Getting off topic here, but I would like to respond to this. >Actually, getting 'boostered' in adulthood is not a rare thing. It has >a lot to do with what you do for a living. This is true. But you cannot be forced to be vaccinated. Your kids CAN go to school without some or all vaccinations, and it can be done legally. More and more people are opting for none or minimal vaccinations. Do you know that in the first six months of life, the amount of mercury that is injected into children through vaccines exceeds the federal safety guidelines? Of course people should ask for vaccines without thimerosal, but most are not even offered that alternative or made aware of it. We,the people, just accept whatever is told to us. We don t have too, the information is out there. You do have the means to make better, more informed choices, whatever they are. http://www.immed.org/reports/autoimmune_illness/ Criminal_Politics_Vaccine_Contraversy.htm http://members.jorsm.com/~binstock/vacc-let.htm http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve &db=PubMed&list_uids=8620622&dopt=Abstract You might find this abstract interesting regarding mercury levels in babies hair and autism: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed &list_uids=12933322&dopt=Abstract Let s see what some reputable sources have found out about vaccines: http://tuberose.com/Vaccinations.html *1996 study in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that tetanus vaccine disables the immune system by producing a drop in immune T cells, a classic marker of immune deficiency, in 10 of 13 patients. In one study, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, it was shown that the measles vaccine has a long-term depressed interferon production. The vaccination of one-year-olds with measles vaccine caused a precipitous drop in their level of alpha-interferon production. This decline was still persisting one year following vaccination, when the study was terminated. Results of a study in New Zealand, published in 1997 in Epidemiology, point to higher rates of asthma and allergy episodes among vaccinated children. And in a study using the Mumps-Measles-Rubella (MMR) vaccine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, researchers investigated the association between childhood asthma and live-virus viral strains may be contributory to the rise in IgE (antibody)-mediated disorders. Other researchers are saying that vaccines are disabling our bodies' ability to react normally to disease, thereby creating autoimmune conditions. In 1994, a committee of investigators at the Institutes of Medicine directly associated vaccines with the rising occurrence of autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, that attack and destroy the myelin sheaths (insulation) of nerves. They said "it's plausible that injection of an inactivated virus, bacterium, or live attenuated virus might induce in the susceptible host an autoimmune response by deregulation of the immune response, by nonspecific activation of the T cells directed against myelin proteins, or by autoimmunity triggered by sequence similarities of proteins in the vaccine to host proteins such as those of myelin.* I don t think many doctors share this info with parents. Should that not be the parents right to have ALL the information so they may make an informed decision? >It is very common for people to get 'boostered' for tetanus, as well. Yes, some will get boostered for it, but more are opting against it. http://www.van.org.uk/tetanus/tetanus_factsheet.htm#chances *The bacteria in a wound will not necessarily mean that a person will get tetanus. Large amounts of unclean material (eg, manure) should be present in the wound, with no air allowed to circulate, for that person to contract tetanus.* http://www.vaccination.inoz.com/Tetanus.html *The rarity of contracting tetanus in nature Be it due to the uncommon circumstances of a potential risk of infection and/or the care that is taken in respect of such preventative measures as above after the wound occurs, the result is that contracting tetanus naturally, without vaccination, is very rare in developed countries: there are less than a dozen reported cases each year in Australia, with half of those cases occurring in people recently vaccinated.* [Moderator's note: Disease incidence in the US can be found at: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5153a1.htm BIG] *Contracting tetanus from a tetanus vaccine, however, appears to be much more common. Many people tell of having developed the symptoms of tetanus from the vaccine, and of the doctors refusing to report it.* [Posted in FML issue 4646]