Bill Gates participated in a talk a few months ago, and raised a few eyebrows.
As a result videos of part of this talk has been popping up on youtube, with titles such as “Bill Gates wants a billion dead!”

One such example is shown below. Please watch and listen to what it is Bill Gates has said.

Ok so the basic jist of this is that in order to reduce global warming, we need to reduce CO2 emissions. Going from the equation that
CO2 =  P (People) x S (Services per person) x E (Energy per service) x C (CO2 per unit energy)
This brings to the conclusion that to reduce CO2, we need to reduce each of these components.
Bill Gates says that if we do a good job in new vaccines, healthcare and reproductive health services, we could lower the population growth quite significantly.

Now the antivaccinators would have us believe that what he meant here is that vaccines would be essentially killing off people or sterilising them, to prevent reproduction, and that this is how the population growth will be slowed.

This is about as far fetched as it gets!!!

The main focus is that by reducing child mortality through better vaccination rates, good healthcare etc… you also reduce population growth. How does that work?
Take Africa as an example.
Parents in africa can expect to lose most of their kids.  Because of this, parents in Africa tend to have a very large number of children to try to ensure that a few of them will survive and be able to take care of them later. So they might have 6 kids in the hopes that 2 will survive.
But through vaccines and good healthcare, the deathrate of these kids can be significantly reduced. About half of child deaths occur in Africa. Two thirds of these deaths are preventable – through better healthcare, better sanitation, more vaccinations etc…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality
http://www.globalissues.org/article/715/today-21000-children-died-around-the-world

And as parents lose less children, their need to have more children will diminish. Thus reducing population growth quite significantly. There is nothing sinister in what Bill Gates said. Just some people trying to twist his words!

Links of interest
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
http://vaccinecentral.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/bill-gates-hero-or-villain/

The anti-vaccination camp like to use strong and sensitive subject matter to tempt our imagination and get our attention. However many times they also bend the truth or actually invent facts out of thin air!!

Aborted Fetuses? Seriously? They would like us to believe that fetuses are actually being actively aborted, and injected with viruses for vaccine manufacture … This is an outright lie.

There are in fact 2 cell cultures derived from aborted fetuses from the 1960s that are involved in the manufacture of certain vaccines. Fetuses have never been aborted for the purpose of vaccine manufacture!
To understand this better, one needs to understand what a cell culture really is.
In a laboratory environment, the cells are continually reproduced. Meaning the actual cells used in the vaccine manufacture were never actually part of the child they originated from.
Since these cells are continually reproduced in a laboratory environment, there is no need for any new fetal cells to be acquired.

The human diploid cells are then only used at the very start of vaccine manufacture. The viruses used in vaccines need a medium to grow on, and the best medium for this is by far human tissue. The viruses are cultured on these human diploid cells.
This explains it quite well
http://www.immunizationinfo.org/issues/vaccine-components/human-fetal-links-some-vaccines

Then during the purification process, all cells are removed.
What can happen however is the viruses can get a little confused, and mix up their DNA with the DNA of the host cells. ie the diploid cell line they are cultured on.
And SO WHAT?? This is DNA we are talking about … not a contaminant!

The step up from this from the anti-vaccination camp is that there is a moral issue with using a product that has been manufactured on a cell line derived from an aborted fetus.
The vatican itself has issued a statement saying that until an alternative is found, the benefits from using these vaccines outweighs the risks of not having it.
http://www.immunize.org/concerns/vaticandocument.htm

More information on this can be found here:
http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2009/11/anti-vaccination-activists-and-extreme-opponents-of-abortion-like-to-use-language-that-gives-the-idea-that-ongoing-abortions.html

One of the latest “scare” tactic to come from the anti-vaccination lobby is squalene. Things such as
“Squalene is too dangerous for human use”  or
“Squalene – an oil-based adjuvant (to enhance immunity) known for decades to cause severe autoimmune diseases in lab animals” or even
“Other research shows that squalene is the experimental anthrax vaccine ingredient that caused devastating autoimmune diseases and deaths for many Gulf War veterans from the US, UK, and Australia” and many more.

I find this laughable considering what squalene really is.

Squalene is a natural organic compound that is produced in the liver of all living animals including humans. It is used by the body to synthesize hormones, cholesterol and vitamin D. Meaning it is already in our body. It has been shown to have numerous other health benefits.

• Provides significant antioxidant benefits for heart health.
• The american cancer society has even reported that squalene decreased the spread of cancerous lung tumours in lab animals.
  More information about this can be found here:
  http://www.cancer.org/Treatment/TreatmentsandSideEffects/ComplementaryandAlternativeMedicine/PharmacologicalandBiologicalTreatment/shark-liver-oil

Of important note here also is that squalene was never used as an adjuvant in the anthrax vaccine during the Gulf War. The adjuvant used was aluminium hydroxide.

Squalene is used in all sorts of industries. Food, cosmetics, health supplements and many more. The squalene used in commercial products is usually derived from shark liver oil.

Squalene is added to vaccines to improve their efficiency and boost their immune response. Meaning the dosage of actual vaccine can be reduced quite significantly.

So what really is all the fuss?
This is a clear example of the anti vaccination camp picking something out of thin air, and trying to scare parents.
The concerns they raise about squalene are nothing more than that! Scare tactics!!!

Sites of interest:
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/80n0208/80n-0208-c000037-15-01-vol151.pdf
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-defense-of-childhood-influenza-vaccination-and-squalene-containing-adjuvants-joseph-mercolas-dirty-little-secret/
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/squalene-not-to-worry/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squalene 

Misconceptions regarding vaccinations are of serious concern to any responsible parent.
Many of these misconceptions come from anti-vaccination groups, that attempt to plant doubt in parents minds about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines. Many more are coming from non-reputable sites that pluck ideas out of thin air and call it being “informed”.

All of these can easily be proven to be false, and are repeatedly proven, yet parents are still falling foul to these lies.

Here is a list of such misconceptions

1.       Disease was already in decline before the introduction of vaccines.

The many anti-vaccination websites out there, often pull this one out. They often also use a graph to try to prove their point. An example of this can be found on this site: http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/graphs/

What these sites fail to mention, is that the graph they are actually showing is of the death rates attributable to the disease. Not the incidence rate of the disease. In fact the incidence rate is shown on the same graph as remaining steady UNTIL after the vaccine was introduced.

2.       Vaccines are full of poisons

I am not going to list out every ingredient in vaccines as this will take too long to debate each and every one of them.
That deserves a post all to itself. You can find it here
Vaccine Ingredients – The truth about these toxins  

Something to keep in mind also when throwing the word “Poison” around is that a poison is in the dosage. Everything can be considered poisonous, at the right dosage. Including water.

3.       Most people who get a disease have been vaccinated

In a population where the majority of people are vaccinated it is easy to think such a thing.
Vaccination will only sero-convert a certain percentage of people. Depending on the vaccine itself this can be anywhere between 80%-95%. So for a small percentage of “vaccinated” no immunity will develop for the specific disease.
When outbreaks occur, these are the vaccinated that are most at risk of catching the disease.
Lets take a class of 100 students. 99% of them are vaccinated. 1 is unvaccinated. Because of the % that do not develop any immunity lets make this 7% so about 7 students. In an outbreak of measles, the 1 unvaccinated child, and the 7 vaccinated with no immunity all contract the disease. It appears as if it is mainly the vaccinated that catch the disease. However looking at the percentages, 7% of vaccinated caught the disease, whereas 100% unvaccinated caught the disease.

Looking at the measles outbreaks around the world today, it is clear that it is mostly the unvaccinated that are not only catching the disease, but also spreading it.
USA: 118 confirmed cases – 105 were unvaccinated (89%)
NZ: 72 confirmed cases in Auckland – Almost all unimmunized
UK: 496 confirmed cases – Almost all unimmunized
France: 7321 confirmed cases – Almost all unimmunized

 4.       Vaccines cause harmful side effects

All medical procedures carry risks. They can all have unwanted consequences. Why should vaccines be any different?

Yet the risks of problems arising from vaccines still remain relatively tiny, compared with the risk of complications from contracting the actual disease.
The figures below have been obtained from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) website. http://www.cdc.gov/

Disease
Measles
Pneumonia: 6 in 100
Encephalitis: 1 in 1,000
Death: 1 in 1,000

Rubella
Congenital Rubella Syndrome: 1 in 4

Vaccines
MMR
Encephalitis or severe allergic reaction: 1 in 1,000,000

5.       The diseases aren’t as harmful as they would like us to believe
I always remain stunned to hear any “Informed” parent as they like to call themselves say this. Just speaking to anyone from the generation that have lived through these horrible periods can tell you. Many of their friends did not survive or remained permanently maimed as a result of these diseases. That is not “Benign”.
In Africa where many of these diseases are still rife, parents are queuing sometimes for days to try to give their child a chance at getting a vaccines. Because they have seen first hand the devastation that these diseases can cause.

6.       Advancements in health and Sanitation have had more effect on keeping outbreaks under control.
There is no doubt that improvements in health and sanitation have gone a long way in preventing deaths from these diseases. However they have had little effect in controlling the number of cases, since these diseases for the most part are airborne.

7.       Vaccines are not 100% guaranteed or 100% safe
Which medical procedure is?? All medical procedures carry risks. Yet the risks with vaccines are still minute compared to the risks from contracting the disease.

There are a number of places concerned parents can go to ensure the information that they are getting is correct. Always look at facts, and check them out!

Some links to sites of interest
http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/2011-01-06-vaccinemyths06_ONLINE_ST06_N.htm
http://skepticalob.blogspot.com/2009/10/truth-about-thimerosal.html
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/gl/vaccines1.htm