Mouse Brains and Cow Skin

I don’t want to write about human vaccines and their controversial nature, but that is what is on my mind.

I am not an expert about them.   I do know I am skittish about getting the flu shots that come out yearly.  I think coming to a decision about giving them to your own precious newborn is about as hard as they come.

Mouse brains and cow skin?  Those are ingredients in those vaccines.

I read a book called THE MICROBE HUNTERS for one of my science classes (microbiology? biology?).  That’s where I learned about Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine, which I was given on a sugar cube.  And now, there is a vaccine for the German measles, the disease I will always credit with having robbed me of my perfect vision, leaving me with a lifetime of stumbling when I need to get up in the middle of the night and my contacts are in their container by the bathroom sink.   I did gain one thing from that 10-day episode of a high fever and excruciating eye pain: a lifetime of remembering the words to the song KING OF THE ROAD.  (“Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let: 50 cents. No phone, no pool, no pets. I ain’t got no cigarettes…”)

I vaccinated my children.  I was always worried. They got fevers. They slept. They were cranky and unhappy. But I could say, with the best of my knowledge, that I was protecting them from things that were worse than what they experienced.

Now there is a lot more research out there.   There are many more voices added to the mix.  To whom do you listen?  I think you find someone you trust and you do a lot of praying, and you realize that you can’t possibly predict the outcome.  Your stomach will churn, and this will be one of the first of many choices you make wherein you do what is, to the best of your knowledge, best for your child.