Injury
I took my 2-year-old boy to the doctor for an MMR shot. A week later he started fevering, the child got Encephalitis & eventually turned into a vegetable after struggling for a few years. The child suffered for 8 years & then passed away. Doctor said it was from vaccine but it’s “one in a million”. He was compensated by the vaccine court but all of it went for medical expenses. Read more
I took my 2-year-old boy to the doctor for an MMR shot. A week later he started fevering, the child got Encephalitis & eventually turned into a vegetable after struggling for a few years. The child suffered for 8 years & then passed away. Doctor said it was from vaccine but it’s “one in a million”. He was compensated by the vaccine court but all of it went for medical expenses.
I wasn't always skeptical of vaccines. When my son was born I didn't even think twice about it. Everything was done on time and each response he had to them was explained as normal. It started with shaking. He would shake when we came home from a "well visit". I remember my mom even commenting on it & I rolled my eyes and said no the Dr said it's normal. He always had sensitive skin - his skin turned red…Read more
I wasn't always skeptical of vaccines. When my son was born I didn't even think twice about it. Everything was done on time and each response he had to them was explained as normal. It started with shaking. He would shake when we came home from a "well visit". I remember my mom even commenting on it & I rolled my eyes and said no the Dr said it's normal. He always had sensitive skin - his skin turned red and had lasting impressions with just a light touch. He would have lasting marks where the vaccines were administered but worse where the nurses held my crying baby down each time. At 6 months I remember his shots going kind of smoothly. It was odd and so I even boasted about it on LiveJournal (before the mass move to Facebook). Little did I realize that was the turning point of his immune system.
That Pesach we were at my mothers house and my son looked at my cousin's son who was the same age and was flapping his arms & so he thought it was funny & copied him. He did it for a long while & I thought it was normal. My cousin's son by the way does not have Autism today like my son (my cousin also later confided in me that she was warned about vaccines & so she had spaced them out & didn't let her son have the MMR until he was 4). Soon after that my son started having a very bad cold - he was super congested & so the Dr prescribed a prescription decongestant. You can't do that today, but at the time it was legal. He took his bottle's worth & it went away for a week but then it came back so he was prescribed another one.. We went through several bottles.
While we were attributing his sour mood to his congestion what we didn't realize until 10 months was that he wasn't babbling as much . He started babbling at 5 months and was very cute & loud about it - he would wake us up in the early morning with his bababa & dadada & then he would laugh at himself. He loved peekaboo & all kinds of games but it was all slipping away. It was a slow decline. He was saying some word approximations like tzetz for motzetz (pacifier in Hebrew) laboo for la briyoot (bless you .. which I said a lot during his cold) , ma... for Ima.. but they too were fading.
at 12 months I took him in for his 1 year shots. This included the MMR which I don't know why since at the time most of my friend's babies were getting them at 18 months but my pediatrician thought she should give it to him then along with another Dtap, HIB, & Flu shot. That night I called her in a panic. My son had a measles like rash all over his body & a super high temperature. I remember asking her if he had the measles from the shot and she laughed and said no, you can't get the measles.. some kids like yours are just very sensitive & its all normal. A few days later his fever passed.
A few months went by and he wasn't doing his word approximations anymore.. I was starting to worry. The Dr said this was typical in OPOL families (I only spoke Hebrew to him while my husband only spoke English). My brother was a late talker too so everyone assured me it was fine and his congestion was just bothering him. at 15 months the Dr mentioned for the first time to me to get him evaluated. I didn't know what this meant but of course I did.
All of a sudden there was a lot more wrong with my son than I had realized. He didn't cross midline, he didn't sit right, and he wasn't responding to his name (we had though his ears were clogged up) because he did respond before. He used to also look for our dog when I would ask him to but now it seemed like he couldn't even hear me. He didn't do a lot of the strange things often associated with Autism- like he didn't line toys up ever - he always played with them appropriately.. he didn't spin or bang his head on the wall, he didn't toe walk, & while he didn't give the best eye contact he did at times still focus on me.. he was still partially there at the time but soon the diagnosis came anyway.
At 18 months we enrolled him in nursery school. The teachers asked me if we ever had him tested for silent seizures. I didn't even know what this meant but once I did i could see he was having them. His neurologist told us "genetics loaded the gun but vaccines pulled the trigger" & suggested we stop vaccinating him. We were still unsure about all of this, because surely his Dr wouldn't have told us that every reaction he had was normal.
When he was 2.5 his sister was born. We decided to still vaccinate her but pay closer attention. After all we didn't want our kids to get polio! We decided to try Dr Sears approach about spreading them out more but she seemed even more sensitive than our son. she had Jaundice and a glaucioma.. indications that her liver was working overtime & that she had inflammation but again the Dr shrugged it off. She cried so much - colic they called it & had eczema everywhere. She didn't projectile vomit all her baby bottles like our son did (I breastfed my daughter despite my Dr urging me to formula feed like she did with my son) so we were still hopeful things would be good for her.
Meanwhile my son started a horrible few months of constantly vomiting and watery stools. He had lost so much weight & we didn't know what was going on. (again Dr assured us it had nothing to do with the latest vaccines). He was tested for a tumor & luckily he didn't have one but he did end up getting hospitalized so he could be put on a fast & hydrated via IV. We never had the answer as to what happened only that it was some unexplained "gastritis".
At 7 months our daughter hadn't even tried to babble so we took her to be evaluated. They told us she seemed fine but to kept monitoring her and we did. When she was 9 months old, my son came home with the chicken pox from nursery school. How did he get it? He had the varicella vaccine. He passed it on to my daughter who was to young for that one (my husband & I both had it as kids so we were immune). The Pediatrician literally said .. oh well some vaccines just don't work for everyone and your kids are so sensitive. At that moment my husband & I looked at each other & thought .. why are we doing this? The vaccines don't even work for all people? you mean they possibly aren't even working for our children? we decided then to stop - at least temporarily to see how things went.
A few months later our daughter was no longer "colicy" and was talking in full sentences & walking! Today she is "quirky" but not on the spectrum & I have no doubt that if we had continued with her vaccines she would have been on the severe end. Both were tested for MTHFR variances & they do both have it. My son is heterozygous & my daughter homozygous for one of them. This means that both have a slow detoxing system & so its more difficult for their bodies. It doesn't qualify them for a medical exemption though. Both have been dealing with an ongoing Bartonella infection as well but again.. it doesnt exclude them.
My kids are now 11 & 14. They were at Jewish preschools, Jewish camps, Jewish Hebrew school (for my son that couldn't be in a full day school due to his needs) and a Jewish day school. We had a religious exemption. while medically several doctors have told us that we shouldn't vaccinate our children and we have a letter from one of them , no one would actually give us a "medical exemption" - each doctor said it didn't really exist in NYS and only those literally dying in their office would be eligible.
I had consulted with my local Rabbi who shared with me that he didn't vaccinate his own kids & that religious exemptions are valid based on guarding our souls .. and I also contacted my Rabbi back home who knew me well & said if I believed this was hurting my children (which I did) then I knew what the right thing to do was.
This past summer everything changed. Before the law removing religious exemptions was even passed our local Jewish camp that both my kids attended told me they had to protect the community. A community I thought I was part of but apparently now that there was a measles outbreak hundreds of miles away in NYC I was not. I begged them to let my kids go.. my son lived for camp - he sang their songs every day & counted down days he could go again. He was treated so well there.. something he was not used to, & he was with typical kids which was something that made me so happy. I used to cry during Onegs as I went & saw him dance & play in a skit. They stole that away from me and made me feel horrible. They told me that I could just vaccinate them & then they could go .. the cruelest thing was that every year they had him choose the camp colors for their T-shirt & they had him choose it again this year.. AND they showed it to him just a few days before they pulled the rug out from under us.
I was left to try & explain to him & to my daughter why they were no longer allowed to go. Then of course things got worse. The law to repeal religious exemption passed & the day school threw my daughter out. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I know they had to, but on the other, they wouldn't fight for her, they wouldn't even write a letter to the judge or to the state on our behalf, and they certainly have not helped us with any curriculum. the law also allowed for them to have her for any public events but they have never reached out to us. I'm not all that surprised to be honest. while they had been good to my daughter I always felt so sad my son was excluded from everything. again while I understood they couldn't handle his needs.. originally they had set it up with me so he could go there on Fridays for Oneg to feel a part of the community but then that fell through.
Once teh school year started & i started homeschooling, I reached to the hebrew school my son used to attend to see if they would take my kids. My kids attended preschool there for 4 tears each & my son attended their Hebrew school for another 4 years. We were also once members of that shul. the law didn't bind them to not accepting us but they refused as well. My kids are no more dangerous than they were last year or the many years before. They are no more dangerous than all the older people that haven't had a fifth of the vaccines kids are required to get today. they are no more dangerous than all the congregants & visitors that show up at all times with no vaccination proof on them, they are no more dangerous than any kids that have medical exemptions, they are no more dangerous than any other person but we are treated like they are.
Recently the shul where we are members held a medical ethics lecture series. I'm so sad at the amount of people that do not know anything about our vaccine program today. Most didn't know (& some refused to even believe) about the aborted fetuses used in production of these and many still in research vaccines. They don't know how whole DNA is found from those aborted fetuses in our bodies. They don't know that while we are supposed to do everything we can ti protect ourselves, the risk of vaccines is so much higher than they believe. Unsurprisingly, the lectures were all biased towards one side.
The Rabbi whom I do plan on approaching about this soon said that he believed it was totally fine for Yeshivot to not let the unvaccinated into their schools. this is so sad to me. that means he is OK that my kids got kicked out? I guess they can't pass on the diseases they don't have at shul, but they can at school? I am actually surprised we haven't been kicked out of shul yet. This is also my daughter's Bat Mitzvah year. Another hard thing for her to go through. she should have been with her friends every day talking about the plans & the party & learning together. I can't even get myself to plan anything because I work full time, & I have to teach both my children .. there's just to much to do and no village or community to help. We are wavering between staying here & moving. I don't want to stay at all, & neither do my kids. I am to hurt. My husband though loves his job, and loves the area and so it's a lot harder for him to leave.
I had a beautiful healthy baby in the hospital Peekvill NY( a baby friendly hospital. The nurses checked the babies vitals every perfect, I nursed my baby everything amazing. Then the nurse did a mandatory vitamin k shot on my baby which I though how bad can vitamin k be? My perfect baby Immediately started breathing 120 breaths per minute. The nurses and Doctors went into a panic saying your baby has Has possibly pneumonia because of his water birth…Read more
I had a beautiful healthy baby in the hospital Peekvill NY( a baby friendly hospital. The nurses checked the babies vitals every perfect, I nursed my baby everything amazing. Then the nurse did a mandatory vitamin k shot on my baby which I though how bad can vitamin k be? My perfect baby Immediately started breathing 120 breaths per minute. The nurses and Doctors went into a panic saying your baby has Has possibly pneumonia because of his water birth that he swallowed unclean water.
I questioned the vitamin K shot a ״,you did his vitals before the vitamin K shot and he was fine״. They totally denied anything possibly about the Vitamin K vaccine. They told me that he needs a x-ray of his lungsAnd they refused me to nurse my baby because they told me if he chokes the milk could go into his lungs and I could kill my baby. They give my baby four days of IV Antibiotics as precautionary against my will. When the results came in they found nothing.
For six months my baby did not stop crying he was the first colicky baby I’ve ever had. He was in so much pain from the antibiotics burning his gut. He was a sick baby that had Ear infection and a horrible cough the doctor said this child will have asthma for the rest of his life. They wanted to put my baby on more antibiotics and breathing medications, This time I totally refused and Told the doctor I will come back in a few days to evaluate.
I took my baby to cranial sacral Chiropractor , gave him steam showers, and lots of massage ,Baby bifidis ( Probiotics) And non stop nursing, and up with him nights an end. The following week I took the baby back to the doctor all infections were gone thank God. The doctor told me it’s fortunate that the baby is well because I did not take the doctors advice he was going to call child services on me. I continued to two alternative healings on my baby and nursed him a lot and after six months he recovered thank Gd.
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…Read more
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?
Let me share you my story. I have a little girl who was developing normally and was healthy. Things started to change right after she got her MMR shot. At about one year old she lost eye contact and socially became absorbed in her own world. As a responsible parent, I suspected the shot, even though my pediatrician said it’s not related. As I responsible parent I halted vaccinating for the time being. About a year later I was pressured…Read more
Let me share you my story. I have a little girl who was developing normally and was healthy. Things started to change right after she got her MMR shot. At about one year old she lost eye contact and socially became absorbed in her own world. As a responsible parent, I suspected the shot, even though my pediatrician said it’s not related. As I responsible parent I halted vaccinating for the time being. About a year later I was pressured by my pediatrician to continue vaccinating. I naturally hesitated but finally agreed to give a DTaP (after all the MMR is the vaccine said to trigger autism and I never heard that there is an issue with any other vaccine), So regretfully I went along with my doctor’s advice.
With all the therapy we have done we had seen an improvement. But as soon as she got the DTaP she had a major regression. WOW, a double coincidence. I stopped vaccinating completely & BTW I have the full backing of my pediatrician.
I am 100% sure that any studies claiming that vaccines don't cause autism are flawed. I've seen it with my own eyes.
You can print my story but please omit my name. I can also speak to Rabbonim about my experience.
Family/Friend Response
I wasn't always skeptical of vaccines. When my son was born I didn't even think twice about it. Everything was done on time and each response he had to them was explained as normal. It started with shaking. He would shake when we came home from a "well visit". I remember my mom even commenting on it & I rolled my eyes and said no the Dr said it's normal. He always had sensitive skin - his skin turned red…Read more
I wasn't always skeptical of vaccines. When my son was born I didn't even think twice about it. Everything was done on time and each response he had to them was explained as normal. It started with shaking. He would shake when we came home from a "well visit". I remember my mom even commenting on it & I rolled my eyes and said no the Dr said it's normal. He always had sensitive skin - his skin turned red and had lasting impressions with just a light touch. He would have lasting marks where the vaccines were administered but worse where the nurses held my crying baby down each time. At 6 months I remember his shots going kind of smoothly. It was odd and so I even boasted about it on LiveJournal (before the mass move to Facebook). Little did I realize that was the turning point of his immune system.
That Pesach we were at my mothers house and my son looked at my cousin's son who was the same age and was flapping his arms & so he thought it was funny & copied him. He did it for a long while & I thought it was normal. My cousin's son by the way does not have Autism today like my son (my cousin also later confided in me that she was warned about vaccines & so she had spaced them out & didn't let her son have the MMR until he was 4). Soon after that my son started having a very bad cold - he was super congested & so the Dr prescribed a prescription decongestant. You can't do that today, but at the time it was legal. He took his bottle's worth & it went away for a week but then it came back so he was prescribed another one.. We went through several bottles.
While we were attributing his sour mood to his congestion what we didn't realize until 10 months was that he wasn't babbling as much . He started babbling at 5 months and was very cute & loud about it - he would wake us up in the early morning with his bababa & dadada & then he would laugh at himself. He loved peekaboo & all kinds of games but it was all slipping away. It was a slow decline. He was saying some word approximations like tzetz for motzetz (pacifier in Hebrew) laboo for la briyoot (bless you .. which I said a lot during his cold) , ma... for Ima.. but they too were fading.
at 12 months I took him in for his 1 year shots. This included the MMR which I don't know why since at the time most of my friend's babies were getting them at 18 months but my pediatrician thought she should give it to him then along with another Dtap, HIB, & Flu shot. That night I called her in a panic. My son had a measles like rash all over his body & a super high temperature. I remember asking her if he had the measles from the shot and she laughed and said no, you can't get the measles.. some kids like yours are just very sensitive & its all normal. A few days later his fever passed.
A few months went by and he wasn't doing his word approximations anymore.. I was starting to worry. The Dr said this was typical in OPOL families (I only spoke Hebrew to him while my husband only spoke English). My brother was a late talker too so everyone assured me it was fine and his congestion was just bothering him. at 15 months the Dr mentioned for the first time to me to get him evaluated. I didn't know what this meant but of course I did.
All of a sudden there was a lot more wrong with my son than I had realized. He didn't cross midline, he didn't sit right, and he wasn't responding to his name (we had though his ears were clogged up) because he did respond before. He used to also look for our dog when I would ask him to but now it seemed like he couldn't even hear me. He didn't do a lot of the strange things often associated with Autism- like he didn't line toys up ever - he always played with them appropriately.. he didn't spin or bang his head on the wall, he didn't toe walk, & while he didn't give the best eye contact he did at times still focus on me.. he was still partially there at the time but soon the diagnosis came anyway.
At 18 months we enrolled him in nursery school. The teachers asked me if we ever had him tested for silent seizures. I didn't even know what this meant but once I did i could see he was having them. His neurologist told us "genetics loaded the gun but vaccines pulled the trigger" & suggested we stop vaccinating him. We were still unsure about all of this, because surely his Dr wouldn't have told us that every reaction he had was normal.
When he was 2.5 his sister was born. We decided to still vaccinate her but pay closer attention. After all we didn't want our kids to get polio! We decided to try Dr Sears approach about spreading them out more but she seemed even more sensitive than our son. she had Jaundice and a glaucioma.. indications that her liver was working overtime & that she had inflammation but again the Dr shrugged it off. She cried so much - colic they called it & had eczema everywhere. She didn't projectile vomit all her baby bottles like our son did (I breastfed my daughter despite my Dr urging me to formula feed like she did with my son) so we were still hopeful things would be good for her.
Meanwhile my son started a horrible few months of constantly vomiting and watery stools. He had lost so much weight & we didn't know what was going on. (again Dr assured us it had nothing to do with the latest vaccines). He was tested for a tumor & luckily he didn't have one but he did end up getting hospitalized so he could be put on a fast & hydrated via IV. We never had the answer as to what happened only that it was some unexplained "gastritis".
At 7 months our daughter hadn't even tried to babble so we took her to be evaluated. They told us she seemed fine but to kept monitoring her and we did. When she was 9 months old, my son came home with the chicken pox from nursery school. How did he get it? He had the varicella vaccine. He passed it on to my daughter who was to young for that one (my husband & I both had it as kids so we were immune). The Pediatrician literally said .. oh well some vaccines just don't work for everyone and your kids are so sensitive. At that moment my husband & I looked at each other & thought .. why are we doing this? The vaccines don't even work for all people? you mean they possibly aren't even working for our children? we decided then to stop - at least temporarily to see how things went.
A few months later our daughter was no longer "colicy" and was talking in full sentences & walking! Today she is "quirky" but not on the spectrum & I have no doubt that if we had continued with her vaccines she would have been on the severe end. Both were tested for MTHFR variances & they do both have it. My son is heterozygous & my daughter homozygous for one of them. This means that both have a slow detoxing system & so its more difficult for their bodies. It doesn't qualify them for a medical exemption though. Both have been dealing with an ongoing Bartonella infection as well but again.. it doesnt exclude them.
My kids are now 11 & 14. They were at Jewish preschools, Jewish camps, Jewish Hebrew school (for my son that couldn't be in a full day school due to his needs) and a Jewish day school. We had a religious exemption. while medically several doctors have told us that we shouldn't vaccinate our children and we have a letter from one of them , no one would actually give us a "medical exemption" - each doctor said it didn't really exist in NYS and only those literally dying in their office would be eligible.
I had consulted with my local Rabbi who shared with me that he didn't vaccinate his own kids & that religious exemptions are valid based on guarding our souls .. and I also contacted my Rabbi back home who knew me well & said if I believed this was hurting my children (which I did) then I knew what the right thing to do was.
This past summer everything changed. Before the law removing religious exemptions was even passed our local Jewish camp that both my kids attended told me they had to protect the community. A community I thought I was part of but apparently now that there was a measles outbreak hundreds of miles away in NYC I was not. I begged them to let my kids go.. my son lived for camp - he sang their songs every day & counted down days he could go again. He was treated so well there.. something he was not used to, & he was with typical kids which was something that made me so happy. I used to cry during Onegs as I went & saw him dance & play in a skit. They stole that away from me and made me feel horrible. They told me that I could just vaccinate them & then they could go .. the cruelest thing was that every year they had him choose the camp colors for their T-shirt & they had him choose it again this year.. AND they showed it to him just a few days before they pulled the rug out from under us.
I was left to try & explain to him & to my daughter why they were no longer allowed to go. Then of course things got worse. The law to repeal religious exemption passed & the day school threw my daughter out. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I know they had to, but on the other, they wouldn't fight for her, they wouldn't even write a letter to the judge or to the state on our behalf, and they certainly have not helped us with any curriculum. the law also allowed for them to have her for any public events but they have never reached out to us. I'm not all that surprised to be honest. while they had been good to my daughter I always felt so sad my son was excluded from everything. again while I understood they couldn't handle his needs.. originally they had set it up with me so he could go there on Fridays for Oneg to feel a part of the community but then that fell through.
Once teh school year started & i started homeschooling, I reached to the hebrew school my son used to attend to see if they would take my kids. My kids attended preschool there for 4 tears each & my son attended their Hebrew school for another 4 years. We were also once members of that shul. the law didn't bind them to not accepting us but they refused as well. My kids are no more dangerous than they were last year or the many years before. They are no more dangerous than all the older people that haven't had a fifth of the vaccines kids are required to get today. they are no more dangerous than all the congregants & visitors that show up at all times with no vaccination proof on them, they are no more dangerous than any kids that have medical exemptions, they are no more dangerous than any other person but we are treated like they are.
Recently the shul where we are members held a medical ethics lecture series. I'm so sad at the amount of people that do not know anything about our vaccine program today. Most didn't know (& some refused to even believe) about the aborted fetuses used in production of these and many still in research vaccines. They don't know how whole DNA is found from those aborted fetuses in our bodies. They don't know that while we are supposed to do everything we can ti protect ourselves, the risk of vaccines is so much higher than they believe. Unsurprisingly, the lectures were all biased towards one side.
The Rabbi whom I do plan on approaching about this soon said that he believed it was totally fine for Yeshivot to not let the unvaccinated into their schools. this is so sad to me. that means he is OK that my kids got kicked out? I guess they can't pass on the diseases they don't have at shul, but they can at school? I am actually surprised we haven't been kicked out of shul yet. This is also my daughter's Bat Mitzvah year. Another hard thing for her to go through. she should have been with her friends every day talking about the plans & the party & learning together. I can't even get myself to plan anything because I work full time, & I have to teach both my children .. there's just to much to do and no village or community to help. We are wavering between staying here & moving. I don't want to stay at all, & neither do my kids. I am to hurt. My husband though loves his job, and loves the area and so it's a lot harder for him to leave.
Rabbinic Response
My husband and I were both vaccine-injured as children. After my 1st vaccine I had a fever and seizures. By the age of two I was exempted from further vaccinations and treated with anti-seizure meds for a long time. I never had any more seizures but, never-the-less, ended up with autoimmune issues. My husband was 12 month old, had a high fever for many days, and was taken to hospital in critical condition. Doctors diagnosed him as having adverse reactions…Read more
My husband and I were both vaccine-injured as children. After my 1st vaccine I had a fever and seizures. By the age of two I was exempted from further vaccinations and treated with anti-seizure meds for a long time. I never had any more seizures but, never-the-less, ended up with autoimmune issues. My husband was 12 month old, had a high fever for many days, and was taken to hospital in critical condition. Doctors diagnosed him as having adverse reactions to vaccines and a heart murmur as a result. He didn’t have it before vaccination. As a result of the heart murmur he was exempted from further vaccines and received an army exemption, as well.
We both had all the infectious diseases naturally without any adverse effects, measles included. Hashem gives us an immune system to handle it all. There was no need to have the government involved to make decisions. Even doctors in the USSR had rachmones and gave exemptions to those who needed it.
Hashem planned and brought my husband and me together. I knew we are not going to vaccinate our children and after many years we finally had those precious children. We received perfectly legal NYC REs (religious exemptions). Each child was exempt until the age of 18. There was nothing to worry about.
Our local yeshiva accepted our children’s RE exemptions several years ago when my children started kindergarten.
In the middle of November 2018 I received a phone call from the school requesting that they receive the MMR. I was surprised and reminded them about the RE. I was told that school principal no longer has to accept the exemption and that I now had to bring a medical exemption and was given 2 days to comply. Before the two days were up, he forgot about the medical exemption and had my children sitting with a guard until I finally saw the message and called him back to remind him of his promise. I made a doctor’s appointment but not within two days; it would take several weeks to see him.
So, after the allotted two days they were home. For the first couple of days the kids rested and then they started to ask when they can return back to school.
After two weeks we wrote a letter and asked the school for a reprieve explaining that it takes a long time to get a doctor’s appointment. He granted us an extension and allowed the kids to return to school. They were thrilled to be back in school. It was right before their Chanukah Hagiga. However, before they returned home on that same day, I found another message from the school that the principal changed his mind. He couldn’t take a chance because they had a pregnant teacher (fully vaccinated) and he, himself (missing MMR!) couldn’t take a chance. Our children became enemies of the state, just like in Russia when Stalin accused Jewish doctors of murdering their patients and rounded them up in 1953 (he died on Purim in the middle of the roundups).
I can’t even describe what was going on with the kids. My children became very depressed; one of them even wanting to die. One wouldn’t get up till noon and the other one wouldn’t get out of bed without being dragged out and made to wash up and eat.
I started to call frantically to different agencies to find out if the law had been changed. It had not.
Right before Chanukah the DOH sent a letter excluding unvaccinated children from attending schools in particular zip codes. Even though my children’s school was outside of those zip codes it didn’t matter. My children were doomed.
At the end of December, I received a call from Child Protective Services (my phone calls to HHS helped, lol), demanding to see them right away, even on Shabbos. I refused and asked to come on a different day. The entire Friday night and Shabbos were horrible. We all huddled in bed together with shaking children waiting for a knock on the door. That’s how my family lived through Stalin’s purges in the 1930s through 1953. The social worker came in on Monday. She was very surprised to see a normal Jewish family with all paperwork in order, exemption approved, food in the fridge, etc.
The school administration got the message and offered the kids the opportunity to come to school for a limited amount of hours but the principal isolated them in a separate room in the basement all by themselves. Teachers were supposed to give them study sheets, but couldn’t teach them (they never gave them). He discouraged every teacher from even coming nearby. Very few dared to even visit. Kids could visit only from outside, but not to cross the door step. They could not participate in picture day with their friends. This man made a perfect show - keeping two dangerous animals in the cage.
While our kids were out of school, the rabbi of the shul where we were members for two decades, and who married us, refused to help us or intervene with the school for what he said he didn’t believe; neither was he willing to meet with us or friend who would bring along a doctor to explain the situation from a medical and immunological point of view. He was too busy with other responsibilities, and his opinion, as he said, is irrelevant in this matter.
When the DOH finally sent a letter excluding children living in those particular zip codes from attending school, whether or not the school itself was in that area, my children were home once again, this time for an indefinite period. After a total of 3 months, when outbreak was officially over, they were allowed to return.
Our troubles, however, were not over. That was not the end of our tzorres:
A few weeks later, just before Shavuot 2019, we received a call from a new shul board member (the oldest members did not have the guts to call us) to request an MMR for all the kids or not to come. I called the rabbi who said he was perfectly aware of the situation. The next day we received a message: our kids were banned from shul. I could not break the news to them for 2-3 weeks, finding new excuses to stay away from the shul.
My children were born into this shul and had friends there. They had a hideout there when they were younger. Now they are banned from everywhere: shul, schools…etc…. Worse segregation that even blacks had.
If I would have known that my family would be banned by their own kind due to being unvaccinated I would never ever have become religious!
It’s a such a chillul Hashem!
I wasn't always skeptical of vaccines. When my son was born I didn't even think twice about it. Everything was done on time and each response he had to them was explained as normal. It started with shaking. He would shake when we came home from a "well visit". I remember my mom even commenting on it & I rolled my eyes and said no the Dr said it's normal. He always had sensitive skin - his skin turned red…Read more
I wasn't always skeptical of vaccines. When my son was born I didn't even think twice about it. Everything was done on time and each response he had to them was explained as normal. It started with shaking. He would shake when we came home from a "well visit". I remember my mom even commenting on it & I rolled my eyes and said no the Dr said it's normal. He always had sensitive skin - his skin turned red and had lasting impressions with just a light touch. He would have lasting marks where the vaccines were administered but worse where the nurses held my crying baby down each time. At 6 months I remember his shots going kind of smoothly. It was odd and so I even boasted about it on LiveJournal (before the mass move to Facebook). Little did I realize that was the turning point of his immune system.
That Pesach we were at my mothers house and my son looked at my cousin's son who was the same age and was flapping his arms & so he thought it was funny & copied him. He did it for a long while & I thought it was normal. My cousin's son by the way does not have Autism today like my son (my cousin also later confided in me that she was warned about vaccines & so she had spaced them out & didn't let her son have the MMR until he was 4). Soon after that my son started having a very bad cold - he was super congested & so the Dr prescribed a prescription decongestant. You can't do that today, but at the time it was legal. He took his bottle's worth & it went away for a week but then it came back so he was prescribed another one.. We went through several bottles.
While we were attributing his sour mood to his congestion what we didn't realize until 10 months was that he wasn't babbling as much . He started babbling at 5 months and was very cute & loud about it - he would wake us up in the early morning with his bababa & dadada & then he would laugh at himself. He loved peekaboo & all kinds of games but it was all slipping away. It was a slow decline. He was saying some word approximations like tzetz for motzetz (pacifier in Hebrew) laboo for la briyoot (bless you .. which I said a lot during his cold) , ma... for Ima.. but they too were fading.
at 12 months I took him in for his 1 year shots. This included the MMR which I don't know why since at the time most of my friend's babies were getting them at 18 months but my pediatrician thought she should give it to him then along with another Dtap, HIB, & Flu shot. That night I called her in a panic. My son had a measles like rash all over his body & a super high temperature. I remember asking her if he had the measles from the shot and she laughed and said no, you can't get the measles.. some kids like yours are just very sensitive & its all normal. A few days later his fever passed.
A few months went by and he wasn't doing his word approximations anymore.. I was starting to worry. The Dr said this was typical in OPOL families (I only spoke Hebrew to him while my husband only spoke English). My brother was a late talker too so everyone assured me it was fine and his congestion was just bothering him. at 15 months the Dr mentioned for the first time to me to get him evaluated. I didn't know what this meant but of course I did.
All of a sudden there was a lot more wrong with my son than I had realized. He didn't cross midline, he didn't sit right, and he wasn't responding to his name (we had though his ears were clogged up) because he did respond before. He used to also look for our dog when I would ask him to but now it seemed like he couldn't even hear me. He didn't do a lot of the strange things often associated with Autism- like he didn't line toys up ever - he always played with them appropriately.. he didn't spin or bang his head on the wall, he didn't toe walk, & while he didn't give the best eye contact he did at times still focus on me.. he was still partially there at the time but soon the diagnosis came anyway.
At 18 months we enrolled him in nursery school. The teachers asked me if we ever had him tested for silent seizures. I didn't even know what this meant but once I did i could see he was having them. His neurologist told us "genetics loaded the gun but vaccines pulled the trigger" & suggested we stop vaccinating him. We were still unsure about all of this, because surely his Dr wouldn't have told us that every reaction he had was normal.
When he was 2.5 his sister was born. We decided to still vaccinate her but pay closer attention. After all we didn't want our kids to get polio! We decided to try Dr Sears approach about spreading them out more but she seemed even more sensitive than our son. she had Jaundice and a glaucioma.. indications that her liver was working overtime & that she had inflammation but again the Dr shrugged it off. She cried so much - colic they called it & had eczema everywhere. She didn't projectile vomit all her baby bottles like our son did (I breastfed my daughter despite my Dr urging me to formula feed like she did with my son) so we were still hopeful things would be good for her.
Meanwhile my son started a horrible few months of constantly vomiting and watery stools. He had lost so much weight & we didn't know what was going on. (again Dr assured us it had nothing to do with the latest vaccines). He was tested for a tumor & luckily he didn't have one but he did end up getting hospitalized so he could be put on a fast & hydrated via IV. We never had the answer as to what happened only that it was some unexplained "gastritis".
At 7 months our daughter hadn't even tried to babble so we took her to be evaluated. They told us she seemed fine but to kept monitoring her and we did. When she was 9 months old, my son came home with the chicken pox from nursery school. How did he get it? He had the varicella vaccine. He passed it on to my daughter who was to young for that one (my husband & I both had it as kids so we were immune). The Pediatrician literally said .. oh well some vaccines just don't work for everyone and your kids are so sensitive. At that moment my husband & I looked at each other & thought .. why are we doing this? The vaccines don't even work for all people? you mean they possibly aren't even working for our children? we decided then to stop - at least temporarily to see how things went.
A few months later our daughter was no longer "colicy" and was talking in full sentences & walking! Today she is "quirky" but not on the spectrum & I have no doubt that if we had continued with her vaccines she would have been on the severe end. Both were tested for MTHFR variances & they do both have it. My son is heterozygous & my daughter homozygous for one of them. This means that both have a slow detoxing system & so its more difficult for their bodies. It doesn't qualify them for a medical exemption though. Both have been dealing with an ongoing Bartonella infection as well but again.. it doesnt exclude them.
My kids are now 11 & 14. They were at Jewish preschools, Jewish camps, Jewish Hebrew school (for my son that couldn't be in a full day school due to his needs) and a Jewish day school. We had a religious exemption. while medically several doctors have told us that we shouldn't vaccinate our children and we have a letter from one of them , no one would actually give us a "medical exemption" - each doctor said it didn't really exist in NYS and only those literally dying in their office would be eligible.
I had consulted with my local Rabbi who shared with me that he didn't vaccinate his own kids & that religious exemptions are valid based on guarding our souls .. and I also contacted my Rabbi back home who knew me well & said if I believed this was hurting my children (which I did) then I knew what the right thing to do was.
This past summer everything changed. Before the law removing religious exemptions was even passed our local Jewish camp that both my kids attended told me they had to protect the community. A community I thought I was part of but apparently now that there was a measles outbreak hundreds of miles away in NYC I was not. I begged them to let my kids go.. my son lived for camp - he sang their songs every day & counted down days he could go again. He was treated so well there.. something he was not used to, & he was with typical kids which was something that made me so happy. I used to cry during Onegs as I went & saw him dance & play in a skit. They stole that away from me and made me feel horrible. They told me that I could just vaccinate them & then they could go .. the cruelest thing was that every year they had him choose the camp colors for their T-shirt & they had him choose it again this year.. AND they showed it to him just a few days before they pulled the rug out from under us.
I was left to try & explain to him & to my daughter why they were no longer allowed to go. Then of course things got worse. The law to repeal religious exemption passed & the day school threw my daughter out. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I know they had to, but on the other, they wouldn't fight for her, they wouldn't even write a letter to the judge or to the state on our behalf, and they certainly have not helped us with any curriculum. the law also allowed for them to have her for any public events but they have never reached out to us. I'm not all that surprised to be honest. while they had been good to my daughter I always felt so sad my son was excluded from everything. again while I understood they couldn't handle his needs.. originally they had set it up with me so he could go there on Fridays for Oneg to feel a part of the community but then that fell through.
Once teh school year started & i started homeschooling, I reached to the hebrew school my son used to attend to see if they would take my kids. My kids attended preschool there for 4 tears each & my son attended their Hebrew school for another 4 years. We were also once members of that shul. the law didn't bind them to not accepting us but they refused as well. My kids are no more dangerous than they were last year or the many years before. They are no more dangerous than all the older people that haven't had a fifth of the vaccines kids are required to get today. they are no more dangerous than all the congregants & visitors that show up at all times with no vaccination proof on them, they are no more dangerous than any kids that have medical exemptions, they are no more dangerous than any other person but we are treated like they are.
Recently the shul where we are members held a medical ethics lecture series. I'm so sad at the amount of people that do not know anything about our vaccine program today. Most didn't know (& some refused to even believe) about the aborted fetuses used in production of these and many still in research vaccines. They don't know how whole DNA is found from those aborted fetuses in our bodies. They don't know that while we are supposed to do everything we can ti protect ourselves, the risk of vaccines is so much higher than they believe. Unsurprisingly, the lectures were all biased towards one side.
The Rabbi whom I do plan on approaching about this soon said that he believed it was totally fine for Yeshivot to not let the unvaccinated into their schools. this is so sad to me. that means he is OK that my kids got kicked out? I guess they can't pass on the diseases they don't have at shul, but they can at school? I am actually surprised we haven't been kicked out of shul yet. This is also my daughter's Bat Mitzvah year. Another hard thing for her to go through. she should have been with her friends every day talking about the plans & the party & learning together. I can't even get myself to plan anything because I work full time, & I have to teach both my children .. there's just to much to do and no village or community to help. We are wavering between staying here & moving. I don't want to stay at all, & neither do my kids. I am to hurt. My husband though loves his job, and loves the area and so it's a lot harder for him to leave.
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…Read more
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?
* Names have been changed to protect the identity of whom this true account is written about I still remember the day that everything in our lives overturned, and I lost my power of words. I always thought of myself as someone who can elaborate well; Hashem has gifted me with an ability to teach, an ability to explain things. Being a mother of four and an experienced teacher of over twelve years, I always thought I’m one of those…Read more
* Names have been changed to protect the identity of whom this true account is written about
I still remember the day that everything in our lives overturned, and I lost my power of words. I always thought of myself as someone who can elaborate well; Hashem has gifted me with an ability to teach, an ability to explain things. Being a mother of four and an experienced teacher of over twelve years, I always thought I’m one of those lucky ones that has an answer for everything, that Hashem had gifted me with the koach of being able to give over, to break down, and to express any thought or idea.
However, after that day, I found myself at a loss.
My car pulls into the carpool lane, and I see my two daughters standing outside with happy faces. My oldest, Penina, holds her six- year-old sister Chava with one hand, her other hand clutching the briefcase strap that lies on her shoulder.
It is a cold, gray, rainy day. Droplets of rain on the glass are swept away by the windshield wipers. As my van edges closer, I uncontrollably break into violent sobs. I realize why I’m crying- because my girls have no idea that this cold day in November is their last day of school.
I try to suppress my cries, and stifle them as the car door slides open and my girls hop into the car. They are soaking wet from waiting outside, but they are happy. They are in school. That’s all that matters.
While buckling her seat belt, my oldest announces in an excited voice, “Hi, Mommy! Guess what? My Morah said that next week, for Chanukah, we are going to the nursing home to sing Chanukah songs to the Bubbies and Zaidies!”
Holding back my tears, I try to concentrate on the road. My mind is racing and I am fighting to keep my focus. I don’t know how to break it to her and tell her that there never will be a visit to the nursing home. There never will be a lot of anything anymore. The thought of breaking her heart paralyzes me, and I remain silent…
“Mommy, why are you quiet?” my eight- year- old asks.
After a few moments of silence, the younger one responds, “She’s sad.” A pause. She whispers, “I think she’s crying.”
We pull up into the driveway and the door automatically slides open. I help my kids out and in silence, we enter our home. Without even removing my coat, I tell my daughters, “Girls, I want to talk to you about something very important. Come with me.”
I lead them into the living room, I sit down on the couch and they sit next to me, anxiously waiting to hear what is coming next. As I look at my eight- year- old Penina’s meaningful glaze, and my eyes dart to my Chavale’s sweet cheeks, my heart sinks.
“Girls, the menahel called me today. He told me you can’t come to school anymore.” There, I’ve said it.
“What? Why?!” Penina cries out in an alarmed voice.
“Because you don’t have your shots,” I respond. I already feel my breathing becoming irregular, but I try to stay strong. Hashem, please guide me through this.
“But why? I thought we got a letter from our doctor!” Penina responds.
I nod my head. “You’re right. We did give in a medical exemption, but the school decided that they don’t want to accept it. They want us to have a medical exemption only from their school pediatrician, and the school pediatrician doesn’t want to give us one. ”
This is part of my frustration. I have a history of a life-threatening reaction to vaccination, and my oldest daughter also had a neurological reaction to vaccines. We were informed by our doctor that there can be a genetic predisposition to adverse reactions, and that for us, it would be better not to vaccinate. Moreover, we had the psak of a gadol that in our case, it is not permitted for us to vaccinate, as for our children, the risk of harm was too great. The school pediatrician was not aware of such a medical view, and although she could not assure me that my children would be safe from any adverse events, she nevertheless insisted that we vaccinate our children or leave the school. I offered to provide her with medical literature that supports our doctor’s view, or to perhaps have a conversation with our doctor, but she refused.
“But we’re not sick!” Chava pipes up with frustration.
I nod my head and have nothing to say.
I don’t know what to say to my three-year-old son, Sruly, when two weeks later his playgroup morah calls me and tells me that word has gotten out about my children being expelled from school, and that since she’s part of the school, she must comply with the school.
“But I want to learn Alef Beis!” he protests. I swallow hard. And I have nothing to say.
I have nothing to say when the following week, my close friend calls me and informs me that my children and I are no longer welcome in her home. She isn’t concerned about us carrying viruses, but feels that other people wouldn’t want to come to her house if she allows us to come. I also stay quiet when she doesn’t speak to me for many months, doesn’t ask how my children and I are doing. When she finally speaks to me, if feels like a police interrogation as she questions my actions, asks nosy questions, yells a mussar shmuz at me and harshly suggests that I should move.
I have nothing to say when children stop coming to my house; when I receive text messages from neighbors on the block that we are no longer welcome in their homes. I didn’t know what to tell my children when my neighbor, who lives in the house across the street from us, makes an upsherin. My children sit by the window, watching longingly, as they watch throngs of children heading to the party, while they were uninvited. I don’t know how to answer my children’s cries of, “Mommy, I want a friend! I want to play with someone!”
My three- year- old begs me, “Mommy, can I please go to Zevy’s house? He’s my best friend!”… But we’ve been explicitly told we are not welcome. I also don’t know how to respond when my daughters come back from B’nos get-togethers on Shabbos, complaining that they’ve been teased for “being fired from school”, and that they were pushed, shoved and potched for not being vaccinated.
For months, day in and day out, I take the responsibility of homeschooling all three of them. Laundry doesn’t get done, dishes aren’t washed, and my infant cries for attention, as I struggle to somehow maintain a structured homeschooling environment and follow through with each child’s curriculum. As a teacher, I have access and knowledge of all the curriculum and worksheets. Not only do I have to create lesson plans and tests for my students at my workplace, but I also have to do so for each of my children.
I can’t explain to you how painful it is to wake up in the morning, and watch other children walking to school in their uniforms, wearing their briefcases. A part of us feels so less than. So… inadequate. Our children are perfectly healthy. And yet, they aren’t allowed to enter our school.
Words can’t express our pain and humiliation. If one were to see us, they would see a lady with a short sheitel, a skirt well past her knees, and conservative dress, and a pashut kollel yungerman with a beard, a black hat, white shirt and black suit jacket. We are simple, non-materialistic people. Community is so important to us, because we have no family. My husband is a yasom, and my parents live in a different part of the world and are not close to us. To us, our neighbors and rabbonim are our family. To be ostracized from the community and to lose our friends causes tremendous shame, isolation, and loneliness.
When somebody tells my husband that of all the families that are persecuted for choosing not to vaccinate, the “baalei teshuva are the ones that have it the worst”, I see the look of sadness that falls across my husband’s face. We are brokenhearted and dejected at the thought that maybe this is true… that because we don’t have a “name” or money, then perhaps, we are “nobodies”. My husband and I just look at each other, our eyes meeting each other’s gaze, and sit… once again…in silence. We have nothing to say.
I have nothing to say when we plead with the school to allow us to present our case to the V’aad; they tell us “There is no V’aad anymore. We asked our shaila to a Daas Torah.” When we ask to be permitted to present our case to the daas Torah, we were told that the identity of the Daas Torah will not be disclosed to us, and that any further conversation must be taken up with the school attorney.
When we contact the school attorney, he yells at us that not vaccinating is “reprehensible” and that he refuses to converse with us unless we hire an attorney. We are stunned. After several months, out of desperation, we finally hired a lawyer to attempt to at least have a conversation with the “other side”, to sit down with them and attempt to negotiate to at least finish off the school year. Our attorney informs us that the school attorney, a frum Yid, spoke very disrespectfully about us, referring to us as “jerks” and describing us as “leprosy-carrying” and “disease infested”.
I don’t know how to explain it to my children when we plead with rabbonim to help us, however, they all turn away and tell us they aren’t going to get involved. One of them is even responsible for suggesting to our Sruly’s playgroup morah to kick him out. We beg him to have a two-way conversation with us regarding this issue, and we plead with him to speak to rabbonim and doctors that are knowledgeable in this area. Our pleas fall onto deaf ears, and we are denied any platform to speak.
I don’t know what to say when my Penina asked me, “Mommy, isn’t our Rav supposed to be like a father to us? Isn’t he supposed to take care of us?” Their emunas chachamim is being challenged, and I have no answer.
I don’t know what to say when the city’s most prominent posek comes knocking on our door one erev Shabbos, urging us to pack up and leave town. My children stand by the staircase, witnessing the scene, listening to him tell us that people like us are not “wanted in a pro-vax town”. We asked him, “Move? How can we just pick up and move? Who will pay for a new house? Who will help us with our move?” The rav responds, “I’m sure you’ll find a way, just like everyone else does.”
“Mommy, why does the rebbe want us to move?” Chava’le asks me. I don’t know what to say.
My husband doesn’t know what to say when late at night, he finds my daughter’s handwriting scribbled on a blue Post-It stuck on the table where he learns. “Dear Totty, I know I don’t say it much, but I feel it in my heart. I’m really sad. I don’t have any more friends because I don’t have shots. I don’t want to live here anymore. I want to move away from here.”
Eventually, things take a turn for the worse when my husband is informed by his Rosh Kollel that he has received phone calls from members of the community requesting that he be expelled from the kollel because he is a “rodef” because he may be carrying my children’s “viruses”. We are also eventually banned from six shuls, mikvaos and gemachs. Signs are posted outside of these places, exposing us and humiliating us to the public.
My children and I continue to face degradation when our neighbor, who purchased a new pool for her backyard and allows all the children on our block to swim, tells my children that they are not permitted to use the pool because they are “dangerous”.
My husband and I have made the decision to move out of the town that we used to know and love so much. We are leaving with our heads down and with feelings of grief, dejection, and fear of trusting others in klal yisroel.
I find myself drained from the constant tefillos and tears I have shed over this, to the point where only my heart can express what my neshama has to say, as my words have been frozen. Sometimes I catch myself davening in the middle of my sleep, for the most part having nothing to say but “Please, Hashem…”
At this point, I ask of whoever’s reading- if I have no words… if I am unable to speak for myself, can someone out there please find the words to speak for us? Can someone perhaps hear my silent cry, and to perhaps speak for me…for US; for the countless hundreds of Yiddishe families that have suffered in silence? At the very time when all of us have nothing to say, can somebody have the ability to combat the sinas chinam with tremendous ahavas chinam?
Will there be a brave one that can be courageous enough to take a stand to help a family- and all the other families- that have been shamed, humiliated, betrayed and destroyed; can someone stop the madness and help these families recover from the trauma that they have experienced?
Will someone raise their voices for the sake of the children’s ruchnius, not just for the learning that they have missed out on, but for the injustice their neshamos have received from our own communities? Can someone find a way to reinstate our children’s emunas chachamim and restore our faith in our own people?
What will we tell our children when we look back at this important time and point of our history? Did we remain SILENT?