I am the mother of two beautiful young boys. One is seven years old, in grade two, and wants to be an astronaut when he’s older. The other is four-and-a-half years old, not quite as outgoing as his older brother, and unmercilessly good at Jenga. Both of my sons are happy, both are healthy, and both are unvaccinated.

I know what you’re thinking. I get it all the time whenever someone new in my life learns about my decision to forgo vaccinating my children. There’s the look of disbelief, the underlying tone of accusation that comes with someone asking me if I know what I’m doing. They tell me things like, “Did you know that by not vaccinating your kids, you’re not just putting them in danger but other kids too?”

Well, I have something to say to everyone who thinks mandatory cootie vaccinations for children is a good idea: you’re being lied to.

Did you know that, despite being widely available to kids everywhere, no real scientific testing has been done on the long- or short-term effects of cootie shots? It’s a gaping hole of unsubstantiated evidence that pharmaceutical companies have been filling with propaganda about public safety and scare tactics.

Cooties, or cootieum ickius as it’s known in the scientific community, is still a relatively new virus when compared to diseases like measles. There’s no clear information on when the first case of cooties was reported, but the very first cootie vaccination was administered in 1949 by five-year-old Ashton Thompson on a playground in St. Augustine, Florida. After that, the cootie vaccination became a regular part of standard health practices amongst school children. It seems like most of the population haven’t looked back since.

It’s important to remember that our society wasn’t always so heavily medicated and vaccinated. Before Thompson developed the cootie shot, no deaths had been directly linked to the cootie virus. Mankind had survived for millennia without this “cure,” so why the recent push from governments and other pro-vaccination groups for mandatory immunization?

Did you know that the cootie shot contains actual traces of the cootie virus? That’s how vaccines work: the shots contain weakened cootie cells meant to trigger your body into developing a resistance to the disease. Sometimes children can experience a negative reaction to the shot and develop side effects, including feelings of “ickiness” or even developing full-blown cooties. Pharmaceutical companies want you to believe that somehow, you have to make someone sick before they can get better.

There are people out there who want you to think that cooties is a harmful disease — and it can be — but there are natural, holistic ways to combat cooties other than vaccinating your children. For example, did you know a simple mixture of lavender, paprika, and dried shrimp flakes applied to a child’s skin twice a day can render him or her almost entirely immune to cooties? People have been using this traditional recipe for years, but corporations don’t want you to know about it because it’s not profitable for them. This is the kind of information the population needs to hear about.

So consider this my personal plea, from a mother who only wants the best for her kids: before blindly vaccinating your children against diseases like cooties, do some research, consider the facts, and explore the alternatives. I may not be a doctor, a scientist, or even the most educated person around, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s best for other people.