What you should know about the chicken pox vaccine

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 To compare, vaccines only deliver immunity for a couple of years after you get them. So you should every few years get "booster shots" but if people got booster shots for all the vaccines offered, that would be a lot of shots every few years.  But if you haven't had the disease and you don't get the booster shots every couple of years or so, then you are depending on "crowd immunity" rather than you being immune.  And if you get chicken pox as an adult, you can get very ill. (10 - 20 times the number of deaths when adults get chicken pox)

Vaccines are medications with side effects

The FDA VAERS' (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) first year surveillance of VARIVAX included over 1,500 reports. 76 were serious adverse reactions that included 2 deaths.

The federal government has paid families of vaccine killed and disabled children nearly $100 million in tax-payer dollars each year since 1986 through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVCIP).

Studies show that up to 3% of VARIVAX recipients get chicken pox from the vaccine, and that some chicken pox cases may be contracted from recently vaccinated children. Vaccine recipients may therefore pose a health risk to pregnant mothers or family members with chronic health problems or compromised immune systems.

Since 2000 when there have been outbreaks of whooping cough among children vaccinated as recently as 3 years previous to becoming ill, it is now thought that the immunity offered by all weakened virus vaccines may not be over 3 years.

California's Pacificare Health Systems HMO chose not to recommend VARIVAX; medical director Dr. William Osheroff said, "The real issue is all of the unanswered questions about Varivax...This is a very benign disease in children, but the vaccine may create a false sense of security as these kids get older and find themselves non-immune. Chickenpox as an adult is a serious disease."

Some parents reported a correlation between VARIVAX and seizures. (The FDA Vaccine Data Safety Link has recently reported that seizures following DPT are "common," although the DPT vaccine has been in use for decades.)

VARIVAX was developed with the use of aborted fetuses. This may pose religious and/or ethical considerations for some people.

Shingles, a painful, debilitating disease, is caused by the chicken pox virus.In the first 10 years of use, nearly 1 out of 1000 vaccine recipients developed shingles. There is no way to know how many of the remaining 999 out of each 1000 will also develop shingles in later years.

According to the National Vaccine Information Center, many healthcare professionals are very concerned that the live vaccine virus may "reactivate later in life in the form of herpes zoster (shingles) or other immune system disorders."

Dr. A. Lavin of the Department of Pediatrics, St. Luke's Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, strongly opposed licensing VARIVAX, "Until we actually know...the risks involved in injecting mutated DNA [the vaccine] into the host genome [children]."

Some studies suggest that chicken pox in a vaccinated child may be milder than in an unvaccinated child. However, Chicken pox is a very mild illness in most kids whether vaccinated or not.

The FDA has informed us in the last couple of years that NOW, vaccines contain LESS mercury.  Mercury, even in small amounts is a toxin.

Those who may suffer from any chronic condition or who are taking medicine on a regular basis (or whose family members do) should also consider avoiding this vaccine.