Vaccine & Immunization misconceptions

79184Immunization vs. vaccination
Expand Messages
Colleen Huber, NMDToday at 5:48 AM
The terms immunization and vaccination have been used interchangeably in discussions here, although they are distinct.  I am pro-immunization, so long as immunization is defined as follows:

The infant crawls through his home, stopping occasionally to sample the possibly tasty debris on his fingers.  His older siblings come in from the backyard, tracking dirt or mud inside with traces of bird droppings and parts of dead insects.  The infant crawls through the dirt.  After a while, he'll stop to sample his fingers again.  His older sister picked up some viruses and more Staph aureus at pre-school that day.  Her baby brother is so cute that she picks him up frequently, giving him big hugs and kisses.  Then the cat walks by, traces of litter, with possible traces of Toxoplasmosis coming off the pads of his paws with each step away from the litter box.  The infant takes off after him, in his tracks, but the cat is too fast and wise to the baby, so the baby gives up and samples his fingers again, possibly his toes also, although he mostly gave that up at a younger age.  Now he's hungry and cries for his Mom.  She picks him up and offers the breast, with normal skin flora as condiment to the milk.  Dad walks in with new microbes courtesy of other people outside the family, and takes the baby who now reaches for his Dad.  Countless varieties of microbes have been sampled throughout the day (the tracked in dirt turned out to be especially rich!), and the immune system is already sorting out and responding to those that have arrived in a feasible, workable way: through the skin and mucous membranes.

Vaccination on the other hand makes sense to me only if the being is inside out:  approach the world first through the bloodstream, then going deeper to the mucous membranes.  Finally, deepest and most protected is the skin, necessitating a sterile needle and alcohol swab for the vaccine.

So being skin side out and blood side in, I vote for immunization as defined above over vaccination, and I vote for patients to choose whichever of the two they prefer, or any combination of the above that they like, and my support for that choice is non-negotiable and unconditional.


Colleen Huber, NMD
Naturopathic Oncologist (FNORI)