Pneumococcal vaccine reduces only four cases of pneumonia per 1000 children. The cost for vaccinating 1000 children comes to $ 12,750. Treating the four cases of pneumonia in India using WHO protocol, would cost $1. The pneumococcus strains prevalent in India are nearly all sensitive to inexpensive antibiotics like penicillin. In the US which has been using the pneumococcal vaccine for some years now, there has been a strain shift – strains covered in the vaccine are being replaced by other strains. Ominously the new strains are more antibiotic resistant. Vaccine has simply made the problem of pneumococcal disease worse. Yet this vaccine is being pushed in Africa and Asia.
Advocates of mass immunization point to the decline in the incidence of diseases after the introduction of modern vaccination programmes. But one of the anti-immunization lobby's central arguments is that many diseases were already waning – thanks to better public health, hygiene and diet – before vaccines were introduced. Scarlet fever, for example, was a major killer in the last century, yet it is virtually unknown today – and there is no vaccine. Rubella (German measles) is on the increase in the UK despite a mass immunization programme among babies and selective immunization of mothers. This may be a reflection that antibody levels have fallen in the population at large because children are no longer getting the mild diseased naturally. Why not immunize only women of childbearing age who have not developed natural immunity?
Homeopathy's system of protection treats many childhood diseases as cathartic, necessary evils: measles, for instance, is seen as helping to clear out toxins from the child's system.
Vaccination is a seductive insurance policy, but it is naive to think you can buck nature. Illness is part of health and out of disease comes health.
Public health experts agree that natural immunity last longer. Yet, they argue that overall the benefits of vaccine-acquired immunity outweigh the risks of natural infection. Deadly epidemics, pandemics, and seasonal influenza will continue to occur. Flu vaccine advocates hold that vaccination is one way to protect the most vulnerable, the very young and elderly, from severe complications and death.
The diphtheria vaccine was first introduced in Germany. After the vaccine was introduced the number of cases of diphtheria steadily increased.
Vaccines are now given to eight week old babies, though there is absolutely no long-term scientific evidence available to show that it is safe to do so. By the time they reach their second birthday small children will have received over a score of vaccinations. American children will have received even more. The vaccine industry is forever looking for new vaccines to give.
The number of deaths from whooping cough had fallen long before the vaccine was introduced. The vaccine has not reduced the incidence of the disease. The risk of a child given the whooping cough vaccine developing brain damage is officially said to be 1 in 100,000. But that’s the ‘best’ figure. Other research shows that the risk is as high as 1 in 6,000. There is no doubt that the vaccine causes far more harm than the disease and there is clear evidence linking the vaccine to brain damage.
Vaccines are dangerous and they don’t always work. Up to half of the people given a vaccine jab do not develop a resistance to the disease concerned.
As yet, there is no body of information in the anti-immunization camp as powerful as society's existing faith in the science of vaccination.