Seda

Please don't go Jenny McCarthy on us. I have an answer that you won't like. The vaccine overload/ overdrive theory you mention is complete and total nonsense. It's a disservice to OCF members to suggest that getting a flu shot may cause a recurrence. I'm aware of the natural dog food gurus peddling vaccinois as a way to discredit veterinarians who debunk their products but thank god for mandatory rabies vaccine laws. But Brian has been very good in debunking the naturopathic and homeopathic falsehoods one of which is vaccinosis. I'm disappointed to see you raising them here.

For those who don't keep up with psuedoscience and fake medicine, here's a quick summary of the Vaccine overload theory spelled out in Wikipedia

[quote]Vaccine overload is the notion that giving many vaccines at once may overwhelm or weaken a child's immune system and lead to adverse effects.[44] Although the scientific evidence does not support and even contradicts this idea,[43] many parents of autistic children firmly believe that vaccine overload causes autism,[45] and it has caused many parents to delay or avoid immunizing their children.[44] Such parental misperceptions are major obstacles towards immunization of children.[46]

The idea of vaccine overload is flawed, for several reasons.[43] First, vaccines do not overwhelm the immune system; in fact, conservative estimates predict that the immune system can respond to thousands of viruses simultaneously.[43] Moreover, despite the increase in the number of vaccines over recent decades, improvements in vaccine design have reduced the immunologic load from vaccines, such that the number of immunological components in the fourteen vaccines administered to U.S. children in 2009 is less than 10% of what it was in the seven vaccines given in 1980.[43] Furthermore, vaccines constitute only a tiny fraction of the pathogens naturally encountered by a child in a typical year[43] and common childhood conditions such as fevers and middle ear infections pose a much greater challenge to the immune system than vaccines do.[47] Second, studies have shown that vaccinations, and even multiple concurrent vaccinations, do not weaken the immune system[43] or compromise overall immunity.[48] Finally, there is no evidence of an immune-system role in autism.[43] The lack of evidence supporting the vaccine overload hypothesis, combined with these findings directly contradicting it, have led to the conclusion that currently recommended vaccine programs do not "overload" or weaken the immune system.[1][49][50][/quote]

For a Wikipedia article, it's surprisingly good. It was better than Quackwatch's or the NCI
Here is the link to the complete article
Vaccine "controversy"

I know we all worry about cancer coming back but skipping a flu shot is not going to protect you.
Charm