Right Mothering

Beware Antibiotics for Ear Infections

What are the Dangers of Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccination?

Girls Used as Guinea Pigs in HPV Trials

My second cautionary tale has made it into the mainstream press, but that does not necessarily mean it has made it into the mainstream consciousness.  First, check out this old interview of Dr. Drew by Tucker Carson.  (Just gloss over Dr. Drew’s statement that “pregnancy is a diseased state and can be quite dangerous to women”) and this almost three-year old article from the New York Times based on the publication of then-recent research.

Now, my pill-clouded experience of long-term relationships was not the most positive.  Passion subsided soon after the first flush of excitement, and now I know why –  the pill.  I was lucky to escape those relationships, but I was even luckier to have been off the pill when I met my husband.

Since being off the pill for many years, I now appreciate the natural hormonal fluctuations of my body.  When I am ovulating, arousal is wonderfully overpowering.  I do not know how a marriage would remain physically fulfilling without this monthly ebb and flow of desire.  And more importantly, how can one truly fall in love if ovulation and its accompanying hormones and the resulting arousal are suppressed?

And we should not forget yet one more generally unacknowledged danger of the pill: as a contaminant of nature.

** Update **

Just came across this old news about how the pill interferes in other chemical ways with falling in love.

I spent a good chunk of my twenties on the birth control pill, and given the lack of an open discussion of its downsides (see the recent article in the New York Times) and the concomitant promotion of its supposed benefits in advertising, this should pose no great concern.

However, I wish I had known what I know now, and I will share this knowledge with my daughter when she comes of age.

First, a little over one year ago, my not-so-conventional doctor tested me for various food sensitivities and found that I had an overgrowth of Candida. I had noticed no digestive problems, and my complaint was severe seasonal allergies. Mainstream doctors will not diagnose Candida, nor its less flattering name – leaky gut. Well, I healed my gut through a diet eliminating yeast and anything that feeds yeast as well as all the foods to which I apparently had sensitivities, and my seasonal allergies disappeared, never to return, even after returning to my pre-diagnosis diet.

Now, of all the possible causes of Candida, my instinct tells me it was my multiple years on oral contraception. Playing games with your hormones comes at a cost. (See the following article on the website of Dr. Mercola, a great source for information on alternative medicine).

The pill is not harmless, and the trumpeting of its benefits in commercials and the mainstream press does, at least thus far, immeasurable harm to women.

I read Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit throughout each workday, but was disappointed yesterday to read his posting on vaccinations.  He refers to a recent article in his local newspaper and includes a link to an earlier article of his that was published in August.

My perspective on vaccination was shaped by the time I lived in Western Europe, which included the birth and first three years of my daughter’s life.  I gave birth in a free-standing birth house, and a family doctor performed the first check-up in our home the morning after.  He was one of only two doctors who would support the mission of the birthhouse in this way.  We were very lucky that he then took our daughter as a patient.  He practiced homeopathy in addition to conventional medicine.  We trusted him and his recommendations regarding vaccination.

In this western European country, there are no vaccination requirements, ever.  The choice to vaccinate is considered a sacred right of the parents.  Our doctor recommended selective vaccination, beginning at 6 months.  We vaccinated only against those diseases that have are likely to have severe effects – polio, diphtheria, and tetanus.  He also recommended we consider vaccination against rubella when our daughter was of childbearing age.

When we were planning our relocation to the United States, and I began to explore pre-school options, I was shocked by the long list of required vaccinations.  We went to the doctor to ask him to administer the necessary vaccines, or at least one or two, accompanied with his usual homeopathic vaccine drainage.  He refused.  He considered the administration of the remaining vaccines a violation of the Hippocratic oath.

Now, I do not wish to get into details of the pros and cons of each vaccine; I lack the expertise.  But I can share this perspective.  Although some of the vaccinations and their requirement have clear merit, wouldn’t most libertarians be inclined to question the government’s wisdom in its requirement of so many vaccines?  Chicken pox, among them?  Especially when we know that another fully advanced Western European society takes the absolute opposite position and that good doctors there agree with only three of the vaccines on the ever-expanding list here?

Both the Knoxville News article and Reynolds’ piece appeal to the greater good, without appreciating the cost to certain individuals.

“Public health officials argue that getting children vaccinated is for a greater good because it protects those who can’t be vaccinated – young babies, people with immune-system problems and children undergoing chemotherapy, to name some – as well as the 5 percent to 15 percent of the population for whom the vaccines don’t work.”

“But when people decide to forgo vaccination, they threaten the entire system. They increase their own risk and the risk of those in the community, including babies too young to be vaccinated and people with immune systems impaired by disease or chemotherapy.”

I do not mean to be callous, and I certainly don’t want to tempt fate, but knowing that I breastfeed my children well into toddler hood and thereby confer extended immunity on them and based on the excellent lifelong good health of most everyone in both of our families, I do hesitate to put my children at risk for, in my mind, still to be disproved ailments associated with vaccines.  From that vantage point, I consider the possible side effects of vaccines more worrisome than the diseases against which they inoculate, at least in the case of chicken pox, whooping cough, measles, and hepatitis B.  In this instance, I definitely doubt the wisdom of government.