Why I Think Vaccination is Very Important

Dr. Wile,

I applaud your courage and conviction, and am deeply thankful that you have publicly taken a stand to present the truth regarding vaccines. If I may, I would like to tell you why this is an important issue for our family.

My daughter and husband went to Russia for a missions trip in the summer of 2001. My daughter was 14. One of the jobs they had on the trip was to work with children starting AWANA clubs. They worked with over 350 children, some of them street children. When Emily returned home, she felt fine, but in a few weeks she began to cough. There was no fever, no runny nose, no anything – except this nagging and worsening cough. She couldn’t sleep. I would find her, blue and gagging, hanging over the bathroom sink at night.

Then, our good old pediatrician – God bless his heart – came up with the answer. In looking through her past records, he discovered that due to a reaction to her 2 month old vaccinations, she had never received the vaccination for pertussis after that. In other words, my daughter had whooping cough.

This story gets worse. Because she had babysat for a cousin, who was only 2 months old and unvaccinnated, the baby came down with whooping cough. My mother, who lived with us at the time, was 83 and had had whooping cough 74 years before – she also came down with it. And, both of my boys came down with it as well.

The difference in the case of pertussis my boys had (who were vaccinated) and my daughter (unprotected) was startling and completely convincing. Emily struggled with pertussis for over 12 weeks. She coughed up blood, she turned blue – unable to breath because she couldn’t stop coughing. Each breath was a whooping, yelping struggle for air. There was a period of about 10 days  at the peak – where she absolutely coughed 24 hours a day. She was using an inhaler to try to expand the bronchioles, and was on medication that didn’t really help. The boys had a really bad cough for three or four weeks, but even the asthmatic one never made me pray for his life like I did for Emily’s on those long nights.

Dr. Wile, the medical community has forgotten how to even test for pertussis. My mother, my daughter and my little nephew all went to the lab for testing, nobody knew what to do or how to document this. I found out through research on the internet (at European sites!) that they weren’t even testing correctly. What a nightmare. But, my daughter did recover, and is fine. As pertussis incidences rise, it scares me to think what a horrible awakening waits for these people who purposefully choose not to protect their children. Thank you for trying to set the record straight.

Cara Shelton


Note: Mrs. Shelton is not a medical doctor and does not dispense medical advice. She is a mother who understands by experience how important it is to vaccinate her children. Please consult a board-certified medical doctor before making any medical decisions for yourself or your family.