Why do these mothers REFUSE to vaccinate their children?
Doctors, other parents, even their own families call them selfish and irresponsible. So ...
WHEN Sarah Holdway’s sons woke one day sweaty, achy and with a vivid red rash all over their torsos, she didn’t panic. A quick consultation with ‘Dr Google’ on the laptop confirmed what she suspected: they had measles.
Other parents would have rushed them to the doctor, fearing the well-documented horrific complications the disease may produce — including pneumonia, encephalitis (swelling of the brain) and even blindness. But not Sarah.
She simply kept the boys, then aged three and 18 months, hydrated and sponged them with a cool flannel. She didn’t even give them Calpol to bring their temperature down.
‘They were unwell for a few days and I left bowls of fruit around and let them sleep when they wanted,’ she says. ‘I set up camp in the living room, providing a calm environment and lots of cuddles, until they felt better.
‘As long as you have a healthy diet and lifestyle I think the body can fight off most things.’
Sarah, 34, is one of a small but determined minority of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children against infectious diseases which have been largely eradicated in this country, including TB, measles, rubella and whooping cough.
The boys picked up measles at a soft-play centre, she believes, from a child who had recently been given the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. Such vaccines are often made from weakened, but live, viruses which remain in the body for a short period and, some believe, can be spread via coughs and sneezes, a process known as ‘shedding’.
Despite watching their children suffer, Sarah, 34, and her partner Mark, 50, who works in IT, remain resolute: ‘No vaccine has ever been proven to be completely safe or effective, so why would I allow my children to be unnecessarily pumped full of the harmful chemicals in them?’ asks Sarah.
‘Diseases like polio and diphtheria have been wiped out in this country — mostly due to good sanitation, not vaccinations, in my view — and I don’t see why parents worry so much about their children getting measles and whooping cough when not so long ago these illnesses would spread and people would just deal with them.’
Thankfully, Daniel, who is now eight, and Calen, six, escapedagainst unscathed. And last year, when they and their sisters Lexa, 15, Grace, four, and Violet, two, contracted whooping cough, Sarah did exactly the same thing.
When Lexa was offered the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, to prevent cervical cancer, at the age of 12, her parents refused that, too.
Sarah remains steadfast in her beliefs, despite facing criticism from health professionals, other parents and even her own family.
‘My parents told me I was “being very silly” and my mum even went so far as to say I was “going to kill” my children.
‘I knew she was wrong, but we stopped discussing the subject.’
Sarah, who lives in East Yorkshire, first started doubting medical advice after her eldest child was due to receive her first set of jabs as a two-month-old. She went, unquestioning, to the doctor’s, where Lexa had the injection to protect against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and haemophilus influenzae type B (known as Hib), plus pneumonia, meningitis B and C and rotavirus, a common cause of diarrhoea and sickness.
She said she was a young and uninformed mother at the time. But as her confidence grew, she started doing her research.
‘The internet wasn’t as accessible back then so I did my reading in the local library and concluded that sanitation had reduced the risk of many illnesses we were vaccinating against,’ says Sarah. ‘Chatting to my dad, I also knew that he and all his friends got measles and whooping cough as kids, and survived.
‘I also discovered what other ingredients, besides vaccines, are in these injections, such as monosodium glutamate and aluminium — all things I don’t want my children exposed to.’
By the time Lexa was four months old and due for her next top-up injection, Sarah had ‘sufficient concerns’ to forgo the appointment. She refused to let her have the MMR vaccination at 12 months, too.
‘My health visitor kept telling me: “These vaccines are recommended for all babies by the health authority” and I said: “I know but I’m actively declining”.
‘When she realised how determined I was, she gave up and said “it’s your choice”. I didn’t want to have to keep defending my decision, so I declined all health visitor involvement for babies three, four and five.’ Sarah takes the same stance with anyone who may object to her decision. ‘People believe that, in not vaccinating our kids, we are spreading diseases and affecting herd immunity (when a disease is effectively wiped out within a population, so protecting the weaker members),’ says Sarah. ‘But that would only be true if vaccines worked, and I don’t believe they do.
‘You cannot vaccinate for every strain of a disease, and I’ve heard of people getting whooping cough despite having had the jab. Also, I don’t believe unvaccinated children spread illness. I think they are much healthier, having developed stronger immune systems.’ However, scientists disagree. ‘There is no question that herd immunity is really, really important,’ says Helen Bedford, professor of child public health at University College London and a member of the Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health (RCPCH).
‘The vaccination programme must not be allowed to become a victim of its own success. The reason we no longer see these diseases is because of how effective the vaccines are.
‘As soon as you stop vaccinating, the diseases come back — which is what happened with measles when Andrew Wakefield raised his groundless concerns about the MMR jab in 1998.
‘Measles is the most infectious childhood illness — and it can kill.
‘Last year, a ten-month-old baby
died from measles. Too young to have had the injection, she was dependent on herd immunity.
‘There have also been children too unwell, due to chronic conditions, to tolerate the vaccines themselves who have died from measles since take-up of the MMR dropped at the turn of this century. Thankfully, we have now recovered from the damage Wakefield did and, at 92 to 93 per cent uptake, levels are good again.
‘Yes, polio and diphtheria are now unheard of in this country, but they could return without vaccines. As recently as 2008, an unvaccinated child died in London from diphtheria — we have a lot of travel to and from countries where these diseases are still common, and we are only as good as our immunisation levels.
‘So while a healthy unvaccinated child may fight off many of these ailments — though there is no guarantee, as each one could lead to serious complications — herd immunity is vital for protecting the vulnerable in our society.’
Yet still some parents cannot put aside their concerns. It was Roxanne Woodhouse’s husband Darren, an engineer, who first questioned her decision not to have Meelah, six, and Arlyn, 18 months, vaccinated.
Roxanne, 31, who has recently qualified as a social worker, was raised by bohemian parents who eschewed conventional medicine, including all inoculations.
By contrast, Darren, 32, had a more mainstream upbringing and was given all recommended jabs.
‘Initially he insisted vaccinations were essential. But we did a lot of research — him looking for evidence to support his understanding that they were safe and effective and me searching for articles to support my belief that they weren’t,’ says Roxanne.
‘In the end we both concluded no vaccine was worth the risk, due to the long list of toxins used and potential side-effects.’
When she and Darren took Meelah to Indonesia for six weeks two years ago, none of them had the recommended vaccines, which include hepatitis A, typhoid, tetanus and poliomyelitis.
‘We are all relatively healthy and we avoided salads or fruit washed in tap water,’ says Roxanne.
Happily, they all returned healthy — and thus far at least, Meelah and Arlyn have not contracted any of the conditions their peers have been inoculated against.
Meelah attends a state primary school close to their home in Bristol and, although some private schools and nurseries don’t allow unvaccinated children, it has not been an issue. However, Dr Bedford says people like the Woodhouses should be wary of poorly researched pseudo-science on the internet.
‘If you set out with the belief that vaccination is not a good thing, it’s easy to find information online to support that view. But it isn’t good science,’ warns Dr Bedford. ‘All vaccines can give rise to sideeffects, but they are usually mild: tenderness at the injection site, being off-colour, having a fever.
‘These must be balanced against the much higher risks associated with natural disease.’
AnApHYLAxIS is a rare, serious allergic reaction to vaccines, which can also be triggered by some foods and drugs and is treated with adrenaline.
Between 1997 and 2003, there were 130 reports of anaphylaxis following immunisations in the UK. Everyone affected survived.
About 117 million doses of vaccines were given in the UK during this period, meaning that one person in every 900,000 suffered this adverse reaction.
Yet such statistics were not enough to persuade Therese Hoyle, an educational consultant, to have her daughter Amber inoculated. Instead she gave her alternative remedies, prescribed by a homeopath.
‘It just didn’t seem right to me to put chemicals into a healthy baby, so I did a lot of research and reading around it,’ says Therese.
now 19 and sitting A levels, Amber has reached adulthood without having received a single jab, including the HpV vaccine.
The only ill effect she has suffered, so far at least, is having to defend her mother’s decision to other teenagers at her private girls’ school in Worcestershire.
Therese has similarly been forced to explain herself to other parents, including a friend’s husband who took her to task on Facebook.
‘He was very antagonistic in a post,’ says Therese. ‘When Amber didn’t have the HpV she also experienced some unkindness from other children.
‘She came home from school at the age of 12 and asked me to explain why I’d chosen not to let her have the vaccination.
‘I showed her books about it and downloaded information from the internet so she could read it, then she understood there were risks that I didn’t want her to take.
‘We talked about the importance of a healthy diet and exercise and how that has helped her maintain a very strong immune system.’
One can only hope that Therese and the other anti-vaccination parents never have cause one day to regret their choices.