1Dear Doctor: In our effort to make informed and intelligent decisions about our children's health care, we would like you to please consider the following points about childhood vaccines: - It is impossible to claim with any seriousness that the medical business is free from politics. Vaccine history is full of doctors and officials who broke away from the political machine, always to great professional peril, to speak out against vaccines and the claims of policy makers. The development of vaccines has consistently followed (and not preceded) the dramatic decline of infectious diseases. As you well know, multi-billion dollar sales are at stake every time a national recommendation is made (was the chickenpox vaccine really important?). More importantly, the health policy makers obviously win a political victory when the public is told that the government can now control another infectious disease. - The efficacy of vaccines has always varied so wildly in studies that there's almost no element of science left in the vaccine business. The same whole-cell DPT vaccine showed efficacy of 36%, 48% and greater than 80% in different CDC trials (many excuses followed). Since most of us made it into the 20th century without vaccines, it seems obvious that we have natural mechanisms that offer at least as much protection as the aforementioned products. The "efficacy" of different immune systems may be just as varied. - Even extremely pro-vaccine doctors have admitted that vaccinated kids seem to have a greater incidence of annoying childhood illnesses (colds, ear infections, etc.) than unvaccinated kids. If vaccines were benign, one could possibly consider a risk/benefit analysis. However, these products generate nearly 11,000 adverse reaction reports (with over 100 deaths) annually with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Since this is a passive physician reporting system, you can easily understand why the FDA's director once said that only 10% of the reactions are ever reported. The formaldehyde, mercury derivatives, phenol, aluminum salts, antibiotics and many other stabilizers and adjuvents obviously make vaccines potent and toxic drugs. - Worst of all, however, is the new and mysterious area of zoonotic virus contamination. Monkey, chicken, cow, horse, pig and dog tissue has always been hard to implicate in chronic disease. The CDC in 1996 admitted contamination of the early polio vaccines with Simian Virus-40 (SV-40). Despite SV-40's presence in humans with chronic illnesses, including its concentration in cancer tumors, the CDC denied a causal relationship. More disturbing, however, is the discovery by W. John Martin in California of a "Stealth Virus," which shows identical DNA to the Simian Cytomegalovirus (SCMV) found in African green monkeys used for polio vaccines. Dr. Martin has isolated the viruses in extremely varied neurological illnesses, including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and ADD. His pioneering research is also proving that virus fragments can still damage human brain cells. Virus fragments have been appearing in vaccines for decades but the CDC has always maintained that fragments were never a danger. - While there's no denying that better diagnoses are enabling us to discover a lot of new illnesses, there's no explanation for the dramatic increase in chronic illnesses that do not require high-tech diagnostic equipment allergies, ear infections, autism, ADD, leukemia. epilepsy, and juvenile diabetes are just a few. The truth is, no government or private source is ready to conduct any studies that address the obvious and enormous pressure that zoonotic viruses may be putting on the immature immune systems of our children. The study of slow-acting toxins is neither profitable, nor important to the "instant results" American mindset. In light of these arguments in this emotional and controversial subject, we would request your tolerance of our decision not to vaccinate. We are prepared to provide studies and documentation to support the arguments provided here. We think that you will agree that as guardians of our children, we need to educate ourselves in a balanced manner. You will also agree that as parents, politics or profits don't fit into our decisions only our genuine concern for the well-being of our children. Thank you for your time, and the high-level of care you provide.