21 Alternative Rituals to the Well Baby Checkups

Replacing the white coat infant blessings

Jan 08, 2023

The date was August 22, 2014. The William Thompson CDC Whistleblower story was gaining momentum; breaking out of the non-vax echo chamber. There was a battle of the citizen journalist iReports and CNN was forced to respond. The CDC had no choice but to issue a statement to CNN and put another out on their website. Dr. Thompson weighed in through his lawyer. Brian Hooker's reanalysis of the CDC data was published in a journal and immediately retracted. Snopes was on the case.

I would giddily call Liam Scheff almost every night, after every new development. "This is it, buddy!" I'd say. "We're finally going to be heard. It's all falling apart now. The truth is coming out!" And he'd make a little whine of disbelief, like he was mulling the possibility, and then laugh and tell me I was wrong, before he’d try to change the topic to something he’d rather talk about, like permaculture or the world’s reliance on oil.

He'd say that we, Team Anti-vax, would never, ever break through. It— with “it” being the vaccine mafia— was never going to fall apart. No matter what was happening, we could never do enough, he said. The anti-vaxxers will never win because we have nothing to replace vaccination with.

A year and a half later, Liam published a video where he spoke about some of the things we used to cover in our late night chats, and he called it, “Vaccination is the best of all possible worlds.” It’s unbelievable that the overlords haven’t taken the video down, so please take five minutes to watch it today. I’ve downloaded the video for safekeeping but Substack doesn’t support embedding it just yet, so you’ll need to click the title in this paragraph to watch.

Liam opens with, "You don't question huge cultural stories, and the story is always the same: ’This is how we do it. We didn't always do it this way, but we learned to do it this way, and now we live in the best of all possible worlds.’”

He goes on to say, “Despite disease outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations. Despite diseases caused by the ingredients of vaccines. Despite autism. Despite causing polio by spraying DDT. We live in the best of all possible worlds. Their side gets all the support they want because the entire media operation—the church, the government—believes this. No one is going to admit that we don't live in the best of all possible worlds. And this is the most crucial point that nobody talks about: the anti-vaccine side doesn't know what to offer in the place of vaccination. Vaccination is nothing if not a ritual. It is a religious, ritualized act. A ceremony. You go to someone with a white coat, who you trust implicitly, who is smarter than you, who has had more training than you. They gain your trust by telling you it's going to hurt a little bit, and then the hurt is going to be over. Of course, they're talking about a simple prick of the skin, not vaccine injury. They're just priests. They're not students of what the ingredients are doing to your body, or they wouldn't be doing it. They are hallowed for enacting this ritual. It is very significant to go to a place where you have no control, to give yourself up to authority, to let them do a ritual in which you are a participant. It makes you feel like you are part of something. You will become a member of a society that accepts a tribal ritual. The anti-vaccine movement doesn't have a ritual to offer. They have nothing that says, ‘You can bring your child to this non-vaccine center and we'll bless your child with the holy oil of oregano. We're going to do all of this as a ritual. An anti-glyphosate, anti-vaccine, anti-sugar, anti-poison ritual.’ We can't compete. People who are asking for logic in medicine are missing the fundamental aspect of medicine: it is a religious ritualistic practice. We are a far more tribal species— a far more mythology-driven, psychologically-driven species—than we are a logical species. That's what makes it impossible to get anything done in the sciences, which are a religion, colored with a little bit of math.”

One year later, Liam was gone. You can help support the loved ones that this brilliant mind left behind by purchasing his book, Official Stories. In case you haven’t noticed, there has never been a replacement for Liam. He was truly one of a kind.

Seen through Liam’s lens, how is the ritual of vaccination in western medicine different from the ritual of baptism as a requirement for eternal salvation in Catholicism? Or the Hindu black pottu dot on a baby's cheek keeping them from getting sick from people admiring them too much? Or, at the extreme end of rituals, female genital mutilation as a mark of marriageability in Burkina Faso? People who participate in those rituals don't question them because they are huge cultural stories. Even if the participants don't wholeheartedly believe, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Here in the US, half of us circumcise our sons at birth because we think it will make him more desirable to women. Where I’m from, fathers smear their son’s faces with the blood of the first deer the boy kills. A wedding is a ceremony. A funeral is a ceremony. Taking communion is a ritual. A bris is a ceremony. High school graduation is a ceremony. A bar mitzvah is a ceremony. Blessing someone when they sneeze to protect them from unexpected death is a ritual. Knocking your knuckles on wood to continue your good luck after talking about it is a ritual. Tossing salt over your shoulder to cancel bad luck after spilling the salt is a ritual.

And taking your baby to a pediatrician’s office and handing them to the nurse for vaccination to guarantee them good health is a 20th century ritual. How can scientific research ever make progress when it has to adhere to the religious tenets of ritualistic medicine? Even peer reviewed articles criticizing vaccine safety begin with the words, “Vaccinations are the most important inventions of human history.” That’s a ritual to guarantee future research funding from the NIH.

OK, just one more favorite Liam video before I get to my point. It’s called “Ask a Scientist.”

“Don’t try to read our papers. You’re not in our club. You’re not allowed to.”

Many years ago, when I initially wrote this piece you’re reading today, I was chatting with a reader who messaged to say that vaccination is a ritual of cleansing. Those who partake are clean, and those who do not are unclean. Heck, you're unclean for even questioning it, even if you did partake. They see themselves as clean and pure and see us as vile and germ ridden. And he pointed out how absurd it is that this purification ritual takes place by congregating in disease-infested doctor offices.

I had to agree with him. Picture it: you take your precious newborn infant to a little space in an office strip mall with cough spittle, mucusy sneezes, and shed skin cells on every surface—the door handles, toys, books, scale, instruments, the blue vinyl table protected by a tissue-thin strip of paper. This place is a revolving door of diarrhea, streptococcus, RSV, hand-foot-and-mouth, rhinovirus, pertussis, and dozens of undiagnosable viruses. And once at this space, you allow your child to be injected with weakened bacteria, viruses grown in cells from aborted babies, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80, aluminum, and a little bit of mercury if it’s “flu season.”

If we take our babies in for these injections five times over 18 months, the tribe will deem our child to be cleansed.

Q: But what about British people? They don't vaccinate for chicken pox.

A: That's not our tribe.

Q: Japanese doctors are no longer allowed to say that the government recommends the HPV vaccine.

A: That tribe's belief system is not founded in science.

Q: But the US doesn't vaccinate for tuberculosis, and almost everyone else does.

A: Stop telling us what other backwards tribes do. Our way is the right way.

Germ theory is the "understanding" that microscopic viruses cause infectious diseases in healthy people. If you buy into germ theory so completely that you’re compelled to guard your baby against disease with vaccination, then how are you talked into doing this ritual at a dirty doctor's office? It's so germy that, in 2006, doctors were told to stop wearing disease-spreading neckties while doing their rounds.

If you're that scared of germs, a doctor is the most terrifying guy in town. Why in the world do you want him to handle your newborn?

And it reminded me of how repulsive it is that we expect women to birth babies in hospitals where, every year, 1.5 million Americans go to die…and that includes the 440,000 people the medical establishment is responsible for accidentally killing every year. This is who you entrust with your healthy infant's life?

And if you're smart enough to wait outside with your newborn in a baby carrier until your name is called for your appointment, then why are you at the doctor's office at all? To have your baby weighed? To have their head measured? You don't have a tape measure at home? You don't want to spend thirty bucks on a baby scale?

It’s because you’re there to have the priest in the white coat give your baby the once over and declare, "He's perfect! Good job, parent!"

Why not squirt a little hand sanitizer on a local homeless guy and ask him to hold your baby and tell you what a good job you're doing? Do you think a pediatrician with a disease-spreading necktie is any less germy? He’s not.

And what's a doctor's favorite thing to say when denying that a vaccine has made a child sick? "Ah, they must have picked something up in the office when they were here for their checkup." So either the vaccine injected into your child made them sick, or the visit to the doctor's office made them sick. Pick your poison.

Allopathic doctors are for sick people. Specialists are for sick people. Their offices are for sick people. Their hospitals are for sick people. Their medicines are for sick people. There is no such thing as a "wellness" when it comes to doctors.

There is a faction of the population who believe that germs seek diseased tissue as their natural habitat, and the germs aren't the cause of the diseased tissue. The "terrain theory" holds that sick people have a temporary or permanent disposition to infection caused by their environmental toxic load, inadequate nutrition, vitamin deficiencies, and stress levels. These stagnant pools within our tissues become the breeding ground for existing benign microbes to morph into pathogenic microbes.

The impact of stress on the immune system is why you get sick after a long difficult event, like a month of studying for and taking college final exams. It's why women under daily pressure—like while getting a divorce—develop precancerous cervical lesions even when they are negative for HPV.

It's also why being happy and having a close community boosts immunity from catching colds, despite being in physical contact with others. It's why the idiots at the University of Nottingham wrote a paper about how being in a good mood makes the flu vaccine work better. Being happy doesn't make the flu vaccine work better. Being happy makes the immune system work better.

But on the flip side, never having infections isn't beneficial, either. It's why people who "never get sick" are shocked when they end up with cancer. Getting a fever clears infection and diseased tissues, and heating up the body with exercise or saunas may have the same effect.

I don't have a two-minute every-other-month "anti-vaccine wellness ritual" for new parents to prevent the disposition to infection. Nobody does, and they shouldn't want one anyway. Babies get fevers sometimes. It serves a purpose. But here's my ideal list of what new parents should be doing, though I know it's not 100% possible in 100% of parents so there's no need to tell me that in the comment section.

Don't use Pitocin, epidural anesthesia, or antibiotics to bring your baby into the world. You’re kidding yourself if you think they only drug the mama and not the child.

Wait at least three minutes after your baby is born to cut the umbilical cord to their placenta to give 35% of their red blood cells, stem cells and immune cells the chance to return to their body.
Don't give your baby the vitamin k shot at birth. Skip the vitamin k drops, too. Your newborn's blood is not meant to clot quickly—thin blood is crucial for stem cells to reach their destination as fast as possible. Even the oral drops cause jaundice.
Rub your baby's vernix coating into their skin like a barrier and don't bathe them for a week.
Only use a diluted Castile soap for your baby's baths, or no soap at all. As much fun as it is to dote on a baby, healthy baby skin doesn't need antimicrobial soaps or any powders, creams or lotions.
If your baby seems colicky or unable to sleep comfortably, they may have a gut bacterial imbalance. Try infant probiotic drops for a week to see if that solves the issue.
Your baby should be sleeping on a non-toxic mattress to limit exposure to fire retardant off-gassing. Buy a new non-toxic one, or wrap a conventional mattress with only a hole on the underside, and cover with a blanket and a fitted sheet. Yes, even if you co-sleep on a king, do it anyway.
Run a HEPA filter in the room where your baby sleeps to clean the air.
Dress your baby only in organic cotton clothing.
Use cloth diapers and cloth wipes to avoid the chemicals of the conventional versions.
Keep your baby out of crowded public places until they're six months old.
Breastfeed your baby exclusively on demand for six months, then continue while introducing fruits, egg yolks and pureed grass-fed beef for at least six months more.
Babies have permeable intestines by design so that mother's milk antibodies access the blood. Wait until your baby is six months old to make sure their intestinal junctions have closed as much as possible before you feed them pureed or solid food.
Your baby's bottles and cups should be glass, never plastic.
Wait to feed your baby grains—rice, wheat, or corn—until they have molars. Their stomachs don't have the optimal enzymes to digest it. Even of those three, I’d only allow organic rice.
Have a zero-pesticide rule when it comes to feeding your baby. Glyphosate doesn't wash off because it's taken up into the plant from the soil.
Aim for a high quality high fat diet for your baby—plenty of grass-fed butter, beef fat, coconut oil, olive oil, avocado, eggs and organic cheese from grass-fed cows.
Let your baby get 10-15 minutes of direct sunshine a day between the hours of 11am and 3pm. Let most or all of their skin see the sun, without sunscreen. The sun's UVB rays are critical to making the vitamin D hormone. Beyond that, kids should avoid sunburn at peak hours with wide brim hats and clothing, never sunscreen.
If your baby gets a cold or the flu, supplement with zinc, vitamin C and give calcium for fever. Never give over-the-counter fever reducers of any kind unless your child is in complete misery. When your child has a fever under 104 and you're fighting the urge to treat it, comfort yourself by imagining their fittest cells surviving while the sickly ones are being destroyed. Acetaminophen works by crossing the blood brain barrier and gets distributed throughout the entire central nervous system. It also depletes glutathione—a powerful antioxidant free radical scavenger that repairs tissues and helps the body to excrete toxic substances from cells.
In the event of an infection, insist on a laboratory confirmation of the need for antibiotics before allowing your baby to have any. Then alternate the dose with probiotics.
Let your child drink only remineralized reverse osmosis water or natural spring water. Reverse osmosis kitchen filters remove 90% of fluoride, reduce lead and remove chloramines. A squeeze of lemon neutralizes chlorine and so does adding a little non-GMO vitamin C powder to their bath water.

Can you figure out why these 21 points haven't replaced vaccination for the majority of the population? They take more work than most people in our American culture are willing to put in. They take effort. They cost money. You wanted to have kids, so guess what? You need to take care of them, even if that means spending money on higher quality food, because just keeping them alive day after day isn’t cutting it.

So the next time you find yourself in a conversation with someone who sees your child as a disease-carrying baby bat because you didn't partake in the vaccine ritual, confidentially reassure them that you did the delayed cord clamping ritual, the vernix rubbing ritual, the probiotic ritual, the daily sunshine vitamin D ritual, and the breastmilk 12 times a day ritual, so your baby is also protected and cleansed, and they don't need to worry themselves about it.

Then remember what I said about diarrhea doorknobs, and ask them to explain how germs are so dangerous that they need to vaccinate against them, and yet so benign that they’re unconcerned about taking their kids to a cesspool at a strip mall to get it done.