From Cookie Magazine:
"...Peet's analytical urges are comical when she's talking about kids' gear, but not when she's discussing a subject she feels is among today's most pressing public-health issues: infant vaccinations. "As soon as I was pregnant, the neuroses kicked in," says Peet, 36, who is married to screenwriter David Benioff. She began calling her older sister's husband, a Philadelphia pediatrician, "every five minutes" with all kinds of questions, especially about shots. "I asked him, 'Why are all of these necessary? Why are some people staggering them?'?" Eventually her brother-in-law arranged a series of phone calls between Peet and his own mentor, Paul Offit, M.D., who is chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, and a board member of Every Child by Two, a pro-vaccine organization cofounded in 1991 by former first lady Rosalynn Carter.I am assume that when she makes her PSA, they will ask her to leave out the part where she calls non vaxing parents, "parasites".
"Once we had spoken, I was shocked at the amount of misinformation floating around, particularly in Hollywood," says Peet, who quickly boned up on the hot-button controversies surrounding the topic, including the unproven link between certain vaccines and autism; the safety of preservatives like mercury-based thimerosal; and the fear that the relatively high number of shots kids receive today can overwhelm young immune systems. Her conclusion? Well, not only is Frankie up-to-date on her vaccines (with no staggering), but her mom will soon appear in public-service announcements for Every Child by Two. "I buy 99 percent organic food for Frankie, and I don't like to give her medicine or put sunscreen on her," says Peet. "But now that I've done my research, vaccines do not concern me." What does concern her is the growing number of unvaccinated children who are benefiting from the "shield" created by the inoculated—we are protected from viruses only if everyone, or most everyone, is immunized: "Frankly, I feel that parents who don't vaccinate their children are parasites."
13 comments:
Who does she think she is? Why does she think she has the right to make an ignorant statment like that? She does not have the right to pass judgement on those of us who are making the journey through the path of our chilrens ASD. Maybe when she has walked in my shoes for a few miles then she can make that type of comment. Until she has some experience with ASD, and other heartbreaking conditions don't preach to us.
gosh i wish i could contact her directly!How condescending,judgmental and insensitive. I have two kids with ASD both of who showed signs after BOTH having seizures after their MMR vacs. I do not know if they caused it but I will take every precaution to make sure it does not happen again. most in the autism community do not disagree our kids need vacs we want the safest schedule for our kids.I will do titers before giving boosters and other safety measures. Shame on you Ms.Peet-you are in no position to judge parents of children with autism until you walk in their shoes.
The fact that Ms Peet came to the conclusion that all children should be vaccinated because the co-inventor of one vaccine told her it was safe(!)Is worrisome to say the least. Did Ms Peet talk with any of the "parasitic" parents of those children who were vaccinated with devastating results? Did Ms Peet talk to anyone in the medical field who has good reason to doubt the safety of today’s vaccinations? No. What this naive mother did was choose to believe one utterly biased opinion of one hot-shot working directly for the drug industry, and she declares "quite frankly I feel that parents who don't vaccinate are parasites" when the absolute reverse is true.
Those parents who choose not to vaccinate are not lazy parents who let the drug kings decide what poisons should be pumped into their children; they have researched all the info available and made INFORMED decisions.
Shame on Ms Peet for using the Cookie magazine as a platform to lambaste parents who love their children enough to actually research in depth all the controversy and make the highly personal decision to vaccinate or not their precious children.
This is disgusting! I hate when these no count celebrities voice their no-count opinions. Reading this hurt my eyes!
I am linking to you so that people can read. I too wish there was a way to contact her.
Ehh, I almost (to a point) agree. I like Amanda Peet and people are going all up in arms over this statement, but if I look at it from the point that she means, I almost feel the same way. I feel that the parents who don't vaccinate (and I am NOT talking about parents that choose to delay - I am talking about the parents who do not vaccinate at all) - they are depending on all the other vaccinated kids and adults. The fact that my child is vaccinated and won't be walking around with Polio is benefiting someone who chose to skip the Polio vaccine. So that is the textbook definition of parasite - something that uses another thing for its benefit, no?
Well no.
People who choose not to vaccinate don't really take the position that my kid won't get sick because everyone else is vaccinated. They usually take the position that I know my kid might get sick, and I am taking my chances.
People who are against vaccination completely take the stance that their child's immune system will be much stronger, and fight off disease on its own because the child has an unadulterated immune system. And lots of them report that their children do not get sick very often or at all.
The diseases that are still active in this country are rarely fatal. Polio was eradicated thirty years ago in the US. And it has never come back even though many people in this country are not vaccinated for it.
Most vaccines wear off after a few years, for example I have not been vaccinated since I was a teenager, so most of mine have probably worn off by now. I got Pertussis winter before last, and recovered just fine, but other than that no serious viral infections.
And most adults are like that.
Small pox was eradicated, and we no longer vaccinate for it, but it has not come back.
Agita,
And you also need to keep in mind, the arguement can also be made that you are the "parasite" benefiting off my child.
The way vaccination policy in this country works is that the powers that be, knowing that some people will be permanently injured and some will even die from vaccination, have decided that rather than making a risk/benefit analysis on each child, they would to ahead and vaccinate everyone and to hell with who ever get's sick. They set up a program to pay those who are damaged by vaccines to "compensate" them for their injuries (like death and brain damage can ever be compensated with any dollar amount), but of course, once money is involved, you know that the government will hold on to every penny that they can.
So the way it actually works now is that everyone gets vaccinated, some kids get sick from them, but are never told by their docs that it is a result of vaccination (usually because docs are not even taught to look for signs of vaccine injury) and if they do figure out that it was a vaccine injury, they are not even told about the compensation fund.
And when they find out about it on their own, they have to usually wait 2 to 10 years to get their case heard and get paid. But usually the three year statute of limitations gets their cases thrown out.
So really, what should be happening is that you should be carrying my child through the streets, thanking him from the bottom of your heart for taking the bullet so your kid can be free from dreaded scourge of chicken pox.
My son should be treated like a wounded soldier coming home from the war, who the town cares for for the rest of his life because they are grateful that he gave so much to keep them safe.
But that is not really what happens, is it.
I agree with what you are saying Ginger. I obviously don't know everyone that choses not to vacinate or what their reasons may be, but as far as I know the people that chose not to make the decision because they feel that they are informed about what might happend and they want to take the chances. It's unfair to call them names... especially seeing that there is clearly some kind of correlation with vaccines and autism.
Ginger!
Both your statements are so *spot on* and make some excellent points!!
This is some of your best anaylsis yet!
Ginger, Polio has not been erradicated in the US for the very reason that Amanda Peet suggests...not everyone gets vaccinated. There was a Polio outbreak a few years ago in an Amish community that didn't vaccinate. You must have missed that news report. Also the recent report of a community in CA that was not vaccinating against Measles, and a local day care experienced an outbreak. How about the guy flying on a commercial plane last summer with Tuberculosis? That was reported on CNN. Perhaps you don't have a TV.
I am sorry to hear that you had Pertussis. You must have been one of the lucky ones (1/3 of adults with Pertussis) that didn't have sleepless nights from whooping. Glad to hear that you were lucky and didn't break ribs from coughing violently, or bloodvessels in your eyes. And, I imagine that you didn't have a newborn at home at the time... because if you did while suffering from Pertussis, your baby likely would have been admitted to the ICU and put on a ventilator. And you would have been one of hundreds of parents that have lost a child after infecting the infant with Whooping cough.
I'm thinking that it's safe to assume that you don't know any teenagers that have been perfectly healthy one day and then died the next from invasive bacterial meningitis? Several cases occurred this past spring and hit the news, with alerts from health depts about a potential meningitis oubreak. Ever wonder why the men and women who serve our country have been vaccinated for EVERY DISEASE imaginable, including Meningitis? It's not because these diseases are gone... not in the US and not in the rest of the world either.
Ginger, all of these devastating diseases are prevented from vaccines. So I suggest you and your family stay off airplanes, out of daycare settings and away from those traveling overseas (where Polio, Meningitis, etc) are rampant.
The thing is this...if a terrible disease does resurface in this country and there is a shortage, putting your family at risk...I imagine that you'll have a change of heart if it means the difference between life and death. What if Avian Flu comes to the US and there isn't enough vaccine for all Americans? Glad to know that you'll be willing to forgo a dose so that someone who appreciates the difference that vaccinations have made in our lives, can survive.
The problem with vaccines now a days isn't how many we are recommended to receive... it's that people like yourself (and me too) weren't alive years ago when people were falling ill from devastating diseases and dying --- because there wasn't a vaccine to protect them.
Sure Amanda Peet may have made a judgmental statement, but her message had good intentions and was clear... MOMS, STOP WATCHING JENNY "the playboy bunny who cured her son's alleged Autism" on OPRAH. And protect your kids from diseases that moms in several other countries lose their children to every day.
How's that for "spot on?"
Keep,
You are actually pretty far from the spot.
There was no polio outbreak in the Amish community.
In 2005 an Amish infant with immune deficiency was being treated for pneumonia and when she got a battery of test, she was found to have inactivated polio strain virus in her stool (not wild polio). They screened the community and found four other children who had this as well.
No one got sick or exhibited any symptoms and the virus could only have made their way into the children's bodies by them coming in contact with someone who had been vaccinated with OPV and was "shedding" polio. One of the known side effects of the Oral Polio Vaccine is actually contracting polio.
This very same thing could be happening at your neighborhood school right now, but the only reason they even knew about this is because medical authorities freaked because the Amish don't vaccinated and they started sifting through their kids poop.
Yes there has been more measles this year and yes as vaccination rates go down, you will see more measles. There have been a about 120 reported cases this year in the US and no deaths so far, which I understand are about 1 in 1000 cases.
Yes there was that guy on the plane with TB, but the TB vaccine is not even recommended for use in the US.
I am sorry to hear that you had Pertussis... Ginger, all of these devastating diseases are prevented from vaccines.
I am not really sure where you are going with all this. I am assuming that you have never read my blog before.
I have never suggested that vaccines don't prevent illness. Merely that they also cause a myriad of other permanent health problems that are very often much worse than the diseases they were mean to protect from.
Which is why when they are used, they should be used with more caution.
PS... my family will not travel abroad. Because we have an autistic child and no cash. We will continue to go where ever people go because we are (mostly) vaccinated. Remember... we are the people that did like we were told and trusted our doctors when they flat out told us that vaccines don't cause autism... and then got them... and then got autism.
Here are the basics of my arguement.
In 1949 my dad, his little brother and their father all got polio. While my dad and uncle recovered, their father didn't. My dad was only 7 and his brother 6. They same ages my boys are now.
At the time the US polio rate was 1 in 3000. Polio vaccine was very important then. If my children were facing that same risk, I may vaccinate them with it now.
HOWEVER, the rate of polio is now zero. Yet my son was vaccinated as if he had the same risk of contracting polio that his grandfather did a half century ago. He was given 3 polio shots in his first 18 months of life (at the same time as 4 to 6 other vaccines), when the vaccine information sheet says that 90% of children will gain immunity from polio the first time they get a shot.
So my son was vaccinated three times as an infant, with a vaccine he probably only needed once, for a disease that was of zero threat to him.
Yet the autism rate in this country is 1 in 150 (remember the height of the polio epidemic was 1 in 3000) and as an American child he has a 1 in 6 chance of having a serious, chronic illness (autism, add, asthma, juvenile arthritis, type 1 diabetes, life threatening allergies, pediatric cancers, etc.)most of which are suspected of links to vaccination.
We are over vaccinating our children and we have traded treatable viral illnesses for incurable autoimmune and neurological disorders.
I was born in 1969. My birth cohort got about 10 vaccines during childhood. No disease epidemics, no autism/asthma epidemics.
Children today get around 66 vaccines in childhood, 36 in the first 18 months and our kids are some of the sickest in the world.
The vaccine program in this country has become absurd. We are vaccinating babies on the day they are born for a sexually transmitted disease.
The law of diminishing returns has kicked in, and we have crossed the line of good judgment. We are not just vaccinating against polio, we are vaccinating against chicken pox and diarrhea.
You also need to understand that many of these deadly epidemics were dying off on their own before the vaccine actually came along because of better sanitation and nutrition that was coming about in the mid 19th century. Even if we completely stopped vaccinating, it would not be as bad as it was 100 years ago because we live cleaner lives and have better health care. When people in "other countries" have outbreaks, it is often because they live in third world conditions with almost no infrastructure, clean water, sanitation, adequate nutrition and inadequate heath care providers. The live piled on top of one another.
We live in a different reality and we need to vaccinate our kids according to the risk to their individual health and the risks that are a reality in the region that they live in.
And when a child cannot be safely vaccinated, like my son, we should not vaccinate him.
This is a really complicated issue and I would encourage you to do a lot more homework before posting, especially with such a condescending tone. It is kind of rude and I really encourage respectful discourse here.
I think along with others we will be boycotting Ms Peet and any films she appears in from now on.
Dont let her get away with her false apology which is mere damage control. let her pay for her irrational comments.
There is lot rubbish talked about vaccinations and Ms Peet seesm to have fallen for them hook line and sinker.
Boycott this awfull mind controlled celebrety now, she does not have your childrens best interests at heart but would rather be a whore for big pharma.
I am sick of these celebrety sell outs who think they have the right to make our vaccination choices for us.
The Amish community does not vaccinate. Can anyone explain why autism is so rare in the Amish community? I decided not to vaccinate my child not because I thought she was under the safety shield of vaccinated children but because I don't trust the ingredients in vaccines. You have to weight the disease, the probability of getting the disease and the risk of the vaccine. Personally, I believe the recommended schedule is overkill. The drug company's bottom line is money. My bottom line is my child's best interest. I'm not an "expert" but I am the only advocate my child has. You think the drug companies have your child's safety in mind? The children with autism are just part of doing business .. why is it that you can't sue the companies directly? I can guarantee you they would focus more on what ingredients they used if they had the risk of being sued. They have no consequences .. so there is no accountability. Take the toxic ingredients out of the vaccines and I will gladly vaccinate my child. In the meantime, don't tell me I should put my child in danger because it's best for "public health" when "the public" has turned their backs on the babies that were unlucky enough to get autism and then have the b*lls to call the parents crazy. A parent know their child more than everyone else in the whole world ...if they say they changed after vaccination ... I believe them. Ms. Peet just feel lucky your child was born after the most toxic chemical (mercury) was removed from vaccines ....there are millions of little soldiers that paved the way for your child to have a less toxic vaccine ...the parents who lost trust in the drug companies because they saw first hand the damages done to their babies are not parasites. Google "mercury" and tell me if you'd want even a trace amount in your baby's body. You say you feed your baby organic why?... do you know of some hidden benefit to eating organic? Hey, her body can obviously cleanse itself of all toxins ...right? Why bother with organic? You won't feed her toxins but you'll let a doctor inject her with them? If you believe in organic so much ...why are you not fighting for a more natural vaccine?
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