Ahhhhh -- So I see that you don't understand how the immune system works, which is where some of our crossed wires are coming from.

It's true that vaccines are "inert" viruses in the sense that they are damaged and therefore incapable of replicating. But that is a far cry from "harmless." That over simplification is the root cause of much of the disagreement between pro and anti vaccine advocates.

The immune system doesn't have any magic that it uses to differentiate dangerous things from non-dangerous things. It's not that smart. It simply spends its early years learning self proteins from foreign proteins, and it does this by shape. It is completely incapable of telling whether or not a protein is "infectious" or not. All it knows is "self" and "non-self", "invader" versus "local."

Take food allergies -- the peanut protein isn't "dangerous', it can't "replicate", but try telling someone who is about to die from an overwhelming immune reaction to that protein, (called anaphylaxis, essentially unknown before vaccinations were started, by the way...) that it isn't dangerous. Obviously that's not true, so vaccine advocates who equate "inert" to "harmless" have missed the boat somewhere, right?

The purpose of injection foreign proteins into the bloodstream (which is effectively what an IM shot is) is to stimulate an immune response against those foreign protein parts. So you see -- the immune system is supposed to react to the foreign proteins, to mount an inflammatory response and try to destroy those foreign proteins, and it is completely irrelevant to the question whether the foreign proteins are capable of replicating or not.

The immune system sometimes doesn't mount a strong enough response, so immune system irritants (adjuvents) are added -- often things like squalene, or aluminum.

Problem is -- those immune system irritants don't stay in the muscle any more than the foreign proteins do. They float into the bloodstream, and some of them cross the blood brain barrier, especially in the very young, whose blood brain barriers are not watertight yet and still a little leaky. And once found by the immune system in the brain, they set up an inflammatory reaction there. Or in nerves, or gut, or wherever they are found. That's where encephalitis after vaccination comes from -- not an infection, but rather an immune reaction -- the very thing you are trying to stimulate. You just got too much and in an unfortunate location.

So the question is -- what are the long term consequences of an irritated immune system, or nerves irritated by an immune reaction to foreign proteins? Not today, tomorrow, or next week, but months to years later?

Answer? We have no idea. Most of what goes on in medicine is actually an unknown. What are the causes of rampant food allergies (hyper-stimulated immune system) these days? We don't have a clue. Clearly a new thing, but no idea where it comes from. How about ADHD? No clue. Autism? No clue. Depression? No clue. Anxiety? No clue. Panic attacks? No clue. Asthma/atopy? No clue.

So you see -- sometimes the pat answer, the dogma, doesn't really shed any light. It makes us feel better, but for some of us, that is inadequate. So we think about physiology, and are willing to think outside of what the "experts" tell us. After all -- it wasn't too long ago that they told us that smoking was good for our lungs, that mercury injections were the cure for syphilis, and that there were few diseases that a good bloodletting wouldn't cure.

Enjoyed the discussion!