Vaccination Forms From California: Fill & Download for Free

Never ask how until you’ve determined whether.By the 1970’s, smallpox had been all but eradicated, but children were vaccinated with 7–10 doses of vaccines against Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis (DTP), Polio (OPV), and Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. There is absolutely no question that these vaccines save millions of lives and millions more from lives of suffering or deformity.The main change in the 1980s was the addition of an optional flu vaccine. In the 1990s, vaccines became available for varicella Zoster virus, which causes chicken pox and shingles, and until that time was causing about 100 deaths per year in the US alone. Then, came a vaccine for rotovirus, an extraordinarily infectious infant disease that until 1998, when my daughter was one of the first to be vaccinated, killed 20–60 children per year (in the US) and resulted in 50,000–70,000 hospitalizations and 2.7 million cases, usually causing dangerous dehydration and potentially dangerous fever, resulting in billions in costs, both for medical care and lost wages, but potentially lower future productivity on the part of afflicted children.Today, the recommended schedule for babies 0 to 15 months in the US today is 25 doses of 10 vaccines, assuming they are given a flu vaccine.And as for those “half the doses?”I was one of those who found out the hard way that the MMR vaccine I received one dose of in the late 1960s had not conferred lifetime immunity. After a group of schoolchildren came into contact with the children of anti-vaxxers in California and caused an outbreak at my mother’s school, I caught the measles in the prime of life. My fever spiked to 105°F. The pneumonia I had had earlier rebounded. I was lucky. I was young and strong and made a full recovery, but I could have died. And if I had, it would have been entirely—100%—the fault of those parents in California who, ignorant of the facts of the matter, had failed in their civic duty to have their children vaccinated.Our comfy existence in which plagues sweeping through our communities are something to fear and make headlines instead of the background fabric of life is the result of herd immunity. If enough of the population is vaccinated, disease cannot reach those who’ve been overlooked or who cannot be vaccinated due to age or condition. But if enough people are NOT vaccinated, then even some of those who have been may be exposed to a heavy enough pathogen burden to overwhelm their immunity and trigger infection.When you fail to vaccinate your kids, you are making them a menace to society.

My brothers both got the mumps and could be infertile right now. I happened to convince my mother to let me get vaccinated 2 months prior.My mother was part of the group of people in the late 90's and early 00's that bought the autism hype. I am 18, and finally convinced my mother to let me get vaccinated halfway through my senior year, when I was 17.I have two younger brothers, aged 16 and 14. All of our lives, we have been very healthy with strong immune systems, probably from genetics, but also because we have always ate healthy foods, and have stayed very active.Not being vaccinated never really mattered, and I didn't know it was wrong until high school when I took statistics and chemistry. I have had many arguments with my mother over the last few years, but in the end, she doesn't have the tools to understand controlled studies, and the points I made sort of went over her head. It also didn't help that I was aggressive and sarcastic with my approach. Looking back, that was the worst way to handle it.This past summer, my 16 year old brother got sick. His neck and cheeks swelled up, and he got a fever. The doctor didn't know what it was. It really wasn't that bad though, and he got over it within a few weeks.I slowly waited for the sickness to pass to me. It never did. A week later, my youngest brother got back from a baseball tournament and very quickly developed the same symptoms. When he went to the doctor, it was determined to be the mumps.The only reason I didn't get it was because I had gotten the MMR vaccine a few months earlier.It is possible that my brothers are infertile. Not that likely, but a definite possibility.Let's just say that my mom has had a change of perspective, and they have both since been vaccinated.

I am not the first to note a paper that definitively belongs in this list, but other answers that reference it have been collapsed for brevity. And in truth, they were not as good answers as I am about to write, because they do not expose to the naive reader who may have only heard some vague reference of it the specifics of exactly why this paper was so atrocious. I refer to Andrew Wakefield’s infamous paper (now retracted): “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.”. This is the paper that started the anti-vaccination movement.1— Unlike much research of questionable quality, that may be published in vanity journals or society journals with less exacting peer review standards, this work was published in an extremely reputable journal — The Lancet. Per Wikipedia: “The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is among the world's oldest, most prestigious, and best known general medical journals”. [1]2— The authors made an inferential error that any high-schooler taking an AP Statistics class would have known to avoid: the assumption that correlation equals causation. While speculation of causative mechanisms is often performed in papers that identify correlation, the tiny sample size here was completely inadequate to support any such hypothesis. This claim supported by this error caused the paper to receive far more publicity than it otherwise would have warranted. From the Lancet’s 2004 partial retraction:We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient. However, the possibility of such a link was raised and consequent events have had major implications for public health. In view of this, we consider now is the appropriate time that we should together formally retract the interpretation placed upon these findings in the paper, according to precedent.[2]Note the minimization of the statements made in the paper, the “possibility” of a link. In fact, this is the first sentence of the Findings in the abstract of the original work:Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated, by the parents, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children[3]You may make your own interpretation, but that does not read to my eyes as a casual and non-directing speculation of the type one might find within the closing comments of a paper’s discussion. Had it been placed there, rather than front and center in the Findings, the impact may have been much less. For certain, in interviews Wakefield was not shy about playing up the link:Neither school nor hospital stood on the sidelines. They threw their weight behind Wakefield. In the build-up to the press conference, they installed extra phone lines and answering machines to field the expected panic, and distributed to broadcasters a 23 minute video news release showcasing Wakefield’s claims. “There is sufficient anxiety in my own mind for the long term safety of the polyvalent vaccine—that is, the MMR vaccination in combination—that I think it should be suspended in favour of the single vaccines,” he said, in one of four similar formulations on the videotape.3— The authors failed to disclose to the journal substantial financial conflicts of interest. From the Lancet’s 2004 statement:(4) That the children who were reported in the Lancet study were also part of a Legal Aid Board funded pilot project, led by Dr Wakefield—a pilot project with the aim of investigating the grounds for pursuing a multi-party legal action on behalf of parents of allegedly vaccine-damaged children, the existence of which was not disclosed to the editors of The Lancet.(5) That the results eventually reported in the 1998 Lancet paper were passed to lawyers and used to justify the multiparty legal action prior to publication, a fact that was not disclosed to the editors of The Lancet.(6) That Dr Wakefield received £55000 from the Legal Aid Board to conduct this pilot project and that, since there was a substantial overlap of children in both the Legal Aid Board funded pilot project and the Lancet paper, this was a financial conflict of interest that should have been declared to the editors and was not.[4]4— The authors violated the standards of medical ethics, including conducting invasive tests on children that were not clinically justified.The developmentally challenged children of often vulnerable parents were discovered to have been treated like the doctors’ guinea pigs.5— The authors violated the standards of medical and experimental practice for subject enrollment and data collection.He is also anxious to arrange for tests to be carried out on any children . . . who are showing symptoms of possible Crohn’s disease. The following are signs to look for. If your child has suffered from all or any of these symptoms could you please contact us, and it may be appropriate to put you in touch with Dr Wakefield.”The listed symptoms included pain, weight loss, fever, and mouth ulcers. Clients and contacts were quickly referred. Thus, an association between autism, digestive issues, and worries about MMR—the evidence that launched the vaccine scare—was bound to be found by the Royal Free’s clinicians because this was how the children were selected.6— The authors falsified data. Although none of the 12 cases cited in the report was accurately represented, here is an example to show how egregious the changes were:Child 1’s recorded story began when he was aged 9 months, with a “new patient” note by general practitioner Andrea Barrow. One of the mother’s concerns was that he could not hear properly—which might sound like a hallmark presentation of classical autism, the emergence of which is often insidious. Indeed, a Royal Free history, by neurologist and coauthor Peter Harvey, noted “normal milestones” until “18 months or so.”Child 1 was vaccinated at 12 months of age, however. Thus neither 9 nor 18 months helped Wakefield’s case. But in the Lancet, the “first behavioural symptom” was reported “1 week” after the injection, holding the evidence for the lawsuit on track.Step 1 to achieve this: two and a half years after the child was vaccinated, Walker-Smith took an outpatient history. Although the mother apparently had no worries following her son’s vaccination, the professor elicited that the boy was “pale” 7-10 days after the shot. He also elicited that the child “possibly” had a fever, and “may” have been delirious, as well as pale.“It’s difficult to associate a clear historical link with the MMR and the answer to autism,” Walker-Smith wrote to the general practitioner, with a similar letter to Wakefield, “although [Mrs 1] does believe that [child 1] had an illness 7-10 days after MMR when he was pale, ?fever, ?delirious, but wasn’t actually seen by a doctor.”Step 2: for the Lancet, Wakefield dropped the question marks, turning Walker-Smith’s queries into assertions. And, although Royal Free admission and discharge records refer to “classical” autism, step 3, the former surgeon reported “delirium” as the first “behavioural symptom” of regressive autism, with, step 4, a “time to onset” of 7 days.So here—behind the paper—is how Wakefield evidenced his “syndrome” for the lawsuit, and built his platform to launch the vaccine scare.Even when data was not completely falsified, it was cherry-picked:Moreover, through the omission from the paper of some parents’ beliefs that the vaccine was to blame, the time link for the lawsuit sharpened. With concerns logged from 11 of 12 families, the maximum time given to the onset of alleged symptoms was a (forensically unhelpful) four months. But, in a version of the paper circulated at the Royal Free six months before publication, reported concerns fell to nine of 12 families but with a still unhelpful maximum of 56 days. Finally, Wakefield settled on 8 of 12 families, with a maximum interval to alleged symptoms of 14 days.Between the latter two versions, revisions also slashed the mean time to alleged symptoms—from 14 to 6.3 days. “In these children the mean interval from exposure to the MMR vaccine to the development of the first behavioural symptom was six days, indicating a strong temporal association,” he emphasised in a patent for, among other things, his own prophylactic measles vaccine, eight months before the Lancet paper.7— The authors did all of the above, not in service of misplaced medical zeal and a true desire to help their patients, but in service of money earned for creating support for a lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer, with a follow-on of driving business to a replacement vaccine that Wakefield would profit from.Given the previous week’s publicity drive, the vaccine plans were sensitive. But the school had long known of this ambition. First surfacing in Wakefield’s 1995 patent for a diagnostic test for Crohn’s disease, it had been fleshed out in 1997, eight months before the press conference, in a patent for a “safer” single measles shot.The revised business plan was ambitious and detailed, aiming to raise £2.1m from investors. It spanned the detection of Crohn’s disease, the treatment of autism, and “a replacement for attenuated viral vaccines.”8— As a result of the above actions and motivations, the authors precipitated a public health crisis.As parents’ confidence slowly returned in Britain, the scare took off around the world, unleashing fear, guilt, and infectious diseases—and fuelling suspicion of vaccines in general. In addition to measles outbreaks, other infections are resurgent, with Mr 11’s home state of California last summer seeing 10 babies dead from whooping cough, in the worst outbreak since 1958.For most authors their participation was peripheral. Though one other has been struck from the register after the investigation that resulted in the Lancet’s final retraction in 2012, it is clear that Wakefield was the architect of this fraud, that it was his venality and conflicts of interest that led him to posit and promote the link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and that he continued to champion this finding long after other studies had cast significant doubt on the validity of his results.In other words, out of sheer personal greed the primary authors of this paper violated medical ethics, abused children, lied to their parents, lied to the public, and indirectly caused (and are still causing) illness and death from diseases that should be highly preventable.To this last, Wakefield is not the only one culpable. There is a long list, from the Lancet that failed to properly investigate and issue a full retraction in 2004 when the improprieties were first brought to their attention, to celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy who utilize the platform of their fame to promote dangerous agendas. But whatever came after, Wakefield and this paper started it.All quotes unattributed in the text above are from Brian Deer’s investigative series in the British Medical Journal. [5] [6]Footnotes[1] The Lancet - Wikipedia[2] ScienceDirect[3] ScienceDirect[4] ScienceDirect[5] How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed[6] How the vaccine crisis was meant to make money