An excerpt from Stay Away From My ER, and other fun bits of wisdom.

1. You don’t like to be told what to do. Especially not by arrogant doctors, who act as if they know better, just because they’ve been through a few decades of training!

2. Your child hates shots. And, as her parent, you feel that your main job is to keep her comfortable rather than safe.

3. You’re more worried about side effects and complications than you are about tetanus and meningitis. You heard about the two deaths from vaccination errors in Samoa, but not about the 83 measles deaths. Because you don’t trust the media. “The pro-vaccine mafia is quick to sweep all cases of vaccine-related injury and death under the rug as extremely rare anomalies, but many a parent of a vaccine-injured child will be the first to tell you that, if she could do it all over again, she wouldn’t have let her kid get jabbed,” said the anti-vaxxers.

4. You once got the flu after you got the flu vaccine, so you know that vaccines don’t work. Newsflash: they do. Just not 100 percent.

5. You read somewhere that vaccines weaken immunity.Tetyana Obukhanych, PhD states: “In the debate over vaccine safety, we have lost sight of a bigger problem: how vaccination campaigns wipe out our herd immunity and endanger the very young.” You didn’t notice the disclaimer: “The information in this book is not intended as medical advice. Readers assume sole responsibility for choosing for themselves and their children disease prevention options that are compatible with their convictions.” No medical advice here. How about getting some medical advice from your kid’s doctor?

6. Taking your kid to the doctor takes time. Plus, doctors are always late, like they’re taking care of sick kids or something, and you don’t have time for this.

7. Vaccines cost money.Not yours, of course, they come from the insurance. But you still have to pay for the gas.

8. Jenny McCarthy and other celebrities, including a famous – now infamous – doctor, whose license was withdrawn for fraud, say that vaccines can lead to autism. The entire medical community disagrees, but you trust Jenny more than you trust your pediatrician.

9. You think that your pediatrician is looking to make money out of your child. After all, pediatricians are well known to be rich.

10. You can’t sue the vaccine companies if your child is harmed. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 exempts drug companies from liability, in an effort to avoid vaccine shortage. But did you know that that law establishes alternative ways to compensate those who have been harmed?

11. You read that “vaccines can cause lifelong, incurable diseases… if your child develops permanent nerve damage, she could require lifelong care … If you choose to vaccinate, are you prepared to reorient your life in the event of autism or brain damage?” So, you’d rather let them take their chance with childhood diseases. Are you familiar with Polio and its damaging long-term consequences?

12. You always wanted a boy. This one is a girl.

13. Vaccines kill children. Your anti-vax resources told you that “Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, has injured and killed tens of thousands of adolescents and teenagers.” While you’re looking for the mass graves, how about checking what CDC has to say?

14. You know better than anyone what’s best for your child, so you don’t need to take her to a doctor. She shares your DNA. You don’t need an education or even information. It’s all in your DNA.

15. Even Gandhi was against vaccines. For him, it wasn’t really about vaccines. It was about cows. He disapproved of using cows to produce the smallpox vaccine. He also disapproved of eating them. He didn’t do steaks, not even burgers. He was a Hindu and a fruitarian. Are you?

16. Vaccines contain toxic stuff. As a matter of fact, vaccines are mostly water and antigen, plus preservatives to keep them from going bad. Because you wouldn’t inject rotten stuff into your kids, would you? Those preservatives are similar to those in your packaged bread, soda, mayo, and mascara. Are you foregoing all those?

17. Your kid looks like your ex.And you hate your ex.

18. Vaccines will overwhelm your baby’s immune system. Newsflash: Your baby doesn’t have an immune system. Yet. That’s what vaccines are doing. Building up her immune system to help her fight disease.

19. The immunocompromised who can’t be immunized and are at risk – young babies, cancer kids, pregnant women – they’re not your problem.They’d better take care of themselves.

20. Childhood diseases have been mostly eradicated. Why vaccinate for something that doesn’t even exist? Good point! That’s why we no longer vaccinate for smallpox. Because it’s extinct. Why? Because of the vaccine. We vaccinate for other diseases. Measles, mumps, pertussis. They’ve been resurging since people stopped vaccinating. Google Samoa’s measles outbreak, its cause, and its consequences.

21. God says no. Like some in the Middle East, you think that vaccinating your kids is against God’s will. Many loving parents in Pakistan and Afghanistan thought that the polio vaccine was intended to prevent their kids from reproducing. Not really. The vaccine was meant to prevent the kids from getting paralyzed by polio. Still, angry mobs killed health care workers to fulfill God’s wish. I don’t think that really helped their children.

22. You heard that natural exposure to disease is better than vaccines.“Truth be told, the only way to truly develop vibrant, lifelong immunity, is to live your life as you normally would, without injecting dead viruses and chemical adjuvants into your muscle tissue. Natural exposure to whatever diseases are lurking in the world is the only way for the body to develop permanent antibodies that will forever protect against disease.”  There’s some truth to that. The immunity they will get after having a disease is likely to be stronger than that obtained from vaccines. Presuming that they survive the disease. Some won’t. Are you willing to take that risk?

23. Unlike the others, your child is special. Believe it or not, but most parents feel that way. Their kids are special to them.

24. The earth is overpopulated.

I’ll offer you a compromise: Don’t vaccinate all your kids. Only vaccinate the ones you want to keep.

For those who can’t immunize your kids for medical reasons: take care and stay safe!

Rada Jones is an emergency physician and can be reached at her self-titled site, RadaJonesMD, and on Twitter @jonesrada. She is the author of Stay Away From My ER, and other fun bits of wisdom, Mercy, and Overdose.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com