Are vaccines safe for children?

The reasons for asking this question are:

1. Too many of my friends are having children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD or commonly known as autism).

2. My daughter is about to be born this November and will be expected to go through a battery of at least 13 doses of vaccines against 9 different diseases.

Get this book for a thought-provoking read.



What started out as a casual remark by a friend about the phenomenon of more and more children being diagnosed with ASD started a chain of literature search and email queries to health authorities here. I've also taken to reading instruction leaflets that come along with all OTC as well as prescription-only drugs. Let's face it, most of us, even those in the practice, would simply throw away these leaflets and just either follow DIMS (Drug Index of Malaysia & Singapore, essentially a guide to drugs published by drug companies) or what's conventionally being dispensed by others. A case of following the majority.

Here are some disturbing issues yet to be resolved:

1. The long-term effects of vaccines are rarely studied. Most pre-market release trials observe test subjects over a period of a few days or weeks for short term effects like fever, swelling of injection areas. No one knows what vaccines do to children over months and years.

2. Heavy metals such as mercury and aluminium are often used as preservatives in quite a number of vaccines. We know for a fact that minute amounts of heavy metals do severe damage to the body and that these heavy metals, unlike some others like iron and zinc, have no known beneficial effects on the body. Why then, in this age where even the tiniest amounts of mercury in salmon and big fishes are considered harmful, are we knowingly putting these metals into infants?

3. The principle of vaccination is basically putting the pathogens into the body, in a controlled manner, to stimulate the immune response. Are the levels of pathogens safe?

Heavy questions for all concerned parents indeed.