My Journey To Anti-Vax

After a long career in the NHS, and now working outside of it, I have come to the conclusion that our NHS, is not fit for purpose. I know this has been stated before, but I would go further than that to state that it is, in many ways detrimental to our health.

I had a conventional enough childhood, my brother and I were injected with the vaccines of the day. Much less than the burgeoning volume of doses contained within today’s schedule, but nonetheless.

Luckily, my brother and I were relatively unscathed, or were we? Who knows, we both have health issues of varying degrees. Maybe they are related, however, that is a taboo question today.

I began my training as a nurse in 1987, three years of learning how to pass the exams the system deemed necessary. I laboured, at that time, under the misapprehension that what I was taught was valid, was supported by the evidence, had been validated and tested. What a naive belief.

I experienced, at that time, a taste of a medical system that had some elements of genuinely caring for patients. It was seen as a somewhat paternalistic system and consultants held sway in the hospital, but, all in all, it was a better system than that we have now. Nowadays, patients are merely fodder, transiting through the medical industrial complex. It is nothing but a business, pure and simple.

Targets, standards, mission statements, the newest trends employed by hospital management as dictated by the likes of NHS England, to demonstrate to the public ‘how much we care’. These statements are by any measure, vacuous and empty, they are there to distract and pacify the public. Let’s look a bit further into this with a question; Since the introduction of one target after another, and the injection of countless billions flowing into the open mouth of the NHS, has this made any substantial difference to the speed and quality of the care you have received? No, I thought not.

I have worked in this sick system for 34 years. The manipulation of the public and the illusion of the provision of safe, high quality care is staggering.

My personal clinical experience spans midwifery, stroke, hepatology, sexual health and primary care, within which I have managed those long term chronic diseases like asthma and diabetes. In the course of working in primary care, I had given childhood vaccines, for which I now feel ashamed to have done. At that time I naively believed what I was told by those ‘in the know’ and followed the advice given from NHS England (and all of its previous incarnations, which have changed with every government ‘overhaul’ of the system).

At the time of the MMR scandal, I was a humble practice nurse in a GP surgery and one of my roles was to work in the baby clinic giving the scheduled vaccines. I remember parents coming to appointments expressing caution about the MMR, given the recent controversy. God forgive me, I repeated the advice that had been circulated from our supervising bodies above, that Dr Andrew Wakefield’s research was debunked, that there were no studies done that supported his findings. I bitterly regret that at that time, I did not question this information, I trusted our supervising bodies. How wrong I was, because at that time Dr Wakefield was an early flag bearer for the truth community, but he was pilloried, abused and made out to have zero credibility.

I was unaware at the time (because I failed to look into the case) that he was a renowned gastroenterology consultant surgeon, that he had merely responded to pleas from parents imploring him to look at the cases of their children who had been perfectly well, were developing speech as normal, had hit all of their developmental milestones, then they had the MMR vaccine. There followed astoundingly similar reports from these parents as to what happened next; fevers, seizures, screaming, then, their children were lost to them. Those children were gone, never to return.

They consulted Dr Wakefield because concurrent with the loss of their children’s communication skills and change in behaviours, they had all the signs and symptoms of an inflammatory bowel disease. Knowing this Dr Wakefield felt duty bound to look into this, and he found that after investigating and treating the bowel conditions, there was a correlating improvement in behaviour and language in these affected children. This was not one or two children he noted this in, but almost 200 children, and his colleagues concurred. It was these findings that Dr Wakefield felt compelled to look into further, because if a vaccine was causing these inflammatory type bowel issues and was linked with developmental and communication issues, all in short order of receiving the MMR, this could potentially cause harm to other children, as yet, unaffected and developing normally.

I hope this is what we would all feel was the right thing to do. Consequently, he lost his reputation, career and means of income to support his wife and four young children.

I used to caveat any type of discussion regarding vaccination with the line “I’m not anti-vax but…”, now I shudder at that platitude. I am now proudly anti-vax and I will endeavour to outline in the next part, more detail as to how I have arrived at this terminus.


Fight for your child


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