Texas megachurch run by vaccine-denying preacher battles measles outbreak (Kenneth Copeland)

Daily Mail ^ | 8/28/2013

[iowamark]

A Texas megachurch connected to a pastor who has openly questioned the benefits of modern medicine has been forced to host vaccination clinics after 21 members of the congregation contracted measles.

The outbreak started when a person who contracted measles overseas visited Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark, located about 20 miles north of Fort Worth, Texas.

Officials with area health departments said those affected by the outbreak range in age from 4-months to 44-years-old.

All of the school-age children with measles were homeschooled, and the majority of those who were infected had not been vaccinated.

'If it finds a pocket of people who are unimmunized, and the majority of our cases are unimmunized so far, then if you are around a person with measles, you will get sick,' Russell Jones, chief epidemiologist for Tarrant County Public Health, said Monday...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children get two doses of the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, called the MMR.

The first dose should be when they are 12 to 15 months old and the second when they are 4 to 6 years old.

Vaccination opt-out rates nationwide have been creeping up since the mid-2000s, spurred in part by the belief the battery of vaccinations routinely given to infants could lead to autism despite scientific evidence to the contrary and the debunking of one of the most publicized studies that first fueled vaccine fears years ago...

[fungoking]

Sometimes medicine is the ANSWER God gives to prayer.

[goat granny]

shingles comes from the herpes zoster virus, same as chicken pox not measles. There has been a big push lately about shingles, it is nasty but usually if you had chicken pox as a child you have some immunity against shingles. Just the opposite of what the commercial projects. On rare occasions a shingles patient would be hospitalized. But it was rare... Some company must have just developed a vaccine and want everyone to get it....It is painful but I don't know of any adult throughout my years that had shingles. We all had chicken pox as kids.

One of my granddaughters (now a graduate from college) had a rare case of shingles as a baby. Never had chicken pox.....also had shingles as a young teen. again never had chicken pox....extremely rare of a baby to get shingles.

[webstersII]

“What about the one where he claims being cured by anything created by man is a sin? Thanks.”

Reference, please.

[goat granny]

don't remember the parties but german measles can cause birth defects in babys if the women gets it during pregnancy. Better to get it as a child. Mumps will cause sterility in males that get it as adults. When my oldest son had chicken pox as a kid, he had a bad case, even has the pox on his eye lids. He had to be kept in a darken room until the last scab fell off. Scratching the pox can leave large scars if scratched off as scabs. Had to keep him from scratching. All my kids had measles, mumps and chickenpox, just as I did as a child. They are all in their 50’s now. Son ended up with only 1 scar from pox scratching....

[SeminoleCounty]

Of course, what the Big Government Big Pharma will not tell you...is that measles was quite common years ago...and many children caught it and recovered with zero after effects.

Like any illness, some people are going to have after effects, and even die, after measles. But the vast majority survive with no problems

Anti-Vac folks are not the kooks...its the ones who push immunizations for normal, non-life-threatening infections that are the kooks.

[CitizenUSA]

Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor like yourself. I don’t see anything in there that says we can’t cure, feed, or otherwise render aid to our neighbors.

Christianity and science are complimentary—not enemies. Many great scientific accomplishments were made by Christians, because God created the universe, put us in it, and gave us minds to understand it.

[Jim Noble]

It's interesting that, whenever rubeola (measles) vaccine coverage falls below a certain % of a population, there are epidemics. Obviously, there is an environmental or animal reservoir.

The "question" of rubeola vaccination yes/no is not interesting at all. It's just stupid.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-— Christianity and science are complimentary—not enemies. ——

Yes. Jesus is Truth Itself. So all truth is God’s truth. We should never fear the truth, in whatever form we find it.

We have nothing to fear from the truth. This distinguishes us from the occultists, materialists and Marxists, who fear truths that contradict their ideologies.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-— Cool. But if you choose not to get your kid vaccinated and your kid contracts measles and infects someone who; couldn’t get vaccinated because of a health problem; or another child that had their first shot but hadn’t yet gotten the booster; or someone that just got their vaccination but hadn’t yet built up sufficient immunity; or your kid infects a pregnant woman and causes a miscarriage or a birth defect; one of those you kid infects dies from a complication like pneumonia or meningitis, then would you agree that they should have the choice to sue you for damages? ——

Public health, properly understood, trumps unqualified liberty. A similar problem exists with the overuse of antibiotics. Overuse reduces the efficacy of these drugs for everyone.

[trebb]

You gave out lots of good info about the childhood diseases. I wasn’t advocating one way or another - just sayin’ how it wuz when I was a child. These days, one must weigh the cost-benefits of some vaccines and to insure they don’t cause more harm than they prevent. Way more autism/ADDS/ADDHD, etc., than I remember as a child and the cases seem to be trending more severe in nature than what we grew up hearing about. Some may be due to better communications, but that doesn’t account for all of it. I made a personal choice with the shingles vaccine and asked for and read the data sheet before I let them stick me. I’ll probably fore-go the Flu shot this year - I take one every few years or so and invariably get sicker and have it hang on longer in the years I take the shot.

[Valpal1]

Yes, lower vaccination rates would cause higher death rates. Most of the deaths are in infants under the age of first vaccination. The younger the infant the higher the risk of serious complications and death.

If more of the general population is not vaccinated, then more pocket epidemics will occur and more infants will be exposed and more infants will contract the disease and at high risk for serious complications.

The whole point of immunizations is herd immunity, not individual immunity. By stopping epidemics in school age children, who are at low risk of complications, we stop them from taking the disease home to infant siblings, pregnant mothers and elderly or sickly family members in the home, all at higher risk for complications and death.

You are also not recognizing the fact that a vaccination is much cheaper than hospitalization for encephalitis or pneumonia. Pediatric ICU is cubic money and deeply traumatizing for the infant.

[spetznaz]

Reference, please.

My question was in response to a post (#18) made by Dallas59 (also copied) where he said the following: 'Being cured by something created be man is a sin. Same with eating certain foods and wearing certain types of cloth.'

I found the statement a tad ludicrous, but then noticed that FReeper preacher had answered FReeper's humblegunner question on the clothes reference made by Dallas59. Since at that point Dallas59 had not responded as to what made him/her think it is a 'sin' to cure someone, I thought maybe preacher might be able to shed some light.

I find it a tad weird for someone to claim God would want someone not to use available means to get better, but I thought it would be proper to see what thinking went behind that before I said humbug.

I've copied everyone I referenced in this post out of decorum.

[Matchett-PI]

You wrote: “Scam flim flam man”

Fundie nut-cases are a dime a dozen & an embarrassment to the Christian community:

Video Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland - Pentecostal Bedlam (Holy Laughter) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SgByE0pX1M

<>

“Holy Ghost Enema” and more:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2456124/posts?page=34#34

<>

Joyce Meyer’s assertions are not unlike those of leading Word of Faith proponent Kenneth Copeland, who also believes Christ’s death on the cross was not sufficient to atone for our sins:
http://www.equip.org/articles/the-teachings-of-joyce-meyer/

<>

“...Furthermore, the contemporary Christian must not only be able to confidently and lucidly respond to what passes for the fashionable worldly wisdom of the day, but to confront the enemies of Christianity with superior arguments, something which is eminently possible. What is the alternative, being a clown like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, so people will go on thinking that such bozos are somehow representative of the intellectual depths of Christianity? ....”
http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2009/04/freedoms-just-another-word-for-nothing.html

[Wayne07]

There used to be 500,000 cases of measles a year in the US. Now we average 100. If you don;t think vaccines work, I don’t think there is any way to describe you but deeply deeply ignorant.

[Vendome]

Can’t watch this amoral idiocy.

Totally contrived horse puhtooty.

[Matchett-PI]

You wrote: “...This distinguishes us from the occultists, materialists and Marxists, who fear truths that contradict their ideologies”

Exactly:

[snip]

“...To stop at the literal level of the text as a Rev. Jerry Falwell or Sam Harris would, is to leave most of the meaning out, and [to] deify the Bible itself for their purposes (either pro or con) and to miss out completely on the doing of its meaning being actively threaded through the reader’s soul.”

“....the modern deviation of “fundamentalism” is no less a form of debased materialism than materialism proper. In fact, it represents the reaction of a weak soul to the abnormal conditions of modernity — an attempt to combat materialism by fully conceding its assumptions. ...”

[snip]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2738591/posts?page=78#78

[Matchett-PI]

You wrote: “Can’t watch this amoral idiocy. Totally contrived horse puhtooty.”

But oh what a huge shallow-minded fan-base they ALL have, while they laugh all the way to the bank.

Deceiving, and being deceived ... What’s worse is, “they love to have it so.”

Pathetic!

[momincombatboots]

Not me sa.., I don’t have a dog in this fight. I work for a living and my kids attended kid prison.

[arbitrary.squid]

I went to high school with Craig Hagin, son or grandson of Kenneth Hagin (I think there were two Kenneths, father and son). He was a seriously odd person, and their whole family was creepy to me. The whole Rhema Bible College is a cult-like place, in my opinion, but then, Tulsa is full of that, what with Oral Roberts and Victory Christian, and other mega-church type places.