These 3 subjects are very close to my heart. I belong to separate email lists for the three subjects but it seems I’m not allowed to jointly post on all 3 because the different groups that speak up for children on one subject can’t agree on the other two.
Good thing I have a “blog” because, here, no one can stop me from mixing up my issues. (smile)
Knowing that babies die from the use of breast milk substitutes, being circumcised and being vaccinated, I am very wary of these practices and do everything I can to educate others about the dangers. Not only death but lifelong injury/illnesses can be traced back to all of these follies. Many people who are against formula feeding and circumcision of infants, will defend in a very loud voice the mass vaccination of infants. They truly believe that the pharmaceutical companies have improved the lives of millions. I thought that, too, at one time. I was married to a doctor who had been in charge of setting up vaccine programs for the provincial government in Quebec. When I read a “Mothering Magazine” article in 1977 which discussed the dangers of vaccines, I was shocked. I took the article to my husband thinking that he would be able to tell me scientifically why the article was incorrect. He read it through and handed it back to me saying “This makes perfect sense, don’t ever have our daughter vaccinated again.”
I’ve been reading about and attending lectures on the dangers of vaccines for the past 30 years. The more I know, the more vocal I am about keeping these poisons away from babies, children and adults. In his book, “How to Have a Healthy Child Despite Your Doctor”, pediatrician Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn calls vaccines “A Medical Time Bomb”.
That bomb that Dr. Mendelsohn warned us about in the early ‘80s is exploding all over the place today in immune system disorders like fibromyalgia, arthritis, Crohn’s disease, MS, asthma, etc. The increasing incidence of childhood autism related symptoms has been laid at the feet of the pharmaceutical companies. All the lawsuits against the vaccine manufacturers by parents who can trace their child’s autism symptoms right to a before/after vaccine time are evidence of the dangers of injecting toxic substances straight into the bloodstream.
I wonder why those who don’t trust the way doctors have been in cahoots with formula manufacturers would trust those same doctors to have high ideals when it comes to vaccines and circumcision. I wonder why those who advocate for baby boy’s to have the human right to choice on the integrity of their penis would react so vociferously to defending the right of parents to inject a child with vaccines that may lead to a life of misery and suffering with asthma, thrombocytopenia, allergies, or worse. What’s with women who protect their children from vaccines and formula but can’t bear to look upon natural male genitalia? For me, this is a 3-pronged issue and I’ve come to the conclusion that all 3 come out of basic corporate greed. Yes, folks, it’s money, pure and simple, that keep hurting babies. There’s not one advocate of circumcision, formula or infant vaccine who would be interested in any of these things if it wasn’t for a profit. Just look at all the advocates on the opposite side: lactivists, intactivists and anti-vax folks—they don’t make money from their unceasing quest to educate others (if they do, none are getting rich, that’s for sure). I’d love to see the day when all three of these violations against babies are ended.
Well said Gloria! I couldn’t agree more! I have always felt strongly about keeping babies natural!!! and that means leaving their bodies the way they were when they where born and feeding them the food their meant to eat and not injecting them with crazy unknown things made in some lab somewhere . . . Although I have only recently stated feeling that way about vaccines and have vaccinated my children up until recently. However no that I am more informed on that topic I think I almost feel most strongly against it!!!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!
Megan~soon to be mother of three!
Thank you for this, Gloria. Corporate greed and profit are significant factors, I agree, and an interesting way to link these 3 issues (breast-milk substitutes, circumcision and vaccination). My observation is that circumcision is a form of abuse that stems from a hatred for and discomfort with human sexuality, based in many religions. I think it is more thanks to religious propaganda and body-shame rather than corporate greed, that circumcision remains statistically, shockingly high, and that circumcision remains acceptable in our society. It is astounding to me that circumcision is LITERALLY and ACTUALLY accepted as a religious practice. This is at terrible, shameful racket. When people awaken to the FACT that circumcision involves ACTUALLY cutting off parts of the penis or yoni–sex, love, procreation, relationship, gentleness, tenderness, sacred, feelings,– belonging to a beautiful innocent being of pure joy (as ALL infant children are), it should wash over our communities like an actual revelation: that circumcision is nothing more and nothing less than mutilation, torture, and must be eradicated as one of the central ways to move forward as a more whole, peaceful society, planet-wide.
Gloria, Thanks for your comments,I agree with you. I’m including comments made hundreds of years ago, that are pertinent to the discussion of ‘male genital mutilation.’
Maimonides, Moses
The Guide of the Perplexed
Translated by Shlomo Pines
The University of Chicago Press, 1963
(Many scholars consider this to be
the most authoritative translation to date.)
Similarly with regard to circumcision, one of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible. It has been thought that circumcision perfects what is defective congenitally. This gave the possibility to everyone to raise an objection and to say: How can natural things be defective so that they need to be perfected from outside, all the more because we know how useful the foreskin is for that member? In fact this commandment has not been prescribed with a view to perfecting what is defective congenitally, but to perfecting what is defective morally. The bodily pain caused to that member is the real purpose of circumcision. None of the activities necessary for the preservation of the individual is harmed thereby, nor is procreation rendered impossible, but violent concupiscence and lust that goes beyond what is needed are diminished. The fact that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps diminishes the pleasure is indubitable. For if at birth this member has been made to bleed and has had its covering taken away from it, it must indubitably be weakened. The Sages, may their memory be blessed, have explicitly stated: It is hard for a woman with whom an uncircumcised man has had sexual intercourse to separate from him. In my opinion this is the strongest of the reasons for circumcision.
p. 609.
Maybe if more people speak out about this cruel and unnecessary surgery, it will end.
once one piece of the puzzle pops into place, more and more of them do. Honestly, I add the cosleeping issue in to one of your “prongs” as well. Does someone make money if my baby sleeps with me? No. Does someone make money if my baby sleeps in a crib in a nursery? Yes.
So often, it’s all about follow the money. I hope the future doesn’t judge us too harshly.
I’m glad that you and other people are helping to bring this stuff to light! The more exposure these issues get, the more people will hopefully question their choices about these things. I think some people just go along with the crowd, and if the ‘crowd’ is doing these things (or not doing them), they will follow these as well.
I wish I didn’t have to be an ‘intactivist’, I wish that all circ was outlawed like it should be worldwide. It’s not fun giving advice to expectant parents and then have them completely ignore your data and do it anyway, just because their doctor or mother in law says it’s ‘the thing to do’.
Gloria, it has been a long road for me to come to the same conclusions. A professor while I was in college talked about vaccinations effecting his grandson causing him to become autistic making my husband I look into vaccinations and lead us to conclude that we weren’t going to do them.
My husband’s family is from Yugoslavia and he was left intact and it was really a no brainer that we’d do the same for our son.
I was fortunate enough to be the only child out of three siblings who was breastfed. Then when my older sister had my nephew she breastfed too and then my other sister had a baby and not only left him intact but also breastfed for two years. So when my daughter came and even though I had a lot of trouble getting a good painless latch. I still chose to breastfeed through all the pain because I really knew it was the best thing for my daughter. I’m so glad I did because I have some really wonderful memories of that close tender time with her.
I also feel very lucky to have birthed both of my children with direct entry midwives. I really believe if women understood the power they have in their bodies and with support they can do anything!
Thanks for your wonderful blog!
Sarah
“You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts”
—
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The facts are that vaccines save far more children than they kill. The US had about 450 deaths and about 4,000 cases of encephalitis from measles annually before the vaccine. A picture is worth 10,000 word says a Chinese proverb. This article has 2 graphics: originally from the CDC, but placed on 1 page:
* – http://wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine
Before you bring out Autism I warn you that it is a fraudulent claim Wakefield made. Yes, Wakefield is a fraud:
* – http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/08/thanks_again_jenny_mccarthy_and_andrew_wakefield.php
The fact is that vaccines saved untold millions, probably over a billion people, in the 20th century.
Amen! And keep at it in those groups! For me, once the ball started to roll, it kept rolling. More and more choices and decisions were challenged, and I was able to change my husband along the way as well. The circ. battle was the hardest here, and I have two out of 3 boys who are circed, unfortunately. *cries* My 2nd child had vaccine reactions and we stopped after this. So my first is almost fully vaccinated 🙁 He definitely seems to have more issues going on, like anger and getting overwhelmed. Like his nervous system got a shock. Glad home birth was never an issue I doubted! I was spared the disaster a hospital birth can be.
Wow. I have to once again, amend my earlier comment. I guess that circumcision does indeed have a lot to do with $$$. While flipping through one of the free parenting magazines from my trip to Vancouver, I was utterly FLABBERGASTED to see, in the classified section, a beautiful glossy ad for…Male Infant Circumcision. Who the hell is Dr. Neil Pollock, and how on EArth can this be happening–and in Vancouver, a modern, cosmopolitan city. While the campaign to eradicate FGM in non-western countries continues, male circumcision is advertised in children’s magazines couched in euphemism: “virtually painless and bloodless” !!!! the ad cries. I am apalled. What do we need to do to have circumcision made illegal?
Oh, my amen was not for walabio…
According to this graph,http://www.vaclib.org/sites/debate/web1.html, the decline in measles started way before the introduction of the vaccine. Hygiene is and remains the main cause that those diseases against which we are now being vaccinated against, declined.
Everyone around me has had the measles growing up. Everyone in all schools. I do nt know anyone who died.
“Maria”
March 25th, 2009 | 9:02 pm:
> “According to this graph:”
> “ http://vaclib.org/sites/debate/web1.html ”
> “the decline in measles started way before the introduction of the vaccine. Hygiene is and remains the main cause that those diseases against which we are now being vaccinated against, declined.”
I call strawman:
Notice the the graphics do not show the infectionrate, but the deathrate. Let us take polio as an example:
¿Do you suppose that the deathrate from polio might have dropped after the advent of the ironlung?
It is true that some diseases without vaccines have been reduced, but one must emphasize that the way we did this was by taking draconian measures such as closing schools and quarantining whole families.
> “Everyone around me has had the measles growing up. Everyone in all schools. I do nt know anyone who died.”
That is an anecdote. One really cannot say anything about anecdotes. Let us talk statistics:
1 of my favorite sites is “WhatIsTheHarm.Net”:
* – http://whatstheharm.net/
Although the whole site is great, I refer you to to the article about VaccinationDenial:
* – http://whatstheharm.net/vaccinedenial.html
Not a discussion I am willing to have, sorry, unless you are willing to read all the links and book I can share. But of course, you already have read it all.
And oh, you have got to be kidding with that site ROFL I wonder where the heading ‘What’s the harm in hospital birth’ is?….
Ok, I certainly won’t waste my time here. Apologies, Gloria, for engaging.
“Maria”
March 26th, 2009
12:48 am
> “Not a discussion I am willing to have, sorry, unless you are willing to read all the links and book I can share.”
Links yes, but as for books, I know this tactic:
Get someone to agree to read a few books on the subject, then give an enormous reading list which will take the average person over an year to complete. Basically it is a form of temporizing.
> “But of course, you already have read it all.”
I have not read everything, but am willing to read any link you throw at me.
> “And oh, you have got to be kidding with that site ROFL I wonder where the heading ‘What’s the harm in hospital birth’ is?….”
Everything on that site is a verifiable incident. I believe that you refer to the Homebirthpart of the site. If you read the entry:
* – http://whatstheharm.net/homechildbirth.html
You will see that if is mother with risky pregnancies deciding against all common sense to give birth at home with unqualified birthattendents — not healthy mothers with qualified midwives like Gloria LeMay
Another section with a similar point is childvegetarianism:
* – http://whatstheharm.net/childvegetarianism.html
Nothing is wrong with a vegetarian diet, but these are parents that determined that human milk comes from animals, so starve their newborn babies by feeding them only vegetablemush. This is going to a ridiculous extreme. Gloria LeMay encourages breastfeeding — not vegetablemush — for newborn babies.
> “Ok, I certainly won’t waste my time here.”
I am sorry that you feel that you wasted your time.
> “Apologies, Gloria, for engaging.”
I apologize to Gloria LeMay too, but facts are what they are.
Circumcision for boys is equal to episiotomy and sexual birth assaults for women. Why not wait until they’re 10 or more to cut their willies with no pain relief? Oh yeah, they might fight back. With women, we are waiting until birth, when they are the most vulnerable and are also unable to fight back. Who benefits from these psycho-sexual-surgical assaults? Financially it’s undoubtedly medicos, hospitals, drug makers, and therapists. Who is NOT benefitting? Baby boys(and girls) and women. This intact foreskin scare is junk science as much as saying that routine birth interventions are safe. Medical sexual assault-it pays!