Vax story Avi

To whom it may concern (lawmaker/DOH representative/school administrator/Rabbi):

Our son Avi is not being accepted at our local community Yeshiva, which is the only one in the New Jersey town in which we reside, despite having a medical exemption and two MMR vaccines, which they had said he needed in order to be admitted for the current school year. My family has been brought to the point of financial ruin because I, his mother, a Masters’s Degree’d professional, have traditionally been the main breadwinner of our home being that my husband is a blue-collar worker. But I have been forced to homeschool my son or place him into public school which is against our Orthodox Jewish religious practice.

I did not want to have to tell you this information in order to protect my child’s medical privacy, but you should know about it since you have decided to insert yourselves into our family’s health decisions.

My son Avi won’t be able to have children because the vaccine industry and the CDC, in which you place your trust, deceived us. They led everyone to believe that thimerosal had been removed from the pediatric immunization schedule in 2001, when in fact, they left it in flu shots and in 2004 began recommending flu shots to infants and pregnant and conceiving women in all trimesters. FDA recently admitted in court that no studies on pregnant women were ever conducted. http://icandecide.org/government/ICAvFDA-Resolved-Court-Filed-Copy.pdf?sfns=mo

A trace amount of thimerosal is defined by the FDA as being 1 microgram (mcg) of mercury or less. Flu vaccines for pregnant women may contain 25 micrograms of mercury and pediatric flu shots for infants younger than one year contain 12.5 micrograms mercury. The year that my son was conceived, the CDC told pregnant and conceiving women to run out and get a novel H1N1 flu shot that was laden with 25mcg of thimerosal which they knew was highly toxic to babies, along with the seasonal flu shot. That year, there was an eleven-fold increase in fetal demise (miscarriage) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23023030/ that was attributed to the synergistic toxicity of the two vaccines.

Over 165 peer-reviewed scientific studies show a link between thimerosal and neurological injuries. Thimerosal is about 50 percent ethyl mercury by weight. Animal studies have shown that mercury impairs testosterone in male rats. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21219378/Low-dose mercury induces testicular damage protected by zinc in mice (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11267727). Vaccines typically contain sterile water (so it could be sterilized with chlorine). This study showed that mercuric chloride (mercury mixed with chlorine) HgCl2 induced “histopathological changes to the testis including morphological alterations of the seminiferous tubules” i.e. testicular torsion (which is what happened to Avi). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3610915/

The Federal government still has not asked the pharmaceutical industry to stop using thimerosal as a preservative in multi-dose vials that are still being injected into pregnant women and 6 month old babies. You can see it listed in the ingredients on several flu formulations right on the CDC website. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf

They may argue that the thimerosal in the flu shot is a very low dosage, too low to cause significant harm. However, the greatest effect of endocrine-disrupters can occur at the lowest doses. For many chemicals, increasing the dose will increase the toxic effect. However, for endocrine-disrupters, lower rather than higher doses can have the highest effect [Allsopp et al. 1997].

Avi almost died in the hospital the same night he was born when they had to amputate his one remaining testicle. The thimerosal that was lodged in my brain during the nine months of pregnancy while my brain was communicating with his had caused the first one to become torsed in utero.

The CDC claims that ethyl-mercury, the kind that makes up thimerosal, exits the body more quickly than does methylmercury. However, studies have shown that thimerosal actually accumulates in the brain, which is why it appears to exit the blood. This study found that “Brain concentrations of total mercury were approximately 3-4 times lower in the thimerosal group than in the methylmercury group, and total mercury cleared more rapidly in the thimerosal group (with a half-life of 24.2 days versus 59.5 days). However, the proportion of inorganic mercury in the brain was much higher in the thimerosal group (21-86% of total mercury) compared to the methylmercury group (6-10%). Brain concentrations of inorganic mercury were approximately twice as high in the thimerosal group compared to the methylmercury group. Inorganic mercury remains in the brain much longer than organic mercury, with an estimated half-life of more than a year.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280369/ (This explains how it could have been present all throughout my pregnancy.)

We are told that Avi cannot go to Yeshiva because the school lacks resources to care for his special needs. However, Avi is a normal boy who was rated by the NYC Department of Education to be of normal intelligence and to have no emotional issues. He did have an IEP in New York with a diagnosis of “other health impairment” which was never explained to us. He has also been noted by Rabbinical leaders and speakers to be of above-average spirituality. Avi does display some symptoms of hyperactivity in the evenings at home and can get bored and become inattentive in school when he feels that the subject matter is too easy or not taught in an engaging manner. However, he always had excellent grades until last year (2nd grade) when he attended a new Yeshiva in Staten Island which had a larger size classroom than he was used to and where he did not connect with the homeroom teacher.

I should also note that attention deficit can also be explained by the thimerosal in the flu shot I took at conception. The CDC study below found that prenatal exposure to thimerosal in males is significantly associated with attention deficit. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/environmental-exposures.html#A6.

It could also be due to the hep B at birth dose that he received in the hospital when he was born. A 2018 study showing hep B vaccine has negative impacts on baby’s cognition and brain development http://vaccinesafetycommission.org/pdfs/Wang%20Yao%202018%20Cytokine%20IL-4%20Hep%20B%20Hippocampus.pdf

As a result of recent politics, Avi was removed from our community Yeshiva in New Jersey in the middle of first grade when they refused to accept our religious exemption to vaccination. This policy was never explained to us when we bought our home in the community and enrolled our children in the Yeshiva here. Nor was it written about on the Yeshiva’s website. Religious exemptions were allowed in the state. The school removed both our children, including one fully vaccinated child, when they noticed the religious exemption letter. At that time, I began the treacherous task of commuting both my kids to New York for Yeshiva, one hour each way, to attend their former Yeshiva there where we had been prior to moving to New Jersey. The following school year, I decided to send them to a closer Yeshiva that was just half an hour away. However, then the measles epidemic happened and because my son did not yet have a medical exemption, and because of the New York measles outbreak that was occurring nowhere near their Yeshiva, that New York Yeshiva decided to expel my son as well, in the middle of his second grade school year.

He was out from November through February until I was finally able to get him a medical exemption to return to school. At that time, I began to homeschool Avi and prepare his body to receive the MMR vaccine through chiropractic energy medicine and homeopathy. At the time he had a chronic cough and I was not going to give him a vaccine until he showed no signs of a cough.

To add insult to injury, our local synagogue also banned all unvaccinated children from attendance. Not just our local synagogue, but also all the synagogues in our New Jersey community, which all are party of the same group of synagogues under one Vaad (Rabbinical council), which decided unanimously that 7-year-old Avi and any other unvaccinated child was a threat to the members of their synagogues, school, and playgrounds. For five months, I had no community and no synagogue. Avi was banned from Hanukkah and Purim activities. During those five months, the measles outbreak never came to our community, nor did my son get the measles.

The synagogues told my husband that he had to have not one, but two MMRs before he would be allowed back. Meanwhile, I discussed my son’s medical condition with his New Jersey pediatrician who agreed that our son is sensitive to further damage to his endocrine system resulting from endocrine-disrupting chemicals present in almost all vaccines and wrote him a medical exemption based on his medical diagnosis. As a result, after being out for three months, my son’s former school in Staten Island let him back in to finish up the school year, which he did. However, now his grades plummeted as he was unable to keep up with the class, therefore lost interest and got behind in several subjects.

Because driving to New York for a year and a half to take and pick up the kids each day was such a hardship for me, I had trouble finding work because I could never give any job a start date. I had to take out a $9,000 loan to pay for Yeshiva and travel expenses. The tolls were also extremely expensive. I was constantly behind on tuition and also began having to accept charity on a monthly basis just to scrape by with my bills. I got into two automobile accidents in the process of all that commuting and my car insurance payment became unaffordable.

For the current school year, we applied to get our children back into the original New Jersey Yeshiva where we reside, that had expelled my son in the middle of first grade. We hoped that he would be accepted for the third grade with his medical exemption. However, the director said that he would still need two MMRs. He said that he’d called the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and was told that the MMR should be fine for our son based on the medical exemption from our son’s pediatrician, although his medical exemption letter did not exclude the MMR. My husband, therefore, caved in and gave the MMR to our son without telling me. I accidentally found it about it by seeing an email he’d sent out to a relative who’d recently had a baby and wanted proof of our son’s MMR before he’d be allowed to visit.

One week after that, my son developed an extreme runny nose with thick mucus which lasted for the next three weeks, was constant, and led to a bloody nose. I brought him to our holistic chiropractor who treated him with detoxifying energy treatments designed to draw out the toxins from his body. The nose bleed stopped. I brought him to the pediatrician and asked how long it would take for titers to show up. He said about five weeks to be sure, so I made an appointment for five weeks out. We were preparing for the Passover holiday and my husband was concerned that our son would still not be allowed into the synagogues over the holiday and was told that our son needed two MMRs also in order to go to summer camp for which we were applying.

My husband went ahead, again with his rabbi’s approval, to bring my son to a clinic without informing myself or his pediatrician and have him injected with a second dose of MMR. This occurred just a few days before the scheduled appointment for titers. Again he did not tell me anything and again I found out about it and was extremely hurt by it. I felt betrayed. I questioned my children who were told to keep quiet about it. My husband made me believe that the synagogue by my home was being nice to us by allowing my son back with just one MMR and we went into the holiday like normal. However, one week later, once more, like clockwork, my son had a recurrence of the very runny nose constantly for the next three weeks and bloody nose following. I brought him back to the chiropractor and told him that he had had a second dose of MMR vaccine just 5 weeks after the first dose. He did not think this was a safe timeline and mentioned that had I not brought him previously to detoxify from the first one, there may have been more serious health consequences.

Once more the bloody nose stopped. However, I noticed my son experiencing hay fever symptoms that he had never experienced before, such as itchy eyes and sensitivity to dust and animal dander. Five months later in October, I began to notice skin breakouts of various types which he had also never experienced before. I brought him to another holistic practitioner who looked at his face and said it was a dairy allergy. Prior to the shots my son had never been allergic to anything! He had only ever had no more than three ear infections as a baby. He was never sick and when he did have a cold or a croup cough, it would always be gone within 24 hours. He had the healthiest immune system around.

This school year the same local Yeshiva that kicked him out in the middle of first grade and demanded the MMRs to be accepted this year, still did not accept our son despite the fact that we gave him the two MMRs and turned in a valid medical exemption to them over the summer, written by our son’s pediatrician. They led us on to believe that once the two MMRs were given, he would likely be accepted. But then they said they had concerns about his behavior. Once I proved his behavior is normal by sending them references from his former teachers and summer camp Rebbes, they made it about him being behind academically and that they “don’t have resources”. They told me to get him a clinical neuropsych. They never made that a criterion for enrollment for any of their existing special ed children. I got on the waiting list for it which is four months minimum. I then emailed the Rabbi to ask now what? What should I do with him in the meantime, put him in public school? I got no reply.

I have to have my 8-year-old child at a non-Jewish babysitter on days that I am called to sub as a preschool assistant teacher. I send him there with workbooks and lesson plans to do which he very rarely does much of. It’s not normal for an 8-year-old boy to be at a babysitter. Meanwhile, I’ve been having the door closed at Yeshiva after Yeshiva. It is almost the end of the first half of the school year. I cannot make a living as long as this continues. The board of ed said they can evaluate him for special education. However, he would first have to be enrolled at the public school. We are now looking into other Yeshivas that are a commuting distance. However, my financial condition had gotten so bad that I may be losing my car and have no money to pay for Yeshiva. I will have no means to take him there if my car is repossessed. We will be forced to sell our house and move to a different community just to have our children in a Yeshiva. For what is all this hardship, I ask? Is it in order to protect all the vaccinated children in the Yeshiva from a possible outbreak of chickenpox? For that, you deny a Jewish child a Jewish education?