What a few years ago seemed an immutable truth: "vaccines are necessary" today is being questioned by many people. Parents of children who believe that they are not so necessary, that they do not really work, that they have more side effects than benefits and that their use is only related to the need for pharmacists to continue making money.
Their testimonies have been collected in the book "Life without vaccines", where the reader can find the reasons why parents decide not to vaccinate their children. As a father I find it interesting, curiously, that's why knowing the reasons, as a nurse I think dangerous, depending on where the reader lives and because it is probably full of biased and manipulated reasons and arguments to achieve a truth as unreal as, in theory, the one they criticize.
The author of the book is Andreas Bachmair, a homeopath German residing in Switzerland. This already tells us a lot about the reliability that the book can have. If you wonder what I mean, tell you that I focus on your profession, how this good man earns his bread.
The Homeopathy is one of the greatest deceptions of the present century, because it is an invention of two hundred years ago based on absurd principles (valid then, but not now), like the less you take from a substance the more you heal, or as what heals you is the energy of a molecule that He has transferred his vibrations to the water, without already taking a molecule, but only water, which is still in force and seems to have more and more followers.
Daily I read articles that say that the percentage of people who try homeopathy is increasing, showing two things, one, that most ailments are minor and that today we medicate for things that heal on their own and two, that many people don't know what it takes and that he does not know that homeopathy is not the same as "natural remedies made with plants", since this is phytotherapy.
The last major review of studies on homeopathy was done by Cochrane in 2010. The Cochrane, as you know, is a database that reviews well-done studies on a specific subject, without profit or commercial interests, to try to help know the scientific evidence about health related issues.
Well, in that review of all well-done studies done with homeopathy, the following was concluded:
The findings of reviews of homeopathy studies do not show that homeopathic remedies have an effect beyond placebo.
This means that Homeopathic balls do what the person who takes them thinks they are going to do, that is, the placebo effect. No more no less.
Have a homeopath write a book about the reasons for not vaccinating children subtracts the credibility of how many arguments you can make on the subject.
But they are parents' opinions, their experiences
As I see in the description of the book, what is tried with the book is to gather opinions of parents, experiences, that explain why they do not vaccinate their children, why they made that decision, what they think about vaccines and tell us what very bloody that their children are without having vaccinated them.
And I do not doubt it. I do not doubt that they are very healthy because The 111 stories of parents who have not been vaccinated are sure to come from countries with an excellent level of hygiene, developed countries, where diseases do not usually appear in outbreaks, as in poor countries, and countries where the percentages of vaccinated children are very high.
I myself could not have vaccinated my children and I could almost put my hand in the fire by ensuring that my children would reach old age without taking any of the diseases for which there is a vaccine (except chickenpox, since the vaccine coverage is still low). It could happen, some of my children could take some of them, but the probability would be so low, thanks to the fact that all the people around them would be vaccinated, that they could write a book saying that, indeed, you can live without vaccines.
Book?
Yes, with trick. It is as if all the children lived in a building and every morning they went outside to go to school with their parents. Once all down, they would swell a big mattress together and my family and I jumped on it going down faster than they did. That done, I would write a book saying "Children who go down faster by jumping out the window", explaining that those who go down the stairs or by the elevator do so because they follow the dictates of the elevator assemblers, who have a round business putting an elevator in each building and doing the annual maintenance and manufacturers of slippers and shoes, which every year sell a lot of pairs of shoes because when going down the stairs there is wear that does not appear when you jump out the window.
I would explain that my children are just as healthy and happy as those who go down the stairs and that, in addition, mine take less to lower, because with a simple jump they are already on the ground.
Once the parents of the children read my book, they would realize that it is better to jump out the window and so every day there would be fewer children and parents swelling the mattress and more children jumping on it. The first days there would be few risks. The following, tell me.
What if they lived in another country?
I think we all agree by saying that living in a developed country the risk is low. Now, if children lived in another country, such as in Africa, in countries where polio outbreaks, such as Syria, are emerging, or you know where, the chances of getting sick would be higher. Vaccination rates are lower and the lack of general hygiene, malnutrition, etc., helps spread the disease.
As a curiosity, I have in the consultation some parents who did not vaccinate their children that one day, because they were going to travel, they brought them to administer the polio vaccine. "Of course - I thought - while they have been in Spain there have been no children that could infect them."
What if this extends?
The million dollar question, what happens if more and more parents stop vaccinating their children? Well, the same as with the inflatable mattress from before: the vaccine covers will go down, fewer children will be protected from certain diseases and it will be easier than, in case there is a case of illness, an outbreak occurs by contagion. This does not have to happen in childhood, perhaps it would never happen or perhaps it would happen within a decade or two. But the same thing would happen in Holland, where the Calvinist community of the so-called Biblical Belt does not vaccinate for religious reasons and from time to time suffers measles outbreaks lamenting some loss "because God has wanted it that way."
In summary
In short, it can be an interesting book for those who are looking for arguments for and against vaccines. The problem is that the testimonies are from the parents themselves and not from people of science who endorse with studies why children should not be vaccinated. In contrast, as a recommended book that defends vaccines would put the book of Carlos Gonzalez, "In defense of vaccines", which with scientific studies and real data explains why it is important and logical to vaccinate children. Read and decide.
