Tetanus/Vaccines/more From Will Taylor, Homeopath

Another very wise post from Will Taylor MD, homeopath from Maine..
Sheri

Luise wrote...
>>>Deep punctures on the foot mean nothing.
>>>So, not getting tetanus after a nail in the foot - with or without
>>>hypericum in an unvaccinated person - does not mean anything one way or
>>>other.

Will wrote..
Absolutely! Heck, there are only something like 5 cases of tetanus per
year in the entire U.S., and the major risk factors are IV drug use, major
burns, and stasis ulcers in the elderly. I only saw 2 cases in my very
intensive medical training, both major (>50% whole body) burns. Most docs
have never seen it. & I live in the far north, where tetanus spore does
not survive well in the soil.

I don't think the Ledum I gave Ben did diddly-squat, unless it helped to
lessen the pain of the wound. I wasn't trying to credit it for preventing
tetanus in his case (tho I can see how one might have read that into my
posting).

What I was trying to say, was that the decision to skip immunization can
sometimes be severely tested at the 11th hour - you know, like Louise said,
air-raids seem a whole lot more real when the bombs start falling. & That
happened for me - at least I could imagine the sound of approaching
airplane engines - I lay awake on his bedroom floor a good while, feeling
very tried for my decision to not immunize. Too late to reverse it then -
without the initial series of 3, a tetanus immunization that night would
not have been effective.

But then I came to the realization that I trusted homoeopathy more than the
immunization anyway. I had my Ledum, & my Hypericum, & my whole warehouse
of remedies, & my repertories & MMs & old books that smelled like kerosene
with pressed lentils between the pages ;^) . & I realized that God &
Hahnemann would not forsake me (that's for the folks who are concerned
about religious zealotry ;^) ). So I fell asleep & slept peacefully. &
The point is not that Ben was OK - of course Ben was OK - the point is that
his father was OK.

>>>Will's statement that a lot of - vaccinated - children came to him with a
>>>nail puncture: this I do not understand at all. Vaccination obviously
>>>cannot prevent someone treading on a nail. So what does that prove?

Well hey, I don't understand this either! ;^) I think what I said was
that I've had a number of parents of unvaccinated kids call me with 11th
hour concerns like mine, above. & We both suddenly discover that their
decision to not immunize was based on a naive disregard of the realities of
potential disease. Now (to borrow Louise's air-raid metaphor), the bombs
are falling & they freak, & they question the wisdom of their decision to
not immunize.

>Where I come from "the resolve NOT to immunize had been shaken.." would
>mean that they had immunized after all.

Nope. They had resolved not to immunize. & Now that resolve was being
shaken, they were worried that they had done the wrong thing in deciding
not to immunize. I think this might be a language difficulty here.
English is a queer language. So's German. I was raised near Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, where most folks speak something that is supposedly a little bit
of both, but is in fact a whole lot of neither (Milwaukeedeutsch - don't
pronounce the "L").

So what this is all about, is this. We need to talk with parents about the
realities of disease risk. They need to know that just breastfeeding and
taking antioxidants and eating organic food and processing their emotions
is *not* going to prevent their kid from getting pertussis. I guess I
stated that in a silly way, but I see a lot of parents who would find that
surprising. And we need to help them understand what it is like to lie
awake on their child's floor after she steps on a nail in the garden. And
how it would feel to watch your kid start having seizures 36 hours after a
pertussis immunization. Then we can talk about the options for managing
such things, and get real informed decisions about immunizing or not.

Will Taylor, MD