical researchers to conduct interviews of the school population, looking into diet, lifestyle, stressors, environmental conditions, and responses to the flu outbreak to draw out any differences between those who never got sick, those who got sick and easily recovered, and those who developed more serious complications.

At the end of such a study, we would have a clear set of wellness strategies to share with the country, far more effective for most people than any vaccine.

Dr Fauci would no doubt leap on the words “most people” and point out that 40,000 people die of regular flu every year, that hundreds died from H1N1 in the Spring, and that vaccines are life-savers for at-risk populations — children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems.

But even when tens of thousands die, millions do not. Even among at-risk populations, survivors outnumber victims.

Yet our medical strategy for infectious diseases is invariably based on the seriously-sick minority. We develop our vaccines and other pharmaceuticals with an eye toward helping the least healthy among us and then we recommend, or even mandate, those medicines for everyone.

This is just nuts. We’ve developed a medical model based on the dissection of cadavers and study of pathologies while ignoring the flesh and blood lessons of the most healthy among us. We devote enormous resources to managing symptoms and show little interest in the innate human capacity for self-healing.

Worse, through the mandating of vaccinations, we are undermining that innate healing capacity, pushing more and more people into at-risk populations.

The more we practice this American sickcare, the sicker we get.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

All we had for medical records was a final check-up: Lily was in good health, ideal weight, no signs of developmental delay. There were no records of early illnesses, nor of any vaccinations, but it seemed likely that she  breastfed as a baby and that her year in a poor, overcrowded orphanage had exposed her to some of the common childhood diseases.

Soon after getting home we took Lily to see the local pediatrician, a good friend of ours, Dr. O. As first time parents, we’d spent the months leading up to the adoption reading and thinking through the various issues that face all parents, including vaccinations, which we had decided against.

We live on a small island that attracts lots of off-the-grid, anti-establishment types, so Dr. O knew many anti-vaccine parents. She firmly yet respectfully advised that we reconsider. I proceeded to tell her in my most reasonable voice that we considered vaccines more poison than medicine and that we were hoping to raise Lily free of all modern pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics. After an awkward pause, Dr. O said that it was our choice to make and that was that.

Later that day I had the stark realization that I had accused our good friend of routinely poisoning thousands of children, beginning with her own. Though we remained friendly, our friendship was never the same, and I stopped accompanying Lily to her annual checkups.

Lately, we’ve been thrust back into the vaccination issue by two events: first, Lily is heading off to a college (NYU) that requires several vaccinations; second, there will soon be a major push to get Americans dosed with swine flu vaccine, with New York City students being near the front of the line.

So, I’ve been doing the Internet thing: visiting websites, reading studies, reports, opinions and commentaries, lurking in chatrooms, exchanging emails, and sometimes adding my own comments to the conversation, including a few pieces for this website.

I’ve been struck by the amount of anger and hostility on the pro-vax side, even toward parents whose children have had tragic reactions to vaccines. No matter how calm and reasoned I and others present the arguments against vaccination we can expect a slew of insults — belittling our intelligence, questioning our motives, and blaming us for every case of measles or whooping cough in the future.

I was getting increasingly frustrated and angry with “them” when I remembered my experience with Dr. O. I realize now that no matter how we present the anti-vax arguments they always come with the accusation: you — doctor or parent — are poisoning children.

Though I still consider that a mostly true statement (I accept the need for some vaccinations under specific conditions), it carries such horrible implications that it is bound to derail the best arguments, pushing most pro-vaxers into denial-bound defenses of their position. We love our children so much — it is simply beyond consideration that we poison them out of love.

The Power of Denial

Upton Sinclair, while trying to reform the American meat-packing industry, famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” To which we can add: “or when his or her actions as a parent depend on not understanding.”

Denial is an unconscious psycho-emotional reaction to knowledge which, if brought to full awareness, would threaten the status quo. When my job, family, community or nation is seriously challenged by new information, my capacity for denial allows me to simply not get it. If I’m deep enough in denial I won’t even hear about the issue.

Denial can mask the most outlandish contradictions. Any suggestions that mainstream American medicine is on the wrong course inspires vociferous attacks and jingoistic bleating about the “best healthcare on the planet.” The facts tell otherwise — by almost every metric America’s healthcare system trails dozens of other countries — but changing the system means challenging the status quo, so denial kicks in and most Americans find it difficult to understand how seriously screwed up the system is.

Unfortunately, arguments against the status quo, especially “you’re poisoning children!” types of arguments, only deepen the denial. Which is why divisive issues get so nasty — when intellectual understanding is impossible, all that’s left is emotional venting.

Inform Without Threatening

As part of her new student preparation, Lily had to fill out various medical forms, including a vaccination report. And she had to respond to NYU’s strong (but not quite mandatory) preference that she receive certain vaccinations and/or boosters.

So I found myself talking to a new pediatrician (Dr. O has retired) and then to a public health official at NYU. I knew going in that I did not want a repeat of my experience with Dr. O or in online “discussions.”

In both conversations I stressed that we were not against vaccinations. We simply did not see them as the only way to stay healthy. We asked politely that Lily be free to choose her own medical approaches.

We made clear that Lily had lived a very healthy 18 years without resort to any modern pharmaceuticals. And that Lily understood well her responsibility to manage her diet and continue with her wellness-promoting lifestyle.

I’m not sure if we changed any minds. But nobody got angry, and that’s a good beginning.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

As with your first child, you’ve been totally involved in your three-year old’s life since birth. He’s with you always. You could stare into his eyes for hours. Though he looks very much like his sibling, you could list a hundred ways in which he’s different, unique, one-of-a-kind.

You frequently find yourself saying, “He’s the happiest person I’ve ever known.”

Three days after his third birthday he got round 4 of his DPT. Within minutes of receiving the shot, he began a high-pitched shrieking, like you’ve never heard before. It went on for nearly two hours. He was also running a fever. He was utterly inconsolable.

Eventually, he slept. But when he woke up the next day he was different. He wouldn’t make eye contact. He wasn’t talking. He definitely wasn’t happy.

Thus began his slow slide into what would eventually be diagnosed as autism.

In the days to come you would learn a whole lot about autism, a disease now affecting hundreds of thousands of American kids. But you would also hear, from doctors and other experts, that its cause is still unknown.

For you, the cause could not be more obvious. One day he was healthy; he received a vaccination and soon after he was sick.

Moreover, you felt the change as it happened. You felt the reaction to the shot as if it was happening to you. You know that something in that shot poisoned your son.

But none of the doctors listen to you. Your pediatrician — the one who administered the shot — got so rudely dismissive that you had to find a new doctor for your kids.

So you go online and discover web-linked communities of parents of autistic children who, like you, know that vaccinations, at the very least, contribute to the onset of autism. Surveys of parents of autistic children show that some 60% blame vaccinations for their child’s autism. Yet for all their numbers, and for all the certainty of their convictions and the seriousness of their cause, they have been ignored, dismissed, belittled, condescended to, and berated for undermining the “life-saving science” of childhood vaccinations.

Welcome to the vaccine wars — a multi-front, furiously pitched battle in which the Medical-Industrial-Complex forces millions of parents to dose their children with barely-tested chemical concoctions.

Those in favor of vaccination claim to have Science solidly on their side and paint the anti-vax parents as a bunch of hysterical fools and dangerous luddites.

They say it is indisputable that vaccinations virtually eliminated several childhood diseases; in fact, as the chart below shows, the diseases were all in natural decline long before the vaccinations were started.

This chart shows when vaccinations were started for each disease:

Clearly, each disease was in decline before its vaccine was invented. Through a combination of improved nutrition and public sanitation, along with successful exposure to each disease — from those who contract the disease and heal naturally — American bodies were in the process of developing true immunity. Though vaccines may have helped speed up this natural process, they were not necessary to it.

Vaccinators also claim that Science has proven the safety of every vaccine before it is added to the mandated schedule. You would certainly think that before they shot a cocktail of exotic chemicals and demonstrated toxins into the bloodstream of a baby that the government would have extensively tested it first.

In fact, the US government does little testing. Most is done by the manufacturers. Obviously, no one can run long-term double-blind studies on babies; instead, they do just enough testing on animals and adult volunteers to win approval of their new wonder drug.

Then public health authorities administer the real tests on infants, toddlers, and schoolchildren.

Even the industry’s own tests generate a long list of side effects and contraindications for every vaccine. But adverse reactions from vaccinations are dismissed, ignored, and under-reported by those giving the shots.

Yet, vaccine enthusiasts loudly decry the “lack of science” on the part of the angry parents.

In fact, the parents have done some of the best science: they observed the subject (their child) intensely over a long period of time; they noted precisely when the child’s behavior and health radically changed; they educated themselves; they formed a hypothesis; in lieu of live, double-blind testing, they gathered matching reports from thousands of other parent-scientists.

They know that there are serious dangers to America’s vaccination program. Ignoring their informed experience and dismissing them as anti-science fools is “science” at its worst.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth

Dr. Harvey Karp spells out the growing danger from just one group of chemicals, a “ubiquitous family of hormone twisting compounds, known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)“:

These substances are the focus of intense scrutiny because: 1) they’re found in every home in America 2) they’re increasingly linked to human disease 3) our exposure to them has risen in parallel with the surge in autism diagnoses and 4) they may theoretically affect the developing fetal brain.

In recent years, research has mounted against a virtual police lineup of EDCs, like BPA (in food cans, hard plastic water bottles), phthlates (in soft plastics, cosmetics) and fire retardants (in sofas, computers, flame-resistant clothing). Multiple animal and human studies have linked EDC exposure (during or after fetal development) with a host of hormone-related disorders, like low sperm count, cancer (breast, ovarian, prostate, testicular), congenital malformation of the genitals and even obesity.

In 1996, pediatricians and other concerned scientists convinced Congress to order the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to test hundreds of chemicals for endocrine disrupting effects. The Clinton administration began the process of designing these tests, but the Bush administration defied the law. It ignored this mandate to protect the public health…and organized medicine watched impotently from the sidelines. Today, ten years and tens of millions of dollars later, not a single chemical has been evaluated for endocrine disrupting effects!

Our exposure to EDCs is no mere theoretical concern. In 2000, a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study found detectable phthalates in 99.9% of adults including women of childbearing age. The CDC also discovered detectable levels of BPA in 93% of thousands of Americans tested (6 years of age and older).

The presence of EDCs in women of child-bearing age is especially worrisome. That is because there is evidence that even minuscule amounts of these chemicals — levels commonly present in a woman’s body — may disturb fetal brain development during highly sensitive periods of neural development known as windows of vulnerability.

Ironically, Dr Karp offers the above as part of his argument for the safety of vaccines, while it is really a powerful caution against the whole chemical/pharmaceutical industry. We are engaged in a decades-long chemistry experiment in which the natural environment and the human body serve as testing mediums. In the process, we are altering our blood and fluids, affecting brain chemistry, impacting fetal development, and causing a host of unintended consequences, most with negative  implications for the environment, including the human organism.

The whole miracle of modern chemistry is that small amounts of specific compounds can have powerful, often positive, effects. Digitalis for heart problems, insulin for diabetics, aspirin for headaches, antibiotics for bacterial infections, anesthetics for surgical procedures, vaccinations for smallpox, polio, and other serious illnesses: the tiniest quantities of these and other chemical formulations have greatly reduced human suffering and added countless benefits to our daily lives.

Yet even as we’ve extolled the many virtues of the chemical/pharmaceutical industry, we’ve turned a blind eye to its dark side: every chemical compound with the potency to create positive effects can as easily cause negative effects. The only way to guard against this is to thoroughly test every synthetic chemical before it is released into the world and/or into human bodies.

In fact, the vast majority of industrial chemicals undergo no environmental testing, much less human trials. The Bush administration’s conniving to prevent any testing of EDCs is just the latest example in a long history of political and corporate avoidance of an examination of the dangers of  synthetic chemicals in our environment.

Though pharmaceuticals do have to pass through some government testing and approval, they cannot possibly be tested for the wide range of psycho-emotional realities and bio-chemical interactions they will encounter from one body to the next. Still, we do test enough that most all pharmaceuticals now come with long lists of possible side effects and contraindications, including fatalities. (A 1996 study estimated that aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs caused 7600 deaths per year in the U.S.).

A recent FDA ruling against Percocet and Vicodin, two of the most popular prescription painkillers in the world, illustrates the problem:

The panel’s 20-17 vote to recommend a ban on the combination drugs was one of 11 it took at a meeting called to advise the F.D.A. on problems arising from the extraordinary popularity of acetaminophen. In 2005, American consumers bought 28 billion doses of products containing the ingredient.

While the medicine is effective in treating headaches and reducing fevers, even recommended doses can cause liver damage in some people. And more than 400 people die and 42,000 are hospitalized every year in the United States from overdoses.

Americans have been consuming these very ordinary over-the-counter drugs for years. Now we learn that even recommended doses can cause liver damage serious enough that it is reported to medical professionals. And acetaminophen is just one of thousands of similar chemicals that our bodies must deal with on a daily basis.

Which brings us to vaccinations. We are told that all vaccinations are thoroughly tested and proven safe before injected into our children, some into our newborn babies. But do they test for babies who, via their mothers, already have synthetic chemicals in their systems, such as alcohol, nicotine, or any of dozens of other medications? Do they test for babies who had especially traumatic births? Do they test for babies who receive formula versus those who breast feed?

For older children receiving shots, have they tested for those on Ritalin, antibiotics, and other now-common kid drugs? Have they tested for those who are being physically or sexually abused at home? Have they tested for those sick with worry over their parent’s divorce or economic woes?

Of course, we cannot possibly test for all circumstances. So the ultimate test is to go ahead and mass-vaccinate a large population and then see what happens.

What has happened over the past seventy years is that, while we have virtually eliminated several serious illnesses, we have seen the emergence and growing danger of many others, especially cancer. The synthetic chemicals in our environment, including vaccinations, are the prime cause. The first step in really eliminating childhood illness is reducing the amount of synthetic chemicals in our children’s bodies.

Michael Sky | CommonHealth