Welcome to 4allofyou.
This is an information resource for parents who are concerned about their children's health. It is also a resource to learn more about vaccinations, environmental toxins, special diets, autism, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental disabilities.
I am not a physician. All information provided in this cite is for educational purposes.
If you are concerned about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, please visit the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC).
To learn more about whether or not your child is healthy enough to be vaccinated click here.
To learn how to recognize an adverse vaccine reaction click here.
If you are seeking information about the laws regarding your child's attendance in public school in Indiana, please click here.
If you are seeking information about the laws regarding your child's attendance in public school in Illinois, please click here.
If you are seeking information about the laws regarding your child's attendance in public school in Kentucky, please click here.
For more information about your legal right to make decisions about vaccination of your children, please click here.
If you are visiting this blog because you saw a billboard advertisement and you want to know what this is all about, please read my blogpost: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAX. HERE'S YOUR SIGN.
If you want to know our personal motivation behind this movement, please click here to read WE ARE ANTI-VACCINE WACKOS. IT'S JUST WHAT WE DO.
To read my post: VACCINES DO NOT CAUSE AUTISM please click here.
Showing posts with label evansville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evansville. Show all posts
Friday, August 5, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAX. HERE'S YOUR SIGN.
I don't think I have ever been as nervous as I am at this moment. This whole thing started last week after I read a front page article in the Evansville Courier & Press Newspaper. The article was titled, "Sticking to the schedule" and was written for the purpose of informing parents what vaccines their children "have to have" in order to attend public school in Indiana. As I read the article, I was struck by the fact that there was no information about parents' legal right to religious exemption. There was some vague wording, "Waivers could be obtained in special circumstances," which to me seemed misleading, making it sound like these "waivers" are hard to get.
I have to back up a bit. I don't usually get the Courier & Press Newspaper and I didn't buy it on the day when I read the above-mentioned article. I didn't even see it the day it came out. I happened across it while sitting in the waiting room of the Trauma ICU at Deaconess Hospital in Evansville. I was there with a dear friend whose brother was nearly killed in a motorcycle accident. If I hadn't been there with Donna, I would never have seen the newspaper in the first place. But I did. God works that way.
The article ran on the front page of the newspaper on Monday, July 25th. I was at the hospital on Tuesday, July 26th. Since it was already a day-old paper, I took it with me when I left, figuring no one there would miss it (or need it as much as I did). It was just one of those things where I knew I had to take it with me. When I got home I went to the Courier & Press online and looked up the article with the intention of commenting on it. That's when I saw the video of a nurse at the Vanderburgh County Health Department giving multiple vaccines to a young boy and proclaiming, "They all turn out just fine" and joking, "We haven't killed anyone yet!"
I really do try to live my life peacefully. I feel like I have been at war over the last several years and am suffering from combat fatigue. There are many times when I just want to crawl in my bed, pull the covers over my head and pretend I never even heard of autism or vaccine-injury. Sometimes I do just that. I take a vacation from reality and pretend that I am just a mother and a grandmother living in a small town in Southwestern Indiana. I pretend that my children are healthy and life will play out just the way it should. Then something happens to snap me back to reality and I realize that for me, this is life just as it was meant to be. There is a reason my daughter had to get sick. If she hadn't, I would never have become involved in this war in the first place. It's too late now. Just like the military, I can't quit. And whenever I begin to think I can, My SUPREME COMMANDER does something to remind me that quitting is not an option. That's what He did when he put that newspaper in front of me. It's sort of like when Bill Engvall says, "Here's your sign!" but on a different level entirely.
What has followed in the days after reading that article and watching that video has been a whirlwind of writing. I have written several blogposts and notes on facebook about what's been happening here. I won't go into that in this note. Let's just say that it's been enormously frustrating trying to get our local media to print anything about parents' concerns about vaccine safety or about the legal right to religious exemption. It AIN'T happening. Period.
At one point several days ago I was ready to give up. The comments section on the Courier & Press article had been disabled and the experiences shared by parents of vaccine-injured children were removed completely. Then our comments were removed from the Courier & Press facebook page. Then many of us were blocked from the page altogether. I was so frustrated I didn't know what to do. So I went to bed. But first, I prayed. And I asked my friends to pray for me. My standard prayer when I don't know what to do is, "God... if this is your will, please show me what I need to see."
When I got up the next morning I was still so tired and just plain weary, and I was beginning to get frustrated with God for not answering me in a timely fashion. I was hoping He would have sent the answer in a dream or given me some sort of miraculous vision. As I think back on it now, it seems like I must have been on the verge of crossing my arms, tapping my foot and looking at my watch. I'm glad now that I didn't do that. While I'm absolutely certain that God has a sense of humor (and I KNOW he has patience because he's still working with ME after all these years!), I am very thankful that I didn't test Him at that particular time. What I did instead is what I do almost every morning lately. I made a cup of green tea and sat down at the computer. After checking my email and scanning the Courier & Press online to make sure there were no more articles about back-to-school shots, I turned to facebook.
That's when I got it. Literally. "HERE'S YOUR SIGN!"
I don't remember at this moment who it was that had posted the photograph. It wasn't one of the facebook friends I regularly communicate with. But there it was. The photograph of a billboard that reads "No Shots, No School... NOT TRUE!!!" I think it was probably at this moment when I uttered what was one of the heaviest sighs of my life. If you've ever had that feeling of, "What have I done?" you know what I'm talking about. It's that sense of, "Oh, God. This is too much. I didn't really want to do THAT much." Too late. When you get orders from THE SUPREME COMMANDER, refusing is just not an option. Believe me, I've tried. I learned some time ago that if I don't do as I'm told, this is not going to go away, it's just going to get bigger. So, in the interest of compliance and to save myself the pain of paying the price for disobedience, I started a fundraiser. I posted on facebook that I was going to raise money to put up a billboard in Evansville, Indiana so that parents here could have the information they need to make informed decisions about vaccinating their kids. For the last few days I have been working like a crazy person (that's easy for me...), listing things on ebay and asking people for donations. My kids have been very patient (for the most part). They have let me do what they know by now I must do.
I have to tell you that I have never checked into renting a billboard before. I figured it would be expensive, but I had no idea just how MUCH it would cost. I played phone tag for a couple of days with the salesperson from the Evansville office of Lamar Outdoor Advertising, but finally she and I connected. When we started talking I prepared myself for the possibility that she would tell me, "We can't run something like that. It's too controversial." (Remember, this is Evansville, Indiana.) I started off by telling Nicole what had happened with the Courier & Press. I told her, "We are not telling people not to vaccinate. We are just asking the media to please report in an unbiased manner and let parents know the truth about their legal rights." I followed this with the disclaimer, "I'm really not just some nut-job. I'm the mother of a vaccine-injured child who almost died after receiving one shot. People need to know that the recommended childhood schedule has never been studied for safety." The response I got from Nicole was, "I don't think you're a nut-job." She then proceeded to tell me about a friend whose toddler was "perfectly healthy" until he got his shots for preschool and then decended into severe autism. Nicole also told me that she has been concerned about vaccines and stated her wish that I had called sooner, as she has just (last week) taken her own daughter in for her "well-baby visit" during which she received the standard multiple vaccinations as per the recommended schedule. This led to a fairly lengthy conversation about how to help protect her baby from the toxic effects of vaccines. I gave Nicole the web address of my blog and promised to send her some information from Russell Blaylock about protecting against vaccine damage. This is how God works. Every task He gives us leads to another opportunity. Each connection we make leads to more opportunities and the chance to save His children.
I sent Nicole the photo of the billboard I had seen on facebook. She said she would need to get it approved by her supervisor. (Uh-oh, I thought). She told me that he was very open-minded and she felt pretty sure he would approve it, which he did. The one caveat was that there has to be a contact listed at the bottom, "In case there are any complaints." (Heavy sigh.) Please God, I'm going to need a big shield and some armor. This is Indiana. Home of Ely Lily, the company that came up with the idea of putting thimerosal in vaccines so many decades ago.
As scary as the thought of being the target of backlash is, that was not my only concern. As I said, I've never rented a billboard before. I was prepared for the cost to be in the hundreds of dollars a month range. The quote I got was, "$3,438 to run the message for one week on all four digital billboards in Evansville." My heart sank. How in the world am I going to raise $3,500 in less than a week. The time crunch has to do with the fact that school starts here next week. My goal had been to raise enough money to get the message out prior to the first day of school, so that last-minute parents (like me) who have waited (either because they are too busy or because they are scared of what may happen as a result of vaccinating) would get the message in time to look further and learn about their rights and about vaccines before blindly obeying the message put out by the Courier & Press. My biggest fear is that so many families here are uninformed and feel they have no choice. We're all strapped financially. If people HAVE jobs they need to keep them. They can't afford to stay home and home-school and they can't afford to take off from work when the schools send their kids home (as happened last year) because they aren't "up-to-date" on their vaccinations. Talk about having a gun to your head.
Anyway, I told Nicole that I didn't think I could come up with the money. Then she said I could run the message on two billboards (one on the east side of town and one on the west side) for one week for $1,984. That's still a lot more than I was counting on, but it's much better. I told her I believed I could do it and stated firmly "I know this is going to happen." (The firmness was just as much for me as it was for Nicole.) Heavy sigh. Too late to back out. I've already got people contributing to the cause. Remember, this is like the military. Once you're in, you can't quit.
So this is where I was yesterday. I have several things listed on ebay and several things more to list. Suddenly, my camera battery won't charge. I start using Leah's camera and bought some rechargeable batteries for it. I'm back in business. Suddenly, those batteries won't charge, either. (Have I mentioned yet that when God wants my attention, He doesn't mess around. He just hits me right where it hurts. I guess that's because He knows how hard-headed I am. Subtlety would be lost on me when I'm on a mission, so He just doesn't bother with it.)
Okay. Now what? Like an intercom switched on in my head I hear, "You're thinking too small." As I sometimes do, I decide to ignore the intercom. How can I be thinking too small? I am working my ass off here. I don't need this right now.
Since I'm on a forced break at this time, I decide to check facebook. This is when I get the message from my friend, Marsha McLelland. I love Marsha. But I really did NOT want to hear what she had to say. The message she sent was something like this, "What a great idea! We need to take this to the next level and put these signs all over the country!" Now, don't get me wrong. Marsha is a Rock Star. She is so committed and works tirelessly to advocate for the safety of children. But, damn it! I'm just me. I'm just a mother and a grandmother living in Southwestern Indiana and at this point it looks like I'm NEVER going to get back to my bed and those covers. This is when I hear the voice in my head saying, "You asked me to show you what you need to see." This is also when I hear my mother in my head saying, "Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it." (Heavy sigh.)
So here's the deal... I know this is a long note and it's not over yet, so please... bear with me.
I have agreed to write this note, asking for help. We must do this. Trust me. Once you read this, if you turn your back, it's not going to be pretty. At this very moment I am reminded of a phrase from an old television sitcom (can't recall which), "God'll getcha for that!" Please don't take that as a threat. It's just the way my mind works.
Anyway, I have agreed to write this note with the intent of sharing it and getting the message out through facebook. Sort of like a cyber flash-mob thing, if that's an applicable analogy. That is a daunting task. If I mess it up, it's on me. I can't handle that kind of pressure alone, so once again, I called in THE EXPERT - THE SUPREME COMMANDER. I asked for help. I asked my facebook friends to pray for me and I asked God to give me what I need to know to make this happen, if it is His Will.
I posted my request for prayer on my profile page. I also posted it on the Vaccine Resistance Movement (VRM) facebook page. Almost immediately I got a response from a man named Steve. This is what he wrote, "Max would have been 2 today....he will guide you and give you strength!" I have never interacted with Steve before today and I had never heard of Max. I was immediately engulfed with such an overwelming feeling of sadness and the tears started flowing. Me crying is not an unusual thing, I am moved to tears very easily. This was different. I couldn't stop crying and I was filled with a profound sadness that I can't recall feeling in a long time, if ever. I sat and cried for a while. Then I went to Steve's facebook page and I saw the photos of Max. As I sat looking at this gorgeous child I started getting the message loud and clear, "Use me." I fought that for a while. I left the computer and washed the dishes. Then I cleaned up the countertops. Then I scooped out the litter box. The entire time I kept getting the same message: "Use me." As I walked out the door from the hall to the garage and back in again, I caught myself thinking, I need to hold his hand because he's so small. Finally, I sat back down at the computer and wrote this message to Steve:
Steve: Thank-you for introducing me to Max. He is with me.
I almost feel awkward writing this message to you and am having difficulty
making my fingers type this question, but I keep getting the clear message, "Ask" "Use me."
I have been to your profile page and seen the photos of your beautiful son.
I admit I had never heard of Max before today, though I had seen your posts on VRM.
I can only imagine how much your heart is breaking today.
When I read your comment I immediately felt such huge sorrow and am having trouble
stopping the tears from flowing - and I never even met Max until now.
I believe there is a reason for everything and Max's death will not be in vain.
I know that is such small comfort to you, but this is the message I am getting.
As I said, this is so hard for me to write.
My head is telling me "Do NOT take advantage of this father's grief..."
but Max is telling me (I know, I sound crazy) - but MAX is TELLING me, "Use me"
I'm so sorry.
I started to type, "I don't know what to say."
But then erased that because I do know what to say, I'm just having such a difficult time saying it.
May I tell Max's story?
There. I said it. I asked the father of a dead baby if I could use his story to raise money.
That feels so dirty to me. But it's not. Max can help.
He can do this so other parents don't have to go through what you and Mom have gone through.
Please tell me what happened.
Marci
After writing the message I did what for me is one of the hardest things in the world to do. I waited.
I felt as though I couldn't start writing this note until I heard back from Steve. So I sat here at the computer going through my facebook friends list and thinking about who to tag when the note was finished. Suddenly I knew it was time to start writing. So I started. I had no idea where this was going to go at the time, but I knew it was time to begin.
After a while, I got a message back from Steve. Here is what he wrote:
yes thats fine ....Joel Lord is putting together a small story of Max's life. might be best if we all work together to get this right
I thanked Steve and asked him to have Joel message me the information when it was complete. Then I went back to this note. A while later I got the message from Joel Lord. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:
A family in the UK recently lost their baby boy, "22 months at death", following post vaccination adverse drug interactions. Up until that point their baby had received the full slate of injections typical for his age group. At 6 months he began to experience ongoing convulsions/seizures. His neurologist then chose to prescribe him a set of experimental drugs (none of which are officially licensed for use in infants): 'Sodium Valproate' or 'Valproic Acid' (Anticonvulsant, antipsychotic - anti-seizure medication),'Keppra' or 'Levetiracetam' (antiepileptic drug) & 'Clobazam' (benzodiazepine type anticonvulsant) - ostensibly to quell his seizures. Initially he was put on a combination of Sodium Valproate & Keppra. A decision was then made to switch Keppra for Clobazam, as, per the neurologist in charge, "It was clearly making him worse." There was speculation of possible Dravet's Syndrome (severe myoclonic epilepsy in infancy). At no time during this phase were the parents ever consulted or briefed on the authorization of these drug combinations given to their child.
The parents, now estranged, marked the date of what would have been their child's 2nd birthday in solemn remembrance of their son; born 04 08 2009, died 21 06 2011. The father duly noted "Each time he was given shots he seemed to have seizures...overdose symptoms were heart block, coma, death."
...one glaring factor remains that we must consider - a family put their trust in an Industry sworn to protect the innocent. And yet they were not briefed on the synergistic nature of anti-seizure medications when combined. Nor were they prepared for the seizures which suddenly gripped their child at 6 months, the result of vaccine induced Encephalitis, inflammation of the brain & meninges (Meningoencephalitis) manifesting as ‘diffuse and/or focal neuropsychological dysfunction‘. Whose responsibility was this? Certainly most parents aren't versed in the hard science & reasoning behind vaccine methodology. Who can blame them given these hurried modern times? But if that is the case, then isn't it the obligation of doctors making these pivotal life-changing decisions to have all the facts straight beforehand? This child is unfortunately gone. But the message still resonates and his legacy will hopefully serve as a burning light of truth for parents throughout our communities, that it is now time to step back and rethink the entire concept of "herd immunity". - Excerpts from 'VRM: The Problem With Vaccines Part 4A - Primary Aspects of Vaccine Toxicity Affecting The Body' by Joel Lord, founder of Vaccine Resistance Movement
I am a firm believer that when someone dies a traumatic or wrongful death, the soul can be stuck hanging around trying to make sense of what happened. I believe this is the case with Max. I believe this is why I felt such an enormous feeling of grief immediately after reading his father's comment. I also believe this is part of my mission, and I believe we owe it to Max to allow him to rest in peace, knowing that his death will not be for nothing. So today, on what would have been Max's second birthday, I am asking all 1707 of my facebook friends to please contribute $1.00 to fund the billboard project. I am also asking all of my 1707 facebook friends to forward this note and ask your friends to do the same. Contributions can be made by paypal. Please put in the message section, "Happy Birthday Max. Here's Your Sign."
With God's love and blessings and my undying gratitude,
Marci
Max. A beautiful child who would have celebrated his 2nd birthday today, August 4, 2011. Max suffered and died on June 21, 2011. His death was the result of vaccine-injury.
This is the message that will be printed on billboards across America. The goal of this mission is to inform parents of their rights and to encourage parents to learn more about vaccinations before giving consent. Afterwards, it may be too late.
Since this note was written on August 4, 2001, we have received enough donations to fund four billboards: Two in Evansville, Indiana; one in Austin, Texas, and another in Denver, Colorado. We have incorporated and have filed the paperwork to establish a non-profit 501(c)3. Contributions are now being accepted online or by mail. Please visit www.vaxtruth.org for more information.
I have to back up a bit. I don't usually get the Courier & Press Newspaper and I didn't buy it on the day when I read the above-mentioned article. I didn't even see it the day it came out. I happened across it while sitting in the waiting room of the Trauma ICU at Deaconess Hospital in Evansville. I was there with a dear friend whose brother was nearly killed in a motorcycle accident. If I hadn't been there with Donna, I would never have seen the newspaper in the first place. But I did. God works that way.
The article ran on the front page of the newspaper on Monday, July 25th. I was at the hospital on Tuesday, July 26th. Since it was already a day-old paper, I took it with me when I left, figuring no one there would miss it (or need it as much as I did). It was just one of those things where I knew I had to take it with me. When I got home I went to the Courier & Press online and looked up the article with the intention of commenting on it. That's when I saw the video of a nurse at the Vanderburgh County Health Department giving multiple vaccines to a young boy and proclaiming, "They all turn out just fine" and joking, "We haven't killed anyone yet!"
I really do try to live my life peacefully. I feel like I have been at war over the last several years and am suffering from combat fatigue. There are many times when I just want to crawl in my bed, pull the covers over my head and pretend I never even heard of autism or vaccine-injury. Sometimes I do just that. I take a vacation from reality and pretend that I am just a mother and a grandmother living in a small town in Southwestern Indiana. I pretend that my children are healthy and life will play out just the way it should. Then something happens to snap me back to reality and I realize that for me, this is life just as it was meant to be. There is a reason my daughter had to get sick. If she hadn't, I would never have become involved in this war in the first place. It's too late now. Just like the military, I can't quit. And whenever I begin to think I can, My SUPREME COMMANDER does something to remind me that quitting is not an option. That's what He did when he put that newspaper in front of me. It's sort of like when Bill Engvall says, "Here's your sign!" but on a different level entirely.
What has followed in the days after reading that article and watching that video has been a whirlwind of writing. I have written several blogposts and notes on facebook about what's been happening here. I won't go into that in this note. Let's just say that it's been enormously frustrating trying to get our local media to print anything about parents' concerns about vaccine safety or about the legal right to religious exemption. It AIN'T happening. Period.
At one point several days ago I was ready to give up. The comments section on the Courier & Press article had been disabled and the experiences shared by parents of vaccine-injured children were removed completely. Then our comments were removed from the Courier & Press facebook page. Then many of us were blocked from the page altogether. I was so frustrated I didn't know what to do. So I went to bed. But first, I prayed. And I asked my friends to pray for me. My standard prayer when I don't know what to do is, "God... if this is your will, please show me what I need to see."
When I got up the next morning I was still so tired and just plain weary, and I was beginning to get frustrated with God for not answering me in a timely fashion. I was hoping He would have sent the answer in a dream or given me some sort of miraculous vision. As I think back on it now, it seems like I must have been on the verge of crossing my arms, tapping my foot and looking at my watch. I'm glad now that I didn't do that. While I'm absolutely certain that God has a sense of humor (and I KNOW he has patience because he's still working with ME after all these years!), I am very thankful that I didn't test Him at that particular time. What I did instead is what I do almost every morning lately. I made a cup of green tea and sat down at the computer. After checking my email and scanning the Courier & Press online to make sure there were no more articles about back-to-school shots, I turned to facebook.
That's when I got it. Literally. "HERE'S YOUR SIGN!"
I don't remember at this moment who it was that had posted the photograph. It wasn't one of the facebook friends I regularly communicate with. But there it was. The photograph of a billboard that reads "No Shots, No School... NOT TRUE!!!" I think it was probably at this moment when I uttered what was one of the heaviest sighs of my life. If you've ever had that feeling of, "What have I done?" you know what I'm talking about. It's that sense of, "Oh, God. This is too much. I didn't really want to do THAT much." Too late. When you get orders from THE SUPREME COMMANDER, refusing is just not an option. Believe me, I've tried. I learned some time ago that if I don't do as I'm told, this is not going to go away, it's just going to get bigger. So, in the interest of compliance and to save myself the pain of paying the price for disobedience, I started a fundraiser. I posted on facebook that I was going to raise money to put up a billboard in Evansville, Indiana so that parents here could have the information they need to make informed decisions about vaccinating their kids. For the last few days I have been working like a crazy person (that's easy for me...), listing things on ebay and asking people for donations. My kids have been very patient (for the most part). They have let me do what they know by now I must do.
I have to tell you that I have never checked into renting a billboard before. I figured it would be expensive, but I had no idea just how MUCH it would cost. I played phone tag for a couple of days with the salesperson from the Evansville office of Lamar Outdoor Advertising, but finally she and I connected. When we started talking I prepared myself for the possibility that she would tell me, "We can't run something like that. It's too controversial." (Remember, this is Evansville, Indiana.) I started off by telling Nicole what had happened with the Courier & Press. I told her, "We are not telling people not to vaccinate. We are just asking the media to please report in an unbiased manner and let parents know the truth about their legal rights." I followed this with the disclaimer, "I'm really not just some nut-job. I'm the mother of a vaccine-injured child who almost died after receiving one shot. People need to know that the recommended childhood schedule has never been studied for safety." The response I got from Nicole was, "I don't think you're a nut-job." She then proceeded to tell me about a friend whose toddler was "perfectly healthy" until he got his shots for preschool and then decended into severe autism. Nicole also told me that she has been concerned about vaccines and stated her wish that I had called sooner, as she has just (last week) taken her own daughter in for her "well-baby visit" during which she received the standard multiple vaccinations as per the recommended schedule. This led to a fairly lengthy conversation about how to help protect her baby from the toxic effects of vaccines. I gave Nicole the web address of my blog and promised to send her some information from Russell Blaylock about protecting against vaccine damage. This is how God works. Every task He gives us leads to another opportunity. Each connection we make leads to more opportunities and the chance to save His children.
I sent Nicole the photo of the billboard I had seen on facebook. She said she would need to get it approved by her supervisor. (Uh-oh, I thought). She told me that he was very open-minded and she felt pretty sure he would approve it, which he did. The one caveat was that there has to be a contact listed at the bottom, "In case there are any complaints." (Heavy sigh.) Please God, I'm going to need a big shield and some armor. This is Indiana. Home of Ely Lily, the company that came up with the idea of putting thimerosal in vaccines so many decades ago.
As scary as the thought of being the target of backlash is, that was not my only concern. As I said, I've never rented a billboard before. I was prepared for the cost to be in the hundreds of dollars a month range. The quote I got was, "$3,438 to run the message for one week on all four digital billboards in Evansville." My heart sank. How in the world am I going to raise $3,500 in less than a week. The time crunch has to do with the fact that school starts here next week. My goal had been to raise enough money to get the message out prior to the first day of school, so that last-minute parents (like me) who have waited (either because they are too busy or because they are scared of what may happen as a result of vaccinating) would get the message in time to look further and learn about their rights and about vaccines before blindly obeying the message put out by the Courier & Press. My biggest fear is that so many families here are uninformed and feel they have no choice. We're all strapped financially. If people HAVE jobs they need to keep them. They can't afford to stay home and home-school and they can't afford to take off from work when the schools send their kids home (as happened last year) because they aren't "up-to-date" on their vaccinations. Talk about having a gun to your head.
Anyway, I told Nicole that I didn't think I could come up with the money. Then she said I could run the message on two billboards (one on the east side of town and one on the west side) for one week for $1,984. That's still a lot more than I was counting on, but it's much better. I told her I believed I could do it and stated firmly "I know this is going to happen." (The firmness was just as much for me as it was for Nicole.) Heavy sigh. Too late to back out. I've already got people contributing to the cause. Remember, this is like the military. Once you're in, you can't quit.
So this is where I was yesterday. I have several things listed on ebay and several things more to list. Suddenly, my camera battery won't charge. I start using Leah's camera and bought some rechargeable batteries for it. I'm back in business. Suddenly, those batteries won't charge, either. (Have I mentioned yet that when God wants my attention, He doesn't mess around. He just hits me right where it hurts. I guess that's because He knows how hard-headed I am. Subtlety would be lost on me when I'm on a mission, so He just doesn't bother with it.)
Okay. Now what? Like an intercom switched on in my head I hear, "You're thinking too small." As I sometimes do, I decide to ignore the intercom. How can I be thinking too small? I am working my ass off here. I don't need this right now.
Since I'm on a forced break at this time, I decide to check facebook. This is when I get the message from my friend, Marsha McLelland. I love Marsha. But I really did NOT want to hear what she had to say. The message she sent was something like this, "What a great idea! We need to take this to the next level and put these signs all over the country!" Now, don't get me wrong. Marsha is a Rock Star. She is so committed and works tirelessly to advocate for the safety of children. But, damn it! I'm just me. I'm just a mother and a grandmother living in Southwestern Indiana and at this point it looks like I'm NEVER going to get back to my bed and those covers. This is when I hear the voice in my head saying, "You asked me to show you what you need to see." This is also when I hear my mother in my head saying, "Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it." (Heavy sigh.)
So here's the deal... I know this is a long note and it's not over yet, so please... bear with me.
I have agreed to write this note, asking for help. We must do this. Trust me. Once you read this, if you turn your back, it's not going to be pretty. At this very moment I am reminded of a phrase from an old television sitcom (can't recall which), "God'll getcha for that!" Please don't take that as a threat. It's just the way my mind works.
Anyway, I have agreed to write this note with the intent of sharing it and getting the message out through facebook. Sort of like a cyber flash-mob thing, if that's an applicable analogy. That is a daunting task. If I mess it up, it's on me. I can't handle that kind of pressure alone, so once again, I called in THE EXPERT - THE SUPREME COMMANDER. I asked for help. I asked my facebook friends to pray for me and I asked God to give me what I need to know to make this happen, if it is His Will.
I posted my request for prayer on my profile page. I also posted it on the Vaccine Resistance Movement (VRM) facebook page. Almost immediately I got a response from a man named Steve. This is what he wrote, "Max would have been 2 today....he will guide you and give you strength!" I have never interacted with Steve before today and I had never heard of Max. I was immediately engulfed with such an overwelming feeling of sadness and the tears started flowing. Me crying is not an unusual thing, I am moved to tears very easily. This was different. I couldn't stop crying and I was filled with a profound sadness that I can't recall feeling in a long time, if ever. I sat and cried for a while. Then I went to Steve's facebook page and I saw the photos of Max. As I sat looking at this gorgeous child I started getting the message loud and clear, "Use me." I fought that for a while. I left the computer and washed the dishes. Then I cleaned up the countertops. Then I scooped out the litter box. The entire time I kept getting the same message: "Use me." As I walked out the door from the hall to the garage and back in again, I caught myself thinking, I need to hold his hand because he's so small. Finally, I sat back down at the computer and wrote this message to Steve:
Steve: Thank-you for introducing me to Max. He is with me.
I almost feel awkward writing this message to you and am having difficulty
making my fingers type this question, but I keep getting the clear message, "Ask" "Use me."
I have been to your profile page and seen the photos of your beautiful son.
I admit I had never heard of Max before today, though I had seen your posts on VRM.
I can only imagine how much your heart is breaking today.
When I read your comment I immediately felt such huge sorrow and am having trouble
stopping the tears from flowing - and I never even met Max until now.
I believe there is a reason for everything and Max's death will not be in vain.
I know that is such small comfort to you, but this is the message I am getting.
As I said, this is so hard for me to write.
My head is telling me "Do NOT take advantage of this father's grief..."
but Max is telling me (I know, I sound crazy) - but MAX is TELLING me, "Use me"
I'm so sorry.
I started to type, "I don't know what to say."
But then erased that because I do know what to say, I'm just having such a difficult time saying it.
May I tell Max's story?
There. I said it. I asked the father of a dead baby if I could use his story to raise money.
That feels so dirty to me. But it's not. Max can help.
He can do this so other parents don't have to go through what you and Mom have gone through.
Please tell me what happened.
Marci
After writing the message I did what for me is one of the hardest things in the world to do. I waited.
I felt as though I couldn't start writing this note until I heard back from Steve. So I sat here at the computer going through my facebook friends list and thinking about who to tag when the note was finished. Suddenly I knew it was time to start writing. So I started. I had no idea where this was going to go at the time, but I knew it was time to begin.
After a while, I got a message back from Steve. Here is what he wrote:
yes thats fine ....Joel Lord is putting together a small story of Max's life. might be best if we all work together to get this right
I thanked Steve and asked him to have Joel message me the information when it was complete. Then I went back to this note. A while later I got the message from Joel Lord. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:
A family in the UK recently lost their baby boy, "22 months at death", following post vaccination adverse drug interactions. Up until that point their baby had received the full slate of injections typical for his age group. At 6 months he began to experience ongoing convulsions/seizures. His neurologist then chose to prescribe him a set of experimental drugs (none of which are officially licensed for use in infants): 'Sodium Valproate' or 'Valproic Acid' (Anticonvulsant, antipsychotic - anti-seizure medication),'Keppra' or 'Levetiracetam' (antiepileptic drug) & 'Clobazam' (benzodiazepine type anticonvulsant) - ostensibly to quell his seizures. Initially he was put on a combination of Sodium Valproate & Keppra. A decision was then made to switch Keppra for Clobazam, as, per the neurologist in charge, "It was clearly making him worse." There was speculation of possible Dravet's Syndrome (severe myoclonic epilepsy in infancy). At no time during this phase were the parents ever consulted or briefed on the authorization of these drug combinations given to their child.
The parents, now estranged, marked the date of what would have been their child's 2nd birthday in solemn remembrance of their son; born 04 08 2009, died 21 06 2011. The father duly noted "Each time he was given shots he seemed to have seizures...overdose symptoms were heart block, coma, death."
...one glaring factor remains that we must consider - a family put their trust in an Industry sworn to protect the innocent. And yet they were not briefed on the synergistic nature of anti-seizure medications when combined. Nor were they prepared for the seizures which suddenly gripped their child at 6 months, the result of vaccine induced Encephalitis, inflammation of the brain & meninges (Meningoencephalitis) manifesting as ‘diffuse and/or focal neuropsychological dysfunction‘. Whose responsibility was this? Certainly most parents aren't versed in the hard science & reasoning behind vaccine methodology. Who can blame them given these hurried modern times? But if that is the case, then isn't it the obligation of doctors making these pivotal life-changing decisions to have all the facts straight beforehand? This child is unfortunately gone. But the message still resonates and his legacy will hopefully serve as a burning light of truth for parents throughout our communities, that it is now time to step back and rethink the entire concept of "herd immunity". - Excerpts from 'VRM: The Problem With Vaccines Part 4A - Primary Aspects of Vaccine Toxicity Affecting The Body' by Joel Lord, founder of Vaccine Resistance Movement
I am a firm believer that when someone dies a traumatic or wrongful death, the soul can be stuck hanging around trying to make sense of what happened. I believe this is the case with Max. I believe this is why I felt such an enormous feeling of grief immediately after reading his father's comment. I also believe this is part of my mission, and I believe we owe it to Max to allow him to rest in peace, knowing that his death will not be for nothing. So today, on what would have been Max's second birthday, I am asking all 1707 of my facebook friends to please contribute $1.00 to fund the billboard project. I am also asking all of my 1707 facebook friends to forward this note and ask your friends to do the same. Contributions can be made by paypal. Please put in the message section, "Happy Birthday Max. Here's Your Sign."
With God's love and blessings and my undying gratitude,
Marci
Max. A beautiful child who would have celebrated his 2nd birthday today, August 4, 2011. Max suffered and died on June 21, 2011. His death was the result of vaccine-injury.
This is the message that will be printed on billboards across America. The goal of this mission is to inform parents of their rights and to encourage parents to learn more about vaccinations before giving consent. Afterwards, it may be too late.
Since this note was written on August 4, 2001, we have received enough donations to fund four billboards: Two in Evansville, Indiana; one in Austin, Texas, and another in Denver, Colorado. We have incorporated and have filed the paperwork to establish a non-profit 501(c)3. Contributions are now being accepted online or by mail. Please visit www.vaxtruth.org for more information.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
CENSORSHIP IS NOT JUST AN EVANSVILLE THING
For anyone who has been following my battle with the Evansville Courier and Press Newspaper - and especially for those who have not... let me bring you up-to-date.
Last week I had a period of about three days when it seems I was constantly either on the phone with Tom Lovett, Metro Editor of the Courier & Press, or I was writing - either to him or about him. I was angry. I'm still angry, but I want to be fair to Mr. Lovett and to the Courier & Press, so I want to let you know what has happened since I last posted.
I have gotten some pretty critical comments from people (or a person?) who believes I have unfairly singled out Mr. Lovett and his actions. I believe I have defended my actions successfully. You will have to be the judge. I did write a letter to Mr. Lovett, offering to write for the Courier & Press for free, since Mr. Lovett claims the reason he will not publish any stories about vaccine-injured children or parents' right to religious exemption is because he does not have anyone with the expertise, or manpower to put toward the research. This was also used as a criticism by "Anonymous" who sides with the Courier & Press, letting me know that what I am asking (fair and unbiased reporting) is too much because they are so strapped at Evansville's major newspaper. For Anonymous, I am publishing the text of my letter to Mr. Lovett. Again, this is not to single out Mr. Lovett or the Courier and Press. I really had decided not to put this on the blog because I had come to the conclusion that it really wasn't necessary and I REALLY DON'T want to make this a personal witch-hunt. (That's the tactic of the other side and I have a huge aversion to being lumped with the likes of Brian Deer, James Murdoch and Matt Lauer.) However, what I have learned since last week is that this is not a personal thing between Tom Lovett and myself. Since the whole debacle only a few days ago, I have actually been allowed to comment on other online articles on the Courier & Press website, and those comments have been allowed to remain. (I'm still banned from the Courier & Press facebook page, as are many of my facebook friends who attempted to post their children's stories there.) So, it's not just me that's the issue - it's just vaccine safety and the stories of children who have been harmed or killed by vaccines. That's the issue. That's what the Courier & Press doesn't want concerned parents in Evansville and surrounding areas to know. Unfortunately, that's also what newspapers and television news stations don't want parents across this country to know.
Guess what? I am the parent of a vaccine-injured child and I am not going away.
No Vaccines, No School... NOT TRUE!!!
If the local media won't tell the truth about a parents right to choose what is best for his or her own child, we will have to take matters into our own hands. Be watching for the billboards. They're coming. Parents of vaccine-injured children from all across America and even as far away as Australia are banding together to help get the message out. If you would like to know how to help with this effort, please email me (marcellaterry@hotmail.com) or friend me on facebook (Marcella Piper-Terry).
Many blessings, 4allofyou.
Marci
Last week I had a period of about three days when it seems I was constantly either on the phone with Tom Lovett, Metro Editor of the Courier & Press, or I was writing - either to him or about him. I was angry. I'm still angry, but I want to be fair to Mr. Lovett and to the Courier & Press, so I want to let you know what has happened since I last posted.
I have gotten some pretty critical comments from people (or a person?) who believes I have unfairly singled out Mr. Lovett and his actions. I believe I have defended my actions successfully. You will have to be the judge. I did write a letter to Mr. Lovett, offering to write for the Courier & Press for free, since Mr. Lovett claims the reason he will not publish any stories about vaccine-injured children or parents' right to religious exemption is because he does not have anyone with the expertise, or manpower to put toward the research. This was also used as a criticism by "Anonymous" who sides with the Courier & Press, letting me know that what I am asking (fair and unbiased reporting) is too much because they are so strapped at Evansville's major newspaper. For Anonymous, I am publishing the text of my letter to Mr. Lovett. Again, this is not to single out Mr. Lovett or the Courier and Press. I really had decided not to put this on the blog because I had come to the conclusion that it really wasn't necessary and I REALLY DON'T want to make this a personal witch-hunt. (That's the tactic of the other side and I have a huge aversion to being lumped with the likes of Brian Deer, James Murdoch and Matt Lauer.) However, what I have learned since last week is that this is not a personal thing between Tom Lovett and myself. Since the whole debacle only a few days ago, I have actually been allowed to comment on other online articles on the Courier & Press website, and those comments have been allowed to remain. (I'm still banned from the Courier & Press facebook page, as are many of my facebook friends who attempted to post their children's stories there.) So, it's not just me that's the issue - it's just vaccine safety and the stories of children who have been harmed or killed by vaccines. That's the issue. That's what the Courier & Press doesn't want concerned parents in Evansville and surrounding areas to know. Unfortunately, that's also what newspapers and television news stations don't want parents across this country to know.
Guess what? I am the parent of a vaccine-injured child and I am not going away.
No Vaccines, No School... NOT TRUE!!!
If the local media won't tell the truth about a parents right to choose what is best for his or her own child, we will have to take matters into our own hands. Be watching for the billboards. They're coming. Parents of vaccine-injured children from all across America and even as far away as Australia are banding together to help get the message out. If you would like to know how to help with this effort, please email me (marcellaterry@hotmail.com) or friend me on facebook (Marcella Piper-Terry).
Many blessings, 4allofyou.
Marci
OPEN LETTER TO TOM LOVETT, METRO EDITOR OF EVANSVILLE COURIER PRESS
Dear Mr. Lovett:
I’m afraid we’ve gotten off to a rocky start. I would like to do what I can to amend this bumpy beginning. Until two days ago, you most likely had never heard of me. I know that I had not heard of you. So let me begin by properly introducing myself. My name is Marcella Piper-Terry. I am the mother of a vaccine-injured child. My daughter is 17, so she is soon to be a vaccine-injured adult.
For the last 17 years I have watched my daughter’s health evaporate as if into thin air. As an infant, she was slow to gain weight and was diagnosed with “failure-to-thrive.” She was intolerant of milk, had mysterious rashes and “fevers of unknown origin.” She was very prone to ear infections and had two sets of tubes placed in her ears. This is extremely common among vaccine-injured children.
Prior to the addition of the Hepatitis B vaccine into the CDC’s Recommended Childhood Vaccination Schedule, chronic ear infections in infants and children were far less common. The Hepatitis B vaccine was added in 1989 and by 1990-91 it was widely used in the U.S. The hepatitis B series is initiated when an infant is less than 24 hours old. The CDC initially recommended the Hepatitis B vaccine only for newborns whose mothers tested positive for Hepatitis B. Presumably, this has something to do with the fact that a newborn’s immune system is not fully developed and vaccination with a virus at such a young age involves the risk of damaging that process. It would make sense not to vaccinate ALL children, but to only undertake that risk if there are circumstances (such as a hepatitis B positive mother) that warrant such protection. That was how it started. However, within a year or two, the CDC changed its recommendation and added the Hepatitis B vaccine to the childhood schedule, in effect mandating ALL children be vaccinated against this sexually transmitted disease. What we know now (thanks to recently published studies) is that even in cases where the mother is positive for Hep B, the vaccine does not appear to confer immunity for more than 2-5 years, and the incidence of autism among boys vaccinated with Hep B at birth increases three-fold over their unvaccinated peers. Ahhh…. Hindsight is 20/20, right?
My daughter was born in 1994 and was vaccinated according to the schedule. We were a military family at the time. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the military, but there is a pressure on parents to comply with military regulations, including the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedule. In fact, did you know that the children of military parents are the most highly vaccinated children in the United States? “Coincidentally” (I just LOVE that word!), the incidence of autism among children of military parents is much higher than the rate of autism in the general population. (Now that IS an interesting coincidence!) In 2007, when the CDC announced that autism affected 1 in 150 U.S. children, the rate among children of military families was 1 in 82. (It must be something to do with stress, right? Children whose parents are deployed become so stressed out that they develop autism. Yeah. That must be it.)
Many military parents who are concerned about vaccines do not feel as if they CAN question or refuse vaccines. That was not the case with me. I didn’t question at all; at least not at first. I was concerned about my daughter, not only because I am a good parent and wanted what was best for her,but also because I wanted to do the right thing for other people’s children. I bought into the myth that Hepatitis B was something I needed to afraid of. I didn’t know any better. Now I do. I have researched Hepatitis B disease and I have researched the vaccine. I wish I had done it sooner. If I had, I would have most certainly been alerted that something was not right with the CDC’s recommendations, and I would have researched further before blindly allowing my daughter to be injected with other unnecessary and unsafe vaccines. You might say I’m a bit of a slow learner. However, you could also say that once I’ve learned my lesson, I don’t forget it. There are some lessons in life that are easier than others. The lessons that come with being the parent of a vaccine-injured child are by far the hardest I have ever had to learn. That’s because these lessons come directly as a result of my own mistakes. I know now that I should have researched first. I should have asked more questions. I should have said, “Wait. I don’t know enough about what’s in that needle you are about to stick into my child’s body. I need to learn a bit more before I sign that consent form.” If I had only known then even a tiny bit of what I know now, I never would have signed.
During our telephone conversations over the last few days you have mentioned several times that as we were talking, a crowd was gathering around your desk. You said others (presumably employees of the Courier & Press) were offering to give me advice about the safety of vaccines. Actually, I believe you said they were offering to help you in your attempts to convince me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I must admit, I’m a bit envious. I have been researching and learning about vaccines for many years and it’s a very tiring job. It has required that I take graduate level courses in research design and statistics, just so I can really understand and look critically at the studies that have been published in medical journals. Graduate school is grueling as I’m sure you may know. If you haven’t been to graduate school, let me tell you, it’s tough. It’s more than a full-time job. It’s even tougher when you have a sick child to care for. There’s a lot of homework to do and a ton of reading, research, and writing. There are also presentations at regional and national conferences, and award ceremonies to attend, when one is fortunate enough to be recognized by national associations for excellence in research and writing. It’s also tough financially. I was fortunate enough to have been awarded a graduate research scholarship and an assistantship, so I did have a job at the university and I didn’t have to pay tuition. However, the $4,000 stipend I was paid each year didn’t go far, especially when we had to pay out-of-pocket for most of my daughter’s medical care. You see, insurance covered the vaccines that made her sick, but it doesn’t cover the treatments that are necessary to reverse even a small part of the damage that was done to her immune system, neurological system, gastrointestinal system, circulatory system and excretory system. The nutritional supplements, organic foods, digestive enzymes, probiotics, chiropractic care, and multiple other therapeutic interventions have all been paid out-of-pocket. What I’m trying to say is, I’m SO JEALOUS of you! How fortunate you are to have an entire newsroom full of people at the ready to help you in your research! I feel so deprived. It’s always been just me here.
Here’s what I don’t understand… During our conversations over the last few days you have repeatedly stated that you do not intend now or in the future to publish anything regarding the safety (or rather the concerns about the safety) of vaccines. You made it very clear that as far as you are concerned, this issue is closed. You stated to me that the CDC has said vaccines are safe, and it appears clear to me that for you, that’s the end of it. That’s fine - if you are speaking as an individual, or as a parent who has made this decision for your own child. However, you are not just an individual and you are not just a parent. You are the Metro Editor of the only major newspaper in Evansville, Indiana. The population of Evansville is somewhere around 150,000. As Metro Editor, you have a lot of power. You also have a lot of people who are apparently willing to help you, and they are paid to do so. Yet, during our telephone conversations you stated to me that you did not have the manpower to research vaccine safety. You said that you had not looked into it yourself, admitting that you are merely following what the CDC says. You don’t have the manpower to research vaccine safety, yet you have a newsroom full of
people just dying to tell me what I don’t know about it? That’s confusing to me. Please help me here. You admit knowing nothing about it and not having the manpower to research this issue. How is it you have people standing by, chomping at the bit to educate me? Perhaps I’m missing something, but that just doesn’t make sense. It could just be me, though. Remember, I’m a slow learner.
I tell you what, Mr. Lovett – I really do want to alter the course of this path that you and I are now on. (And make no mistake – this is a path, and we are on it together. You’d better get used to me.) I’ll make you an offer. I will teach you what I know about vaccines. I will write for the Courier & Press and I will tell your readers everything they need to know in order to make informed decisions about the health of their children. And I’ll do it for free. There you go! Manpower problem solved! What do you think?
I realize you still don’t know me well and you have a lot riding on this decision. I will be happy to send you my vitae (that’s a fancy name for “resume” – it’s used when someone has attended graduate school, been published in professional journals, and presented their research at professional conferences), and references if you like. You can look me up in the Who’s Who Among American Students, or at the American Psychological Foundation’s database under Graduate Research Scholarship Awards (1997). You would have been able to find me in the registry of Who’s Who Among American Women, but at the time I was nominated my daughter was too sick and it didn’t seem worth it to spend the time filling out and returning the form. Some things are just more important than seeing one’s name in print.
If you decide not to take me up on my offer, I understand. Sometimes, when a line is drawn in the sand, it costs too much in the way of pride to bend down and erase it. Make no mistake, though, you will be hearing from me again… a lot.
I am the parent of a vaccine-injured child… and I am not going away.
Sincerely yours,
Marcella Piper-Terry, M.S.
I’m afraid we’ve gotten off to a rocky start. I would like to do what I can to amend this bumpy beginning. Until two days ago, you most likely had never heard of me. I know that I had not heard of you. So let me begin by properly introducing myself. My name is Marcella Piper-Terry. I am the mother of a vaccine-injured child. My daughter is 17, so she is soon to be a vaccine-injured adult.
For the last 17 years I have watched my daughter’s health evaporate as if into thin air. As an infant, she was slow to gain weight and was diagnosed with “failure-to-thrive.” She was intolerant of milk, had mysterious rashes and “fevers of unknown origin.” She was very prone to ear infections and had two sets of tubes placed in her ears. This is extremely common among vaccine-injured children.
Prior to the addition of the Hepatitis B vaccine into the CDC’s Recommended Childhood Vaccination Schedule, chronic ear infections in infants and children were far less common. The Hepatitis B vaccine was added in 1989 and by 1990-91 it was widely used in the U.S. The hepatitis B series is initiated when an infant is less than 24 hours old. The CDC initially recommended the Hepatitis B vaccine only for newborns whose mothers tested positive for Hepatitis B. Presumably, this has something to do with the fact that a newborn’s immune system is not fully developed and vaccination with a virus at such a young age involves the risk of damaging that process. It would make sense not to vaccinate ALL children, but to only undertake that risk if there are circumstances (such as a hepatitis B positive mother) that warrant such protection. That was how it started. However, within a year or two, the CDC changed its recommendation and added the Hepatitis B vaccine to the childhood schedule, in effect mandating ALL children be vaccinated against this sexually transmitted disease. What we know now (thanks to recently published studies) is that even in cases where the mother is positive for Hep B, the vaccine does not appear to confer immunity for more than 2-5 years, and the incidence of autism among boys vaccinated with Hep B at birth increases three-fold over their unvaccinated peers. Ahhh…. Hindsight is 20/20, right?
My daughter was born in 1994 and was vaccinated according to the schedule. We were a military family at the time. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the military, but there is a pressure on parents to comply with military regulations, including the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedule. In fact, did you know that the children of military parents are the most highly vaccinated children in the United States? “Coincidentally” (I just LOVE that word!), the incidence of autism among children of military parents is much higher than the rate of autism in the general population. (Now that IS an interesting coincidence!) In 2007, when the CDC announced that autism affected 1 in 150 U.S. children, the rate among children of military families was 1 in 82. (It must be something to do with stress, right? Children whose parents are deployed become so stressed out that they develop autism. Yeah. That must be it.)
Many military parents who are concerned about vaccines do not feel as if they CAN question or refuse vaccines. That was not the case with me. I didn’t question at all; at least not at first. I was concerned about my daughter, not only because I am a good parent and wanted what was best for her,but also because I wanted to do the right thing for other people’s children. I bought into the myth that Hepatitis B was something I needed to afraid of. I didn’t know any better. Now I do. I have researched Hepatitis B disease and I have researched the vaccine. I wish I had done it sooner. If I had, I would have most certainly been alerted that something was not right with the CDC’s recommendations, and I would have researched further before blindly allowing my daughter to be injected with other unnecessary and unsafe vaccines. You might say I’m a bit of a slow learner. However, you could also say that once I’ve learned my lesson, I don’t forget it. There are some lessons in life that are easier than others. The lessons that come with being the parent of a vaccine-injured child are by far the hardest I have ever had to learn. That’s because these lessons come directly as a result of my own mistakes. I know now that I should have researched first. I should have asked more questions. I should have said, “Wait. I don’t know enough about what’s in that needle you are about to stick into my child’s body. I need to learn a bit more before I sign that consent form.” If I had only known then even a tiny bit of what I know now, I never would have signed.
During our telephone conversations over the last few days you have mentioned several times that as we were talking, a crowd was gathering around your desk. You said others (presumably employees of the Courier & Press) were offering to give me advice about the safety of vaccines. Actually, I believe you said they were offering to help you in your attempts to convince me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I must admit, I’m a bit envious. I have been researching and learning about vaccines for many years and it’s a very tiring job. It has required that I take graduate level courses in research design and statistics, just so I can really understand and look critically at the studies that have been published in medical journals. Graduate school is grueling as I’m sure you may know. If you haven’t been to graduate school, let me tell you, it’s tough. It’s more than a full-time job. It’s even tougher when you have a sick child to care for. There’s a lot of homework to do and a ton of reading, research, and writing. There are also presentations at regional and national conferences, and award ceremonies to attend, when one is fortunate enough to be recognized by national associations for excellence in research and writing. It’s also tough financially. I was fortunate enough to have been awarded a graduate research scholarship and an assistantship, so I did have a job at the university and I didn’t have to pay tuition. However, the $4,000 stipend I was paid each year didn’t go far, especially when we had to pay out-of-pocket for most of my daughter’s medical care. You see, insurance covered the vaccines that made her sick, but it doesn’t cover the treatments that are necessary to reverse even a small part of the damage that was done to her immune system, neurological system, gastrointestinal system, circulatory system and excretory system. The nutritional supplements, organic foods, digestive enzymes, probiotics, chiropractic care, and multiple other therapeutic interventions have all been paid out-of-pocket. What I’m trying to say is, I’m SO JEALOUS of you! How fortunate you are to have an entire newsroom full of people at the ready to help you in your research! I feel so deprived. It’s always been just me here.
Here’s what I don’t understand… During our conversations over the last few days you have repeatedly stated that you do not intend now or in the future to publish anything regarding the safety (or rather the concerns about the safety) of vaccines. You made it very clear that as far as you are concerned, this issue is closed. You stated to me that the CDC has said vaccines are safe, and it appears clear to me that for you, that’s the end of it. That’s fine - if you are speaking as an individual, or as a parent who has made this decision for your own child. However, you are not just an individual and you are not just a parent. You are the Metro Editor of the only major newspaper in Evansville, Indiana. The population of Evansville is somewhere around 150,000. As Metro Editor, you have a lot of power. You also have a lot of people who are apparently willing to help you, and they are paid to do so. Yet, during our telephone conversations you stated to me that you did not have the manpower to research vaccine safety. You said that you had not looked into it yourself, admitting that you are merely following what the CDC says. You don’t have the manpower to research vaccine safety, yet you have a newsroom full of
people just dying to tell me what I don’t know about it? That’s confusing to me. Please help me here. You admit knowing nothing about it and not having the manpower to research this issue. How is it you have people standing by, chomping at the bit to educate me? Perhaps I’m missing something, but that just doesn’t make sense. It could just be me, though. Remember, I’m a slow learner.
I tell you what, Mr. Lovett – I really do want to alter the course of this path that you and I are now on. (And make no mistake – this is a path, and we are on it together. You’d better get used to me.) I’ll make you an offer. I will teach you what I know about vaccines. I will write for the Courier & Press and I will tell your readers everything they need to know in order to make informed decisions about the health of their children. And I’ll do it for free. There you go! Manpower problem solved! What do you think?
I realize you still don’t know me well and you have a lot riding on this decision. I will be happy to send you my vitae (that’s a fancy name for “resume” – it’s used when someone has attended graduate school, been published in professional journals, and presented their research at professional conferences), and references if you like. You can look me up in the Who’s Who Among American Students, or at the American Psychological Foundation’s database under Graduate Research Scholarship Awards (1997). You would have been able to find me in the registry of Who’s Who Among American Women, but at the time I was nominated my daughter was too sick and it didn’t seem worth it to spend the time filling out and returning the form. Some things are just more important than seeing one’s name in print.
If you decide not to take me up on my offer, I understand. Sometimes, when a line is drawn in the sand, it costs too much in the way of pride to bend down and erase it. Make no mistake, though, you will be hearing from me again… a lot.
I am the parent of a vaccine-injured child… and I am not going away.
Sincerely yours,
Marcella Piper-Terry, M.S.
Friday, July 29, 2011
ASK EVANSVILLE COURIER PRESS WHAT WAS SO OBJECTIONABLE ABOUT THESE COMMENTS
The Evansville Courier & Press has been very quick to squelch any information that may help parents make educated decisions about whether or not vaccines are safe or necessary for their children. The Evansville Courier & Press has also not been fully truthful or open regarding parents' rights to Religious and Medical Exemptions. Rather than publishing the full truth and acting as ethical journalists, the C&P looks more like an advertising rag for the pharmaceutical industry that manufactures vaccines. In the last few days, the Courier & Press has censored and removed comments from parents of vaccine-injured children, and disabled comments from an online article that contained a video of Vanderburgh County Health Department Nurse Kelly Kelley, in which she is simultaneously injecting a young boy with multiple vaccines that have never been tested for their safety when given together and joking flippanty, "We haven't killed anyone yet!"
When I asked Metro Editor Tom Lovett why he was censoring comments made by parents of vaccine-injured children, he responded, "The comments were off topic." I pointed out that the comments were directly related to the video, since Nurse Kelly Kelley had proclaimed "They all turn out just fine." The comments of those who responded to the article clearly are related to Nurse Kelly Kelley's statements. Mr. Lovett's response, when I pointed this out was, "It was an article about getting shots for school, which happened to contain a cute little piece..." I'm not sure how he was going to finish that sentence because I blurted out, "A CUTE LITTLE PIECE?" I went on to state my strong belief that a Public Health Nurse joking about vaccines killing children is anything but cute. I don't know how much of that Mr. Lovett heard because it was at this point he informed me he was hanging up, which he did.
It wasn't long after that conversation took place that the entire online article was removed. It was later reinstated, without the comments. Several of my facebook friends, most of whom are also parents of vaccine-injured children, went to the Courier & Press' facebook page and posted articles about vaccine safety (or lack thereof), and the laws in Indiana regarding parents' right to Religious Exemption. It wasn't long before those comments also started being removed. When I asked why, I was blocked from posting on the Courier & Press facebook page. At that point, I decided it was time to go to bed, but first to pray and ask God for devine intervention. I didn't know what to do, so I called in The Expert. I also asked for my facebook friends to say a prayer, asking God to help me know what to do next.
This morning, one of my facebook friends who has written a very eloquent letter to the Editor of the Courier & Press asked if it (or any of the other letters we have written) has been published. When I went to the online Letters to the Editor page, I found a letter that was written yesterday by my friend, John Blair, President of Valley Watch. John is a tireless advocate for the health of citizens of the lower Ohio River Valley, including Evansville. He is also not well-liked by many people here who believe, as Mitch Daniels believes, that coal is the equivalent of the Middle East's oil fields.
John and I have had many conversations about the effects of heavy metals from coal on the health of children. We have discussed at length the impact of metals from coal on the mitochonria, and how this places children in this area at greatly increased risk of vaccine-injury. (I tried to explain all of this to Tom Lovett, but his mind is made up. Vaccines are safe, according to the CDC and he is not going to print anything to the contrary, no matter how many parents he hears from.)
I left a couple of comments after John's letter. In those comments, I mentioned the issues I just highlighted in this post. We will see if those, too, are removed.
Okay, here's the really cool thing... As frustrated as I was with the Courier & Press denying parents of vaccine-injured children the opportunity to share their stories with other parents, I was also frustrated because I did not have the foresight to save my comments before they were removed. At this point it was just my word agains the Courier & Press that what I had posted was not objectionable, profane, or "off-topic," as Mr. Lovett has claimed. I had no way to prove it because the comments were removed. This morning, before I logged onto my computer, I again said a quick prayer. My basic daily prayer is this, "God, I believe I am here for this purpose and pray it is Your Will. Please help me to see what I need to see, and to always remember that this is not about me, but is about doing Your Work." When I finished leaving my comments on John Blair's letter, I noticed that there is a way to link my comments on the Courier & Press to my facebook profile. I hesitated for about a split second before pursuing this. It will save me a ton of time in cutting and pasting! When I had set up the link, guess what appeared? A history of all the comments I have previously posted on the Courier & Press. (Thank-you, God.)
Here are the comments I posted, which were removed by Mr. Lovett. You can decide for yourself if they are objectionable, profane, or "off-topic" to the issue of mass vaccination of children.
What follows is taken directly from the Evansville Courier & Press archive of comments made by Marcella Piper-Terry. Nothing has been edited or changed. It was all copied and pasted directly into this post.
Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to CHoward (who wrote):
I am appalled by this article! The Nurse's joke was not funny and in fact it wasn't even accurate: children die world-wide from adverse reactions to vaccinations or complications from vaccinations and many more suffer permanent harm and disabilities (my child is one). It's my theory that Pediatricians and Pediatric Nurses do not thoughtfully read any serious scholarly research (and it exists!) on these matters because they could not live with themselves for their roles in contributing to childrens' illnesses and sometimes deaths. They would rather just believe what the AAP, CDC and Pharmaceutical companies preach. It's ignorant and shameful!
Marcella Piper-Terry: CHoward: Well said. It doesn't help that medical and nursing schools are funded in large part by the pharmaceutical industry, or that the CDC and AAP benefit financially (via "grants") from the vaccine manufacturers. The fox is truly guarding the henhouse.
...
July 27, 2011
12:27 a.m.
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Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to momof3 (who wrote):
I have a 18 year old daughter that receives her immunizations at the health department. We have health insurance and she also has medicaid it has never been an issue. We make an appointment prior to going and have never had to wait. The staff are experts at giving shots and it is finished before you know it. They can give 5 shots in the time our primary care doctor's nurse can give 1.
Marcella Piper-Terry: Five shots at once. Are you aware that this has never been studied for safety? or that the vaccines your daughter is being injected with have never been studied with regard to their effect on reproductive function? Educate before you vaccinate!
...
July 27, 2011
12:24 a.m.
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Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to justwondering (who wrote):
"Children who have health insurance which covers physicals and vaccinations are encouraged to receive those services from primary-care physicians, but Cory said the Health Department does not deny those children."
We are "underinsured" but have been denied vaccinations twice at the Vanderburgh Health Department. Apparently the administration is not aware of what line-level staff are doing.
Marcella Piper-Terry: Consider yourself fortunate. You have additional time to learn what's really in those vaccines and to decide if they are really necessary for your child. Contrary to what the newspaper prints or the 6:00 news reports, your child does not have to be vaccinated in order to attend school. If you believe God created your child perfectly (including his/her immune system), and if you believe injecting multiple viruses, bacteria, and toxins into your child's body simultaneously (a medical experiment that has never been tested for safety) is against God's will, then you have grounds for a Religious Exemption. That's the law in Indiana. Please educate before you vaccinate. If your child is injured by vaccines, as many thousands of children have been, you will be left holding the bag. You can't sue vaccine manufacturers; they are protected from liability by the U.S. Government.
...
July 27, 2011
12:19 a.m.
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Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to princeskayla#122383 (who wrote):
They make this sound so easy which it is not. My primary care doctor does not give immunizations any more. The doctors office suggested I contact the health dept to get the shots. I called the Warrick county health dept. I was asked if I had insurance. I said "yes" I did and I was told that they could not help me. They only give the immunizations to children with no insurance. I then contacted several different places and was told the same thing. I ran across a place that told me that I could pay out of pocket for the immunizations. But I would have to contact my insurance company to see if I could get reimbursed. That would have been nice but I didn't have almost $300.00 laying around for the shots. I felt like I was being punished because I have medical insurance. As a last resort I contacted my primary care doctor once again to see if they could help. Luckily they agreed to go ahead and order the shots that I needed. They also went ahead and billed my insurance for me. If they wouldn't have agreed to do this I have no idea what I would have done.
Marcella Piper-Terry: Wow! I would love to know the name of your primary care doctor! There are MANY physicians throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world who have done their own research and as a result have stopped administering vaccinations because they realize it is against the Hippocratic Oath - "First do no harm."
There are many parents who would consider themselves extremely fortunate to have a physician who listened to their concerns and who did not "fire them from the practice" for simply bringing up their concerns about vaccines. This happens all too frequently. There is no medical procedure that exists which can be applied to 100% of the population, without a certain percentage of that population suffering negative health effects. Why are vaccines considered safe for ALL children. This makes NO SENSE.
...
July 27, 2011
12:12 a.m.
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Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to openeyes (who posted this video):
http://www.youtube.com/user/one4eric
Marcella Piper-Terry: Thank-you for sharing Eric's story. Your son's suffering will not be in vain. God bless you.
...
July 27, 2011
12:02 a.m.
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Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
Marcella Piper-Terry: It is astounding to see a medical professional make light of the concerns and very real experiences of parents whose children have been injured or killed by vaccines. As this C&P story reports, children are only required to stay for an hour "or less" after receiving multiple injections simultaneously. This has never even been studied for safety. Vaccines are studied in isolation, and a few have been studied for their effects in combination, but there has been no safety or efficacy study that replicates the actual vaccination schedule.
Children do die from vaccines. They also develop seizures, encephalitis, immune system disorders, allergies, asthma, chronic ear infections, upper respiratory infections, eczema, food allergies, and a host of other problems.
Vaccine manufacturers cannot be sued if your child has an adverse reaction; they are protected from liability lawsuits by the U.S. government. If your child dies or has a serious adverse reaction, leaving him or her disabled for life, YOU are going to be the one taking care of him or her 24/7. That's the reality of vaccine injury and it is NO LAUGHING MATTER.
Shame on you C&P for not telling your readers about their rights as parents to religious exemption. It's the law in Indiana and it's simple. If you believe God created your child's immune system perfectly, and if you believe artificial manipulation of God's creation by injecting multiple viruses, bacteria and toxins into your child is against God's will, then you have the basis for a Religious Exemption. All you have to do is write it out, sign it, and hand it to the school nurse. For the Courier & Press to deny parents that information shows a lack of journalistic integrity and smacks of bias toward the pharmaceutical industry, those that manufacture and sell vaccines. As a source of the news, the Courier & Press owes it to its readers to report the facts and not to censor those facts just because of the fears or biases of its own reporters or editors.
Parents: At a minimum, please educate yourself about the ingredients contained in vaccines before blindly handing your child over as a guinea pig for pharmaceutical companies. Remember, they don't have to worry about whether the vaccines are safe - you can't sue them if they kill your child.
...
July 26, 2011
3:55 p.m.
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Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
Marcella Piper-Terry: I find it sickening that the nurse(?) in the video jokes, "We haven't killed anybody yet!"
That is no laughing matter. It happens all the time. My now 17 year-old daughter nearly died two years ago from a vaccine reaction. She had a grand-mal seizure 3 hours after she had a SINGLE DTaP vaccine. She stopped breathing and her eyes rolled back in her head while I was holding her trying to keep her from giving herself a concussion as her head repeatedly banged on the floor.
Since that vaccine, she has been diagnosed with a Primary Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Her immune system is shot, making her BY FAR more vulnerable to lymphoma and leukemia.
Vaccines DO kill children and there are many factors that parents need to understand before blindly following the advice of someone who obviously thinks this is one big joke.
Most parents don't know that if their child suffers an adverse reaction (seizures, encephalitis, immune system problems, meningitis, coma, death, life-long disability), there is NO RECOURSE legally. You can't sue the vaccine manufacturer because they are protected from liability by the U.S. Government. Therefore, they Don't HAVE to make their products safe. There are no consequences to them when something does happen. It's all on you, as a parent.
The Courier & Press also needs to be impartial and report the truth about parents' rights to Religious Exemptions. They are NOT Difficult to get, and they are THE LAW in the state of Indiana. Learn more and educate before you vaccinate.
...
July 26, 2011
3:37 p.m.
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Thank-you to all of my wonderful friends on facebook who took the time to pray for me. God does answer prayer. The proof is that he sent me you.
Many blessings and God's love to you,
Marci
When I asked Metro Editor Tom Lovett why he was censoring comments made by parents of vaccine-injured children, he responded, "The comments were off topic." I pointed out that the comments were directly related to the video, since Nurse Kelly Kelley had proclaimed "They all turn out just fine." The comments of those who responded to the article clearly are related to Nurse Kelly Kelley's statements. Mr. Lovett's response, when I pointed this out was, "It was an article about getting shots for school, which happened to contain a cute little piece..." I'm not sure how he was going to finish that sentence because I blurted out, "A CUTE LITTLE PIECE?" I went on to state my strong belief that a Public Health Nurse joking about vaccines killing children is anything but cute. I don't know how much of that Mr. Lovett heard because it was at this point he informed me he was hanging up, which he did.
It wasn't long after that conversation took place that the entire online article was removed. It was later reinstated, without the comments. Several of my facebook friends, most of whom are also parents of vaccine-injured children, went to the Courier & Press' facebook page and posted articles about vaccine safety (or lack thereof), and the laws in Indiana regarding parents' right to Religious Exemption. It wasn't long before those comments also started being removed. When I asked why, I was blocked from posting on the Courier & Press facebook page. At that point, I decided it was time to go to bed, but first to pray and ask God for devine intervention. I didn't know what to do, so I called in The Expert. I also asked for my facebook friends to say a prayer, asking God to help me know what to do next.
This morning, one of my facebook friends who has written a very eloquent letter to the Editor of the Courier & Press asked if it (or any of the other letters we have written) has been published. When I went to the online Letters to the Editor page, I found a letter that was written yesterday by my friend, John Blair, President of Valley Watch. John is a tireless advocate for the health of citizens of the lower Ohio River Valley, including Evansville. He is also not well-liked by many people here who believe, as Mitch Daniels believes, that coal is the equivalent of the Middle East's oil fields.
John and I have had many conversations about the effects of heavy metals from coal on the health of children. We have discussed at length the impact of metals from coal on the mitochonria, and how this places children in this area at greatly increased risk of vaccine-injury. (I tried to explain all of this to Tom Lovett, but his mind is made up. Vaccines are safe, according to the CDC and he is not going to print anything to the contrary, no matter how many parents he hears from.)
I left a couple of comments after John's letter. In those comments, I mentioned the issues I just highlighted in this post. We will see if those, too, are removed.
Okay, here's the really cool thing... As frustrated as I was with the Courier & Press denying parents of vaccine-injured children the opportunity to share their stories with other parents, I was also frustrated because I did not have the foresight to save my comments before they were removed. At this point it was just my word agains the Courier & Press that what I had posted was not objectionable, profane, or "off-topic," as Mr. Lovett has claimed. I had no way to prove it because the comments were removed. This morning, before I logged onto my computer, I again said a quick prayer. My basic daily prayer is this, "God, I believe I am here for this purpose and pray it is Your Will. Please help me to see what I need to see, and to always remember that this is not about me, but is about doing Your Work." When I finished leaving my comments on John Blair's letter, I noticed that there is a way to link my comments on the Courier & Press to my facebook profile. I hesitated for about a split second before pursuing this. It will save me a ton of time in cutting and pasting! When I had set up the link, guess what appeared? A history of all the comments I have previously posted on the Courier & Press. (Thank-you, God.)
Here are the comments I posted, which were removed by Mr. Lovett. You can decide for yourself if they are objectionable, profane, or "off-topic" to the issue of mass vaccination of children.
What follows is taken directly from the Evansville Courier & Press archive of comments made by Marcella Piper-Terry. Nothing has been edited or changed. It was all copied and pasted directly into this post.
Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to CHoward (who wrote):
I am appalled by this article! The Nurse's joke was not funny and in fact it wasn't even accurate: children die world-wide from adverse reactions to vaccinations or complications from vaccinations and many more suffer permanent harm and disabilities (my child is one). It's my theory that Pediatricians and Pediatric Nurses do not thoughtfully read any serious scholarly research (and it exists!) on these matters because they could not live with themselves for their roles in contributing to childrens' illnesses and sometimes deaths. They would rather just believe what the AAP, CDC and Pharmaceutical companies preach. It's ignorant and shameful!
Marcella Piper-Terry: CHoward: Well said. It doesn't help that medical and nursing schools are funded in large part by the pharmaceutical industry, or that the CDC and AAP benefit financially (via "grants") from the vaccine manufacturers. The fox is truly guarding the henhouse.
...
July 27, 2011
12:27 a.m.
Suggest removal
Reply to this post
Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to momof3 (who wrote):
I have a 18 year old daughter that receives her immunizations at the health department. We have health insurance and she also has medicaid it has never been an issue. We make an appointment prior to going and have never had to wait. The staff are experts at giving shots and it is finished before you know it. They can give 5 shots in the time our primary care doctor's nurse can give 1.
Marcella Piper-Terry: Five shots at once. Are you aware that this has never been studied for safety? or that the vaccines your daughter is being injected with have never been studied with regard to their effect on reproductive function? Educate before you vaccinate!
...
July 27, 2011
12:24 a.m.
Suggest removal
Reply to this post
Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to justwondering (who wrote):
"Children who have health insurance which covers physicals and vaccinations are encouraged to receive those services from primary-care physicians, but Cory said the Health Department does not deny those children."
We are "underinsured" but have been denied vaccinations twice at the Vanderburgh Health Department. Apparently the administration is not aware of what line-level staff are doing.
Marcella Piper-Terry: Consider yourself fortunate. You have additional time to learn what's really in those vaccines and to decide if they are really necessary for your child. Contrary to what the newspaper prints or the 6:00 news reports, your child does not have to be vaccinated in order to attend school. If you believe God created your child perfectly (including his/her immune system), and if you believe injecting multiple viruses, bacteria, and toxins into your child's body simultaneously (a medical experiment that has never been tested for safety) is against God's will, then you have grounds for a Religious Exemption. That's the law in Indiana. Please educate before you vaccinate. If your child is injured by vaccines, as many thousands of children have been, you will be left holding the bag. You can't sue vaccine manufacturers; they are protected from liability by the U.S. Government.
...
July 27, 2011
12:19 a.m.
Suggest removal
Reply to this post
Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to princeskayla#122383 (who wrote):
They make this sound so easy which it is not. My primary care doctor does not give immunizations any more. The doctors office suggested I contact the health dept to get the shots. I called the Warrick county health dept. I was asked if I had insurance. I said "yes" I did and I was told that they could not help me. They only give the immunizations to children with no insurance. I then contacted several different places and was told the same thing. I ran across a place that told me that I could pay out of pocket for the immunizations. But I would have to contact my insurance company to see if I could get reimbursed. That would have been nice but I didn't have almost $300.00 laying around for the shots. I felt like I was being punished because I have medical insurance. As a last resort I contacted my primary care doctor once again to see if they could help. Luckily they agreed to go ahead and order the shots that I needed. They also went ahead and billed my insurance for me. If they wouldn't have agreed to do this I have no idea what I would have done.
Marcella Piper-Terry: Wow! I would love to know the name of your primary care doctor! There are MANY physicians throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world who have done their own research and as a result have stopped administering vaccinations because they realize it is against the Hippocratic Oath - "First do no harm."
There are many parents who would consider themselves extremely fortunate to have a physician who listened to their concerns and who did not "fire them from the practice" for simply bringing up their concerns about vaccines. This happens all too frequently. There is no medical procedure that exists which can be applied to 100% of the population, without a certain percentage of that population suffering negative health effects. Why are vaccines considered safe for ALL children. This makes NO SENSE.
...
July 27, 2011
12:12 a.m.
Suggest removal
Reply to this post
Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
in response to openeyes (who posted this video):
http://www.youtube.com/user/one4eric
Marcella Piper-Terry: Thank-you for sharing Eric's story. Your son's suffering will not be in vain. God bless you.
...
July 27, 2011
12:02 a.m.
Suggest removal
Reply to this post
Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
Marcella Piper-Terry: It is astounding to see a medical professional make light of the concerns and very real experiences of parents whose children have been injured or killed by vaccines. As this C&P story reports, children are only required to stay for an hour "or less" after receiving multiple injections simultaneously. This has never even been studied for safety. Vaccines are studied in isolation, and a few have been studied for their effects in combination, but there has been no safety or efficacy study that replicates the actual vaccination schedule.
Children do die from vaccines. They also develop seizures, encephalitis, immune system disorders, allergies, asthma, chronic ear infections, upper respiratory infections, eczema, food allergies, and a host of other problems.
Vaccine manufacturers cannot be sued if your child has an adverse reaction; they are protected from liability lawsuits by the U.S. government. If your child dies or has a serious adverse reaction, leaving him or her disabled for life, YOU are going to be the one taking care of him or her 24/7. That's the reality of vaccine injury and it is NO LAUGHING MATTER.
Shame on you C&P for not telling your readers about their rights as parents to religious exemption. It's the law in Indiana and it's simple. If you believe God created your child's immune system perfectly, and if you believe artificial manipulation of God's creation by injecting multiple viruses, bacteria and toxins into your child is against God's will, then you have the basis for a Religious Exemption. All you have to do is write it out, sign it, and hand it to the school nurse. For the Courier & Press to deny parents that information shows a lack of journalistic integrity and smacks of bias toward the pharmaceutical industry, those that manufacture and sell vaccines. As a source of the news, the Courier & Press owes it to its readers to report the facts and not to censor those facts just because of the fears or biases of its own reporters or editors.
Parents: At a minimum, please educate yourself about the ingredients contained in vaccines before blindly handing your child over as a guinea pig for pharmaceutical companies. Remember, they don't have to worry about whether the vaccines are safe - you can't sue them if they kill your child.
...
July 26, 2011
3:55 p.m.
Suggest removal
Reply to this post
Written on Clinics seeing upswing in vaccinations as start of school nears | VIDEO:
Marcella Piper-Terry: I find it sickening that the nurse(?) in the video jokes, "We haven't killed anybody yet!"
That is no laughing matter. It happens all the time. My now 17 year-old daughter nearly died two years ago from a vaccine reaction. She had a grand-mal seizure 3 hours after she had a SINGLE DTaP vaccine. She stopped breathing and her eyes rolled back in her head while I was holding her trying to keep her from giving herself a concussion as her head repeatedly banged on the floor.
Since that vaccine, she has been diagnosed with a Primary Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Her immune system is shot, making her BY FAR more vulnerable to lymphoma and leukemia.
Vaccines DO kill children and there are many factors that parents need to understand before blindly following the advice of someone who obviously thinks this is one big joke.
Most parents don't know that if their child suffers an adverse reaction (seizures, encephalitis, immune system problems, meningitis, coma, death, life-long disability), there is NO RECOURSE legally. You can't sue the vaccine manufacturer because they are protected from liability by the U.S. Government. Therefore, they Don't HAVE to make their products safe. There are no consequences to them when something does happen. It's all on you, as a parent.
The Courier & Press also needs to be impartial and report the truth about parents' rights to Religious Exemptions. They are NOT Difficult to get, and they are THE LAW in the state of Indiana. Learn more and educate before you vaccinate.
...
July 26, 2011
3:37 p.m.
Suggest removal
Reply to this post
Thank-you to all of my wonderful friends on facebook who took the time to pray for me. God does answer prayer. The proof is that he sent me you.
Many blessings and God's love to you,
Marci
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
CENSORSHIP RULES EVANSVILLE COURIER PRESS AS PARENTS OF VACCINE INJURED CHILDREN DENIED RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH
"Carrie Mominee, right, talks to her daughter Kaylyn, 5, center, while she gets her back to school shots from communicable disease nurse, Kelly Kelley, left, on Wednesday morning. Kaylyn received two shots, a Kinrix for DTaP and Polio, and a MMRV, for measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox." - caption from the Evansville Courier & Press article.
Actually, five year-old Kaylyn received EIGHT vaccines - not Two. She was vaccinated for Diphteria, Tetanus, Pertussis (whooping cough), Polio, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella (chicken pox). I doubt her mother knows that there has been not ONE SINGLE STUDY performed to investigate the safety or efficacy of administering all of these vaccines simultaneously to a human child. Each vaccine is studied in isolation for its effect on the body, but there are not now and never have been ANY studies that actually replicate the real world scenario that is the CDC's Recommended Childhood Vaccine Schedule. I wonder if Kaylyn's mother realizes that her daughter has just become a guinea pig for the pharmaceutical industry.
Next, you can view the video of Vanderburgh County Health Department Nurse, Kelly Kelley, administering shots, assuring us "They all turn out fine" and joking, "We haven't killed one yet!"
Kelly Kelley - Communicable Disease Epidemiologist at Vanderburgh County Department of Health
The article associated with this photo and video was printed in the Evansville (Indiana) Courier & Press Newspaper on Monday, July 24, 2011. The headline reads, "Sticking to the schedule - Community adjusting to revised immunizations" - I would provide a link to the online version of the article, but I can't, since it's been taken down by the Metro Editor, Mr. Tom Lovett.
I first spoke with Mr. Lovett yesterday, when I called to ask him if the paper would do an article on vaccine-injured children or at the very minimun provide the whole store about religious and medical exemptions, which parents in Indiana are legally entitled to by law. Mr. Lovett made it perfectly clear that while he sympathizes with my own situation, "I can tell you are passionate about this, and I believe you believe your daughter was injured by vaccines..." he is completely unwilling to even consider publishing anything in the Courier & Press that may make parents believe there is ANYTHING dangerous about vaccines. "I'm not going to go there." He stated adamantly that the CDC has decided that vaccines are safe, telling me that "even the doctor who published the original artical backed away from this." (I assume he was talking about Andrew Wakefield, who has most certainly not backed away from anything. I also assume Mr. Lovett knows nothing about Brian Deer or the Murdoch scandal. He wasn't in the mood to be educated, so I wasn't going to go there with him, either.
I assured Mr. Lovett that I was not wanting to make this about autism, but was asking only for equal time to explain that there are some children who are more vulnerable to vaccine injury. At the very least, I begged, please tell parents about their rights to exemption. The article mentioned exemptions vaguely, though not by name: "Waivers could be obtained in special circumstances." As I pointed out, this is misleading and makes it sound like it's difficult to get an exemption. It's not. In the state of Indiana, all you (as a parent or guardian) have to do is write out your religious exemption and hand it to the school nurse. I did it. Mine reads, "My daughter does not receive vaccinations because we believe God created her immune system perfectly. We also believe that artificial manipulation of her immune system is against God's will." If you want to learn more about vaccines, how to find out what's in them, and if you may want to exercise your legal right to religious exemption, I suggest reading my blogpost VACCINE INGREDIENTS, CHILDREN AS GUINEA PIGS, & RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS.
At any rate, Mr. Lovett was helpful in suggesting I either write a letter to the editor or contact the editor of the opinions page and ask to be a guest commentator. I pointed out that there is a world of difference between a front page story and a letter to the editor, but I was wasting my breath by this time, so I let it go. I did, however, ask if the comments section of the online article would be censored. I was assured by Mr. Lovett that they would not. He stated that as long as people followed the Courier & Press' policy for comments and did not engage in profanity or personal attacks, there would be no censorship. Sadly, Mr. Lovett did not keep his word.
This morning I heard from several friends that the comments on the online article had been disabled. They knew this because they, as parents of vaccine-injured children who care about the health of other children, went to the online article and tried to share their stories. A few of the posts were published before Mr. Lovett disabled comments and removed them. I called Mr. Lovett to ask why the comments were disabled and was informed that he had disabled them because they were not following C&P's policy. I reminded him that he had specifically stated that the comments would not be censored and I certainly had not seen any profanity or personal attacks. Mr. Lovett stated in today's telephone conversation (the first one today) that the comments were removed because they were "off topic." He went on to tell me that because the article was not about vaccine safety, but was about "getting shots for school," comments made by parents concerned about vaccine safety were "off topic."
After I thought about this for a while, I called Mr. Lovett back. I asked him to clarify the "off topic" thing for me. I reminded him that the online article did contain a video of Nurse Kelly Kelley giving vaccines and assuring parents "they always turn out fine" and then joking about how the vaccines she has administered have not killed any children yet. I stated my confusion as to how comments by parents whose children have been injured or killed could be off-topic? That's when Mr. Lovett hung up on me.
Since our last telephone conversation, not only have the comments been disabled, now the entire article is gone. Fortunately, I had already started this blog post and had saved the link to the video and downloaded the photo. I suggest you view it and share quickly. Censorship is king at the Evansville Courier & Press, and it may not be available for long.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Plea to the Media: PLEASE Provide Information About Vaccine Exemptions!
On Tuesday night (October 19, 2010) I sent an email to News25 (Evansville, IN) reporter Kimberly Barbour after watching her reporting of all the kids sent home from EVSC because they don't have up-to-date vaccinations.
Here is my original message:
From: Marci Terry Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 10:29 PM
To: Kimberly Barbour
Subject: EVSC and vaccines
I just saw the story on the 10:00 news about students in the EVSC not being allowed to attend school unless they have received the "recommended" vaccinations.
Are you aware that "recommendations" are not the same as "Law?"
Indiana DOES provide parents with the option of exemptions. You are incorrectly telling parents that their children must receive vaccinations, which puts you in the position of assuming the role of a medical professional.
You may be held liable if children have adverse affects - including death - as a result of being vaccinated when they already have established immunity.
You may want to retract this story.
Marcella Piper-Terry, M.S.
Yesterday afternoon I received the following email response from Ms. Barbour:
Subject: RE: EVSC and vaccines Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:50:23 -0500
From: kbarbour@news25.us
To: marcellaterry@hotmail.com
Ms. Piper-Terry,
Thank you for your response. It is state law for schools to have shot records for all students. Indiana, thankfully, is a state that allows medical exemptions, but there still has to be documentation provided for them to include in their shot records. I have explained the state law in several previous stories on this topic. The schools have also explained this in their many notices to parents.
Kimberly Barbour
Reporter
WEHT-TV News 25
(812)483-3841
Here is my reply to Ms. Barbour's email:
Ms. Barbour:
Thank-you for your email.
Indiana does provide for medical exemption, as do ALL states in the U.S.
Forty-eight states, including Indiana, also provide for Religious exemptions; Mississippi and West Virginia are the only two states that do not allow this exemption.
Many people realize that they do have a religious exemption to vaccinations when they understand how the vaccines are made and how they do or do not work. Most people do not realize that vaccines contain mercury and aluminum, and that there have never been safety studies to examine the effects of vaccinating children with multiple antigens and additives simultaneously.
I have religious exemptions for myself and my children, based on my belief that God made our bodies perfectly and His design ensured that we were able to fight off illnesses if our immune system is allowed to rally itself naturally in the face of diseases such as the flu or chicken pox. Because I believe God made our bodies perfectly, I believe it is against His will for me to allow anyone to inject viruses, bacteria, mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80, neomyacin, or anything that has been cultured in non-human DNA or aborted fetal tissue into their bodies - or mine.
Religious exemption is a very easy thing to do, and it is the legal right of parents to choose this if it is consistent with their beliefs.
All a parent has to do is write down on a piece of paper that they are not vaccinating because it is against their religious beliefs, sign it, and give it to the school nurse.
People need to know that this in an option and it is their legal right.
People need to know that there are many conditions that are contraindicated for vaccination. For example, if a child has had a previous reaction to vaccines, such as having a seizure or running a high fever, it is contraindicated for them to be vaccinated again with that vaccine. It is also a contraindication for many vaccines if a FAMILY member has a seizure disorder or has had a reaction to vaccines.
If you think I'm making this up, you need to look at the vaccine inserts that contain the information directly from the manufacturers.
Here is a link from Johns Hopkins that will take you to a table where you can look at the vaccine inserts for yourself.
People also need to know that there are many children who should NOT receive vaccinations because they have underlying mitochondrial disorders that make them exponentially more vulnerable to vaccine damage. Children in Evansville are more likely to have mitochondrial disorders because of the very high rates of heavy metals here from the coal burning power plants. The amount of manganese in this area has gone up by more than 1 million pounds per year over the last four years, and manganese CAUSES mitochondrial disorders. These are alterations in DNA that damage the body's energy system, including the ability to produce and utilize ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate). This changes the way the immune system responds to challenge and results in systemic damage rather than the child responding with increased immunity.
Here is a link where you can get information about mitochondrial disorder and what people should look for when considering if they may want to get their child tested for this before getting vaccinated:
Please note that mitochondrial disorder is passed from mother to child - OR - can happen at any time during the lifespan as a result of exposure to toxic levels of certain substances, among them manganese, lead, mercury, arsenic and antimony - all of which are extremely high in the Evansville area because of the amount of coal that is burned here. This is one reason why we have such high rates of diabetes, thyroid disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and autism. ANYONE who has these issues needs to be tested for mitochondrial disorder before being vaccinated, and any Mother who has these issues needs to know that her child is at increased risk of vaccine injury if he or she has an underlying mitochondrial disorder that has not been diagnosed. This was the case for Hannah Poling, whose family was awarded millions of dollars (correction: $1.5 Million) recently in vaccine court for her vaccine injuries - not because she has autism, but because she regressed into autism after vaccination DUE TO underlying mitochondrial disorder. To hear more about Hannah Poling's story and her parents' research into what happened to their daughter, click this link.
(Note: Please understand that thimerosal has not been removed from childhood vaccines. It is still present in flu shots which are being given routinely to pregnant women, so infants are actually now receiving mercury at an even more vulnerable stage of brain development. For more on thimerosal in flu vaccinations and the overall issues related to giving flu shots to pregnant women and children, click this link.
You should also understand that even in the absence of thimerosal altogether, infants and children are receiving toxic levels of aluminum, etc. in vaccines. For more on aluminum in vaccines, please review the article written by Dr. Bob Sears: "Is Aluminum the New Thimerosal?"
Back to my email to Ms. Barbour:
It is not too much to ask for people to be told the truth about the risks they are taking. The consequences of vaccine injury are lifelong.
Please help to set the record straight by informing parents of "the rest of the story."
Thanks so much,
Marcella Piper-Terry
Additional note: People also need to know that if an infant or child was fed soy formula there is increased risk of mitochondrial disorder because of high levels of manganese in the formula. These children should be checked to see if they have mitochondrial disorder before even considering vaccinating as the risk for vaccine injury increases to 1 in 50 for those with mito d/o.
Here are a couple of links for information about issues related to soy formula, mitochondrial damage, and manganese from environmental exposures (power plants):
Journal of NeuroToxicology
Journal of the American College of Nutrion
Soy Formula and Manganese Studies from the Violence Research Foundation
Toxicology information on Manganese. See section 11.
Scholarly articles on Manganese and Mitochondrial Damage
Environmental Health Article, Manganese, Particulate Matter, and Mitochondrial Damage
Here is my original message:
From: Marci Terry Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 10:29 PM
To: Kimberly Barbour
Subject: EVSC and vaccines
I just saw the story on the 10:00 news about students in the EVSC not being allowed to attend school unless they have received the "recommended" vaccinations.
Are you aware that "recommendations" are not the same as "Law?"
Indiana DOES provide parents with the option of exemptions. You are incorrectly telling parents that their children must receive vaccinations, which puts you in the position of assuming the role of a medical professional.
You may be held liable if children have adverse affects - including death - as a result of being vaccinated when they already have established immunity.
You may want to retract this story.
Marcella Piper-Terry, M.S.
Yesterday afternoon I received the following email response from Ms. Barbour:
Subject: RE: EVSC and vaccines Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:50:23 -0500
From: kbarbour@news25.us
To: marcellaterry@hotmail.com
Ms. Piper-Terry,
Thank you for your response. It is state law for schools to have shot records for all students. Indiana, thankfully, is a state that allows medical exemptions, but there still has to be documentation provided for them to include in their shot records. I have explained the state law in several previous stories on this topic. The schools have also explained this in their many notices to parents.
Kimberly Barbour
Reporter
WEHT-TV News 25
(812)483-3841
Here is my reply to Ms. Barbour's email:
Ms. Barbour:
Thank-you for your email.
Indiana does provide for medical exemption, as do ALL states in the U.S.
Forty-eight states, including Indiana, also provide for Religious exemptions; Mississippi and West Virginia are the only two states that do not allow this exemption.
Many people realize that they do have a religious exemption to vaccinations when they understand how the vaccines are made and how they do or do not work. Most people do not realize that vaccines contain mercury and aluminum, and that there have never been safety studies to examine the effects of vaccinating children with multiple antigens and additives simultaneously.
I have religious exemptions for myself and my children, based on my belief that God made our bodies perfectly and His design ensured that we were able to fight off illnesses if our immune system is allowed to rally itself naturally in the face of diseases such as the flu or chicken pox. Because I believe God made our bodies perfectly, I believe it is against His will for me to allow anyone to inject viruses, bacteria, mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80, neomyacin, or anything that has been cultured in non-human DNA or aborted fetal tissue into their bodies - or mine.
Religious exemption is a very easy thing to do, and it is the legal right of parents to choose this if it is consistent with their beliefs.
All a parent has to do is write down on a piece of paper that they are not vaccinating because it is against their religious beliefs, sign it, and give it to the school nurse.
People need to know that this in an option and it is their legal right.
People need to know that there are many conditions that are contraindicated for vaccination. For example, if a child has had a previous reaction to vaccines, such as having a seizure or running a high fever, it is contraindicated for them to be vaccinated again with that vaccine. It is also a contraindication for many vaccines if a FAMILY member has a seizure disorder or has had a reaction to vaccines.
If you think I'm making this up, you need to look at the vaccine inserts that contain the information directly from the manufacturers.
Here is a link from Johns Hopkins that will take you to a table where you can look at the vaccine inserts for yourself.
People also need to know that there are many children who should NOT receive vaccinations because they have underlying mitochondrial disorders that make them exponentially more vulnerable to vaccine damage. Children in Evansville are more likely to have mitochondrial disorders because of the very high rates of heavy metals here from the coal burning power plants. The amount of manganese in this area has gone up by more than 1 million pounds per year over the last four years, and manganese CAUSES mitochondrial disorders. These are alterations in DNA that damage the body's energy system, including the ability to produce and utilize ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate). This changes the way the immune system responds to challenge and results in systemic damage rather than the child responding with increased immunity.
Here is a link where you can get information about mitochondrial disorder and what people should look for when considering if they may want to get their child tested for this before getting vaccinated:
Please note that mitochondrial disorder is passed from mother to child - OR - can happen at any time during the lifespan as a result of exposure to toxic levels of certain substances, among them manganese, lead, mercury, arsenic and antimony - all of which are extremely high in the Evansville area because of the amount of coal that is burned here. This is one reason why we have such high rates of diabetes, thyroid disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and autism. ANYONE who has these issues needs to be tested for mitochondrial disorder before being vaccinated, and any Mother who has these issues needs to know that her child is at increased risk of vaccine injury if he or she has an underlying mitochondrial disorder that has not been diagnosed. This was the case for Hannah Poling, whose family was awarded millions of dollars (correction: $1.5 Million) recently in vaccine court for her vaccine injuries - not because she has autism, but because she regressed into autism after vaccination DUE TO underlying mitochondrial disorder. To hear more about Hannah Poling's story and her parents' research into what happened to their daughter, click this link.
(Note: Please understand that thimerosal has not been removed from childhood vaccines. It is still present in flu shots which are being given routinely to pregnant women, so infants are actually now receiving mercury at an even more vulnerable stage of brain development. For more on thimerosal in flu vaccinations and the overall issues related to giving flu shots to pregnant women and children, click this link.
You should also understand that even in the absence of thimerosal altogether, infants and children are receiving toxic levels of aluminum, etc. in vaccines. For more on aluminum in vaccines, please review the article written by Dr. Bob Sears: "Is Aluminum the New Thimerosal?"
Back to my email to Ms. Barbour:
It is not too much to ask for people to be told the truth about the risks they are taking. The consequences of vaccine injury are lifelong.
Please help to set the record straight by informing parents of "the rest of the story."
Thanks so much,
Marcella Piper-Terry
Additional note: People also need to know that if an infant or child was fed soy formula there is increased risk of mitochondrial disorder because of high levels of manganese in the formula. These children should be checked to see if they have mitochondrial disorder before even considering vaccinating as the risk for vaccine injury increases to 1 in 50 for those with mito d/o.
Here are a couple of links for information about issues related to soy formula, mitochondrial damage, and manganese from environmental exposures (power plants):
Journal of NeuroToxicology
Journal of the American College of Nutrion
Soy Formula and Manganese Studies from the Violence Research Foundation
Toxicology information on Manganese. See section 11.
Scholarly articles on Manganese and Mitochondrial Damage
Environmental Health Article, Manganese, Particulate Matter, and Mitochondrial Damage
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Suicide and Heavy Metals in Vanderburgh County, Who's Responsible for the Death of DeTwain Barnett?
Last night I attended a talk at USI given by Vanderburgh County Coroner, Annie Groves. Coroner Groves has had the unenviable job over the last five years of trying to figure out why Vanderburgh County has one of the highest rates of suicide in the United States.
I have emailed Annie Groves a few times in the last couple of years, asking her to please consider testing for heavy metals in the bodies of victims of suicide. I have not heard anything in response, but I do not know for sure if she has ever received my emails. Last night I had an opportunity to speak with her face-to-face, and to express to her my concerns about the heavy metals in the environment here, and the possible connection with our high rate of suicide.
The suicides in Vanderburgh County really hit home for me a few years ago when DeTwain Barnett (age 10) hung himself. At that time, DeTwain was the youngest victim of suicide Vanderburgh County had seen. At last night's presentation, Coroner Groves informed us that 10 year-old DeTwain no longer holds that record. The youngest child to have committed suicide in Vanderburgh County is now seven - 7 Years Old.
I was outraged when DeTwain died. I am outraged now.
I am repeating my original post, written after DeTwain's death. I am doing this because it is so important, and because I hope that if enough people join me in my outrage, something will be done.
ORIGINAL POST FROM MAY 2007:
The following is in regards to the suicide of 10 year-old De-Twain Barnett, who hung himself in his mother’s apartment in Evansville, Indiana on May 12, 2007. If you are unfamiliar with the story of De-Twain, please read the article by accessing the link provided.
Note: It appears the original article published in the Courier and Press Newspaper is no longer accessible. There are a couple of follow-up pieces you may wish to read by clicking here and here
To Whom It May Concern:
I am a therapist in Evansville, working with children and adults. I have never worked at Cross Pointe, Mulberry Center, or South Western Indiana Mental Health Center. I share many of the concerns others have voiced in the online forum in response to the death of De-Twain. From the descriptions provided by those who knew him best, he sounds like an intelligent, spontaneous, creative boy who wanted to do well but had trouble complying with expectations of teachers in the classroom. The article in the Courier & Press indicated that De-Twain was frequently in trouble at school. His mother recalled he was beginning to feel that nobody liked him. After reading some of the comments written by his young friends as well as adults who knew him outside the classroom, it appears to me (as a strictly outside observer) that De-Twain’s "behavioral problems" may have been due to a number of separate issues, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, learning disabilities, auditory or visual processing disorders, fine-motor problems, food allergies, or the result of his body’s response to environmental toxins. In short, there are many things we, the general public, do not know about this child. Regarding the question of whom to blame, I believe we all need to take a few deep breaths, examine our own priorities and ask ourselves if we could have done anything to prevent this from happening.
What DO we know about De-Twain? We know that he had a great smile. We know his mother believed he was smart, even though his report cards did not reflect his intelligence. We have been told that he was funny, could be silly, and loved to draw. His mother talked about how he would check out DVDs from the library and study the cartoons, honing his own artistic skills. In my experience, when a child is intelligent but unable to demonstrate success in reading, math, or writing, he or she is often quite talented musically or artistically - the intelligence finds a way to come out. Unfortunately, we have focused so heavily on test scores and "academic achievement," with budget cuts in our public schools reflecting our collective disdain for the importance of the arts in education. As a result, our creative children (who are often highly intelligent and our most sensitive & intuitive) frequently are left without an outlet for their gifts or an avenue of expression for their pain. When a child is bright and wants to succeed, but struggles due to unaddressed health problems or learning disabilities, he or she may be especially vulnerable to depression, social isolation, and suicidal ideation. These are the children who need art and music the most! If we are so focused on competition that we devalue the child who is not a “Straight A” student, then we are at least partly responsible for the ones we lose.
In the article about DeTwain’s death, his mother revealed that her son really struggled in school, to the point where she was hearing from his teachers on an almost daily basis. When a child exhibits such a high level of difficulty, something serious is going on. Children who exhibit behavior problems are not “bad children.” They are children who need help. I encourage anyone who cares about our children to learn about the many issues that can affect behavior, attention, and the ability to learn in the classroom environment. A child with allergies or asthma is likely to have increased behavior issues in spring and fall when environmental allergens and air-borne toxins increase. If a child is allergic or sensitive to casein and gluten (dairy products and grains), he or she will OFTEN exhibit behaviors that are indistinguishable from ADHD and can even look psychotic. Anyone who doubts the ability of milk to make you crazy is encouraged to rent the DVD of The Aviator - the story of Howard Hughes. The more milk he drank, the crazier he became. In addition to milk, parents should pay attention to the amount of ice cream and milkshakes their behaviorally volatile children are eating and drinking.
Stomach problems (diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux) affect school performance. Children who have had multiple ear infections, upper respiratory infections, or strep throat are especially likely to have trouble in school as a result of problems with their digestive systems. Many of our kids have had so many antibiotics that their intestinal tracts are shot from yeast overgrowth. They are constipated, gassy, have foul-smelling breath, and skin problems. They crave sugar and carbohydrates. When you have a constipated child and a gut full of yeast and sugar, that's not a child, it's a STILL! Sugar, yeast, and fermentation equals alcohol. No wonder our kids can't pay attention in class and act like they're drunk - they are! Parents of children who struggle MUST do their own research and educate themselves. Sadly, if you ask your physician about food allergies or yeast problems, you may well be told there is nothing to those rumors. This is a point where parents have a responsibility to pursue the issue further, and professionals have a responsibility to admit they may not have all the answers.
As parents, we all need to examine what our children are eating – at home and at school. Improving a child’s diet can go a long way toward improving his or her behavior and functioning. Simple steps like cutting out artificial dyes and preservatives can make a big difference in some children. Give filtered water, fresh fruits and vegetables. Do a little research on the connection between intake of fried foods in early life and breast cancer later on. If we as parents abdicate our responsibility for feeding and fueling our children because it's easier to "drive through," then we must accept part of the responsibility for their health problems, now and in the future.
Finally, we have to face the facts that in this area, we are all being poisoned by the toxins in the air. Alcoa and Sigeco are both among the top 10 polluters in the entire nation when it comes to the toxins they put into the air, including sulfur-dioxide, nitrogen-dioxide, lead, mercury, aluminum, cadmium, and arsenic. These poisons don't just cause cancer - they destroy our children's central nervous systems and contribute to increases in learning disabilities, Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, and bipolar disorder. Alcoa and Sigeco are not the only culprits. If you want to learn more about what's in our air, you can do the research yourself on the EPA website. The question is, how many people are willing to risk the monetary losses associated with doing what's right for our children and our environment? If we are not willing to give up a little in the wallet, then we must share in the blame for what is happening to our children (and to ourselves).
(Please read the accompanying article, “What’s Going On in Indiana” for more information about toxins that may be associated with the rise in suicides.)
When we lose a child like this, it is a sad thing for all of us because we as a society will never benefit from DeTwain's gifts. When I counsel clients who have lost loved ones, one thing we work toward is trying to find some meaning out of the loss. My hope is that DeTwain's death will not be completely in vain, but will serve as a wake-up call to those of us who remain. We are all responsible for OUR children. Please, let's start working together to heal their world and make it one from which they are not so desperate to escape.
Marci
I have emailed Annie Groves a few times in the last couple of years, asking her to please consider testing for heavy metals in the bodies of victims of suicide. I have not heard anything in response, but I do not know for sure if she has ever received my emails. Last night I had an opportunity to speak with her face-to-face, and to express to her my concerns about the heavy metals in the environment here, and the possible connection with our high rate of suicide.
The suicides in Vanderburgh County really hit home for me a few years ago when DeTwain Barnett (age 10) hung himself. At that time, DeTwain was the youngest victim of suicide Vanderburgh County had seen. At last night's presentation, Coroner Groves informed us that 10 year-old DeTwain no longer holds that record. The youngest child to have committed suicide in Vanderburgh County is now seven - 7 Years Old.
I was outraged when DeTwain died. I am outraged now.
I am repeating my original post, written after DeTwain's death. I am doing this because it is so important, and because I hope that if enough people join me in my outrage, something will be done.
ORIGINAL POST FROM MAY 2007:
The following is in regards to the suicide of 10 year-old De-Twain Barnett, who hung himself in his mother’s apartment in Evansville, Indiana on May 12, 2007. If you are unfamiliar with the story of De-Twain, please read the article by accessing the link provided.
Note: It appears the original article published in the Courier and Press Newspaper is no longer accessible. There are a couple of follow-up pieces you may wish to read by clicking here and here
To Whom It May Concern:
I am a therapist in Evansville, working with children and adults. I have never worked at Cross Pointe, Mulberry Center, or South Western Indiana Mental Health Center. I share many of the concerns others have voiced in the online forum in response to the death of De-Twain. From the descriptions provided by those who knew him best, he sounds like an intelligent, spontaneous, creative boy who wanted to do well but had trouble complying with expectations of teachers in the classroom. The article in the Courier & Press indicated that De-Twain was frequently in trouble at school. His mother recalled he was beginning to feel that nobody liked him. After reading some of the comments written by his young friends as well as adults who knew him outside the classroom, it appears to me (as a strictly outside observer) that De-Twain’s "behavioral problems" may have been due to a number of separate issues, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, learning disabilities, auditory or visual processing disorders, fine-motor problems, food allergies, or the result of his body’s response to environmental toxins. In short, there are many things we, the general public, do not know about this child. Regarding the question of whom to blame, I believe we all need to take a few deep breaths, examine our own priorities and ask ourselves if we could have done anything to prevent this from happening.
What DO we know about De-Twain? We know that he had a great smile. We know his mother believed he was smart, even though his report cards did not reflect his intelligence. We have been told that he was funny, could be silly, and loved to draw. His mother talked about how he would check out DVDs from the library and study the cartoons, honing his own artistic skills. In my experience, when a child is intelligent but unable to demonstrate success in reading, math, or writing, he or she is often quite talented musically or artistically - the intelligence finds a way to come out. Unfortunately, we have focused so heavily on test scores and "academic achievement," with budget cuts in our public schools reflecting our collective disdain for the importance of the arts in education. As a result, our creative children (who are often highly intelligent and our most sensitive & intuitive) frequently are left without an outlet for their gifts or an avenue of expression for their pain. When a child is bright and wants to succeed, but struggles due to unaddressed health problems or learning disabilities, he or she may be especially vulnerable to depression, social isolation, and suicidal ideation. These are the children who need art and music the most! If we are so focused on competition that we devalue the child who is not a “Straight A” student, then we are at least partly responsible for the ones we lose.
In the article about DeTwain’s death, his mother revealed that her son really struggled in school, to the point where she was hearing from his teachers on an almost daily basis. When a child exhibits such a high level of difficulty, something serious is going on. Children who exhibit behavior problems are not “bad children.” They are children who need help. I encourage anyone who cares about our children to learn about the many issues that can affect behavior, attention, and the ability to learn in the classroom environment. A child with allergies or asthma is likely to have increased behavior issues in spring and fall when environmental allergens and air-borne toxins increase. If a child is allergic or sensitive to casein and gluten (dairy products and grains), he or she will OFTEN exhibit behaviors that are indistinguishable from ADHD and can even look psychotic. Anyone who doubts the ability of milk to make you crazy is encouraged to rent the DVD of The Aviator - the story of Howard Hughes. The more milk he drank, the crazier he became. In addition to milk, parents should pay attention to the amount of ice cream and milkshakes their behaviorally volatile children are eating and drinking.
Stomach problems (diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux) affect school performance. Children who have had multiple ear infections, upper respiratory infections, or strep throat are especially likely to have trouble in school as a result of problems with their digestive systems. Many of our kids have had so many antibiotics that their intestinal tracts are shot from yeast overgrowth. They are constipated, gassy, have foul-smelling breath, and skin problems. They crave sugar and carbohydrates. When you have a constipated child and a gut full of yeast and sugar, that's not a child, it's a STILL! Sugar, yeast, and fermentation equals alcohol. No wonder our kids can't pay attention in class and act like they're drunk - they are! Parents of children who struggle MUST do their own research and educate themselves. Sadly, if you ask your physician about food allergies or yeast problems, you may well be told there is nothing to those rumors. This is a point where parents have a responsibility to pursue the issue further, and professionals have a responsibility to admit they may not have all the answers.
As parents, we all need to examine what our children are eating – at home and at school. Improving a child’s diet can go a long way toward improving his or her behavior and functioning. Simple steps like cutting out artificial dyes and preservatives can make a big difference in some children. Give filtered water, fresh fruits and vegetables. Do a little research on the connection between intake of fried foods in early life and breast cancer later on. If we as parents abdicate our responsibility for feeding and fueling our children because it's easier to "drive through," then we must accept part of the responsibility for their health problems, now and in the future.
Finally, we have to face the facts that in this area, we are all being poisoned by the toxins in the air. Alcoa and Sigeco are both among the top 10 polluters in the entire nation when it comes to the toxins they put into the air, including sulfur-dioxide, nitrogen-dioxide, lead, mercury, aluminum, cadmium, and arsenic. These poisons don't just cause cancer - they destroy our children's central nervous systems and contribute to increases in learning disabilities, Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, and bipolar disorder. Alcoa and Sigeco are not the only culprits. If you want to learn more about what's in our air, you can do the research yourself on the EPA website. The question is, how many people are willing to risk the monetary losses associated with doing what's right for our children and our environment? If we are not willing to give up a little in the wallet, then we must share in the blame for what is happening to our children (and to ourselves).
(Please read the accompanying article, “What’s Going On in Indiana” for more information about toxins that may be associated with the rise in suicides.)
When we lose a child like this, it is a sad thing for all of us because we as a society will never benefit from DeTwain's gifts. When I counsel clients who have lost loved ones, one thing we work toward is trying to find some meaning out of the loss. My hope is that DeTwain's death will not be completely in vain, but will serve as a wake-up call to those of us who remain. We are all responsible for OUR children. Please, let's start working together to heal their world and make it one from which they are not so desperate to escape.
Marci
Monday, April 27, 2009
Swine Flu - Why Mexico City? It's Evansville in July
I have been working nonstop this month doing a series of presentations about biomedical interventions for autism. So far, I've finished and presented seven different talks, which presented information about immune disregulation, gastrointestinal illness, labs, diets, supplements, and the association of environmental toxins in the epidemic of autism. Tomorrow night I will be talking about vaccines. In preparation for tomorrow night's talk, I have been learning about why things like aluminum and mercury are put into the vaccines in the first place. It has to do with their effects on preserving and enhancing viral activity. This worries me, because I also know from my research and presentations, that there are several other toxins, including heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and cadmium, that also change the way the body handles viruses. This is what has been bothering me all day today.
Today, instead of preparing for tomorrow night's talk, I am consumed with the breaking news about the Swine Flu. As of the afternoon there are 40 confirmed cases in the United States. Apparently the largest cluster is among a group of students in New York, who had traveled to Mexico for Spring Break. There has been much commentary on the news about the fact that the cases in the U.S. (thus far) have been mild compared to the spectrum of illness that is currently ravaging Mexico City. This begs the question, "Why is it so bad in Mexico City?" We need to figure out the answer to that question if we are to predict where the pandemic will be most severe in other parts of the world, including here in the U.S.
As I have been pondering (obsessing about) this question today, I keep getting a sinking feeling in my gut. The reason is because I know too much. That's not a compliment to myself, it's a statement that explains why I have so much trouble sleeping some nights. I have an incessant need to know "why" things happen. In this case, you will have to judge if this is a good thing.
The sinking feeling in my stomach is related to something I remember from the second Defeat Autism Now! Conference I attended (April 2007). There was a presentation given by Dr. William Rea, from the Environmental Health Center in Dallas, Texas. The presentation was entitled, "The Environmental Aspects of ASD; The Early Mechanisms of Chronic Degenerative Disease and Hypersensitivity." I know, that's a long title. Much of the presentation was about the impact of toxins (heavy metals, pesticides, organophosphates, etc.) on the immune system and the subsequent link to autism. This will not sound like Greek to anyone who has researched the issue of thimerosal (mercury) or aluminum in vaccines and their effects on viruses.
Anyway, the main thing I remember from Dr. Rea's presentation was a photograph of Mexico City and the smog there. When I got home this afternoon, I pulled out my binder from that Conference and looked up Dr. Rea's presentation. I found the photo of Mexico City, and written above it, in my handwriting, is "Evansville in July."
So, I googled "Mexico City" and "Air Pollution." Here is what I found:
Mexico City ranks at the top of the list of "Most Polluted Megacities" in the world, according to Maricela Yip and Pierre Madl, authors of an interesting paper, completed while they were students at the University of Salzburg in Austria. It appears the paper was published under the direction of Dr. W. Hofmann, and the Department of Biophysics, "in Cooperation with the Afro-Asian Institute (Salzburg, Austria) and International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at QUT (Australia)."
I honestly don't know how impressed I should be by these authors or whether or not the source is a "valid" one. However, when I read the article (actually skimmed it, due to time constraints), several bells went off. Why is this relevant to Southwestern Indiana?
The article talks about the specific toxins that are ranked "severe" and "heavy" in Mexico City: Sulfur Dioxide, Particulate Matter, Lead, Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, and Ozone. These are some of the same toxins that cause Southwestern Indiana to have more PPM and Ozone Alert days in the summer than they have in Los Angeles. If you think I'm joking, check out the EPA website for yourself. And, like Mexico City, we live in a valley, so the toxins get trapped here. If you have ever read this blog before, you have probably read some of my "rantings" about these toxins and the health effects of living in the "Coal Burning Power Plant Capital of the World."
I am not going to reprise my rants here, but if you would like to learn about what's in our environment and how it relates to this discussion and your children's health, please read the previous posts: It's In the Air In Southwestern Indiana and Environmental Toxins and Autism. (click on the title to go to the original post.)
To learn about how the air pollution in Mexico City may be contributing to the high levels of deaths from the Swine Flu, please read the article, Air Pollution in Mexico City by Maricela Yip and Pierre Madl.
If there really is a connection here, we need to take steps now to beef up our immune systems by taking antioxidants and natural anti-virals like grapefruit seed extract and olive leaf extract. This will be especially important for groups whose immune systems are already compromised by persistent viral infections (herpes, HIV, Epstein-Barr, etc.). This includes children with autism, ADHD, asthma, and allergies. It also includes adults with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.
Don't panic, but now is the time to prepare. If there is a connection between the air pollution and the flu virus, places like Southwestern Indiana may have a lot more to deal with in the near future than high rates of autism, cancer, and suicide.
I hope I'm wrong.
Marci
Today, instead of preparing for tomorrow night's talk, I am consumed with the breaking news about the Swine Flu. As of the afternoon there are 40 confirmed cases in the United States. Apparently the largest cluster is among a group of students in New York, who had traveled to Mexico for Spring Break. There has been much commentary on the news about the fact that the cases in the U.S. (thus far) have been mild compared to the spectrum of illness that is currently ravaging Mexico City. This begs the question, "Why is it so bad in Mexico City?" We need to figure out the answer to that question if we are to predict where the pandemic will be most severe in other parts of the world, including here in the U.S.
As I have been pondering (obsessing about) this question today, I keep getting a sinking feeling in my gut. The reason is because I know too much. That's not a compliment to myself, it's a statement that explains why I have so much trouble sleeping some nights. I have an incessant need to know "why" things happen. In this case, you will have to judge if this is a good thing.
The sinking feeling in my stomach is related to something I remember from the second Defeat Autism Now! Conference I attended (April 2007). There was a presentation given by Dr. William Rea, from the Environmental Health Center in Dallas, Texas. The presentation was entitled, "The Environmental Aspects of ASD; The Early Mechanisms of Chronic Degenerative Disease and Hypersensitivity." I know, that's a long title. Much of the presentation was about the impact of toxins (heavy metals, pesticides, organophosphates, etc.) on the immune system and the subsequent link to autism. This will not sound like Greek to anyone who has researched the issue of thimerosal (mercury) or aluminum in vaccines and their effects on viruses.
Anyway, the main thing I remember from Dr. Rea's presentation was a photograph of Mexico City and the smog there. When I got home this afternoon, I pulled out my binder from that Conference and looked up Dr. Rea's presentation. I found the photo of Mexico City, and written above it, in my handwriting, is "Evansville in July."
So, I googled "Mexico City" and "Air Pollution." Here is what I found:
Mexico City ranks at the top of the list of "Most Polluted Megacities" in the world, according to Maricela Yip and Pierre Madl, authors of an interesting paper, completed while they were students at the University of Salzburg in Austria. It appears the paper was published under the direction of Dr. W. Hofmann, and the Department of Biophysics, "in Cooperation with the Afro-Asian Institute (Salzburg, Austria) and International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at QUT (Australia)."
I honestly don't know how impressed I should be by these authors or whether or not the source is a "valid" one. However, when I read the article (actually skimmed it, due to time constraints), several bells went off. Why is this relevant to Southwestern Indiana?
The article talks about the specific toxins that are ranked "severe" and "heavy" in Mexico City: Sulfur Dioxide, Particulate Matter, Lead, Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, and Ozone. These are some of the same toxins that cause Southwestern Indiana to have more PPM and Ozone Alert days in the summer than they have in Los Angeles. If you think I'm joking, check out the EPA website for yourself. And, like Mexico City, we live in a valley, so the toxins get trapped here. If you have ever read this blog before, you have probably read some of my "rantings" about these toxins and the health effects of living in the "Coal Burning Power Plant Capital of the World."
I am not going to reprise my rants here, but if you would like to learn about what's in our environment and how it relates to this discussion and your children's health, please read the previous posts: It's In the Air In Southwestern Indiana and Environmental Toxins and Autism. (click on the title to go to the original post.)
To learn about how the air pollution in Mexico City may be contributing to the high levels of deaths from the Swine Flu, please read the article, Air Pollution in Mexico City by Maricela Yip and Pierre Madl.
If there really is a connection here, we need to take steps now to beef up our immune systems by taking antioxidants and natural anti-virals like grapefruit seed extract and olive leaf extract. This will be especially important for groups whose immune systems are already compromised by persistent viral infections (herpes, HIV, Epstein-Barr, etc.). This includes children with autism, ADHD, asthma, and allergies. It also includes adults with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.
Don't panic, but now is the time to prepare. If there is a connection between the air pollution and the flu virus, places like Southwestern Indiana may have a lot more to deal with in the near future than high rates of autism, cancer, and suicide.
I hope I'm wrong.
Marci
Friday, March 6, 2009
Preparing Your Body for Pregnancy; Preparing Your Child for Vaccination
If you have read much about biomedical interventions and recovery from autism, you may be familiar with the analogy of being hit by a bus. As Stan Kurtz writes, “You cannot be cured of being hit by a bus, but you can recover from it. You might even be able to recover enough that you do not need to park in special parking spaces when you go shopping. If you are fortunate enough you might recover well enough that you gain back so much of your functioning such that no one would know you were ever in an accident.” This is a great analogy, especially for those children who have already received a diagnosis of autism. In many cases, while we may not be able to “cure” the autism, if we address the underlying conditions through appropriated testing and treatment, we may be able to recover the child to the point where he or she no longer meets the diagnostic criteria for autism. In many cases, no one would ever guess the child had been “hit by the bus” in the first place.
But wait…
What if we could prevent your child from being hit by the bus in the first place?
Let’s think about pregnancy. When a fetus is growing in the womb, it is incubating. We have been told for some time now that pregnant women should not smoke and should not drink alcohol, because these behaviors are known to be damaging to a developing fetus. The peer-reviewed medical literature is bursting at the seams with paper after paper, documenting the research findings about the teratologic effects of tobacco and alcohol.
Teratologic: the scientific study of visible conditions caused by the interruption or alteration of normal development
Marci’s note: Teratological effects may well include effects that are not “visible” and which may not become known for a long time after the exposure that caused the damage. Examples:
But wait…
What if we could prevent your child from being hit by the bus in the first place?
Let’s think about pregnancy. When a fetus is growing in the womb, it is incubating. We have been told for some time now that pregnant women should not smoke and should not drink alcohol, because these behaviors are known to be damaging to a developing fetus. The peer-reviewed medical literature is bursting at the seams with paper after paper, documenting the research findings about the teratologic effects of tobacco and alcohol.
Teratologic: the scientific study of visible conditions caused by the interruption or alteration of normal development
Marci’s note: Teratological effects may well include effects that are not “visible” and which may not become known for a long time after the exposure that caused the damage. Examples:
- Babies who were fed soy formula. Soy is a source of estrogen. When fed as the sole source of nutrition, the amount of estrogen taken in can disrupt the balance between hormones, and may contribute to the early onset of puberty in girls, and delayed onset of puberty in boys.
- Terbutaline administration. Terbutaline is a medication given to women to stop preterm labor. It has been linked to later onset of learning disabilities and social deficits in children whose mothers took the drug during pregnancy.
By now, everyone has heard that there is an epidemic of autism in this country. There are some people who still want to deny this fact, but the evidence is overwhelming, and it is real. It’s not just because of more inclusive diagnostic criteria. It’s also not purely genetic. There is no such thing as a genetic epidemic. So what’s going on? And why can’t the researchers figure out the cause of autism?
The clue is in the previous question. As long as researchers are looking for “the cause” of autism, they are not going to find it. Why? Because multiple factors working together synergistically is the source of the epidemic. There is no single “smoking gun.” If you are not familiar with the concept of synergism, you need to understand this key concept. Here is the definition:
Synergism: the phenomenon in which the combined action of two things such as drugs or muscles is greater than the sum of their effects individually. In the case of drugs, the result may be dangerous to the patient.
Marci’s note: in the case of toxins (heavy metals, toxic chemicals, pesticides, organophosphates, food additives), the combined action of two (or more) things is greater than the sum of their effects individually. The result may be dangerous to the patient. Alternatively, the synergistic effect of a genetic predisposition and an environmental exposure (to metals, pesticides, medications, etc…) will be more damaging than the effects of either situation (genetic or environmental) alone. The result may be dangerous to the patient. (Remember that in this case, the patient is the infant in the incubator.)
Synergy is an extremely important concept when it comes to autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. The concept of synergy is precisely why families who have sought relief through “The Vaccine Court” have not been successful in establishing that their children’s regressive autism was caused by the combination of thimerosal (mercury) and the MMR vaccine. (Note: the basic premise of the argument is that the child’s immune system is compromised by mercury (a heavy metal, which damages multiple systems in the body, including the enzymatic processes, and detoxification pathways), predisposing the child to be more vulnerable to the effects of the MMR vaccine (a vaccination which simultaneously injects three separate viruses into the blood stream, bypassing the body’s primary immune defense mechanisms (gastrointestinal and respiratory), ultimately resulting in a situation which overwhelms the body’s defenses and leads to chronic illness (fever, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, ear infections, respiratory infections, chronic tonsillitis, strep, bronchitis, allergies, asthma, & seizures), which later results in the behavioral and cognitive symptoms that lead to an “autism spectrum disorder” diagnosis.
Please remember that the fever, diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, seizures, etc… tend to occur prior to the behaviors that lead, ultimately, to the “autism” diagnosis. This is an important piece of information, especially since most parents I have spoken with report that the “experts” who diagnosed their children with “autism” often state (with considerable authority) that the physical symptoms (diarrhea, constipation, vomiting) the parents are reporting are “just part of autism.” The physical symptoms are therefore ignored. This is PRECISELY why professionals who do not look further than the obvious behavioral and cognitive presentations, can and do state (with considerable authority), that “Autism is a lifelong condition and there is nothing you can do about it.” From where I sit, it looks like the authorities have it backwards. The physical symptoms happen first and the behavioral and cognitive symptoms happen as a result of the physical symptoms. Therefore, the lack of eye-contact, reduced awareness of the environment, inattention, aggression, and poor social skills are “just part of the gastro-intestinal disease” and if we do something to fix the GI problems, the symptoms associated with the child’s “autism” diagnosis will improve. If this sounds like voodoo science to you, let me phrase it differently.
Consider, for a moment, symptoms that you yourself might have had. Have you ever had a migraine? Have you ever had a “stomach virus” with nausea, pain in your gut, diarrhea, constipation, achy joints, headache and ‘brain-fog?’ If you have, please try to recall at this moment what it felt like. Now, imagine you are in a room full of four year-olds – a preschool environment. Do you feel “social?” Can you concentrate? Are you likely to learn and “achieve on par with your potential?”
If you only consider “autism” – which is a behavioral and cognitive-based diagnosis – and do not look further, the professionals who tell you with so much authority, “There is nothing you can do” are probably correct. If you don’t look beyond the behaviors and the label, it is likely that you are facing a lifelong diagnosis, for which you will not see significant improvement. In other words, your child will most likely never get married or have children, will probably not be able to live independently, will most likely not be able to support himself or herself, and will require full-time support from you until the day you die – which will probably happen prematurely due to all the stress you will endure in the interim. And your marriage? Statistics indicate that the divorce rate among couples with autistic children is 85%. Is this a good time to talk about the economy and the difficulties of single parents raising a child with autism?
I realize I am being brutal. I apologize for that, but not for the need to be honest. Grab a tissue, have a good cry, and suck it up because this discussion is relevant to your life. It is especially relevant if you are considering having children in the future.
“Current Events” time!
On February 12, 2009, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (Vaccine Court) Special Masters ruled against three families of autistic children, whose histories were chosen as “test cases” in the plaintiffs’ efforts to legally establish causality between thimerosal, MMR, and the children’s regression into autistic symptoms, which happened to occur shortly after receiving the vaccinations.
It was reported that one factor which helped sway the decision against the families is that they claimed their children were “developing normally” prior to the administration of the MMR vaccine. The Masters, upon review of photographs, videos, and medical records of the children in question, concluded that the parents’ claim that their children were “developing normally” was untrue. As I recall, the opinion of the special masters cited things like videos and photographs showing inconsistent eye-contact prior to the MMR administration. This concept of “normal development” hit me like a ton of bricks when I read it.
What does this statement mean, “Developing Normally?”
When I think about this question, the first thing that comes to mind is how shocked I have been and continue to be, when I ask parents the following question, “Did your child have a lot of ear infections during the first four years of life?”
The answer I frequently receive is, “Not a lot. No more than any other children.”
My response: “How many ear infections does your child typically have in a year?”
Typical response: “Three or four.”
What is important about the conversation, as reported above, is that most parents I interview report that their child is having three or four ear infections per year (which are treated with antibiotics) and the parents are also reporting that their child is no different from other children who are “developing normally.”
This is a problem.
Another area where I see a problem involves constipation. My developmental history form specifically asks about constipation and the majority of children I see have had significant problems with the frequency of bowel movements. Several have had to go to the hospital multiple times because their bowels have become impacted. Many parents have told me that they have expressed concerns to their pediatricians or family doctors, regarding their children’s infrequent bowel movements (often once a week or less), only to be told by their trusted physician, “In some children, that’s normal.”
Bowel movements are the body’s way of clearing toxins. (The body also clears toxins through urination and sweating.) Some toxins will ONLY clear the body through bowel movements. If you have toxins building up in the body and the half-life of that toxin is, let’s say 3 days, and the child in question is only having a bowel movement every 7 days, then if that toxin is taken into the body (perhaps through vaccination) and the child does not have a bowel movement for four or five days after taking the toxin it, where do you suppose the toxin goes? It gets stored in the body. Some of it goes into the soft tissues like kidneys and bone marrow. Some of it goes into the brain. Once it’s stored, it’s hard to get it out.
The gist of this is that our children are NOT developing normally if they are having chronic constipation (or diarrhea), or if they are having chronic bacterial and viral infections, upper respiratory infections, bronchitis, tonsillitis, strep, allergies, and asthma. We have an entire generation of children who are more prone to illness than children who are truly “developing normally.” The problem is, we have become so accustomed to this that we now accept this situation as “normal.” This needs to change. (Note: The generation of children who are so prone to infections and gastrointestinal problems coincides with the administration of the Hepatitis B vaccination at birth. For more on this topic, please read the post Vaccines and Autism - Your Child vs. The Greater Good.)
So, going back to the concept of teratology – things that disrupt normal development … In order to prevent more children from being “hit by the bus,” we need to pay closer attention to the things that may disrupt “normal development,” starting before conception even occurs. We need to prepare the incubator. For those children who are already here, we need to assess the status of their overall health and development BEFORE we inject them with multiple viruses simultaneously, and BEFORE we allow anyone to inject them with substances (thimerosal, aluminum, formaldehyde, etc.) that are KNOWN to have teratologic effects. Remember, the first rule of vaccinations is “do not vaccinate a sick child.” The problem is that when we view children with chronic conditions (viruses, bacterial infections, etc.) as “normal,” our perception of what constitutes “a sick child” has been skewed. Those are the children who are being “thrown in front of the bus.” My point: If we identify (accurately) those children who ARE sick, and get them healthy BEFORE administering vaccinations, we are likely to decrease the numbers of children who subsequently regress and end up receiving an autism diagnosis.
Back to the main question at hand – what do you need to do to increase your chances of having a healthy baby – one who stays healthy and does not become part of the estimated 1 in 67 American children with an autism spectrum disorder?
- Don’t wait until you are pregnant to start preparing your body. Remember, you are the incubator. Imagine for a moment that you have just delivered a baby that was born premature, and had to be placed in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) of the hospital. When your precious infant is taken from your womb and placed in the incubator in the NICU, you expect that the incubator will be a healthy environment for your fragile infant. By healthy, I mean, you expect that the incubator is free from bacteria (strep, staph, clostridia), viruses (Herpes, Measles, Varicella [Chickenpox], Human Papilloma Virus, Epstein-Barr, Cytomegalovirus), yeast (candida albicans and others), and parasites. You also expect that the incubator your infant is placed in will not be contaminated with heavy metals (lead, mercury, antimony, arsenic, cadmium, aluminum [not technically a ‘heavy metal’]), and that the incubator will not be sprayed with pesticides or contaminated with organophosphates. In essence, what you expect, is that your precious baby will be placed in a pristine environment, in which he or she will be able to develop, to his or her full potential.
If you expect strangers to care for your baby this way, shouldn’t you do everything you can to care for your future child with the same concern?
This entire thought process should start at least one to two years before you become pregnant.
If you live in the Tri-state (Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois), you should know that you live in the coal-burning power plant capitol of the world. If you have lived here for any length of time, you have been exposed to heavy metals (from coal-burning power plants), pesticides and organophosphates (from farming). If you get annual flu shots and have not specified that you want thimerosal-free flu shots, you have had a yearly dose of mercury injected directly into your bloodstream.
If you live in an area where you are regularly exposed to heavy metals and other environmental toxins, you owe it to your future children to find out what toxins have built up in your system, before you make it an incubator for your future child. You would not want your child to be placed in a hospital incubator contaminated with bacteria, viruses, and toxins (metals, pesticides, organophosphates), so why would you allow your child to spend the most important growing stage in just such an environment. If you do not pursue primary intervention that assesses your own body stores of these toxins, that is exactly what you are doing. The incubator is contaminated.
Clean it up before you trust it with the future of your precious baby.
2. If you are the parent of a young child and you are concerned about whether or not to vaccinate him or her, you need to become informed about your options as a parent. One of those options I would encourage is to have your child evaluated first to determine if there are physical problems that should be addressed, prior to vaccination. This may be especially important if your child has gastrointestinal problems, or recurrent viral and/or bacterial infections.
To learn more about assessment for genetic vulnerability and toxic exposures before you get pregnant, or before vaccinating your child, contact Marcella Piper-Terry, M.S.; Biomedical Consultant; marcellaterry@hotmail.com
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