They finally have a pilot study to show who is healthier, vaccinated or unvaccinated children? During many conversations with parents in the clinic about whether to vaccinate their children, I have always taken the approach of giving information. Informed parents can make informed decisions.
What Do I Need To Know About Vaccines?
The first question I ask is, are vaccinated children healthier than non-vaccinated children? And really shouldn’t this be the most basic question of all about our children’s health?
Even though Americans are among the most vaccinated people globally, after decades of vaccinations, we are among the sickest.
There has been research implicating vaccination as one reason for the high rates of chronic disease. However, no government agency or drug company has ever compared the health of vaccinated and non-vaccinated children to see which group has higher rates of neurological disorders, chronic disease, immunological disease, learning disabilities, or autism. Until now!
What Does The Study Look At?
A study in the Journal Translational Science looked at more than 600 children in four states. The study aimed to:
- compare vaccinated and unvaccinated children on a broad range of health outcomes
- to determine whether an association found between vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) remained significant after adjustment for other measured factors.
How Was The Data Collected?
A cross-sectional study of mothers of children educated at home was carried out in collaboration with homeschool organizations in four U.S. states: Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oregon.
Mothers were asked to complete an anonymous online questionnaire on their 6- to 12-year-old biological children concerning pregnancy-related factors, birth history, vaccinations, physician-diagnosed illnesses, medications used, and health services.
What Is NDD?
NDD, a derived diagnostic measure, was defined as having one or more of the following three closely-related diagnoses: a learning disability, Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder, and Autism Spectrum Disorder.
How Did The Study Break Down The Data?
The study broke the children into three categories- unvaccinated children, partially vaccinated children, and fully vaccinated children. A sample of 666 children was obtained, of which 261 (39%) were unvaccinated.
Then the researchers divided the research up into vaccination status and health outcomes, both acute and chronic conditions. They also looked at partial versus full vaccination and chronic health conditions, chronic conditions, and gender among vaccinated children and vaccination status, medication use, and health services utilization.
What Was The Outcome of The Study?
The researchers stated that vaccinated children were significantly less likely than the unvaccinated to have had chickenpox and pertussis. But, contrary to expectation, were substantially more likely to have been diagnosed with otitis media, pneumonia, allergic rhinitis, eczema, and NDD.
The vaccinated were also more likely to have used antibiotics, allergy, and fever medications, fitted with ventilation ear tubes, visited a doctor for a health issue in the previous year and were hospitalized.
Other interesting results showed-
- When compared with unvaccinated and fully vaccinated children, partially vaccinated children fell somewhere in the middle.
- Among the vaccinated (combining partially and fully vaccinated children), boys were more likely than girls to be diagnosed with chronic conditions.
- After the researchers adjusted for all other significant factors, those that remained significantly associated with NDD were: vaccination and preterm birth.
- Preterm birth itself, however, was not significantly associated with NDD, whereas the combination (interaction) of preterm birth and vaccination was associated with 6.6-fold increased odds of NDD.
Are Vaccines Safe and Effective?
The authors shared some scary statistics on public information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
The study reported a linear relationship between the number of vaccine doses administered at one time and the rate of hospitalization and death; moreover, the younger the infant at the time of vaccination, the higher was the rate of hospitalization and death.
The hospitalization rate increased from 11% for two vaccine doses to 23.5% for eight doses (r2= 0.91). In comparison, the case fatality rate increased significantly from 3.6% for those receiving from 1-4 treatments to 5.4 % for those receiving from 5-8 doses.
More Studies Needed
The researchers conclude the study stating that assessing the long-term effects of the vaccination schedule on morbidity and mortality has been limited.
The authors stated:
- Additional research is needed to replicate the findings in studies with larger samples and more robust research designs.
- Subject to replication, potentially detrimental factors associated with the vaccination schedule should be identified and addressed, and underlying mechanisms better understood.
Conclusion of the Health of Vaccinated vs Unvaccinated Kids-
This study points out that there might be more of an impact on our children’s overall health from vaccination than we previously thought. There are some strong correlations between vaccines and adverse health outcomes. More research is needed. Such studies are essential to optimize the impact of vaccination on children’s health.
I agree wholeheartedly.
If you want to read more about a new study comparing vaccinated against unvaccinated children with their health outcomes, check out this article-
