What’s In My Dog’s Vaccine?
Do you notice that so many people and the media make a big stink on not vaccinating animals and children?
A puppy vaccination schedule also called puppy shots should be established during your first veterinarian visit, which should take place within a week of receiving your new puppy. An adult dog vaccination schedule, which includes periodic booster immunizations, can be scheduled after the puppy vaccination schedule has been completed, or immediately upon welcoming an adolescent or adult dog into your family.
Not every pet needs to be vaccinated against every disease. It is very important to discuss with your veterinarian a vaccination protocol that’s right for your pet. If you suspect your pet is having a vaccine reactions, call your veterinarian immediately.
Rabies ($10) This rabies vaccination is required either annually or tri-annually in Texas depending on the county you’re in and the type of rabies vaccine used.
Core Vaccines vs Non-Core Vaccines (dog vaccinations).
The vaccines given to dogs fit into 2 categories: core and non-core vaccines.
Core vaccines are the ones most vets recommend your dog should have puppy vaccinations and also recommends yearly or every 3 years afterwards. for adult dogs. These vaccines all protect against dangerous viral diseases. They are:
- Rabies Vaccinations
- Distemper
- Parvovirus
- Adenovirus (Canine Hepatitis)
The Non-Core vaccines include:
- Bordetella also known as the kennel cough
- Lyme Disease
- Leptospirosis 4-way (this is sometimes included in combination vaccines with core vaccines, but it is a non-core vaccine and should be considered separately)
- Canine Influenza also known as the dog flu
- Parainfluenza
- Adenovirus Intranasal
According to most vets, although these vaccines are not considered Core, they are very important for most dogs who may be exposed to these infectious diseases. But you should know according to research, several of the non-core vaccines (Bordetella, Lyme and Leptospirosis) are bacterial vaccines. Bacterial vaccines have low efficacy rates coupled with high incidence of adverse reactions. This means they should rarely be used, and then, only after careful consideration of all the risks of vaccinating vs not vaccinating against these diseases.
Do you ever wonder what are the ingredients inside the vaccine bottle?
All vaccines are basically made the same except for the virus particles themselves.
I remember the time when the ingredients were available on a large ingredient insert. It is getting harder and harder to know what exactly are the ingredients inside the vaccine bottle.
Types Of Ingredients (commonly found in most of the vaccines)
Adjuvants: aluminum salts, oil-based squalene, bacteria-based lipopolysaccharides, sugars.
Preservatives: mercury (thimerosal), antibiotics (gentamicin, amphotericin B, neomycin, polymyxin-B), phenoxyethanol.
Attenuating agents: formaldehyde.
Growth medium: foreign animal tissues:
Chick embryo
Bovine serum
Human fetal lung tissue
Monkey kidney tissue
Porcine tissue
Eggs
Insect proteins
Fungicides and antimicrobials: phenol, formaldehyde.
Buffering agents: glycerol, sorbitol, sucrose, salts, borax.
Stabilizers: formaldehyde.
Surfactant, Permeability Enhancer: polysorbate 80 (Tween® 80).
Virus particles: individual vaccines (modified live or killed), contamination viruses (Rotavirus) from the animal tissues used to grow vaccines.
Contaminates: glyphosate from GMO-fed animals … used for vaccine growth medium (eggs, bovine and porcine tissue), insect viruses (Army worm), Rotavirus.
Adjuvants
These are chemicals added to vaccines to enhance and lengthen the immune response … especially at the local injection site.
They’re mostly aluminum salts discovered many years ago as pickling agents.
There is no biosystem that uses the heavy metal aluminum – none!
Once aluminum is in the body, it’s difficult to remove. It’s troubling how this method of pickling cucumbers became an ingredient to supercharge vaccines.
The aluminum adjuvants turn on the dog’s immune system. It’s done in a non-selective, non-specific way, making “immunity” last longer.
We think of these as dog reaction as benign and collectively call them “allergies” but anyone living with a dog with allergies knows they’re far from benign.
After the aluminum causes damage locally, it goes to the brain, spleen, muscles, bones, liver and heart where it stimulates the healthy immune system (by presenting the virus antigen particles repeatedly). It also acts as an antigen itself, stimulating the immune system to stay “turned on.”
In other words, it acts as an adjuvant and an antigen.
These toxicants are so widely studied that there’s a syndrome used to describe this complex of diseases.
It’s called ASIA (Autoimmune Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants).
Few veterinarians or human health care doctors are even aware of this syndrome, so it’s unlikely you know about it.
This syndrome shows that chronic stimulation of the immune system stimulates chronic inflammation. And that leads to chronic autoimmune disease throughout the body.
That’s a lot of chronic, isn’t it?
Autoimmune disease is as epidemic in adult dogs as cancer. Once inflamed, it’s not easy to cool these tissues down.
Other adjuvants such as squalene, sugars and lipopolysaccharides aren’t naturally adjuvants … but, added with other ingredients, they become very irritating to the immune system.
They make the response to the vaccines more aggressive and longer-lasting.
If your dog survives the harmful effects of heavy metals, oils, sugars and fatty sugars produced by bacteria that is in dog vaccines… there are more hurdles to jump.
Preservatives
Vaccines are actually quite unstable at room temperature. Refrigeration and stabilization with chemicals is critical to keep everything from becoming inactive. But chemical preservatives are also needed.
The most common agent is ethyl mercury, also known as thimerosal or merthiolate.
The wide use of mercury in vaccines is most likely because it’s cheap.
Mercury is very toxic to the central nervous system.
It can disrupt normal nerve signaling and decrease motor functions … think degenerative myelopathy or weakness of the spinal nerves. It can decrease memory function by destroying brain cells … think cognition problems and Alzheimer’s.
For many with poor detoxifying ability to remove this heavy metal, it further causes immune dysregulation (think chaos!).
Vaccines contain other preservatives to prevent foreign bacteria and fungi from growing.
These include common antibiotics and fungicides … such as gentamicin, amphotericin B, neomycin and polymyxin-B.
And if that weren’t enough, add a dash of phenoxyethanol, which is made from phenol, a known carcinogen … which comes from benzene, another known carcinogen.
This antimicrobial is the same phenol naturally found in coal tar, a highly toxic acid (aka carbolic acid) that’s caustic to the skin, eyes, the respiratory system … basically all tissues.
Phenoxyethanol is commonly known to cause reproductive issues. You can find its chemical intermediate in the production of … plastics (BPA), nylon, detergents, herbicides and pharmaceuticals.
Attenuating Agents
Attenuation is the process of altering the virus particles (called antigens). It makes them less virulent … thus less capable of causing illness.
The virus passes through certain tissues, and alters to be harmless (in theory) or less virulent … hopefully.
These vaccines are called modified live … and they make up many of the core vaccines, including parvo and distemper. The viruses are considered live but weakened … and thus less likely to cause the full-blown clinical disease.
These modified live vaccines have enough of the antigen present that the immune system elicits a stronger, longer-lasting effect on its own … this decreases the need to add the adjuvants I discussed before.
Inactivated vaccines, also called killed vaccines (rabies vaccine, polio), are usually killed by heat or formaldehyde … a known carcinogen.
These vaccines are weaker and need boosters to provide an effective immune response. So they’re usually reserved for diseases that can pass from animals to humans.
Adjuvants are added to killed vaccines along with more antigen … which makes them last longer and produce more immune stimulation. This is why inactivated vaccines can cause worse reactions than modified live vaccines.
Viruses infect all sorts of plants and animals. Passing virus antigens through tissue cultures of these plants or animals can allow for unwanted viral contamination … making the vaccine cocktail infected.
An added component of the vaccine cocktail is formaldehyde. A known carcinogen used as a chemical attenuating agent.
Growth Medium
Many vaccines are grown on tissue considered foreign to our dogs’ bodies.
The common tissues used to grow viruses for vaccines are:
Chick embryos
Fetal bovine serum
Human diploid (aborted fetus) lung
Monkey kidney
Dog kidney
Porcine gelatin
These growth mediums were not meant to elicit an immune reaction … but they certainly do.
The foreign tissue cells make their way through the bloodstream exposing the organs to these proteins … that would have never gained access to our inner sanctum.
This is why anaphylaxis … or chronic allergies to pork or eggs are common reactions after vaccines.
Buffering Agents
Buffering agents such as the sugars glycerol, sorbitol and sucrose, as well as salts and borax … all act to buffer the varied chemical cocktail to help maintain a balanced pH.
The borax I mention is sodium borate … a Substance of Very High Concern identified by the European Chemicals Agency. It’s the same detergent we grew up within the box with a mule team of 20. Its role in vaccines is unclear, except to maintain a pH balance.
It’s associated with increased fetal mortality, low birth weight and infant malformations. In dogs and rats it’s shown to decrease fertility rates – that is, after feeding it to them. Certainly not humane … but feeding toxic borate is not as toxic as injecting it into the body.
Now you might be able to see how these cumulative ingredients could cause great harm to your dog.
Surfactants
A world without surfactants would make washing our clothes difficult.
Using them in vaccines allows the ingredients to mix and stay in a homogeneous solution.
The main emulsifier used is polysorbate 80 (aka Tween® 80) … found in some low-quality salad dressings, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
It’s shown to affect biofilms on the skin and in the gut by increasing the growth of certain bacteria … like Staphlococcus aureus.
Polysorbate 80 in vaccines increases the permeability of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). This allows heavy metals (aluminum and mercury) in the vaccines … or from other environmental exposures circulating in the body – to cross the BBB. And it also allows for other vaccine ingredients to cross the BBB.
Animal testing has shown harmful effects on reproduction, heart function, behavior changes and carcinogenicity.
And the toxic cherry on the top is the breakdown of Tween® 80 to sorbitol, which increases the risk of diabetes.
Every person must come to their own conclusions, make their own decisions and live with the consequences.
It’s your job to think about this information to give well-informed consent to your vet if you wish to vaccinate.
Happily for the dogs, many vets now offer titer testing.
The blood can be collected by your veterinarian (usually around $15 to $20) and then sent to Hemopet for analysis. You may submit your titer request on Hemopet’s website. A distemper and parvo titer costs around $52 and you can ship the vial of blood for about $6 via a US Postal Service Small Flat Rate Box.
Hemopet’s Hemolife Diagnostics is world renowned for its titer testing. What differentiates Hemopet is that the results of each sample are reviewed and reported by the Hemolife staff on our unique Cloud-Based computer technology Laboratory Information System (LIS). They are then personally reviewed and interpreted by W. Jean Dodds and two trained veterinary colleagues, Drs. Andrew Zuckerman and Gary Richter.
Thank you for reading:What’s In My Dog’s Vaccine?
