Vaccinations: The Dangers of Over-vaccination - Natural Health 4 Dogs

There is growing evidence that revaccinating an already immune dog doesn’t make the pooch more immune, and since any vaccination and can be harmful to their long-term health, it doesn’t make sense to vaccinate unless necessary.

A vaccine dose is not made up solely of the organism that causes disease and vaccine ingredients are “proprietary’, so the pharmaceutical companies don’t have to tell us what they use, and this can be problematic for dogs that have previously suffered side-effects from vaccines.

Each vaccine dose probably contains an animal protein upon which to grow the organism, an adjuvant to kick start the immune system reaction, most commonly aluminium in some form or other and, if it is a money-saving multi-dose vaccine, it will need a preservative which is usually mercury-based Thimerosal, also known as Thiomersal and Merthiolate.

I imagine that to most of us aluminium is something that comes on a roll, useful for wrapping leftovers, but we now hear that it may be a cause of Alzheimer's. Mercury is what dentists used to use to fill our teeth until someone clever discovered that the substance was slowly poisoning us and anyone with old-fashioned mercury fillings was advised to have them removed and replaced with new – and more expensive -  ‘white’ fillings. It is quite telling that vaccines for humans in the US, UK, and Europe no longer contain Thimerosal and Thiomersal.

Animal protein sounds much less scary, doesn’t it? Embryonic chicks are often used as the culture on which to grow the organism to be injected. Since protein is the number one requirement in a dog’s diet you could be forgiven for assuming this vaccine ingredient would cause no problems, but you’d be wrong.  When a protein is eaten the digestion process converts it into simple amino acids before it hits the bloodstream so the immune system will recognise and accept it, whereas a protein injected right into the bloodstream is another matter altogether and can trigger a major reaction from the immune system.

Those are just the extra vaccine ingredients that could affect your dog's health. Each vaccine contains a form of whatever disease you are vaccinating against, and this can be the real problem! Sometimes the vaccine intended to give immunity has sufficient amounts of the disease to cause the disease instead of immunity to the disease.

“Rabies vaccines are the most common group of biological products identified in adverse event reports received by the USDA’s Center for Veterinary Biologics (CVB).”  Dr. Jean Dodds, DVM is a world-renowned clinical research veterinarian and a Co-trustee of the Rabies Challenge Fund among her many other activities.

It is recommended that the rabies vaccination be given in a hind leg to make amputation easier should a sarcoma develop at the injection site. This advice comes from many years of observations by vets worldwide and presents a responsible dog-owner with a difficult choice.

Rabies is an incurable disease, so you want to make sure your dog is immune to it, but the vaccine itself presents so many possible and serious side-effects that you shouldn’t revaccinate if it is not needed and this goes for other diseases too.

In the dog world, probably the most well-known expert on the effects of vaccines for dogs is Dr. Ronald D. Shultz, a veterinary immunologist. He has been working in the field for over 40 years and, with a few other experts, including Dr. Jean Dodds, has run long-term challenge (exposure to the virus) and serology (testing antibody levels in the blood) tests on dogs to determine the Duration Of Immunity (DOI) provided by core vaccines. The results showed that the DOI provided by these vaccinations is seven years, and quite possibly, lifelong. (Dr. Shultz vaccinates his dogs once, at 16 weeks of age.)

A titer-test can be done to measure the levels of antibodies to certain diseases in the blood and could save unnecessary vaccinations, but unless you are planning to take your dog overseas, it is quite difficult to organise a titer-test in South Africa.

 

 

The titer-test for rabies is a slightly different kettle of fish due to the legal regulation, and although a blood sample can be drawn by your local vet, it must then be sent to Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in Pretoria for testing. This procedure would cost, but I would still rather pay for the test than take the risk that one of my dogs might suffer terrible side-effects from a vaccination she didn’t need.

Usually, a dog is only known to have experienced a severe reaction to a particular vaccination if the reaction occurs right after the injection and before the dog has even left the vet’s premises. Symptoms such as swelling of the face, itching, difficulty breathing, diarrhea, weakness, shock, and even death can occur immediately afterward.

Other symptoms may show up later, sometimes months later, and that makes it more difficult to prove that the vaccine was the cause. It could be that allergies, lipomas, heart problems, thyroid issues, seizures, epilepsy, autoimmune diseases, lethargy, separation anxiety, and various cancers are just some of the side effects of vaccinations.

I have noticed that for about a week after a vaccination my dogs have side-effects. Daisy scoots as her anal glands fill and she has difficulty emptying them, and Fiona scratches herself silly. Within a month they both develop a new lipoma which is one of the ways a dog’s body deals with toxins they can’t remove. Fiona has a hard lump under the skin on her neck, the site of previous vaccinations, and now both dogs have a note in their vet records that all future vaccinations should be applied to the hind leg.

They may have other vaccine-related problems that I am not aware of yet and, at the moment, I am grateful that nothing worse has happened, but as they are now ten years old I will probably not be getting them vaccinated again.

 

There are homeopathic treatments available to help a dog cope better with vaccinations so if you are lucky enough to know of one make use of their services before, during and after the injections.

Keep a close eye on your dog for at least three days after any vaccination and return to your vet if you even suspect something might be wrong.

Don’t ever vaccinate a dog that is less than 100% well! Each vaccination will cause a huge strain on the immune system as it is and may not be effective on a sick dog whose immune system is already in overdrive.

If at all possible, use titer-tests and only vaccinate if you have to.

 

 

Canine & Feline Immunization. In: Symposium on Practical Immunology Schultz, RD. and F.W. Scott. R.D. Schultz, Ed., Vet Clinics of N. Am., Nov. 1978, W.B. Saunders Co.

 

www.rabieschallengefund.org

 

https://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/abs/10.2460/javma.2005.227.1102

 

https://www.aaha.org/public_documents/professional/guidelines/caninevaccineguidelines.pdf