MMR injections

[Smellen]

Please could someone update me on the latest relating to the MMR jabs.

Is it now "safe" to let your baby have them? Is there any advantage/disadvantage to having the single jabs?

Sorry if this is another old chestnut.

[emmawill]

I had my child vaccinated personally I think meales and months can be such nasty illnesses, german meales made my aunt go boss eyed as it can effected the eyes, etc. My friend choose not to have her child vaccinated she got meales and was so poorly. I personally think there are risks in taking any medicine or vaccination and its normally such a tiny percentage. The risks of your child being ill without the vaccination is a lot higher and of course then passing it to other childern who maybe to young to be vaccinated against or older people who have not had the vaccination or the illnesses.

[LaylaandSethsmum]

Don't know if it was really ever 'unsafe' to give MMR just that there was a of hype surrounding what is now a discredited piece of work. Giving any type of vaccination carries some risk you have to decide for yourself wether the benefits outweigh the potential risks.
From a single jabs point of view some say the advantages are that your child is only exposed to one virus at a time.Disadvantages may include the fact that children are left exposed to disease between injections and also the cost.
If you do an archive search on here you will find loads of MMR stuff. for and against.

[nicnack2]

i thought of having the MMR done seperately but was dissuaded by the GP. Not that i think he was against but because he couldnt garuntee where the vaccine came from. I had DS1 vaccinated at 17months rather that the 13 months. Personally i think there will always be an ongoing dilemma for parents because of the thought of connection.

[Jimjamskeepingoffvaxthreads]

There's a thread today in the In the news section. Search current messages for MMR and you'll get more, search archived messages (if its working) and you'll be reading until xmas!

[ananyamum]

as LAS says, the one piece of work against the MMR has been discredited over and over. my dd is 11 mo and i have been planning to give her the MMR at age 12-15 mo, but a 2 yo at her nursery, who hasn't had the MMR, has now got measles and has been taken out of the nursery. i agree that as a parent you have to decide treatment options for your children, but my dd is ill with a fever now and i am so annoyed that she may come down with measles, which is a dangerous contagious disease, due to someone esle's ignorance. please please read peer-reviewed papers on this topic and make an informed choice!

[spidermama]

Oh dear ananyamum. Here we go again. Perhaps the other mum is less 'ignorant' than you give her credit for. Perhaps you need to read up more about the other side of the debate before you start dismissing it entirely out of hand.

[sandradee]

Yes there are loads of threads on this and it's a very emotive subject.

Personally, I agree with emmawill - Measles is nasty and is a killer. I have friends in the healtcare world who regularly see sick kids come in with measles - and invariably they have not been immunised.

I realise that I don't know enough about the link with autism nd depending on what you read you can get a different opinion. I also looked into single vaccinations and I also decided against that - it's so expensive and yes - there is no guarantee of where it comes from - or that it is more effective (despite what some people might argue on this site)

I know that this is probably going to offend a lot of people but quite frankly I think we all have a duty to society to ensure that the herd immunity is retained at around 90% uptake. There ae some children who will never be able to get immunised due to illnesses (a boy died recently from measles and he was not immunised because he could not be). There will always be a risk with vacinations and I'm not saying that if I was one of those people who had been affected that I would not be wishing I had not, but at the end of the day I made the decision to vaccinate because the risk of something happening via the vaccination is far far less than my child getting measles and dying from it.

[spidermama]

The boy who died from measles recently was the first person in this country to have died from the illness in over twenty years. He also had a serious lung condition anyway, which made him vulnerable.

You are wrong when you say that the outbreaks of measles are occuring amongst the unvaccinated. Plenty of vaccinated children still contract measles.

[sandradee]

Exactly - he was vulnerable and could not be vaccinated but he died of measles. My point being if the herd immunity was still up at 90% he most likely would not have got measles and died.

Why has the herd immunity dropped? Beacuse people are not vaccinating and the uptake is the lowest for 20 years.

I'm sorry but look at it anyway you like it is our duty to vaccinate - not only to protect our children from these awful diseases, but also to protect the vulnerable in society.

Believe me I have thought long and hard about this and of course I don't want to do anything that would hurt my child, but I feel that vaccinating is the responsible thing to do.

[spidermama]

I don't swallow the vaccination myth. It's hardly surprising that this sacred cow of the medical profession is still so untouchable as there's so much at stake (the credibility of huge swathes of the medical community, the enormous profits of the pharmaceuticals which come along with mass vaccination programmes.)

If anyone else would like to open their eyes ...

From The Informed Parent Website ...

It is well documented that the measles death-rate had declined by about 95% BEFORE any measles vaccination had been introduced. This was due to better nutrition, clean water, and improved living conditions.

Thomas McKeown, author of the book 'The Role in Medicine' states:

'With some variation in timing, the history of measles has been rather similar to that of whooping cough. The death rate fell continuously from about 1915; treatment (of secondary complications) has been possible since 1935; and mortality was at a low level before immunisation was used. It was not until mid 1968 that vaccination was used nationally and less than a quarter of all children had been protected by the end of 1972. I conclude that the contribution of immunisation to the reduction of notifications in the last decade cannot be decided on this evidence.'

[Jimjamskeepingoffvaxthreads]

The herd immunity figures for measles are completely unreliable as they don't count children who have been vaccinated singly. I'd put money on the number of children being vacinated against measles being above 90% in all areas of the country.

[Jimjamskeepingoffvaxthreads]

"I'm sorry but look at it anyway you like it is our duty to vaccinate - not only to protect our children from these awful diseases, but also to protect the vulnerable in society."

Nope, sorry my first duty is to ds2 and ds3. DS1 is almost certainly vaccine damaged, and will require 24 hour- full time- care for the rest of his life. My first duty is to ensure the same does not happen to ds2 and ds3. They are obviously genetically vulnerable- so perhaps should be classed as vulnerable and therefore "allowed" to be exempt from vaccination.

[Jimjamskeepingoffvaxthreads]

"I'm not saying that if I was one of those people who had been affected that I would not be wishing I had not, but at the end of the day I made the decision to vaccinate because the risk of something happening via the vaccination is far far less than my child getting measles and dying from it."

Too right you would be wishing your child had not been affected. YOUR child's risk from measles might be higher than the risk from the vaccination, but MY child's may well not be. So ultimately we're all acting in OUR OWN child's best interest rather than societies.

I don't believe there is a person alive who would give a vaccination if they thought it would seriously disable their child, just to protect others.

[harpsichordcarrier]

this is from the BBC website (from the article about Dr Wakefield):
"The number of confirmed measles cases in England and Wales rose from 56 in 1998 to 438 in 2003, although the provisional figure for 2005 was back down to 77."
no reference of course. WHY can't they include references? how hard can it be.
(They changed that btw, it was saying somehting utterly mad yesterday.)

[ananyamum]

???? i am not saying other people should or shouldnt vaccinate. i completely agree that the only people we need to think abt are our own kids, and noone esle. still it is hard to stay objective when the actions of others affects your kids.

[Jimjamskeepingoffvaxthreads]

measles etc has always been cyclical, as is whooping cough, mumps, hib. So these things do go up and down naturally. Can't remember the measles cycle, 4 years? 7 years? I'd stiull place money on 90% of 18 month+ year olds being vaccinated nationwide (with pockets where that's not the case- such as steiner schools- that has nothing to do with Wakefiled though).

[TooTicky]

Oh well said, spidermama.
Vaccinations are not even always effective (there was somewhere in the world where measles had never been heard of, until some interfering idiot decided to introduce the vaccine. Somehow that sparked off an outbreak).
Vaccinations are being tested on children! This is so wrong. Apart from the "intended" part of the vaccine, they can contain all sorts of contaminates picked up along the production process.
Pharmaceutical companies are making a fortune through vaccinations and I understand that they reward doctors' surgeries with a high vaccine uptake rate.
Please research it carefully.
I had a very good book, called The Vaccination Bible I think, which is well worth tracking down.
sandradee, would you stand your child on a busy road if you thought it might help other children? Would that be your duty?

[Jimjamskeepingoffvaxthreads]

tooticky- it's actually the contaminants and extras that concern me.

DS1 was given a thimerosal containing vaccination at a time when it had been removed from Australian and American vaccinations for children. A few years later we were advised not to eat certain fish when pregnant because of mercury contamination, but assured that it was still perfectly safe to inject thimerosal into 8 week old babies.

[spidermama]

\link{http://www.wholehealthnow.com/books/mass-immunisation.html\This} is another good book for anyone interested.

[oliveoil]

xx

[sandradee]

Like I said it's a very emotive issue. My duty is to my child as well but I also think that the government are not out to get us like you all think.

The WHO (a very respected organisation) is a big advocate of vaccination. I think the problem is that we are all too bogged down with all the different alternative sources of information. There will be people living in areas of the world who do not have access to the MMR vaccination that wished they did so that their children have a chance of living and not dying from measles. I think we are really lucky to live in a country where we have access to these vaccinations as routine.

Argue you it however which way you will the fact is that Vaccination is not the evil that people make it out to be - yes it has risks but it's more likely that you'll be run over by a bus, or catch measles and develop complications.

I have a friend who works for a children's hospital who saw a child die from encephalitis that was linked to measles. the father was ranting to the doctors that they killed his child for not doing enough. Very very sad but actually the child was not vaccinated so perhaps if he had done so it might have not developed the complications that it did.

At the end of the day the decision is yours, but if everyone went round thinking only of themselves and heir immediate family then there would be no society. There will always be exceptions to everything but vaccinations are for the general good of the population.

[spidermama]

Perhaps to 'jimjamsdippinghertoeinthevaxthreads'.

[TooTicky]

Oh Jimjams, for you and your ds1 and so bloody with the horrible people who allow these things to happen.
My dd1 had her vax, although MMR separately, but on each occasion when she was all hot and miserable afterwards I thought THIS IS SO WRONG but didn't know where to get the information I needed. Ds1 had one injection only and I just decided NO to any more. Ds2 and dd2 both vax-free and that's how it's staying.
So glad it's all being discussed more now, but still wish parents were given all information so they could make an informed choice.

[sandradee]

Sorry - and I forgot to add "The herd immunity figures for measles are completely unreliable as they don't count children who have been vaccinated singly. I'd put money on the number of children being vacinated against measles being above 90% in all areas of the country. "

I'm glad you have £300 a time to pay for all the single vacinations because I really don't. And I don;t love my child any less than you love yours. So I really doubt that if you added up all the single vaccinatins that the herd immunity would be over 90%

[TooTicky]

sandradee, you're scaremongering. Yes, shit happens, but not just to the unvaccinated.
Horrendous things happen as a result of vaccination, including paralysis and death.
When you say people think the government is out to get them, you are missing the point. It's not vindictiveness, just a lack of concern, and the conviction that they can generally cover their backs if things go wrong. Oh, and if they do have to resign, they're hardly going to be struggling on the dole, are they?
And it annoys me when people who do choose to vaccinate get all goody-two-shoes about it.