MR Chris Hemmings

Vaccinology - Voodoo Science MR Chris Hemmings

Although not for the Travel section, the following book is a journey. Well, actually, it is several journeys happening at the same time. Not uncommon in the modern world as we all work at speed to keep up with enough of the rapidly diminishing frontiers so as to feel reasonably au fait with modernity. There are explorations which began in my childhood and ones started with parenthood, there's politics of the era driving everyone, myself included, and both social and economic influences too. I was very early on a green and reasonably green-fingered too and incline towards holistic approaches to life. However I am also a biological scientist, trained to BSc in Genetics. So I love objective assessment and experimentation. I also grew up with a strong awareness of the issue of allergy, in particular to foods, in particular to wheats and milk, for family reasons that I will return to later. When an anaphylactic shock practically killed my wife's mum, we got her to see Dr David Freed a family friend and allergist, who helped her radically alter her diet. As she said at the time "The next morning, I was lying in bed thinking how I could easily be dead but now I feel right as rain just a few hours later." Vaccinations were always an assumed unpleasantness, deemed to be essential in life but we were aware of the Pertussis jab causing many complaints from distraught parents of bad outcomes for their kids. My elder brother had reacted very badly to the TB jab, his whole upper arm badly swollen, sore and he very unhappy, so none of us sibs were even asked to receive the jab. After the birth of our first, I went to a meeting, in London, of The Informed Parent, to discuss the issues behind vaccination. With all this, it was very easy to decide "No jabs at all for our kids." Which would have been the end of it only pressure to jab, to use jabs, for 100% vaccination and to adopt all the new jabs has grown and grown. Then there was the Great MMR Saga, and the public disgrace of Andrew Wakefield. It was increasingly apparent how the pressures would not let up and that media, education systems, the law and politics itself were all also swung behind the Medico-Industrial Complex, to present a united front. And then there was thought about the next generations.......