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Letter to the Editor: I have lived reality with vaccines

I wish to respond to Mr. Manning’s June 17 reply — “Anti-vaccinationists should inject selves with healthy dose of reality” — to my guest column of June 12.

Apparently, Mr. Manning, like so many others these days, conveniently ignores the fact that observation, or as he calls it “anecdotal evidence,” is the very first step of the scientific process, perhaps the most important step.

My grandmother is one of seven siblings, all of whom are still alive and all of whom survived measles, mumps, chickenpox and rubella. I myself have suffered life-threatening vaccine reactions and have survived mumps and chickenpox.



My mother had rubella while pregnant with me. There are many more than three people whose experiences I have had to draw from. Smart people learn from their mistakes. Even smarter people learn from other people’s mistakes. After 19 years of research, I am compelled to share truth.

Clearly I could not list the 86 published studies that support a link between autism and vaccines in a 700-word limited guest column. Nothing is stopping Mr. Manning from reading them, and they are not hard to find.



If vaccines work so well, then how are people like me who chose not to vaccinate “putting society at risk?” People are free to vaccinate their children and themselves all they want. Those of us who have learned the hard way that vaccines are harmful and who have researched the issue in depth simply wish to maintain our right to say “no” to this medical procedure, just as we are allowed to with any other medical procedure that carries very real risk. Vaccines are no different. They are not inherently without flaws or risks. Reality is what I have lived Mr. Manning — please make no mistake.

Dawn Winkler

Quincy, Calif.


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