When You Hear “Anti-Vaxer” think “Parent of a Vaccine-Disabled Child”

Despite what the media tells you, it isn’t all that common to encounter an “anti-vax” parent who has never vaccinated a child.  Most “anti-vax” parents only wish they were so lucky to have seen that train wreck coming in the crystal ball.  The overwhelming majority of them started out just like the opposition:  pro-vaccine and trusting their doctors.

Then, one day, they lost the healthy child they once knew.

The parent woke up to their child seizing in the middle of the night, or to discover that their toddler has Type 1 diabetes, or a bowel disorder so severe that their child was banging his head on his highchair and hanging over the arm of the sofa trying to mitigate the pain.

Maybe their preschooler became covered in eczema so crippling that it was a 24/7 job to keep them from clawing their skin off, and the parents had to live sleep-deprived for years on end as their marriage crumbled.  Maybe their 8 year old is finishing her 2nd round of chemo and no one has any answers as to why she has to suffer like this.

Maybe that first bite of peanut butter and jelly ended with an ambulance ride and a terrifying near-death experience and now a mother is attempting to function each day under the cloud of PTSD.  Maybe the flu vaccine sent their child into anaphylactic shock; maybe the nurse wearing a latex glove did.

Maybe dad couldn’t stand to be part of an autism family anymore and mom is barely hanging on, going at it all alone with no money to pay for services.

So parents started wondering how this invisible disease took over the healthy child they used to know and they started to research.  Maybe their research led them to question the safety of vaccine ingredients, the overloaded vaccination schedule, and perhaps the very concept of injecting bacteria, viruses, residual mercury, aluminum, MSG, formaldehyde, soy, casein, and egg into an infant’s capillary beds and bypassing the digestive system.

Maybe all of a sudden vaccinating infants seemed insane.

Maybe mom and dad got tired of hearing, “We don’t know what caused your child to be so sick, but the one thing we’re 100% certain of is that it was not vaccines.”  Maybe they decided to take matters into their own hands and start calling their own shots, months or years too late to save their disabled kid.  Maybe baby #2 or #3 arrived and mom and dad said, “Over my dead body” to the hepatitis b vaccine.

Maybe they are done sacrificing their kids for the good of the herd when the herd isn’t sitting at their kitchen table at midnight helping them figure out how they’re going to pay the hospital bills.

So when you hear the media or frenzied parents screaming from the rooftops about these good-for-nothing “anti-vaxers” putting everyone else at risk, stop and put yourself in the shoes of the parent of a vaccine-disabled child for a day.  Just because you don’t see the disability of an assaulted immune system on the outside doesn’t make the injury any less real, terrifying, infuriating, grossly unfair, or expensive to cope with.

Ponder how reasonable this “anti-vaxer” accusation would be if vaccine disabilities were easily perceived with the naked eye, like a mangled arm or deformed facial features.  What if vaccine-disabled children looked like Thalidomide babies with tiny flipper-like appendages in place of arms and legs?  Would their parents be “anti-vaxers” if the one and only way the child turned out that way was because he was vaccinated?  Would you demand that they give the child even more vaccines?

No.  You’d look at those parents and say, “There go the parents of a vaccine-disabled child.  My kids have been lucky, but I understand why vaccines aren’t right for their family.”

(photo credit BBC UK)