Is Asthma Linked to Vaccinations? I Think So.

On January 22nd at around 8:00 PM we arrived to our second hospital that day. My son had been struggling to breathe all day. At this time he was still not breathing normally but was given oxygen and he looked like he was ready to fall asleep. The nurse came in to take some blood. After the nurse finished, my son started panicking. I wasn’t sure what was going on but my 2 year old son had the strength of a full grown man. It was hard to hold him down.

It became painfully obvious that my son was not breathing in or out anymore. I tried to get him to look at me and I tried to comfort him but he looked right through me. My son has some of the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen and to not feel a connection while looking right at them was the most chilling experience I have ever had. It is impossible to explain the helplessness I felt at that very second. I wanted to breathe for him but mouth to mouth was not an option at this point. His airways were completely blocked.

The doctor rushed in and said he has carbon dioxide poisoning (from breathing his own recycled air it was poisoning his blood). He said they have to put him on a mechanical ventilator. Then, a nurse came in and gently grabbed my arm to take me to the waiting room. I agreed to leave the room but I would not go further than outside the door. No way was I able to “wait” down the hall. All of a sudden, a once deserted pediatric floor was full of people running to my son’s bed. It is a sight I NEVER want to see again.

They fought to save his life for over 2 hours. When my husband arrived he asked the doctor what I was unable to, “Is my son going to make it?” The doctor said, “It doesn’t look good.” Helping our son was out of our hands now. We had to put our son’s life in the hands of strangers. The only thing I could do at that point was pray. I was specific when I started praying, I asked for the right people to step into my son’s hospital room and save his life.

The doctor called for an ambulance to come and take him to a better equipped hospital. Over 2 hours later a team from Children’s Hospital arrived and although it seemed to take them forever, it was as if angels walked into my son’s room. One doctor from their team immediately took over. He started shaking my son’s chest (pretty violently too) and I later learned he was shaking the phlegm loose so he could suction it out.

It worked! Within 1/2 hour they were able to stabilize him. They had to temporarily paralyze him so by the time they let me walk over to him the only thing moving was his chest; as it was lifted and dropped by a mechanical ventilator. It was the first time he looked at peace all day long. No more chest caving in and struggling to breathe. The machine was doing all of the work as he slept.

He was far from being in the clear but for the first time all day I felt hopeful and relieved. Below is a picture of me and my son. I was finally able to hold him after they took him off of the ventilator and he was breathing on his own. I decided to share this picture because sometimes a picture can say what words cannot.

So why am I sharing such a personal story? My son has severe virus-induced asthma. This does NOT run in my family. I started looking for any explanations. I have come to learn that the DTaP vaccination has been linked to increasing a child’s chance of developing asthma. Researchers at the University of Manitoba conducted a study that suggest if you delay taking DTP (now DTaP) shots by two months you cut your chances of developing asthma by 50%. Your baby’s first DTaP shot is at 2 months; the study’s findings suggests you should delay the shot until your baby is 4 months.

My son is a triplet; he was given his first DTaP shot when he was 2 months old. What I know now that I did not know then is that I should have adjusted his age because he was born one month early. So, actually, he was given these shots at 1 month of age. My pediatrician should have known this. Why didn’t he suggest I wait? I’ll never know. Why I didn’t research vaccinations is something I try to forgive myself for all of the time.

His triplet sister #1 has intermediate virus-induced asthma and his triplet sister #2 is diagnosed with autism. All of these conditions are associated with the DTaP vaccine. The MMR shot gets most of the attention but I actually wonder if the DTaP shots are worse. None of my kids received their MMR shots yet. In case you are wondering about my kids' prior health: They were all born very healthy (they didn’t even have jaundice) and they were kicked out of the NICU and put in a typical nursery after initial testing.

Asthma is not the only concern I have come to worry about regarding the DTaP vaccine. The three primary doses of DTaP are given at two months, four months and six months. About 85% of all SIDS cases occur at one through six months, with the peak incidence at age two to four months. Scientists will probably have other explanations then what seems obvious; but call me skeptical.

A great book titled, “Healing our Childhood Epidemics / Autism, ADHA, Asthma and Allergies,” explains the increase in asthma diagnosis as being related to the toxins in our environment and in vaccinations. Without going too deep into it, your body has two types of helper T-cells (Th-1 & Th-2); that help activate your immune system. These two cells work together. If these cells are thrown off balance then your body’s immune system will malfunction.

It has been proven that heavy metals will skew the crucial balance between these two cells. The presence of toxins will create a person’s Th-2 cells to become more dominant. Kenneth Bock, M.D. and author of this book explains, “This skewing of immunity to Th-2 dominance makes it harder for people to fight off the viral, bacterial and fungal infections that lie within their cells.”

Mercury, lead and aluminum “overexcite the immune system, resulting in allergy, impaired immunity, and in autoimmunity, in which the immune system inadvertently attacks healthy tissues and organs,” says Dr. Bock.

The DTaP vaccine contains aluminum.

I am not suggesting you skip on vaccinating your kids. My suggestion is to delay when you can and separate shots. If you have preemie babies; delay, delay, delay and remember to adjust their age! Please learn from my mistakes.

If you purchase the book I mentioned above, they have a section in the back of the book with their suggested vaccination schedule. Wish I would have been told about this sooner. If you know of anyone pregnant or with infants, please pass this information on. Go ahead and test my research and do some digging around for yourself. Don’t worry; I won’t get my feelings hurt. I always encourage people to do their own research. But for me, it seems clear that the best option is to delay the shots you can.

I found an interesting organization called The National Vaccine Information Center at: http://www.nvic.org/. They were founded in 1982 and are the oldest and largest consumer organization advocating the institution of vaccine safety and informed consent protections in the mass vaccination system. Check them out sometime.

And for those pharmaceutical companies out there that say my son only falls into a small percentage of children developing asthma from vaccinations; that percentage doesn’t feel so small when your son stops breathing in your arms.

Always research,
Alicia