I’ve experienced quite a number of pros and cons associated with religion as a pastor’s kid, from members complaining about my pants to staff members stealing from the offering plate. My dad had a pretty big church that dwindled down after he left my mother for a woman he met online. Honestly, I think most mega-churches could star a role in a reality television drama with what went on behind the scenes. Let’s just say I haven’t been back to church in awhile.
Understandably, while growing up in that kind of environment, I’ve developed some peeves when it comes to religion. No, I’m not anti-Christianity either. Since I like to be inclusive, one peeve I’ve developed with atheists online is seeing some mock others online for metaphysical concepts, as if the existence of science has truly nullified the possible existence of a supernatural being. I’ve seen way too many people admitted with suicidal ideation by now to stoop to a level of mocking someone else for simply being religious. If you want to believe in God, in the force, or in a flying spaghetti monster, if you’re not hurting those around you, then great.
But let’s get back to why I’m writing this article in the fist place. One thing that really bugs me when it comes to mainstream Christianity is a need some individuals have to control others’ viewpoints by giving them a spiritual ultimatum that… doesn’t actually exist. While I know manipulation isn’t somehow unique to religion, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise, it is a “hot button” issue for me personally witnessing it a number of times. On most occasions, it was coming from someone in a leadership position, such as the pastor of a church or a famous public speaker. This was anything from a pastor shaming people for their political vote, to a husband telling his wife to “submit” to him, to a youth pastor shaming teen girls for their breasts developing and asking them to wear a shirt at the pool or “boys would stumble.” Regardless, it would involve his/her personal beliefs presented as God’s truth. And that’s dangerous.
American Association of Christian Counselors defines religious abuse as: “Spiritual abuse is the use of faith, belief, and/or religious practices to coerce, control, or damage another for a purpose beyond the victim’s well-being.”
The National Association of Spiritual Recovery further expounds on this: “The use of spiritual truths or biblical texts to do harm is another form of spiritual abuse…even if what is said is a quote from the Bible, even if ‘submission’ and ‘obedience’ [e.g] are in a general sense virtues. It is the twisting of good things in order to do harm that is so disturbing about this kind of abuse.“
So why am I talking about spiritual abuse? I saw an article that angered the living daylights out of me, having a click-bait headline that drew in Christian readers and then gave them an ultimatum in choosing between God and vaccines, as if the two are polar opposites. The term “abuse” doesn’t have to mean a physical altercation. It doesn’t have to mean someone gets PTSD. Her entire article is presented as a false dilemma fallacy, which is a manipulative fallacy that, in this case, could create feelings of guilt and fear that would not otherwise be there if she wasn’t implying that God thinks vaccinating is a sin. In other words, a person may not merely be swayed by an opinion that was presented fallaciously, but may subsequently struggle spiritually and emotionally if they are feeling guilty for previously vaccinating, or are now feeling like they have to decide between God and vaccination.
Let me show you how it started off:
We need to talk. If you are not a Christian, this post is not for you. I still love you. I still accept you. I don’t know what you believe and I’m not trying to convince you to believe otherwise. People who practice other religions … I am not well versed in the art of your faith, so you’ll find little help in this post.
No judgment here, but I need to speak to my Jesus peeps. You see, there’s this little thing called a religious exemption and it’s being threatened. A religious exemption is offered in 47 states and gives you the right to opt out of vaccinations if it is objectionable to your faith … and in case you’re wondering, it is objectionable to our faith.
If you’re a Christian, you should care.
We all have personal opinions. I am pro-vaccine due to not only my educational background, but actually witnessing children succumb to vaccine-preventable diseases. I have worked five years in a hospital and I have never seen a single incidence of a “vaccine injury,” other than a fever. And while I feel nothing but anger towards people like her for spreading an ideology that directly harms others, and while I have had horrible experiences when it comes to religion, I have still never felt the need to stoop to such a low level that I would claim God doesn’t love someone anymore (even indirectly) because they don’t agree with me. First of all, because I don’t believe that, and second of all because that is textbook manipulation.
I need to clarify that I’m not pretending that I am somehow better than others because I have studied this topic for years and have experience in a hospital setting. People tend to infer an appeal to authority when someone mentions he/she has a background in the field being debated. In reality, I am aware that someone can pick up a textbook and teach themselves, and I’d love to have a real detailed discussion about vaccination with someone who is against it one day (I just haven’t had that opportunity, considering I’ve never met one who knows what they’re talking about). What I’m trying to express is that the topic of vaccination isn’t something I merely stumbled upon while reading her post, but is very important to me for multiple reasons. This isn’t a sensitive topic for just her, it’s also a sensitive topic for me as well. Likewise, she is allowed to have her opinion and share it with others, and my problem with her blogpost isn’t simply because she disagrees with me. If I have learned anything as a pastor’s kid, I learned that it’s possible to share one’s opinion – even a harsh opinion– without using religious threats and emotional tactics. If you have to convince someone to be on your side by claiming their worth as a Christian or human being is at stake instead of having an actual argument, you may want to rethink the way you handle arguments.
I can’t predict the future (usually), but let me tell you what’s going to happen if you choose not to care. First, they’ll go after the philosophical exemption. It’s the easiest exemption to get and the easiest exemption to get rid of. Next, they’ll start infringing upon the religious exemption claiming things like, “religious objectors are not constitutionally exempt from vaccinations.” They’ll tell you (like in New York) that you can get a religious exemption but you’ll have to use the magic words and hope that the person who probably doesn’t believe in God and knows nothing about your faith is having a good day. In other states, health departments are magically “misplacing” the exemption cards they’re required to have on hand – the same one your child needs to attend school. Eventually, they’ll do away with the religious exemption all together like California, West Virginia, and Mississippi already have. Your only recourse will be to homeschool. When enough people start homeschooling … they’ll come after you and your kids too.
They’ll come after your kids? Just a tad overdramatic from a school asking your child to get their vaccinations up to date. Her first point was a slippery slope fallacy, and then she goes into Sith Lord mode, separating pro-vaccination as the out-group and Christianity as the in-group. An “us” vs “them,” if you will.
First, who is “they?” Why is she singling out “us” from “them,” considering when according to available demographics, her assumption is not supported and those against vaccination are not primarily one religion? I really tried to find anything that backed up her opinions. I couldn’t even find it an accepted belief among specific groups in Christianity that are stereotypically “old-fashioned” such as orthodox protestant. Considering 84% of conservatives seem to support vaccination, even coming from the perspective she’s shared in previous blogs of her religion being associated with her political party (in-group homogeneity), the anti-vaccine movement doesn’t seem to be polarized according to either specific religion OR party affiliation. In other words, while she’s making it seem as if religious exemptions are only given to Christians and Christians are the only ones trying to get exempted from vaccination in the first place, this doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Even if we looked at other parts of the world, I couldn’t find studies that supported her assumption. My point is that matter how much I try to find evidence that can support her opinion that requiring vaccinations is somehow persecuting Christians (unless we’re including the “Christian Scientists” cult) there is really no way to extrapolate “Christians = anti-vaccine” from available data I’ve seen, and I’m sure she knows this already or she wouldn’t be writing a blogpost to convince Christians not to vaccinate.
The reason I’m mentioning all of this is because I want to highlight how she is using GroupThink tactics in her very first paragraph, to make her intended audience feel a part of her group, as if they’re vigilantes fighting against the “others.” She makes it seem as if Christianity and your local health department are engaging in spiritual battles like something out of a reject book from Tolkien. It would be one thing if she backed up her assumptions (e.g “who probably doesn’t believe in God.”) with any stats whatsoever on personal beliefs among health department or pediatric office employees who are promoting vaccination, but she didn’t. It would be on thing if she backed up her assumptions that the government is persecuting Christians by denying religious exemptions, but she didn’t. In fact, the links that she provided showed quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.
“Ms. Check said she rejected vaccination after her daughter was ‘intoxicated’ by a few shots during infancy, which she said caused an onslaught of food and milk allergies, rashes and infections. Combined with a religious revelation she had during the difficult pregnancy, she said, the experience turned her away from medicine. Now she uses holistic treatments.”
Ms. Check has no evidence to point support that her daughter being “intoxicated” by shots (though it sounds like a different kind of intoxication may have been involved). Ms. Check says she had a religious revelation. Let’s have her quote express a different perspective, shall we?
“Mrs. Smith says she rejected organic food after her daughter was “intoxicated” by the pesticides, which she said caused an onslaught of food and milk allergies, rashes, and infections. Combined with a direct revelation from God, she said the experience turned her away from organic plants and to pepperoni pizza.”
If your first thought is “uh…you sure about that ‘revelation?'” then you’re starting to see how claiming you were visited by an angel or had a huge revelation from God could be rather difficult to support in terms of religious exemptions. It’s our constitutional right to be able to worship without fearing the government is going to take us away or hurt us. Fear of going to a church/mosque/synagogue and being killed for it is a reality in other parts of the world. Having the free exercise of religion is quite an important right that our founding fathers gave us. Thomas Jefferson wasn’t part of one single religion and still found it in our best interest to be able to worship and practice our own. This is already a really good thing. And in addition to our freedom to worship, citizens can fight for religious exemption from practicing what they believe goes against their religion – even if they’re full of crap and are just trying to get out of gym class. You can be the only one in your religion who believes this, and still have the right to fight for it.
However, as US citizens, we are also expected to pay taxes and abide to laws. You can fight this, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to win. While I’d love to claim that my religion of “Moneyarian” prohibits me from paying taxes or getting a jail sentence for robbing a bank, as US citizens, we aren’t given whatever we ask simply because we don’t like it- even if you personally can back it up with scripture (e.g “ask and it shall be given to you”). That’s not how reality works.
Vaccination isn’t a religion, isn’t part of a religion, and isn’t adhered to or rejected by specific religious demographics.
I know vaccination truly being part of a religion may not be something pertinent to the legality of fighting for a religious exemption, since you can still claim it goes against your personal beliefs, but I do think it’s important to mention in case anyone is feeling personally victimized by vaccination being mandatory. As I previously mentioned, one interesting thing about the anti-vaccine movement is that it is not just “the liberals” or “the conservatives” or “the christians” or “the atheists.” It seems to counterintuitively avoid polarization among any group of individuals other than rich white people. Affluent whiteness is not the pinnacle of Christian doctrine (though some may think that).
I know many who hate religion claim that Christianity and medicine opposites, but I’ve worked enough with Christian doctors and nurses to know otherwise. Even throughout history, Christianity played a major role in sparking the field of nursing back in the Middle Ages. My own field of osteopathic medicine (D.O. in the us, not an osteopath) was burgeoned by a pastor’s kid. I sacrificed my 20’s to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in money I don’t have to one day maybe save a life. Because the value of human life is that important to me. That’s not anti-Christian doctrine.
This is my own personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt: I believe claiming that mandatory vaccination goes against Christianity is abusing the system. While she claims that Christians should be scared that “they” will take away “our” religious exemptions, abusing her rights by claiming it’s her religion that disagrees and not simply her personal opinions will certainly not help that. The courts aren’t in charge of determining whether a personal belief actually falls in line with someone’s religion by bringing in Theologians and having a debate (it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re the only Christian in America who believes something is a part of your religion), but you’re still going to have to provide evidence for how it will greatly affect your faith. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be against filing religious exemptions for every little thing someone personally disagrees with. If it helps, imagine this with someone who isn’t a part of your religion. If we’re going to go down a slippery slope, imagine your state removing religious exemptions because a small group of people kept filing them in the name of Spaghetti Monsterism to get out of [insert controversial subject here]. That’s not martyrdom, that’s just being an asshole. And it happens all the time.
(Some excerpts from the link)
There is no “us” vs “them” here.
When “they” can’t convince you with science, they will inevitably invoke Jesus by getting “physician” guest bloggers who claim to be Christian to paraphrase a few Bible verses and tell you to get vaccines in the name of “loving your neighbor” and all that. They’re banking on the fact that you’ll refer to the “leader” and not the “Word.”
Let’s break down the points she tried to make here:
- I’m not sure what a “claim to be Christian” is (I’m going to take a wild stab that she thinks she’s the “real” kind who is a shining example of Christianity), but I’m sure both “real” and “fake” Christians can get doctorates. I can’t figure out whether or not she’s mocking the thought of a Christian doctor existing, or implying they’re fake physicians, but it’s an ad hominem either way.
- If she’s implying you can’t be both a doctor and a Christian, a majority of my class in medical school are Christians. When I did research full time, even my principle investigator was a Christian. A ton of doctors are Christians. Many of my professors are Christians. So no matter whether or not someone personally believes that all doctors are satanists, you still don’t get asked to deny Christianity and bow to satan at a white coat ceremony. I know I’m using hyperbole here, but she is still claiming “they” are trying to attack Christianity and not disease.
- If she’s implying that they’re not a real physician, chances are, if a person puts their face, title, and specific information you can search and/or LinkedIn account on a blogpost claiming they’re a physician and a Christian, they’re probably a physician and a Christian. The funny part is, if she’s implying they’re lying, this throws a lot of anti-vaccine advocates under the bus, considering the only time I’ve seen fake doctors is on Twitter when anti-vaxx homeopaths put “Dr.” behind their name because they took an online class. I know this is anecdote, so you’re more than willing to find me fake pro-vaccine “doctors” using a real profile picture and name (there are a lot of anonymous trolls on either side). Let’s not forget the “The Health Ranger” who owns NaturalNews, claiming to be an expert in health, yet somehow can’t mention what undergrad he went to or what he majored in (Bachelors of Science can include a ton of subjects). He was magically able to mention that he totally got accepted to MIT (sure Jan), a specific university, yet couldn’t name his major or his undergraduate school.
- Why on earth is “guest blogger” used as a pejorative? Who cares if someone does it full time or not, as long as they actually studied the subject?
- I’m concerned that the phrase “if they can’t convince you with science” was used non-ironically. I understand if you’re an atheist, you believe religion is a branch of mythology. That’s fine. But if you’re a Christian, then the world surrounding us was created. There’s not really a way around that, considering biology is the study of life. The scientific method is just a boring way of saying “lets make some guesses, get some data, and form new guesses from the data.” It’s always open to change, but the accumulation of statistically-significant data is a big deal when making the next educated guess. It’s usually the whole “it can be backed up by math and deductive reasoning” thing that sparks my interest in the first place, not makes me lose interest. She’s acting as if Christians can only form opinions via Ouija board.
- Why would I use a Bible verse to try to get Christians to agree with my views on vaccines? I’ve never had to quote the Bible to explain that death and disease are horrible things. Why? Because I already know that Christians are not somehow incapable of rational thought and observing the world around them. And assuming that I have to open the Bible and explain that to another person, especially one who witnessed polio themselves, is downright laughable, whether or not they’re religious. The Bible is not going to mention vaccination. It can’t mention vaccination. She uses that to her advantage to pretend what the Bible would say. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word is not named Megan.
- Speaking of “The Word,” her last sentence is somehow both mind-numbingly platitudinous and nonsensical, considering it’s based off of another false dichotomy fallacy. She’s acting as if those who promote health are somehow simultaneously promoting anti-Christian and pro-dictatorship values, two beliefs that are not opposites, by using their title as a weapon. One is a religion and one is a some letters on a coat. I’m got used to hearing crappy platitudes hidden in “Christian-ese” jargon when people tried to sugar coat their own personal opinion.
If your pastor says it’s okay … then it must be okay right? No … because your pastor isn’t Jesus and probably hasn’t read the vaccine package inserts or ingredients list, and he was probably told that God loves children who get measles more than vaccine-injured children. Chances are though, like many Christians, your pastor hasn’t even thought about it.
Again, she needs to stop assuming that Christians can’t be doctors or haven’t formed their opinions based off actually studying something for themselves. You can have a great relationship with God and also be able to read and physically comprehend something. And I’m not indirectly claiming that pro-vaccination means better comprehension. If you’re anti-vaccine as a Christian and disagree with my viewpoints, I’m still assuming you did so because you formed your own opinion by yourself without blindly following your pastor. Just like Megan, other people question things and try to learn. On top of it, you’re more than 30 times more likely to get the measles if you’re unvaccinated, so that sarcastic statement about God loving a group of kids more also makes no sense. Does she mean “God loves kids who don’t get the measles?” Because while it’s still emotion-driven garbage, it’s at least more accurate garbage. Not to mention, she’s indirectly claiming that if Jesus was here on earth in the 21st century, that he’d be startled to read the package insert. That’s quite a bold claim to make.
The package inserts are not the same thing as a warning label, and it’s scary how often I have to describe this, as it makes me concerned that people are informed about the medications they’re taking. If you are on a bunch of medications, it’s good to know side effects. Even if you need it. This can truly save your life in the future. For instance, I take birth control, and DVT is right there on the package insert as an actual warning. Do not smoke with the meds — this is why! The black box warning label is the warning label. And required vaccines don’t have any. Check it out yourself:
These are just a few of the many examples. If you clicked on the picture, you can see the separate section for “adverse reactions,” which is what anti-vaxxers are always talking about in terms of the “vaccine insert.” From my own experience, I’m almost always given the same highlighted screenshots of someone else’s picture of a physical paper insert (I’m sadly not exaggerating), but vaccine inserts can range from 10-40 pages long. If someone gives you a 1-page screenshot, this is not the full package insert. Package inserts are also not “hidden” as antivaxxers claim, as any package insert is available through a quick google search. If you want more information, here’s a list of vaccine information that can help you narrow down your search. You’re more than welcome to read the adverse reactions, but it’s important to clarify that these are not synonymous with a true warning label as anti-vaxxers claim. These are the reported side effects from VAERS (meaning someone who claims that the vaccine gave them chiggers would be reported), and are not based off of statistically-significant studies. Anybody can claim something, but statistical analyses matter in terms of finding trends in the VAERS data, which is how we determined that the 1998 Rotavirus vaccine increased chances of intussusception. It was taken off the market in 1999. This is what happens when a real “vaccine injury” is found. I don’t know why anti-vaxxers claim the government doesn’t want you to know about VAERS, as if the government hasn’t discovered Google, and when the CDC made a quick decision to use a different vaccine as soon as legitimate side effects were discovered.
The most important part of an insert aside from warning label are the contraindications. This is what should always be checked before a vaccine isn’t administered. If a child had a reaction due to a negligent physician who didn’t check their history, then absolutely report them. That is their fault, and you can file a lawsuit.
As for the ingredients, the ingredients aren’t thrown in there for the heck of it. That’s because people like me work in a laboratory and know how to actually pronounce the names and understand how they work and why they’re there. This is where I tend to get overly snarky, because I am so tired of anti-vaxxers presenting some ingredients like they’re weapons of mass destruction because they saw an IUPAC name and think it involves dead fetuses floating around or some kind of witchcraft. I’m not expecting everyone else to know a lot about chemistry, as that’s pretentious and idiotic. Few people care that much about chemistry- I get that. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re going to fight against vaccine ingredients and use them as fear-mongering, at least know what they are before suggesting people read a list that would get a shrug those of us who know what the words mean.
To put this into perspective, picture another person claiming your favorite food is “poison,” as they start reading off the ingredients one by one. Even if you’re on the other end of your phone/computer sneering saying “except mine would just say ‘lettuce!'” It wouldn’t. Even if we’re talking all organic food grown in the earth, the kind of fear-mongering in regards to vaccine ingredients includes what it’s made from as well as what is in it, even if it’s microscopic and/or measured with a micropipette. If we’re just talking about organic lettuce, an anti-lettuce site would have a list of the bacteria, the pesticides organic plants are exposed to, the fact that it grew in literal feces, as well as the chances of developing brain-eating parasites, and all of the “toxins” pouring into it from the rain.
I love a good spinach salad. It’s delicious. I don’t care if a cow shat in it previously. You can make it look like all organic lettuce is contaminated E.coli or healthier than the alternative with a good enough click-bait headline. I love vegetables.
My dad is a pastor and he thought about it. That’s why I’m vaccinated.
Then there’s the practically mythical “extreme crazy Christian” angle, which is how people (even some Christians) who vaccinate like to portray Christians who don’t. You know, the “God gave me an immune system so I’m just going to “faith-heal myself well” and He will protect me while I roll around in polio” perception. This is certainly within God’s power; but guys, this is a highly inaccurate perception. Let’s clear up these misguided perceptions, shall we
By posting something like this, trying to control the viewpoints of others by telling them they’re bad Christians for vaccinating, you’re certainly not helping.
In the Beginning
In the beginning, this is how it all went down: God created heaven, earth, day, night, water, dry land, plants, animals, people, and … the immune system. He then said,
I’m missing something … oh yes, Adam needs the DNA of a dog, some cells of a monkey’s kidney, a couple of mutated viruses, bits of ground up aborted baby, a few carcinogens, some detergent, and a little hazardous waste to help trick his immune system into giving him some temporary junk immunity. Well … Adam is a grown man, so maybe I should shoot up his baby first.
Wrong. God saw all that He had made and “it was very good.” God’s perfect. Nothing further needed.
Oh my. Let’s break all of this bull crap down. We all know pain exists in the world. Disease exists, congenital development abnormalities exist, parents mourn their children every day, and many people are suffering. In order to pretend the immune system is already perfect, one would have to ignore the slew of other biological issues that are also no fault of the individual. The Bible is filled with pain and suffering. Job lost his entire family. Lot’s wife died while their town was exploding. If something is “very good,” that’s not synonymous with “can never fuck up.” OBVIOUSLY pain exists. I couldn’t imagine being so clueless to what goes on in the world that one of my driving points is dependent upon the existence of congenital conditions or the ability to develop cancer without doing anything wrong. I’m honestly jealous. When you view the world through the lens of a snowflake, yeah, I’m sure a needle would look scarier than cervical cancer that she apparently thinks can be treated with bubbles, gumdrops, and some turmeric.
Also, what is with those “ingredients” she listed? I think SHE may want to actually read what ingredients are in vaccines. Don’t you think I’d avoid my flu shot every year if I knew there were deadly carcinogens and tiny dead babies floating around in it? There aren’t. The ingredients are safe.
“Yeah, but then sin entered the world?”
Oh yes, and so did our arrogance. We actually think “we” hold the key to improving upon His design … as if He forgot something when He created the immune system. Thank God He created us to fix it, right? Except that sin gave us the capacity to perform all sorts of evil deeds (1 Peter 2:16) so the fact that God gave us the ability to make vaccines does not make them safe or effective and is not a reason to use them.
Give me a break. I don’t believe God gave us a functioning brain just for us to be forever afraid of inventing something new. If she thinks technology designed to save lives is “arrogant,” she may want to go ahead make herself DNR so no arrogant person dares to save her life using said evil technology. Throw in blood transfusions while she’s at it! I’m sure she drives a car everyday, which is totally “arrogant” by her standards, considering she has two functioning legs God obviously wanted her to use. If God gave you legs (and 100% of people are born with two legs according to her previous logic that nothing can go “wrong” in utero), how arrogant is it that you defy his plan for your life by driving a car everyday? Utilizing technology is a sin according to her ideology.
Yeah, I think that sounds ridiculous too.
I really don’t know another way to respond to these histrionic claims of hers other than using similar theatrics. My argument sounds like I’m responding from the viewpoint of a middle schooler who is yelling at her BFF. It sounds ridiculous just typing it out. But a majority of her points have been based off of emotional tactics. I was taught that a lot of bad things entered the world when Eve sinned, but notice she still didn’t argue that point. While Christians may not all have the same viewpoints, and I don’t want to speak on behalf of those who may not take Genesis literally, she didn’t explain how a viewpoint that sin sparked disease and suffering means that trying to combat that suffering is in itself a sin. Evil deeds have always existed. According to the Bible, Lucifer, the angel, was jealous and arrogant himself before he and other angels fell. Arrogance isn’t unique to humankind according to scripture.
So let’s look at that again:
“The fact that God gave us the ability to make vaccines does not make them safe or effective and is not a reason to use them.”
Aborted Fetal Cells
God is pro-life and this is an un-contested issue. There is zero scriptural support to the contrary. If you’re a Christian, you might be surprised to know that more than 23 vaccines contain cells, cellular debris, protein, and DNA from aborted babies, including: Adenovirus, Polio, Dtap/Polio/HiB Combo, Hep A, Hep A/Hep B Combo, MMR, MMRV Pro Quad, Rabies, Varicella, and the Shingles vaccines.
I’m sorry, but we cannot hold up a pro-life sign on Sunday and give our child a chicken pox vaccine on Monday. We can’t be against abortion but utilize a product derived from it, or knowingly support an industry that profits from it. Now, I usually turn a blind eye to my fellow Christian friends who do this — It’s their business and I am not the ultimate judge, but when someone tells me I “have” to inject my kid with a product derived from and containing aborted fetal ingredients, you better believe I have a problem with it.
“Un-contested issue” and “Zero scriptural support to the contrary” are not true (isn’t lying a sin?), considering not only is abortion an extremely controversial subject, but the Bible does mention abortions. Women in Old Testament were forced to have an abortion by their husband if accused of infidelity and the Bible talks about God killing children in the womb. Should we also mention that the Bible talks about dashing children against rocks? This doesn’t mean that I think Christianity should support abortions, rather that she can’t lie while crossing her fingers while hoping no one else has actually read the Bible. And before someone jumps out and says “But you have to read it in context!” I know this. I’m not pretending to be a Biblical scholar, nor am I trying to actually debate the subject of abortion- I’m just trying to refute her assumption that this is an “uncontested issue” with “zero scriptural support.” The Old Testament was rough, even when one takes into account the context and time period before Jesus’ death/resurrection. It’s pretty important to acknowledge the fact that a number of passages are extremely morbid without a commentary rather than pretending controversial scriptures don’t exist. This being said, I am really aggravated by her generalizing scripture like everyone is on the same page (both literally and metaphorically). Not to mention, even on top of scripture, one’s viewpoint of abortion involves both metaphysical concepts like “when does life begin?” along with their religious beliefs such as “is God okay with abortion?” that can certainly be backed up with one’s interpretation of scripture and view of God, but “zero scriptural support” and pretending no debate exists among Christians is simply not true.
But let’s talk about vaccines now. There aren’t aborted fetuses in vaccines. It’s actually kind of funny that here she is complaining about how mandatory vaccination somehow persecutes Christians (with no evidence to support that statement), while a majority of women who receive abortions are Christian, Huh, I wonder why she never mentioned that.
I get my vaccines for free. If this was all for profit, don’t you think they’d make healthcare workers pay for them, considering flu shots are mandatory for healthcare workers? It’s either get a vaccine or get fired, so why don’t they make a ton of money off of it? What single “industry” is she talking about that profits from vaccines, for that matter? The CDC? The government? Private companies? Random compounding pharmacies? All of the above? We save money more than make money by paying for cheaper prevention instead of more expensive treatments in a hospital. The money comes from saving money on hospital bills, not from giving out free vaccines (as if that makes sense). My husband’s vancomycin alone cost over $1200 without insurance. “Big Pharma” makes far more from medications compared to vaccines. There’s not just one pharmaceutical industry, or that would be really confusing to explain my birth control company change. Even doctors complain about over-priced meds. Doctors are patients too, and that’s why so many are out fighting for more affordable healthcare. I want healthcare to be affordable. I don’t like some pharmaceutical industries making life-saving medication practically impossible to afford without insurance. In other words, it is not only silly, but downright stupid to believe 100% of doctors who are pro-vaccination also are obsessed with money and are in cahoots with 100% of pharmaceutical companies, 100% of which somehow work for the government, which is fighting against Christianity.
“it’s their business and I’m not the ultimate judge.”
That is a response so puerile and passive-aggressive that it’s downright cringe-worthy. The “ultimate judge” isn’t Megan, she’s right. But I suggest next time she avoid implying that those who vaccinate will be thrown into hell.
We’re talking about Christianity here, which means we believe in the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not murder (Exodus 20:13 & Deuteronomy 5:13).” Children are recognized from God at the point of conception (Genesis 4:1, 17, and Jeremiah 1:5), are knit together by God in the womb (Psalm 139:13-16; Psalm 22:10-11; & Galatians 1:15), are blessings from God (Genesis 1:28; Genesis 4:1; and Psalms 127:3 and 113:7-9), are valued and loved (Matthew 18:1-14 and 19:13-15), are created in His image (Genesis 1:27), and their killing is condemned (Psalm 106:35, 37-38). In fact, the prophet Amos condemns the Ammonites because they “ripped open expectant mothers in Gilead” (Amos 1:13) and child killing was one of the major reasons that God’s anger burned against the Kingdom of Israel bringing about their destruction and exile (2 Kings 17:17-18).
Oh, but they only use cell lines from two aborted babies in the vaccines and the benefit to the public as a whole is far outweighed. False times deuce. First of all, sacrificing the few for the many is biblically unjustifiable. God prohibits child sacrifice (Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:13, 12:30-32, 18:10, Leviticus 18:21 & 20:2-5, 2 Kings 16:3, and Psalm 106:38), and there is no “for the greater good clause” or “public exception” listed in anywhere in the Bible.
Let me highlight something pretty important: this is about vaccines. Remember how this post was about vaccines at one point? She’s deviating from the discussion into an abortion post, because she knows a majority of her audience is pro-life. This isn’t about abortions, this is about vaccines.
Vaccines don’t have aborted fetuses in them.
And she then she continues with “sacrificing the few for the many is Biblically unjustifiable,” as if that has anything to do with the discussion at hand. Why yes, it does sounds pretty awful when one histrionically exaggerates the current subject at hand, vaccination, which is most certainly not about child sacrifice. Talk about theatrical.
Here, let me try: “Oh, but those vaccine ingredients that a high schooler in AP chemistry could pronounce without having a meltdown apparently sound too big and scary for this group of uneducated rich people and their little snowflakes, so now infants are suffocating to death.” Oh, look at that, I can also exaggerate things to make the out-group appear to be a bunch of jackasses. Who knew?
A kid’s fever that may develop after a live, attenuated vaccine isn’t comparable to child sacrifice. I’m sad I have to actually explain this in the 21st century, but preventing disease and millions of deaths is not equivalent to throwing a child into into a giant pit of fire. Millions of children’s lives are saved every year through vaccination.
- An estimated 50,000 to 80,000 children are hospitalized with RSV pneumonia in the United States annually. On a global scale, an estimated 1 million children die from this disease
-
The measles isn’t “just a childhood illness.” In 1999, measles killed over 873,000 people across the globe . In 2002, it was still continuing to kill about 800,000 on a yearly basis. To put this into perspective, just the measles vaccine alone saved 20.4 million deaths from 2000-2016. Now, after measles vaccination programs are spreading across the world, WHO estimated annual deaths to be about 145,700 (2013), finally dropping to 90,000. And she’s calling 20 million lives being saved “child sacrifice?” Through vaccination, we’ve seen an 84% drop in deaths.
It’s as if they think vaccines are tiny vials of poison, and getting vaccinated is like playing a deranged game of Russian Roulette where we stab children with blunt poison-filled instruments for the sake of…. I don’t know, I really haven’t figured out what the point of that would be, considering there are far less sinister ways to make more than $0.75.
And wow, glad she included the random Bible verses about child sacrifice, as if I was going to pick up the Bible and be like “oh, she’s right! Who knew tossing children into a burning pit to appease Baal was bad? I’m going to stop vaccinating now, because somehow this relates to basic acts of disease prevention!” This is equivocation. And she still seems to have not discovered the Bible passages telling the Israelites to murder children, but I’ll let her get to those later. I did chuckle a little when she brought up Amos and didn’t mention the book of Hosea. And she brought up Psalm 106 but not Psalm 137.
If kids are valued in her eyes, then why is she fighting against those of us who are trying to protect them after we spent years studying how disease works and after years of witnessing kids contracting vaccine-preventable illnesses? Especially considering it involves kids who weren’t autonomous yet before their own mothers decided for them that they shouldn’t be protected from “just a childhood illness.” These kids did not make these decisions themselves. If she wants to talk about kids being created by God to be loved and valued so she can use it as a red herring and an appeal to emotion fallacy, then boy did she just dig herself in a giant gaping hole considering the hypocrisy of her own belief system that is responsible for children dying of vaccine-preventable diseases. If she wants to keep using an appeal to emotion, then maybe we can talk about how this woman’s beliefs are the reason little cancer patients in line for a bone marrow transplant have to be afraid, on top of their own cancer no less, of dying of a preventable illness. Maybe she wants to talk about how immunocompromised individuals are dying because of her mindset.
Secondly, even though there are only baby parts from a few babies in our vaccines, many more babies were aborted and dissected in the process of obtaining the perfect strain. In fact, aborted babies are being used everyday to create new cell lines for more vaccines. But just in case you didn’t hear this on the news, in church, or at your doctor’s office, here’s where these ground up baby parts came from:
PER C6 came from a healthy 18 week-old baby who was aborted for social reasons. This tumorigenic strain is being used to develop adenovirus, Ebola, influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV vaccines. Developers call it a “human designer cell” but what they really mean is “aborted baby cells.
The HEK293 cell line is derived from the kidneys of a healthy aborted fetus and is being used to develop new influenza vaccines
IMR-90 cell line came from a 16-week old female aborted baby and IMR-91 came from a male aborted baby. Both were created for vaccine production and functional references
WI-38 (RA 273) was a 16-week-old female baby (20 cm long) who was aborted in Sweden because the parents felt they had too many children. The baby was packed on ice and sent to the United States (speculation suggests without consent – which was common) where it was dissected. The use of WI-38 cells is a lucrative moneymaking business
WI-1 through WI-25 cell strains were derived from the lung, skin, muscle, kidney, heart, thyroid, thymus, and liver of 21 separate elective (and some speculate illegal) abortions
WI-44 was derived from the lung of a three-month old surgically aborted fetus
MCR-5 cell line was derived from the lung tissue of a 14-week-old male (Britain)
Eighty elective abortions (recorded) were involved in the research and final production of the current rubella vaccine: 21 from the original WI-1 through WI-26fetal cell lines that failed, plus WI-38 itself, plus 67 from the attempts to isolate the rubella virus.
Enough.
Aborted fetuses are not being ground up everyday for research. Aborted fetuses are not being aborted to perfect vaccine strains. I think I would have noticed that by now. In order to have efficient vaccines, you need to have good antigens. Think of it like a dog sniffing the sweater of a man who is wanted for murder. In a similar manner to killed vaccines, the sweater can’t come alive, or can’t turn into the criminal to fight the cops looking for him. The sweater is dead. But the dog uses his actual scent to track the culprit and not the scent off of a similar-looking sweater.
When it comes to live, attenuated vaccines, think of it like the culprit being severely injured in the back of the cop car. The bad guy is already contained and have the sirens going off for antigen-presenting cells. There’s a small chance of them escaping, but it’s very rare. If it does happen, however, they’re weakened, and it’s easier to catch them. This requires weakening a real antigen. One that is going to be seen as foreign by the body and have a monoclonal antibodies created for that specific pathogen- that’s the entire purpose of vaccination. The cops have caught the real criminal. Just because something is weakened doesn’t mean it’s fake; on the contrary, it’s just weakened. In order to create something real, you need to have it be created in a realistic environment . That means viruses need to replicate in human and/or animal cells instead of magic or bubbles. They need to be weakened in a realistic environment. There are two fetal cell lines originally obtained decades prior (almost 50 years).
This post does a great job highlighting the problems with claiming that aborted fetuses are in vaccines.
This post provides a detailed history of it.
Researchers are not hacking a bunch of babies up for vaccines, and I don’t think any of them would sign up for something that screwed up. I sure as heck wouldn’t – I have a hard enough time perfusing rats. But claiming fetal cells are floating around vaccine vials is like saying a stove is in your reheated soup. Using something isn’t synonymous with putting it in the final product.
People will tell you that there aren’t actually any “aborted fetal ingredients” in the final product (as if that matters) that it’s just a medium used in the process. They say things like:
The vaccine that you are offered today contains no trace of the cells that the first-ever batch was grown on.
So…they’re saying it’s like homeopathy? It’s just “frequency” of dead baby? Isn’t that pseudoscience? Despite what you’ve been told, aborted baby parts are in your vaccinations and it says so right in the package inserts:
This product also contains residual components of MRC-5 cells including DNA and protein (pages 6-7 Varivax insert).
What? I’m face-palming. This is one of the most cringe-worthy paragraphs I’ve read in awhile. As previously mentioned, people will tell you that vaccines offered today don’t contain fetal cells, because it’s a truthful statement (the horror). And she says “as if that matters,” but still kept in this earlier claim: “I ‘have’ to inject my kid with a product derived from and containing aborted fetal ingredients, you better believe I have a problem with it.”
If it didn’t matter to her, she wouldn’t have left a statement like that in that she backtracked on later, as if no one would notice it. No, vaccines don’t contain cells from aborted fetuses. Human cell lines from two abortions preformed almost 5 decades ago are used for a CELL STRAIN. I’m guessing at this point she has no idea what on earth these words mean. Cell lines are not used to put into a medication or vaccine. In the easiest way I can put it, human cultures/strains are there to serve as a good environment to grow things in. Understandably, you’re going to want to have human DNA for the first cell line. If you cut a leaf off of a vine, it wouldn’t contain a tiny microscopic pergola. You wouldn’t need to perform homeopathy to get water down the tiny pergola, considering it isn’t there to begin with, and that’s not how reality works. Instead, you may have a tiny sliver the dirt or wall it was growing on show up every now and then in while you’re grabbing the leaves. It is pretty unscrupulous to change the comment that it doesn’t contain cells or traces of the cells into a statement that is trying to deviate from tiny aborted fetuses chilling in vaccines from the evil scientists. Touching a nearby door handle will give you a slew of bacterial DNA way more than anything seen in a vaccine. Some protein isn’t the same as “fetal ingredients,” as if there’s chopped off tiny innocent arms in your vaccine. Nobody is trying to hide secret tissue information. When you transfer something, it can contain some tiny microscopic things that won’t hurt you. These have been extensively studied and used for half of a century. They’re fine. Fetal cells, again, are not in vaccines.
In fact, go ahead and read a literal laboratory manual for how to make a cell line if you want: Protocol-MRC-5-Cultivation-HDCF-ANLSPHDCFMRC5
Human safety studies on the effects of aborted fetal DNA, cells, and proteins? Zero. But there is research that shows that the mixing of DNA in the vaccine and DNA in your child could be one of the many ways vaccines contribute to cancer and autism. (See how I did that? Implicated vaccines as a contributing factor in autism without even mentioning mercury?)
The DNA from neoplastic cells can contain activated (cancer-causing) oncogenes, viral oncogenes, the genomes of oncogenic viruses, as well as retroviruses that can be transferred to vaccine recipients potentially inducing tumors. Don’t worry though; your pharmaceutical company will take extra precautions (like they did with the Polio vaccine) to make sure this doesn’t happen.
So the cancer article was super interesting, and was honestly a great read. I found myself extremely intrigued by MDs and PhDs (and one random anti-vaxxer) having a discussion on where they wanted their research to go. Some excerpts:
What we see is that there is a lack of tumorigenicity in immunocompetent animals (that’s the very last paragraph), the mom of the fetus had no prior health complications, and we see that they want to use vaccines to target cancer itself. So… thanks? This was a discussion about ethics involved in bringing back cell cultures that replicate quickly for future HIV vaccines. She should probably open things up she posts next time. This is actually pretty embarrassing for the anti-vaccine movement to post so haphazardly, as it is blatant evidence that the Evil Physicians have legitimate concerned conversations including powerpoint slides and details on prior experimentation to highlight any potential consequences for a detail risk evaluation in a courtroom. This is fantastic pro-vaccine evidence. This is evidence that vaccine research starts very early and involves detailed conversations of ethics. Awesome!
Second of all, what is it with the ableism of the anti-vaccine movement? Have they ever asked an autistic individual whether or not they want to be eradicated from the earth? Do they not get a say in the matter? They don’t see their way of thinking as a disease. On top of that, vaccines don’t cause autism. Anti-vaxxers are notorious for spreading hatred and disgust, yet they claim to be “warriors” for autism. It doesn’t look too great when one of the biggest factors of being anti-vaccine, autism, involves cyberbullying anyone on the spectrum:
That is insulting to those who are autistic. They’re allowed to love themselves. They’re allowed to see themselves as valuable humans with unique genetics without being labeled an “injury.” Every time someone mentions it as some awful cause of [insert scary-sounding word], they speak over someone who is actually autistic.
And here’s just one example of those who are actually autistic, and how Vaxxed responded:
Just for a comparison on what an anti-vaxxer argument is like, this is the worst they have against those who advocate vaccines. People warning others that they’re literally killing their children (which they are).
Hello? What are we doing? There is no biblical/religious justification that makes it even remotely okay to play “operation” with an aborted baby, let alone inject our children with foreign human DNA that has the propensity to cause all sorts of medical conditions.
The Other Ingredients in Vaccines
It’s not just the aborted baby parts you should have an objection to. Neurotoxins, hazardous substances, attenuated viruses, animal parts, foreign DNA, albumin from human blood, carcinogens, and chemical wastes are all ingredients in your child’s vaccinations and not one of them are proven safe. Not…a…single…one.
Of course not, considering the very definition of the scientific method. You can’t prove things via biological research. That statement would have made her fail my 7th grade science class. Instead, we have a slew of evidence that points to vaccine ingredients being safe and efficient with statistical significance using data and a step-by-step process of how they did it and what stat programs they used. Unlike her side. You can’t “prove” anything as “safe.” You never can. It is impossible. She should have learned this in middle school.
I use albumin every day in the lab for my IFS. It’s safe. “Animal parts” aren’t in there, either. The sun is a class I carcinogen, and I’m sure she’s been in the sun a few times. “Chemical wastes” are definitely not in vaccines. I spent the entire semester around 14 dead bodies breathing in formaldehyde 12 hours a week, and she’s bitching about a needle prick
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, NIV)
And then there’s the issue of contamination. Not only are the additives in vaccines considered contaminants from a biblical standpoint, the contaminants themselves are oftencontaminated.
Since vaccine preparation involves the use of materials of biological origin, vaccines are subject to contamination by micro-organisms. […] The increasing number of target species for vaccines, the diversity of the origin of biological materials and the extremely high number of known and unknown viruses and their constant evolution represent a challenge to vaccine producers and regulatory authorities.
Oh this is just too good. It’s so funny to me when I see an anti-vaxxer accidentally destroy their previous arguments. Do you know what greatly helps prevent those contaminations? Hmm…. take a wild guess.
Those oh-so-evil preservatives.
Over and over again, studies support that they’re safe. You’ll get more preservatives eating a pear. They’re not in there because evil scientists want to murder you, they’re in there to help PREVENT contaminations. If we took the preservatives out of vaccines, that puts people at risk for infection. Would they like that? We can’t have it both ways. If someone who doesn’t have a true contraindication and avoids vaccination because of the “icky toxins,” then they risk the lives of innocent people around them.
Welcome to planet earth, where bad things exist.
I know we’re autonomous adults. We’re allowed to have your own opinions. But what is sad is when snowflakes are so angry that they have to god-forbid abide to a rule for once and get vaccinated like the rest of us try to punish everyone else by “fighting the system” because they think their fairytale idea that disease will run from them if they eat the right magic has the power to change the physical world. There is no magic option to earth. We are surrounded by a microscopic world that does a great job killing humans every day, and even money and your white privilege can’t save anyone from that. I wish anti-vaxxers figured that out.
And really, explain to me how risking infection is somehow protecting your body. Again, she digs her own grave by calling people bad Christians for getting vaccinated when she’s exposing her loved ones to literal toxins (it’s called “the measles toxin,” for crying out loud).
In the Bible, blood represented the life force of the human or animal. Human blood was to be kept pure under all circumstances and free of contaminants like animal parts and blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:11, 17:14, Deuteronomy 12:23, Leviticus 17:10, Acts 15:20, and Acts 15:29).
First of all, I would LOVE to see how she is living daily according to the rules of Leviticus. I’m not sure how many times she can accidentally destroy her own argument, as if mainstream Christianity relies on the Torah for advice on how to be more organic. So unless she’s avoiding wearing clothing woven with different fabrics, I have no idea why her driving point involves mainly just quoting ancient law. Especially considering Jesus blatantly makes it known in the New Testament that it’s okay to eat any animal. If she wants to use a vegan argument, she still wouldn’t be making much sense unless she’s referring to gelatin, which is only in some. Animal blood isn’t in vaccines, and vaccines are no administered into your bloodstream to begin with. I cannot think of a more idiotic way to describe the “sin” of vaccine ingredients. Maybe next we can take turns going through each ingredient in our favorite foods and calling other people bad Christians for consuming it using Leviticus.
Bovine cow serum for example, is often contaminated with viruses that cause viral diarrhea. In 2012, Merck recalled over a million doses of their PedVaxHib (Hib vaccine) and ComVax HiB/Hepatitis B combination vaccine because of Bacillus Cereus contamination, a bacteria that typically causes diarrhea and food poisoning. The polio vaccines used in the 1950’s and 60’s were contaminated by the SV40 virus from monkey kidney cells now responsible for several different types of cancer including brain and bone cancer, lymphomas, leukemia, and mesothelioma, and can be passed to subsequent generations via maternal antibodies from those vaccinated with contaminated vaccines.
Contrary to what she decided to randomly pull out of her hind quarters, Bovine serum albumin is not “usually contaminated” with diarrhea-causing viruses. I use it every fucking day. The rest of the lab uses it every fucking day. This is one of my favorite things: anti-vaxxers will quote vaccine ingredients, thinking those of us who actually know what they are will be scared. That’s not going to happen to those of us who have actually studied chemistry. Let’s use a chemical you know about. Table salt.
“Sodium chloride is in there!”
“Uh… that’s just table salt.”
“Half of table salt is a deadly explosive, and the other half is a deadly gas!”
You know as well as I do that table salt isn’t going to gas and kill you. However, what I said is actually true….according to the molecular weight, that is. Sodium is a deadly explosive, and chlorine is a deadly gas. They freak out about thimerosal being “50% mercury”, yet table salt is apparently 100% deadly poison according to their failed chemistry rules. In reality, we know table salt is perfectly fine. The dose makes the poison, and structure determines function. I can’t wait for anti-vaxxers to discover what enantiomers are.
And there it is again, the anti-vaccine argument about a vaccine introduced in the 1950s. Didn’t see that one coming. Studies point out that SV40 does not seem to be attributed to human cancer.
Even the CDC admitted SV40 was an oopsie on their website … and then the page was removed. Don’t worry though, those aborted baby and tumor-derived cell lines only cause cancer if they’re contaminated, and those crazy lab-viruses only cause harm if they “escape” from a lab. Rest assured, your pharmaceutical company has everything under control.
Laboratory safety practices and technology cannot erase human error and equipment failures that lead to accidents, as evidenced by a recent string of lab-acquired infections and environmental releases of SARS, Ebola, tularemia, and other dangerous diseases. In fact, the last reported human cases of smallpox were laboratory acquired.
As I previously mentioned, SV40 isn’t giving people cancer, and isn’t in any vaccines your child is receiving. And no, your vaccines don’t have tumors in them (not like she’d know what those are anyways). You can do anything with an argument if it’s built off of a ridiculous assumption from the start.
So we’re just going to let people eat from organic food stores, even though all organic food contains pieces of cancer-ridden dead puppies?? Do you want that for your kids?”
My favorite part is this is her wording. Her description of “fetus parts” has changed on and off to “derived cell line” throughout her entire blog. These are two completely different things (this is the understatement of the year). Earlier she said point-blank that fetuses were being hacked and fetal parts were in your vaccines. Then she correctly throws in “derived from a cell line” every now and then. I’m guessing this is for when someone calls her out on her bull crap, she can pretend the other person is over-exaggerating, because she “totally mentioned cell lines.” In actuality, she explained what a cell line was erroneously, used fear tactics, and expressed the existence of fetal parts which are certainly not in vaccines.
Science is not infallible. It’s actually designed to be open to falsification. Of course there have been mistakes, but instead of ignoring them crying “but we’re special scientists,” It has burgeoned better research practices and ethics committees. It’s extremely regulated, and if you doubt me, try applying for a grant and asking permission to study on humans or animals. Ebola also isn’t getting released from a laboratories. Western Africa has affected by it for a long time, but if she’s anything like the other anti-vaxxers I’ve met, she just didn’t know it existed until the media said a white person got it.
But wait, what about your neighbor?
Apparently, you have a biblical duty to vaccinate your child for your neighbor’s, but you don’t owe your neighbor any duty that conflicts with God’s Word. Not to mention that you’re first and foremost entrusted with the welfare of YOUR child and you’re not called to put your child at risk for someone else’s.
What is the most confusing to me is how Christianity is based on Jesus, who died in the place of a murderer to save mankind from death, and she continually scoffs at the idea of making a decision to benefit others. He didn’t come to be served, but to serve. The Bible is full of scripture on self-sacrifice (John 15:13, Hebrews 10:34, Matthew 19:21, Mark 10:21, Luke 18:22, Acts 4:32-37, Philippians 3:8). Again, I don’t believe vaccination has to do with someone being literally or figuratively sacrificed. But it is also ridiculous for her to be so disgusted at the idea of protecting another individual who may not be able to protect themselves, yet she is perfectly fine with exaggerating ingredients and claiming vaccines are synonymous with murdering a child to appease Baal.
And no, nobody has a “Biblical obligation” to be a decent human being. So no, you don’t have an “obligation” to ensure your child’s best friend has a seatbelt on. You don’t have an obligation to make sure they’re not starving to death. You don’t have an obligation to save anyone else, like healthcare workers do willingly every day without expecting a reward. And it infuriates me to read someone’s blog who feels personally victimized by the suffering of a child who isn’t her own to the level of calling the mere act of protecting another child with leukemia “child sacrifice” because her special snowflake got a needle prick. If she thinks that counts as suffering, what a slap in the face to children who have to face the harsh reality of life with a terminal illness.
Yeah, but the Bible says you have to submit to governing authority.
We Christians are not to submit to any governing authority or policy that is not submissive to God’s Word (Book of Daniel, Esther 4:11 – 7:3, Acts 5:27-29, 1 John 2:4), are to “have no other gods,” are to keep God’s commands even in the face of policy that forbids it (Daniel 6:7-10), and are not to defile ourselves with things of the culture that contradict our God (Daniel 1:8). I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have the “legal” right to vaccinate, I’m simply saying that Christians have a legit biblical argument for opposing it.
Now when Daniel learned that the decree (not to pray to anyone but the king) had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. – Daniel 6:10 (emphasis mine).
That’s nice. Why don’t we get back to how she told people that they’d stand before God for vaccinating? Because at this point, I’m pretty sure her readers aren’t concerned about its legality when they think they’re going to hell. Governing authority or not governing authority, this is about her believing vaccines are sinful. Give to Caesar what is Caesars. Let’s avoid going down a rabbit trail of whether or not it’s technically legal. People already know boycotting exists, and anti-vaxxers are continually trying to get religious exemptions. So why would legality matter?
Yeah, but God says, “love your neighbor as yourself.”
God also (throughout His Word) shows us countless ways to do that. Not one of them includes murdering unborn children, injecting viruses into each other, shooting our kids up with carcinogens, segregating unvaccinated children, and harassing their parents.
Not only is none of this true, but yet again, there’s the old “let’s bring up segregation because my people at the country club are suffering” ploy.
WILLINGLY CHOOSING TO EXPOSE YOUR CHILDREN, AND THOSE AROUND THEM, TO DEADLY DISEASES BECAUSE YOU’RE AFRAID OF VACCINE INGREDIENTS
IS NOT SYNONYMOUS WITH EXPERIENCING RACISM
Ah, glad I got that off my chest.
I can’t get over how many times anti-vaxxers have compared their suffering to racism and anti-semitism. “I can’t believe people are angry that I’m potentially exposing their immunocompromised children to deadly diseases, I’m the victim here!”
Vaccinating Out of Fear
The Bible calls us to make wise decisions, but wise decisions are not based on fear. Yet, this is the #1 and almost exclusive means used to coerce parents into vaccinating. Seriously, take a look at the headlines. Simple childhood illnesses are deceptively portrayed as deadly diseases. We’re told diseases are being “brought back” even though they never disappeared. People run from a measles rash like they ran from the plague. A rash of course, is far worse than anything the MMR vaccine could cause. A fever is scary, unless it’s the fever that accompanies your child’s vaccinations. Statistics are manipulated and the one unvaccinated child who got all of the other vaccinated people sick is plastered onto the news so you can avoid every single place this child frequented, breathed, ate, or farted at.
Oh, but polio and paralysis and iron lungs! The polio campaign is a perfect example of how fear, deception, and manipulated data are used to fear people into vaccinating. Do you think God supports fear propaganda? No. There are 365 “fear nots” in the Bible. This could be one of the many reasons “fear propaganda” seems to be ineffective at convincing the unvaccinated (who are largely made up of Christians) to change their stance.
This point could have destroyed her entire argument just by itself. The anti-vaccine movement is based off of nothing but fear mongering, so bashing fear-mongering makes no sense. Meta-analyses don’t support it, a majority of healthcare workers don’t support it, smallpox being eradicated doesn’t support it, most of their “vaccine injuries” weren’t even caused by vaccines, the list goes on. I would love for her to find one single anti-vaccine article that doesn’t blame various medical conditions that scare them on vaccination. Considering they’re openly supporting the potential consequence of millions of children’s deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases over a one-in-a-million chance of a severe vaccine reaction, how is she going to explain an anti-vaccine standpoint without using scare-tactics? There’s a van driving around the country to share a documentary so parents can mourn their autistic children, for shits sake. Mothers are mourning their living children because of over-exaggerated scare tactics in a documentary put to scary-sounding music. And here she is calling the risk of legitimate death and suffering a mere “scare tactic.” If warning people about death is just a “scare tactic,” then what on earth does the anti-vaccine movement count as, considering one of her biggest driving points was mentioning ingredients that simply sounded scary to her? Her entire blogpost was for the purpose of making people think that they’re bad Christians for vaccinating, telling people dead fetuses are in vaccines, throwing out fake information to invite fear, and crying victim over laws cracking down on people committing fraud. Talk about hypocritical.
Not to mention, where have we come as a society when real warnings about death and disease that can be backed up by epidemiologists are considered too offensive to mention and marked off as “fear mongering?”
Do you want to know why they’re portrayed as deadly diseases? Because they’re actually deadly diseases.
Imagine that!
In a typical case of the measles, a person will get better a few days later. However, a slew of complications can develop. Some are minute, such as an ear infection, others are much worse such as pneumonia, encephalitis, subacute sclerosing pan-encephalitis (SSPE- a horrible progressive inflammation in the brain), and diabetes. The most common cause of death in young children from the measles is pneumonia, which affects about 1/20 of those who contract it. Before vaccination, there were about 50 cases of SSPE annually. Now there are only 1 or 2 cases annually.
The measles vaccine alone saved 15.6 million lives annually worldwide from 2000-2013. The flu kills 36,000 people in the United States every year. And getting vaccinated not only protects yourself, but your friends and family. It’s required for me working in a hospital. As a scientist myself, I assure you that toxins are not in the vaccines or I wouldn’t be getting them. The flu vaccine is also effective. Some years are more effective than others, but it doesn’t make much sense as to why someone would want to purposely avoid a prophylaxis.
Hepatitis B is awful. You think kids are protected from that too? In the early 1990’s, 300,000-400,000 people were infected every year in the US, and it currently kills around 600,000 people annually, including several thousand in the US. Taiwan instituted a nationwide immunization program and had spectacular declines in acute and long-term disease. You cannot magically protect your kid from unprotected sex or assault, and refusing their ability to stay protected from hepatitis and possible cancer is downright despicable. Even hospital mishaps can spread it. Pregnancy can spread it.
Whooping cough is also deadly. It’s called the “100 day cough” for a reason. And what do epidemiologists say about it? Here is a comparison of the estimated risks of adverse reactions after DTP immunization with the complication rates of natural whooping cough
| Adverse reaction |
Whooping cough complication rates per 100 000 cases |
DTP vaccine adverse reaction rates per 100 000 immunizations |
| Permanent brain damage |
600–2000 (0.6–2.0%) |
0.2–0.6 |
| Death |
100–400 (0.1–4.0%) |
0.2 |
| Encephalopathy/encephalitis* |
90–4000 (0.09–4.0%) |
0.1–3.0 |
| Convulsions |
600–8000 (0.6–8.0%) |
0.3–90 |
| Shock |
|
0.5–30 |
Dukes, Jeffery Aronson. Meyler’s Side Effect of Drugs: an Encyclopedia of Adverse Relations and Interactions. Elsevier, 2015.
This is why I get so mad at them. Their arguments stem from trying to convince everyone that 3 is somehow a bigger number than 4000. And what’s sad is that antivaxxers who I show this to will go straight to the bottom where it says “shock” without skipping a beat. I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw this chart on an anti-vaxx site soon with the word “shock” highlighted. The word “shock” is referring to anaphylactic shock, which is pretty much the only known reaction directly linked to vaccination due to a previously unknown allergy. The vaccine doesn’t cause the allergy, it causes the reaction to that allergy. Every other “vaccine reaction” can also be attributed to the disease itself.
While anti-vaxxers like to pretend your child is safe from these diseases, they are lying to you. Hep B is so ridiculously contagious that funeral homes require the vaccine for prepping bodies: http://www.hepbpositive.org.uk/funeral-staff-vaccinations
Seeing people like her using God as a reason to avoid vaccination reminds me of a popular analogy where a man was on his roof because of a flood, praying for God to save him. After a boat and a helicopter came to save him and he refused, he drowned. He got mad at God in the afterlife, asking him why he didn’t save him. He expected a miracle that defied physics even though his prayers were answered. Here we’re given an actual safe way to prevent ourselves from getting sick and even prevent some forms of cancer, yet there’s a bunch of people fighting against them because they want a vaccine that has never caused a single reaction. There will always be a reaction. Thanks to epidemiologists, we know that the benefits far outweigh any chance of a reaction.
Despite what some may think, “we” humans know very little about the immune system and how it functions (which is why your doctor can’t point to the cause or cure of your chronic auto-immune disease). In fact, we are consistently getting it wrong. That’s to be expected though, right? Only the God who created the immune system knows everything there is to know about it.
By wisdom the Lord laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place; by his knowledge the watery depths were divided, and the clouds let drop the dew. Proverbs 3: 19-20
For you [God] created my inmost being [including my immune system]; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. [Hard to top that, right?] I praise you because I am fearfully [not the scared kind of fear] and wonderfully made [minus the time you were texting while creating our jacked up immune systems]. Your works are wonderful [except you left us completely defenseless to disease without the use of dead babies and hazardous substances]. […] My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place [but the scientific community would like to pretend it was], when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body [woah, now we’re getting personal]; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. [You mean, God knows everything?] Psalm 139:13-16 (emphasis mine).
Why don’t we translate that Pulitzer-winning argument:
“Physicians/researchers, some of whom have a chronic autoimmune disease themselves, went to school for over at least eight years to find better therapeutic options or possibly a cure, but screw them for wanting to learn more instead of believing they’re omnipotent demi-gods.”
Her point relies on physicians being fallible humans, which will always be the case. It’s a red herring. Despite knowing they don’t have all the answers, rheumatologists care about his/her patients with autoimmune diseases. They’ve dedicated 4 years of undergrad 4 years of med school, board exams, 3+ years of residency working 90+ hours a week, and completed a fellowship to show they care and learn as much as they can about it. In addition, her comment about the immune system and autoimmune etiology is erroneous. We already know the cause of a lot of auto-immune diseases- it’s the cures we still need so badly. We already know quite a bit about how anti-self T cells show up. We already know a ton about immunology. And while doctors are working so hard to help their patients, she has already expressed that she sees her children as more valuable than anyone else. Who are you more willing to trust? A random mom who doesn’t care about your child, or a doctor who has sacrificed their time and money to save you?
Unless she knows more about the immune system than doctors do and shows examples of philanthropy, her point here is just going to dig her own grave again. She seems to do that a lot. On top of it, it’s angering to me that she had the audacity to bring up autoimmune diseases as someone who has never suffered from one, especially considering so many people in my family, and even my husband, have one. She doesn’t know what it’s like to check her husband’s pulse in the night. She doesn’t know what it’s like to hear that they found a lesion in his brain. She doesn’t know what it’s like to see her mother screaming in pain at night. Heck, she doesn’t even know what albumin is. She thinks albumin is scary. She doesn’t even know what a cell line is. She is too lazy to learn about biology before trying to debate it, yet is expecting a free handout for some time spent on Google in place of a real degree.
Also, I’m worried that she has never heard of a congenital condition. Some people are born with a ton of physical complications to no fault of their own. And every time she expresses her disgust at people who know the immune system isn’t flawless, I get concerned that she has no idea mutations even exist. I truly have no idea if she’s aware of the slew of physical complications that can develop from our natural biology not being inherently flawless.
If you are a Christian and are trying to figure out whether it’s wise to vaccinate, consider this:
“Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight – Proverbs 3:5-6.”
In other words, read and follow God’s Word:
But the Bible wasn’t written by God. Wrong. See 2 Timothy 3:16.
Well, the Bible is outdated. Wrong. See Hebrews 4:12.
The Old Testament doesn’t apply to our lives today. Wrong again. See Matthew 5:17.
NONE OF THESE ARE ABOUT VACCINES.
Song of Solomon 8:10: “I am a wall and my breasts are like towers.”
Who on earth is using “the Bible is outdated” and random hackneyed statements about the Old Testament as an argument for vaccination? Who on earth is doing this? How about
“I don’t like death.” -Me
But thank God we have vaccines that have prevented so many (unsubstantiated) deaths. I hear this one a lot. I thank God for many things, but how can I “thank God” for vaccines that injure children each and every day, for the rise in cancer caused by contaminated vaccines, for bad science that puts the health of our children at risk, and for institutions that are so corrupt and greed-driven that they’re willing to flat-out ignore vaccine adverse reactions and vaccine-injured children? (Although we shouldn’t be surprised, the Bible talks about this too — Matthew 6:24, Revelations 18:11.)
Most Christians probably haven’t questioned vaccines or even thought about this from a God perspective. I used to be one of them. Regardless, we serve the same God and we should stop pretending that God supports vaccines (at least … in their current state).
I was taught that lying is a sin. I guess she missed those Bible verses.
What children being injured every day? She provides sources for a majority of her claims (crappy sources, but at least she tried), yet is strangely quiet on this substantial claim. Gee, I wonder why. Why does she go on and on about God’s judgment and condemn Christians who vaccinate while blatantly lying through her teeth? I’ve worked in a hospital for 5 years, and I’ve never seen a single “vaccine injury,” other than one low-grade fever. I have, however, seen young 20-somethings die of influenza. Think I’m lying? Ask any emergency doc if they’ve seen a vaccine injury before. When anti-vaxxers do that and don’t get the response they were hoping for, they call the doctor a shill and just solidify their viewpoints even more. “You’ve never seen an injury? Yeah right, whose paying you to say that?” Ask any ER nurse, tech, or doctor how many “vaccine injuries” they’ve seen, and I guarantee it will be about as high as Bigfoot sightings.
And what money? Where is my payout? Not a single anti-vaxxer has ever been able to tell me where my payout is. I will give you my entire payout if you tell me where it’s located. Where do I get it? Because according to statistics, its anti-vaxxers who are rich. And we see an example with her being a white lawyer married to a white doctor. I’m over 200 grand in student loan debts and could qualify for food stamps. What a hypocrite.
In reality, disease is expensive. Influenza has both a high mortality and a high economic burden:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X07003854
If fact, there’s such a high economic burden that it makes no sense to say that they’re doing it for unscrupulous reasons. Hospitals would make way more money with people diagnosed with influenza compared to vaccinating:
http://www.who.int/influenza_vaccines_plan/resources/ARTICLE_Economic_Impact_of_Pandemic_Influenza_in_the_US.pdf
How can I thank God for the immaturity, hate, bullying, and coercion being inflicted upon the un-vaccinated and for vaccine adverse reactions like brain encephalopathy, food allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, vaccine associated chicken pox, measles, mumps, and vaccine associated paralytic polio, immunologic disorders, multiple sclerosis, brain damage, SIDS, and death?
I could go on for nine more pages, but I’ll leave you with this: The Bible does not reference vaccines specifically, but it does reference pharmaceuticals … to which vaccines belong. You know what the Bible calls this? Sorcery (Gal 5:20, Rev 9:21, 18:23, 21:8, and 22:15). Actually the Greek word for sorcery is “pharmakeia.” Pretty ironic, don’t ya think? And no, I’m not saying God is “anti medicine.” I’m saying God is anti-anything that contradicts His Word and the Word is what we Christians claim to live by.
Again, she didn’t back up her claims. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe it’s because everything she’s describing is actually what anti-vaxxers do:
Cyberbullying and threatening to murder children, using pictures of other people’s children to claim they were “vaccine injured,” faking their own children’s injuries, openly admitting they committed fraud by faking their children’s injuries, faking their own injuries, giving false reports, encouraging moms to lie about their children’s vaccination status (even when lying may directly harm their child), defending mothers who murdered their autistic children, writing fake reviews for every doctor who disagrees with them, blaming vaccines on shaken baby syndrome (and continuing to blame after the perpetrator confessed), openly supporting eugenics, The creators of Vaxxed cyberbullying individuals on the spectrum while pretending to defend them, anti-vaccine doctors making rape jokes and cyberbullying others, and let’s not forget their rampant displays of homophobia/transphobia, racism, and anti-Semitism.
I could go on for 9 pages too.
Maybe it’s because most of her claims of “injury” are actually side effects to vaccine-preventable diseases, according to the real world of epidemiology?
Maybe it’s because, using their logic, vaccination decreases the risk of SIDS by half?
Maybe it’s because she just said we didn’t know what caused auto-immune diseases, yet randomly invented a cause of arthritis?
Maybe this is why the most she could give in that last paragraph was a link to a vaccine insert that is readily available on the manufacturer’s websites. Maybe she’d like to mention that vaccine inserts aren’t the same thing as a black box label, but I highly doubt she’d want to do that.
And what “bad science?” If she’s uncomfortable with all of the peer-review out there showing the safety and efficacy of vaccination, then what the heck does she want? Because I’m pretty sure “bad science” is Wakefield secretly giving autistic children colonoscopies and taking their blood from a closet without consulting ethics committees, but what would I know as an actual scientist who has taken multiple research ethics courses?
Other countries also show its efficacy. This isn’t just some United States “big pharma” conspiracy. The data is regularly available:
It does not cause Stillbirth in vaccinated vs unvaccinated studies:
It is especially important for the elderly, according to controlled double-blind studies and meta-analyses:
And let’s talk about “sorcery.” To an atheist, biology and religion are separate. The end. But if you believe a higher power created the universe, then creation and creator can’t be unrelated. As a kid, I was told that God is life and created life. If God created life, then biology as the “study of life” would be another branch of theology. And since science has a system to how it interprets information, acquiring data and running analyses, this isn’t assumption thrown down on paper. This is observing creation, taking note of it, and caring about it. The ones that are poorly done get weeded out (like Wakefield). I get my information from reputable sources and meta-analyses. Homeopathy, on the other hand, is not backed up by “the study of life.” It involves ointments and crystals, basing interpretation of watered-down herbs and astrological signs. That sounds a lot more like “sorcery” to me than a branch of theology, except at least sorcery would probably work better, as vitamins and supplements are responsible for sending 20,000 people to the hospital annually. Alternative medicine proponents can’t even make their expensive placebos correctly without hospitalizing someone.
As for her bastardization of etymology, she left out the little detail that the word “pharmacology” in English is derived from “pharmacy,” a word from the late 14th century meaning “a medicine,” from Old French farmacie “a purgative.” The word stems from a combination of both Greek and Latin roots. Just like a majority of words we use in the English language, the definition has changed. “Sorcery” may stem from its roots, but pharmaceuticals quite obviously don’t involve witchcraft, and pharmaceuticals have drastically changed over time. Original roots do not always keep the same definition. If so, boy are we using the word “terrific” inappropriately. Homeopathy would also be defined as “sympathetic.” Using original Latin and Greek roots to find some kind of secret hidden meaning to a word that already exists in the English dictionary is moronic.
She IS implying God is anti-medicine. She just used the Bible to claim it was sorcery, and thinks God is against vaccination. Yes, that is absolutely implying he is anti-medicine. There is no reason to think that you have to stop vaccinating as a Christian.
Not the same characteristic rash, not the same clinical presentation, not even the same virus family. In smallpox, lesions begin on the face and then spread outwardly to the extremities, and all lesions will be in the same stage of development. The rash begins at the scalp and head and spreads to involve the trunk and extremities, and the pustules will be at all different stages.
If the fetus survives, a neonate with congenital rubella will present with the characteristic cataracts, blindness, deafness (most common), thrombocytopenia, heart defects, hepatosplenomegaly, and skeletal deformities. There will also be a large amount of IgM in cord blood. The childhood presentation often consists of a fever with lymphadenopathy and rash and sometimes a secondary spread to CNS consisting of progressive rubella panencephalitis. In adults it may present with post-infectious encephalomyelitis and optic neuritis, myelitis, Guillain Barre syndrome.
NSFW Biology 
