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Vaccination Controversy and Guidelines:
WHY DO WE VACCINATE, AND FOR WHAT? WHY DO WE VACCINATE, AND FOR WHAT? We have a fear of getting sick, and if someone can tell us that by getting a shot we and our loved ones will not get that disease, we want the shot. Unfortunately, we would rather get a shot to prevent one problem than take the time to slowly build up such good health that we do not need specific disease prevention - and are much much healthier overall. Yearly, or more often, the average conventional veterinarian now recommends your dog receive a combination injection of Distemper, Hepatitis, Leptospirosis, Parainfluenza & Parvovirus. They, and kennels, require Bordetella (Kennel Cough) before boarding, and often recommend it routinely. They often suggest Corona vaccine, and Lyme disease vaccine. Cats are given a combination of Panleukopenia (cat distemper, feline enteritis) and three upper respiratory diseases, Calici, Rhino, and Chlamydia. Highly recommended is Feline Leukemia, and available are Feline Infectious Peritonitis and now ringworm vaccine. Every year (or more frequently) of your animal's life, they are being injected with 4-8 viruses, in addition to Rabies. Would you rebel if your doctor told you to now get MMR & DPT (Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Diptheria, Pertussis, Tetnus), Hib, Hepatitis, & Rabies every year of your life until you died, instead of only a few doses as a child? WHAT IS THE HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE? A healthy animal or person is unlikely to get sick (or very sick) even if exposed to infectious agents. Ideally we would never vaccinate, feed wonderful fresh food and treat the early symptoms that indicate the body is out of balance. (See sheet on the early warning signs of energy imbalance.) If they do develop an infectious disease, it can usually be treated successfully with homeopathy. Vaccinating an animal does not necessarily protect them from the very diseases for which they are vaccinated, and can make them weaker overall. Dr. Schultz, veterinary immunologist at the Wisconsin Veterinary College, tested 6 Parvo vaccines and found only 2 to be at all effective - now the companies have improved them all. ARE ANNUAL VACCINATIONS NECESSARY? Drs. Schultz & Phillips (Scripps Institute) write in Kirk's Current Veterinary Therapy, Vol 11, page 205, saying "A practice that was started many years ago and that lacks scientific validity or verification is annual revaccinations. Almost without exception there is no immunological requirement for annual revaccination...The practice of annual vaccination in our opinion should be considered of questionable efficacy..." Dr. Schultz vaccinates his dogs as puppies for only distemper and parvo, then only Rabies the rest of their lives. Even Rabies vaccine is probably good for more than 3 years, since it is a viral vaccine. The tests done by the vaccine manufacturers on the required 7 dogs (only 7), were carried out only at three years post vaccine. If they had tested dogs longer post vaccine, rabies may be good for life. ARE VACCINATIONS POTENTIALLY HARMFUL? Holistic veterinarians are finding that vaccines are causing great harm to our animals (and ourselves). To cure an animal we must use homeopathic remedies known to reverse vaccine related problems. Often, if vaccinated during treatment, the progress we are making is stopped. Conventional veterinarians are also reporting health problems due to vaccinations. "Immune-mediated hematologic disease and transient bone marrow failure are increasingly recognized sequela of...vaccination. ... Postvacinal polyneuropathy is a recognized entity associated with...vaccines. ...Adverse reactions to vaccination have also recently been reported with increasing frequency in cats." (Dr. Dodds, 1990) Other reports include: immunologic disorders (Frick, Green, McDonald, Phillips & Schultz, Tizard); adverse vaccine reactions (Green, McDonald, Phillips & Schultz, Tizard, Wilford); increased sensitivity to pollen antigens after vaccination (Frick, Dodds). See vaccination bibliography for more information. Many ferrets with green diarrhea (which started after a distemper scare caused much increased frequency of vaccination) were successfully treated with Thuja. ****The inserts that come with all vaccines say to use them only in healthy animals. So if you are taking your animal to a clinic or a kennel and there is not great health, then the vaccines should not, according to the manufacturer, be used at that time. Most of my clients have told horror stories of the illnesses they feel occurred after their animals were vaccinated. Some problems were immediate, but most were slower onset. A veterinarian who breeds and shows Collies tells of breeders who start vaccinating at 2 weeks of age with modified live multiple vaccines. She has noticed for years that these are puppies who have the most lamenesses, the most bloat, the most skin parasites and the most breeding problems. She has avoided them for years. ARE THERE HOMEOPATHIC VACCINES? NOSODES? Many people have stopped vaccinating, but have started using homeopathic protection on an ongoing basis. These remedies are called nosodes, and are homeopathic preparations of the different animal diseases made from the tissues of a diseased animal. Therefore they have not only the organism, but an animal's response to the organism. Some are using nosodes for each disease, and others are using combinations of all the diseases. This is still operating from a fear of getting something, rather than a proactive stance of "let's become very healthy so that even if we are exposed to a communicable disease, we will not get that ill." There is a lot of evidence for the success of using homeopathic remedies in people over the last 200 years to protect them when an epidemic is going on, but few doctors recommended on-going prevention, and certainly not repeated thoughout the life of the person. CAN MY ANIMALS REALLY BE SAFE AND HEALTHY WHEN NOT VACCINATED? YES! Wendy and Jack Volhard studied kennels in Germany, many with lines of German Shepherds that we have here in the States. These 200+ dogs are given a distemper and a parvo only at ago 10 weeks and 1 year. No other vaccines are given except Rabies, when needed. Their diet varies from home-prepared to commercial. These dogs are having litters and showing at 10 years of age, and live to 16 or so. In the States, many Shepherds are dying by the age of 10. Other breeders have found that stopping vaccination has made their line much healthier, and usually immune (through good health) to the infectious agents that usually cause disease. (Not always, of course. Some dogs or cats are very susceptible to disease and will become infected (even if vaccinated, sometimes). I have found that unvaccinated animals who do contact an infectious disease often (not always) recover more quickly, some with homeopathic treatment, some with only supportive care. A veterinarian in Saskatchewan stopped vaccinating his large beef herd 10 years ago and his mortality rate has decreased by 75%. He no longer has any calf scours. Although we do not know what level of antibodies an individual needs to be protected against a disease, you could check the "titer levels" of your animals, and if they have a high titer you would feel more comfortable not vaccinating them. The best, again, is to build up the health of animals so they are not susceptible to acute infectious diseases and live many years of good overal health. RABIES vaccination should be given at 5 months. Be sure the animal is as healthy as possible, and if under homeopathic treatment, check first with your homeopathic veterinarian. Repeat at 1 year, and then every three (unless your state requires it more often). Give the remedy Lyssin 30C within 2 hours of the vaccine. Speak with your practitioner if you breed, or have exclusively indoor animals, or if your animal is very ill. For the other diseases, there are several options, listed in decreasing acceptibility. Feed a great diet. Treat very early symptoms (red gum line, body odor, cats who drink or vomit hairballs, behavior problems - see the early warning signs handout). 1. Do not vaccinate. Rely on the animal's health. Treat if they get the disease. 2. Give homeopathic nosodes for distemper and parvo (dogs) or panleukopenia (cats) until 1 year of age. Then no more nosodes or vaccinations. 3. Give dogs one distemper and parvo vaccination at 16 weeks (one at 8 weeks if exposed a lot); or cats one panleukopenia vaccinations at 16 weeks (8 weeks if too worried). If your animal is highly exposed to an epidemic of a disease, and YOU feel they are at risk, you can then give a 200c strength of the appropriate homeopathic nosode one or two times. If they still get sick, then call for homeopathic treatment. IS THERE ANY RESEARCH ON HOMEOPATHIC PROTECTION? Although homeopathic prevention has been used for many years, especially in Europe, it is not yet a standard approach and must be considered as experimental. Christopher Day, a homeopathic veterinarian in England, has shown very good evidence of protection by homeopathic vaccines in kennels with endemic kennel cough. He, and other homeopathic veterinarians have rarely had animals they protected with nosodes become ill with those diseases and definitely find that these animals have a much lower incidence of illnesses of any kind. Christopher Day's study is reported in the IAVH journal 4/87. Briefly, an outbreak of Kennel Cough in a kennel of 40 dogs showed that the use of vaccination was not effective. Eighteen of the 40 dogs had been previously vaccinated with PI3 & Bordetella before the outbreak. Every one of the vaccinated dogs became ill with a cough (100%) while only 19 of the remaining 22 unvaccinated dogs developed symptoms(86%). The symptoms were severe. The owners decided to try the Kennel Cough Nosode (homeopathic). Over the next several months a total of 214 dogs were treated and observed. The results show that, after use of the nosode, the incidence of Kennel Cough decreased to 4.7% in the previously vaccinated animals that came into the kennel and to about .7% in the previously unvaccinated dogs. Other research on nosodes is currently being conducted in the United States. Funding is needed. Most homeopathic practitioners will certainly work with your animals regardless or your choices about vaccination, even if you elect to fully vaccinate them. I think this is an important issue to grapple with, and encourage you to read some of the following information, and listen to lectures by people like Dr. Ron Schultz or Dr. Jean Dodds. (Several good ones are available from the 1995 AHVMA annual conference. BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR VACCINATION RESOURCES
AVMA Journal, 1998 Report of the American Association of Feline Practitioners and Academy of Feline Medicine Advisory Panel on Feline Vaccines, Vol 212, #2, Jan 1998 |
