January 9, 2020
You may have seen an article on WikiHow that’s been making the rounds. I don’t want to tell you how to feel, but as a parent I found it deeply disturbing.
You see, the article gives step-by-step instructions for “How to Get Vaccinated without Parental Consent.”
In other words, it encourages children to subvert their parents’ decision to refuse powerful immune-modulating drugs with potentially devastating side effects for their children.
The article, written by an anonymous team of 13, includes such helpful suggestions as “Petition the court for emancipation if your parents are really bad,” implying that the “protection” afforded by these drugs is better than the protection of parents who have chosen to say “no, thanks.”
Listening Will Change Your Parents’ Minds
Step 2 of “Making Plans” would be hilarious if it weren’t so chilling.
It contains some unintentionally ironic language: “Try talking to your parents. Explain your own worries, and let them voice theirs. Make sure that it’s a two-way conversation, and you show respect for their perspectives (even when they frustrate you). It takes time, and often good listening skills, to change people’s minds.”
Much as I appreciate the exhortation to “make sure that it’s a two-way conversation,” I find the implication that “listening” will change a parent’s mind rather than the other way around both fascinating and presumptuous. As if a 14-year-old who has gotten most of their vaccine information from the same heavily biased medical establishment that their parents grew up with has necessarily done more thinking and research on the subject than those parents—the same parents who, in most cases, have had to drastically revise their own beliefs over the years due to experiences, conversations, and scientific literature that directly contradicted their previously unquestioned beliefs.
I Want to Avoid Shingles
Step 2 also suggests things to say to parents, like “I’ve read about what shingles can do to the body. I’m scared. I don’t want that to happen to me.” For anyone who has actually researched vaccines, that statement alone is a groaner.
While chickenpox is very rarely a problem, shingles, a re-activation of the same virus (varicella) is more likely to be painful or even dangerous. But the authors don’t mention that minors rarely got shingles before the introduction of the varicella vaccine.
While anyone who has been exposed to varicella virus (naturally or through the vaccine) is theoretically susceptible to shingles, historically, few people other than senior citizens with little-to-no contact with children actually got shingles.
Since the advent of the varicella vaccine, however, the virus is no longer in general circulation and fewer and fewer adults are getting the associated immunity boost. It’s not clear yet if it’s a result of widespread use of the varicella vaccine, but since the vaccine was licensed shingles cases have been continuously rising in almost all age groups in the countries who vaccinate against chickenpox (including the U.S. , Germany, and Canada)—and such an increase was predicted when varicella vaccination was adopted.
There are two vaccines specifically intended to prevent shingles now, but they are not even approved for children, much less recommended for them.
The more recent vaccine, Shingrix, is a live-virus vaccine. [Edit: A reader has pointed out that I got the shingles vaccines backwards: Zostavax, the older vaccine, is the live-virus one. Shingrix is a “non-live recombinant, AS01B adjuvanted” vaccine. (Don’t get me started on adjuvants; that’s a blog for another day.) This just goes to prove my frequent refrain: No one gets it all right. Don’t take anyone’s word for it, not even mine. Read the sources!] As the insert states it is “indicated for prevention of herpes zoster (shingles) in adults aged 50 years and older.”
Shingrix Package Insert
The insert also explicitly states that “safety and effectiveness in individuals younger than 18 have not been established.”
Shingrix Package Insert
So, I ask you, how exactly is getting vaccinated without parental consent supposed to help a teenager avoid getting shingles?
That recommendation/justification is incredibly reckless, ignorant, or both.
And these people are advising our children?
Start with the Assumption that Your Parents Are Idiots
Step 2 also suggests saying “I understand that people are saying a lot of scary things, and that it can be hard to figure out what’s true and what isn’t true. I know it must be difficult for you.”
Is there a parent on earth who would not gag hearing such a patronizing statement come from their child?
It must be difficult for me, you say?
Yeah, I suppose it was difficult for me forty years ago . . . but since then I’ve gotten a college education (with a major in physics, by the way), read hundreds of scientific studies, met thousands of people who have experienced severe vaccine reactions, and read a hell of a lot of mainstream material that obviously misrepresents the facts.
So, while I can understand that it would be difficult for a teenager who has only had access to information that is officially sanctioned (i.e., unlikely to lower vaccine rates) to “figure out the truth”—no, it’s not particularly difficult for me anymore, thank you very much.
And how exactly does patronizing one’s parents “show respect for their perspectives”?
My recent teenager and I at her high school graduation
Be Untrustworthy
Step 3 of “Making Plans,” though, is the pièce de résistance. The authors baldly state, “You are allowed to lie to your parents,” and suggest “you could pretend that you want to know if you’re at risk for ‘vaccine injury.’ ”
I just love the quotations implying that vaccine injury doesn’t exist, don’t you?
But more important is the fact that these anonymous cretins are suggesting that a child be deliberately dishonest, and then they have the nerve to further suggest in Step 6 that it is the parent who is unworthy of trust: “Try asking a school counselor, school nurse, parent of a friend, family friend, doctor, or other trusted adult if they can help out,” they say, implying, of course, that the child should not trust their parents.
Step 2 gets much more specific about the lies it is “okay” to tell parents: “If your parents are distrustful, prepare your cover story especially well,” the authors say, implying that parents are at fault for being “distrustful” of the child who is now specifically planning to violate their trust.
The logic of this is astounding. It is akin to saying, “If your parents are smart enough to suspect that you are lying to them, then lie better.”
Pretending No One Is Ever Really Hurt by Vaccines
Disgusting as all of this is—and it is disgusting no matter what side of this argument you may find yourself on at any particular time—it doesn’t even approach the horrors of section three: “Handling Any Aftermath.”
At least the authors mention the potential for a few days of “mild side effects,” but nowhere do they discuss what to do if those side effects are not “mild.” Nor do they suggest what to do when their parents inevitably receive the doctor’s bills or the insurance company’s explanation of benefits. That’s because by that time the authors will have achieved their objective. Why should they care what happens next?
Adolescence is hard. It’s even harder when complicated by neurological issues, as it so often is these days. (Keep an eye out for the upcoming TMR book on Autism and Puberty.) Successfully navigating adolescence in today’s world requires a great deal of open communication between parent and child. That goes triple when there are serious health concerns.
What are children supposed to do if, as a result of going behind their parents’ backs, they develop encephalitis (a known side effect of all pertussis and MMR vaccines)?
Or Guillain-Barré syndrome (a polio-like paralysis and known side effect of flu vaccines)?
Or rheumatoid arthritis, thrombocytopenic purpura, type 1 diabetes, or any one of the other more than 100 other autoimmune conditions reported after vaccination?
Vaccine Injury Table—Influenza Vaccines
Vaccine Injury Table—Rubella and Measles Vaccines
How is the parent who has been kept in the dark supposed to handle the mysterious, sudden disability of a previously athletic teenager?
And when does the child break down and tell the truth about what was done to them? In the emergency room with doctors mystified by brain swelling “out of the blue”? Or months later when attempting to relearn how to walk or talk? Or never because an anaphylactic reaction took them by surprise and they didn’t make it to an emergency room?
None of this is covered in the article. That’s because the authors don’t care at all—I was tempted to put that far more crudely—what actually happens to the kids who follow their terrible advice.
What to Do If You Are Caught Lying
But the authors do give three suggestions to use as justifications for one’s actions if a parent does find out what their child has been up to:
- “I read about meningitis, and how quickly it can kill someone. It was scary. I don’t want to live with that fear hanging over my head. I know that you may not approve. I did this to give myself peace of mind.”
- “I’m autistic. I can’t be turned autistic twice. But I could die of polio, and I’d really rather not.”
- “I want to be a mom someday. Vaccine-preventable diseases can kill a baby in the womb. I did this to protect my ability to have children in the future.”
I’m going to go over all three of these because our young people deserve better than this overt emotional manipulation. They deserve to know the truth about the risks they face.
1. Real Meningitis Risks
Meningitis can indeed kill quickly. That’s why it’s vitally important to know the symptoms of a serious bacterial meningitis infection (sudden fever, headache, and stiff neck) and get help immediately. However, it is also true that bacterial meningitis is very rare with only about 2,600 cases per year in the whole country, 70% of which are in children under 5. That leaves approximately 780 cases for all the older children this WikiHow is aimed at and young adults. There were 73.7 million children aged 0-17 in the U.S. in 2017, about 20 million of which are under 5. That means that an older child’s risk of contracting bacterial meningitis is significantly less than 1 in 6,844.
None of the available vaccines covers all types of bacteria that can cause meningitis, and all of the vaccines have “serious adverse event” rates of at least 1% in teens—which means that they are at least 68 times more likely to get sick enough for a hospital visit from just one dose of vaccine than they are from meningitis itself. In order to protect yourself to the fullest extent possible by vaccination (there are lifestyle things you can do to reduce the risk as well), you would have to get six doses altogether of three vaccines, one of which is not even recommended for all teenagers—and you could still die of meningitis!
The truth is, much as we would all like for our “peace of mind” to be able to prevent any risk of infectious disease, it is simply not possible. And vaccinations used to avoid infection can—and often do—have very serious consequences.
2. I’m Already Autistic and I’m Afraid of Polio
This blatant attempt to exploit the autistic population is more than a little infuriating.
First off, no, you can’t “die of polio”—unless you’re traveling internationally on your own as well as vaccinating on your own. No one has even had a case of non-vaccine-strain polio in this country since the 1970s.
Secondly, you can indeed worsen the neurological issues associated with autism through vaccination. If you don’t know that autoimmunity runs rampant in the families of children with autism, you should. It is irresponsible and shameful to exploit medically vulnerable teenagers in this fashion.
3. I Want to Have Children Someday
Bad as numbers one and two are, three may be the worst of all.
Yes, “vaccine-preventable diseases can kill a baby,” but science is indicating that it may be the immune activation associated with the illness rather than the illness itself that is the problem—immune activation of the very sort that vaccination induces. In addition, one particular vaccine may be causing high rates of infertility in young women who receive it.
Needless to say, none of the authors’ suggestions is going to make life bearable for either a child injured by a round of illicit vaccines or a parent who has been lied to about—and must deal with—said injury. But that’s not the authors’ problem; their only concern is to increase vaccination rates because they side with the CDC and pharmaceutical companies.
We all know that the CDC and pharmaceutical companies would like to increase uptake for each and every vaccine out there, regardless of the risks to any particular individual. We also know that they are by no means beyond using propaganda and emotional manipulation to achieve that end, even if it comes straight from the Nazi playbook.
But in an era of rampant immune-mediated chronic illness and low rates of infectious disease mortality, that is lousy public health policy.
And teaching children to be dishonest and violate their parents’ trust is lousy for everything else.
If we care about our children’s health—and we want them to care about it as well— it’s up to us parents.
We need to do everything we can to make sure that our children are not vulnerable to the kind of blatant propaganda being promulgated by the management team at WikiHow.
To do that we need to nurture our relationships with our kids right now, even when it’s hard—no, especially when it’s hard—making sure they understand the value of honesty and trust, when it comes to both their lives and our society as a whole.
~ Zoey O’Toole
For more by Professor, click here.
So, immunization didn’t reduce the incidence (and prevalence) of smallpox to…..0? A disease that was a major scourge of humanity well into the 20th century (along with tuberculosis and malaria, still around) just disappeared? At least those who are fervently anti-vaccination should accept this as a miracle of modern medicine (and, yes, I am well aware that some people were harmed by immunization). Even homeopathic treatment has some harmful side effects, and many feel it’s just water (nocebic).
I fail to see what smallpox incidence and prevalence (which, as you pointed out, is zero) have to do with encouraging children to engage in behavior, without the knowledge or consent of their parents, that could potentially get them killed or disabled for the rest of their lives. It’s not like there’s any possibility that they would be receiving a smallpox vaccine, unless they were also signing up for a tour of duty in the military at the same time.
BUT, I’m glad you brought it up anyway.
According to Stanley Plotkin and Walter Orenstein in their textbook, Vaccines:
And Dr. Tom Mack, Professor of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California, at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP):
The people who were killed by the vaccine might not have thought their lives were worth that particular tradeoff.
I’m also glad you brought up tuberculosis. Tuberculosis cases are at an all-time low in the U.S. (9,029 new cases in 2018), but is still much more common and more serious than measles. Yet few people fear it. Two-thirds of cases are in foreign-born individuals, and we know that smoking increases both risk of developing tuberculosis and the seriousness of it. This reduction in cases was accomplished without any sort of vaccination program. (There is a BCG vaccine that may reduce incidence, but it was never recommended for all in the United States.)
Yes, homeopathic treatment can have some harmful side effects, which should tell you that it’s not placebo. If it were just about belief, people who don’t believe in homeopathy would not experience negative effects, and people who do believe in homeopathy would be expecting positive effects, not negative ones.
first of all i love how you say you cant die of polio. thats completely wrong because of you stupid anti vaxxers its getting brought in again. same with small pox. also vaccines dont give autism like seriously go onto google search if vaccines are good or bad. also use some of the millions saying vaccines are safe not the 5 results saying its bad and.then advertising some anti vax product. (yep those researchers definetely arent getting paid to lie) maybe when you do another article check which side has more evidence and proof. dont use the 1 lonely result. Ps just so you guys know youre abloshing my freedom of speech if you delete this. dont say you deserve vaccine choice if i dont get freedom of speech… everybody on this article should do research smh
*sigh* The “misinformation” in your comment is thick on the ground. See my response to your OTHER comment about smallpox.
How is someone going to get polio in this country if there hasn’t been a non-vaccine-related case since the 1970s? You obviously don’t understand how contagion works. You also don’t understand that that means that it hasn’t been “brought in again.” The live oral polio vaccine, however, has been connected with numerous polio outbreaks in other countries when the weakened virus contained in the vaccine reverted to virulence. As the NPR article makes clear, any “comeback” polio is making is specifically due to the live vaccine: “There’ve been outbreaks this year in the Philippines, China, Myanmar, Pakistan and a half a dozen African countries.” https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/11/15/779865471/polio-vaccine-may-be-preventing-the-end-of-polio
We’re well aware of the folks who are saying that [all] vaccines are [completely] safe and effective, most of which are NOT researchers but “journalists,” paid spokespeople, and bureaucrats. Researchers generally know better than to make such ridiculous statements, thank God.
But how do you know that researchers AREN’T getting paid to lie? The fact is that you don’t. In fact, researchers are paid every day to skew their results in order to hide the truth. That is well documented. Is that outright lying? Not always, but does that matter if it misleads people into believing things that aren’t true, especially about highly lucrative products with no liability and serious risks? No, it doesn’t. Please read the Cochrane Collaboration on the quality of industry-sponsored science before you come back.
By the way, NOT publishing uninformed comments is not “abloshing” anyone’s “freedom of speech.” This is our website, and we are free to reject any comments we wish for whatever reason. “Freedom of speech” means that you can criticize the government and not be thrown in jail, not that anyone has to provide you a platform for whatever nonsense you care to spout.
I will warn you that further uninformed blanket statements from you will not be published. If you wish to be part of the conversation, you are going to have to put some significant time into educating yourself.
Oh, and thank you for making it super-mega clear why parents need to be able to access ACCURATE information about vaccines and communicate it to their children.
Good Lord! You have no idea about Polio do you? Are you even aware of the CDC’s own statics? It’s estimated that 95 to 99 percent of people who contract polio virus are asymptomatic. Never knew they had antibodies for it. Theoretically, as with all viruses if infected a person can infect others although there are no studies or data in regards to a person being infected from someone who has sub clinical Polio which is what the CDC calls it. 95 percent of polio cases, infection from the polio virus causes no symptoms or serious effects. In about 5 percent of cases, the polio virus manifests in a mild form (abortive polio) with flu-like symptoms, in a non-paralytic form (aseptic meningitis) or in a severe form called paralytic polio. People who have minor or non-paralytic forms recover completely. …” One of the renowned Dr of the day held a publicity stunt vaccinating his grandchildren in public because he was financially invested in the Polio vaccine. Dr. Alton Ochsner, New Orleans 30 month old grandson was vaccinated along with his sister. He was vaccinated on April 26, 1955 and died 8 days later from Polio. His sister was paralyzed but eventually recovered. In fact the Polio vaccine caused Polio which is why it was removed from the market. His death was noted in the NYT and the local New Orleans newspaper.
The polio vaccine was introduced in 1954. At the time, paralytic and non-paralytic cases were all being reported as polio – non-paralytic cases actually made up around 55% of the reported cases. In the few years immediately following the introduction of the vaccine, the CDC changed the definition of paralytic polio drastically – from 24 hours of paralysis to 60 days. Since most sufferers of paralytic polio actually recovered within a few weeks, this had the effect of eliminating more than two thirds of the cases to be reported. There was also a change in labeling protocol for non-paralytic poliomyelitis, which had constituted the majority of polio cases reported; it was thenceforth to be labeled viral or aseptic meningitis. Between those two changes, 90% of all cases of polio to be reported were automatically eliminated – eliminated, not eradicated. Indeed, by 1965 the reported cases of polio had decreased by 90% – and the reported cases of aseptic meningitis had increased accordingly. Since that time, local and state public health authorities have had to send all reported cases to the CDC for final analysis before they could officially be declared polio. Coincidentally, the number of cases of polio reported soon dwindled to zero.
Not only did the CDC changed the diagnostic criteria, they renamed Polio. Clinically indistinguishable from Polio are: Spinal meningitis, Post-Polio Syndrome aka GBS. Coxsackie virus and echo viruses can cause paralytic syndromes that are clinically indistinguishable from paralytic poliomyelitis. Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis (NPAFP) is clinically indistinguishable from Polio and it only comes from the vaccine. EV-D68, from a clinical perspective is indistinguishable from Polio which is why some Doctors are saying it’s “polio like”. Polio is alive and the CDC knows it.
Let not forget Simian Virus 40 aka SV-40, a cancer causing virus in the Polio vaccine that continues to be discovered in tumors to this date. Even though the CDC denies that the vaccine was infected with this virus-Dr. Maurice Hilleman admitted it in a video.
You’ve got to hand it to the public relations departments of these companies. They have actually succeeded in making it socially unacceptable to not get vaccinated.
I think I have an insight into who is doing the work. I think it is young liberal arts majors and marketing majors with a zillion dollars in student debt and too young to have any common sense.
Rebecca Rust Lee
Coauthor with Andy Cutler, PhD of “The Mercury Detoxification Manual”
No surprise that Amazon and Facebook are partners in WikiHow….
Pharma’s copywriters have no shame.
They are paid to create content that earns money.
Keystrokes into a digital window.
The banality of evil.
Great rebuttal, thank you so very much!
RE: “Shingrix, is a live-virus vaccine. ”
https://pdf.hres.ca/dpd_pm/00041658.PDF says it is a “(non-live recombinant, AS01Badjuvanted)
The Zostavax is live.
No need to post this comment!! Thank you so very much, we were all horrified to read that article!
Oh, thank you! I could have sworn that I read the other way around. I appreciate the eagle eyes and have no problem publishing your comment because NO ONE gets it all right, even me. 😉
so you say that vaccines have caused harm hm? well has not having vaccines caused harm? yes its even brought smallpox back. ( a diseasse prevented by vaccines) so tell me, why does the amount of sickness rise as soon as anti vaxxers are on the rise again. yep your very “informed” all anti vaxxers are misinformed. look at how many results say vaccines are good vs vaccines are bad. i think we have a winner. oh yeah ban me if you want. it just increases your shame.
Dylan, sweetie, you should not be using the word “misinformed” if you allege that “not having vaccines” has “brought smallpox back.”
That is complete and utter bullshit. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, and the only thing that can “bring it back” is scientists messing with the virus in laboratories in order to weaponize it. https://www.livescience.com/65304-smallpox.html
Please don’t “increase your shame” by continuing to comment further without doing some basic education.
Dylan you are so misinformed. For someone who is so aggressive in your commenting you should at least have so semblance of facts in them. Here is what the world foremost authority on Smallpox told the CDC & the government in 2002 when the Gulf War was started and Bush wanted to mandate the Smallpox vaccine for the entire country:
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON IMMUNIZATION PRACTICES
Atlanta Marriott Century Center
The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices held at the Atlanta Marriott Century Center, Atlanta, Georgia, on June 19 and 20, 2002.
NANCY LEE & ASSOCIATES
Certified Verbatim Reporters
P.O. Box 451196
Atlanta, Georgia 31145-9196
(404) 315-8305
Read the entire presentation here: http://www.vaclib.org/news/drmacks.htm. The important information I will post.
Dr. Thomas Mack:
“I have the opinion that doctors and emergency room workers should not be vaccinated a priori, as a category. I think that is true because the likelihood of their being exposed, even under circumstances of importation, is very, very small. And I also think that that will eventually become mass vaccination, whether we want it to be or not. They will be concerned about their families. There will be people making decisions who have not thought through the risk issues.
Policemen and firemen and everybody else who potentially might be exposed under a contingency will demand equal treatment and I don’t think it’ll work.
*Unexposed community members have negligible risk. There is a substantial risk from a vaccine, as you’ll hear in a moment. It is the single most dangerous live vaccine.*
We would still need to vaccinate and identify contacts. We would need personnel and resources for surveillance rather than mass vaccination. That protection will not be maintained. It will gradually wane and we’ll have to do it again and again.
*The informed consent that you would have to prepare to vaccinate somebody in the public, if it’s honest, would have to say that the dangers would exceed the benefits.*
And even if you fudged those words in such a way that you were happy and thought it would be convincing, an awful lot of people who ultimately might be exposed would not be convinced. You’d have to go back again anyway. So I don’t think it would work and I don’t think it would be beneficial.
*If people are worried about endemic smallpox, it disappeared from this country not because of our mass herd immunity. It disappeared because of our economic development. And that’s why it disappeared from Europe and many other countries, and it will not be sustained here, even if there were several importations, I’m sure. It’s not from universal vaccination.*
Prior to the rabid push for vaccination CBS & Rueters had articles, which are still online reporting on a child being infected by his father, a soldier who was vaccinated before deployment to Iraq. The child and his mother was infected. Both news services had pictures on the child’s body showing the Smallpox infection but they have been blurred or removed entirely from their blogs. However, this website has a picture of the child’s stomach covered with the illness- http://deathbyvaccination.com/. You need to scroll down to the heading- Vaccinated Military Dad Gives Smallpox to His Own 2yr old Son
MODERN WARFARE: AMERICAN SOLDIERS SPREAD SMALLPOX TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
-https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boy-infected-by-fathers-army-vaccine/.
-https://www.reuters.com/article/us-smallpox-vaccine/child-in-hospital-after-father-has-smallpox-jab-idUSN1621332120070317
Smallpox vaccine DID NOT eliminate or eradicate Smallpox.
Regarding “I Want to Have a Baby Someday” I have read that up to 25% of girls that got HPV Shots either lose their period, ovaries dry up or are unable to ever have their own baby. If we look at Male sperm from several decades ago (Before 1986 insanity of Aluminum, thimerosal cancer causing Formaldehyde, fetal cell DNA which is Tumorigenic & more without liability) the sperm today is over 50% dead or not swimming or moving around properly. They move around as if they’ve been Drugged. Just look at how many Fertility Clinics have opened in every town, suburb, city and state. Heck, before 1986 if you wanted to have a baby you just had sex. Today it seems like a lot of people who want to have children go to the Bank and the Fridge?
“I can’t be turned autistic twice”?? Yeah, but you can be turned MORE autistic. How would you like to regress to the point where you’re back in diapers? Nonverbal? Banging your head on walls and floors? This world has gone to hell in a bucket.
What about the converse? If the parents demand vaccination, should the kid resist? Does age or maturity factor into this?
We’re all for honest and open communication. If you are nurturing your relationship with your kids, you are listening no matter what your original beliefs and preconceptions are. I certainly hope that parents who “demand vaccination” would be doing the same.
And, OF COURSE, age and maturity factor in, but “maturity” is usually accompanied by stability and trustworthiness. It’s not mature teens that are the concern here.
Spot on Zoey. Exploiting children at this stage of their life is horrific. Seems so similar to the Nazi Youth League and attempts in other countries to target the youth to conform to the ‘accepted’ ideology.
I just feel sick by this… the pro-vaxx propaganda machine blocks us at every turn. It makes it so much harder to get the message that vaccines are not “safe nor effective” to resistant family members, friends, the community.
I read the wikihow yesterday and was appalled. Who on earth would advocate lying and cover stories? Brilliant rebuttal, Professor.