wwyd...Measles Vacs

[mothermars]

Hi
Not wishing to start a huge debate over vaccinations. But, I have a dilemma!

DH is anti vaccinations. Our DS is due his MMR and I have opted for the singles. I did his other routine jabs (against DH's wishes) and that caused friction like you wouldn't believe. But I felt that it was the right thing and that my DS life was more important than my DHs feelings on the matter.

However, I have concerns with the MMR (single or otherwise). My DH has done years of research, and he feels justified by his findings. He has little faith in our government and (long story short) believes it is meanly a money making scam etc. He said that the contents of the vaccines would shock me. He's also spouted much more 'evidence' that vaccinations potentially can do more harm then good. I've done my research too. And I think the only reason I'm doubting myself now, is because I don't have DHs backing, and to me, this is such a big deal, that I feel I am taking a gamble and I'm unsure what to do.

If two parents have strong views and both think they are right - where is the compromise? The middle ground? Who gets the final say? We usually unite in every other aspect.

I know the majority are pro vaccinations, and will say that I should have final say and do it. But bare in mind , that he truly believes that his research is more valid and less corrupted, so me saying "read x y and z" will not alter his opinion.

Has anyone been in this situation before and what did you do?

Also, does anyone know how I can get hold of the breakdown 'ingredients' in the single measles vacs?

Thank you..

If you go for the separates though you won't be able to get the mumps vacination.

Would your dh at least humour you and go talk to someone about it?

The reason I say it is because I was completely unmoveable on the idea of only having the singles for dc. I casually mentioned it to a gp I don't usually see, as I was walking out of his surgery having seen him about something else. The look of horror on his face. He wouldn't let me out the door and blocked it with his body whilst proceeding to list all the reasons why he thought the mmr was safe. This led to a very heated debate and 20 minutes later he reluctantly let me escape, as I walked into a sea of rather irritated and bemused patients whose appointments had been delayed, by the gp I might stress, not me. As he had used his body a human door they had overheard the whole lot.

Anyway, I drove home thinking stoopid doctor, to myself, still determined to continue the path I was on. But over the next few weeks I thought about what he had said, really thought about it, and, after re examining at all the research, decided that possibly he did have quite a valid point. So after a few more months of mulling it over, I bit the bullet, booked both dc in and got the MMR done.

And I'm glad I did. The point I'm making is that I thought I was completely unmoveable on my stance. I had held the opinion that the MMR was a very bad thing, for years. And if I could be persuaded to change my mind through the most unlikely of circumstances, maybe theres a chance that your DH could change his ideas on the benefits of immunisations too.

I think your dh is entirely unreasonable to say that no one and nothing will change his mind. Hardly the basis for a rational discussion. If he refuses to go meet with a professional to discuss the issues in an open minded manner, then you need to be the responsible parent and take your child to be vaccinated.

I realise you think DH won't change his mind but the evidence he is citing - case studies and letters by retired drs is not really good quality. It is essentially anecdote. Not all 'evidence' is equal. Evidence comes from large samples and is found in peer reviewed journals. Of course parents should make informed choices but they need to take some measures to evaluate and understand the quality of the evidence they are reading.

What concerns me is your DH has an 'answer for everything' but is clearly not open to discussion - so no compromise is possible. Its seems quite galling that your DH seems to think he is smarter that the entire medical profession. Would he be willing to have a conversation with a dr rather than one with you where I get the impression that he throws out a statement which blind sides you.

Wow, once again I'm amazed at the number of people who feel qualified to give medical advice and tell a poster directly what to do, without any knowledge of the child!

Your situation is very tough mothermars, if you disagree so passionately. I think you need links to informaton to show your husband rather than being told to do it behind his back. I'm sure he feels very strongly that once in, you can't get them out again, whereas if you delay, you can always change your mind.

The measles vaccination would be the most important one, then the mumps, but the problem is getting hold of the single mumps. For your own child's health rubella isn't important, in fact no child really needs MMR, that's for the "social good" of preventing rubella syndrome, but I'm sure you know that.

So a compromise could be single measles now then mumps / MMR when your child is older and more likely to suffer mumps adverse effects?

But no one can tell you what to do. I don't envy you though. They're his children as well as yours, and yours as well as his.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there. Vaccines are moneymaking scams that benefit governments and drug companies, GM foods cause cancer (and were engineered as a population reduction exercise), infectious diseases are released by government agencies at intervals to reduce the population and encourage takeup of vaccines, area 51 contains aliens.

I am pro vaccine, pro herd immunity to protect those who can't be vaccinated for whatever reason and reasonably sceptical about most of the above paragraph (still sitting on the fence about area 51).

The problem is they are all very believable. You read them and you start to doubt yourself and your own credulity. You wonder if you're being taken for a scam like everyone else and if the world really is run by turquoise wearing crocodiles (or whatever).

So before everyone leaps on the OP - she and her husband are at loggerheads regarding a situation where both believe their choice is the one that is fundamentally best for their child. Doesn't have to be vaccination (although in this case it is) - talking to my (very level headed and not at all whackjob DH) we have come up with a couple of scenarios within our own family where we have both been set on diametrically opposed courses of action, each with our boys' best interests at heart.

How to solve it - well, when unstoppable force meets immovable object it's difficult! We did a lot of talking, a lot of allowing the other person time to do their own research, discuss with friends and family, allowing the other person time to present their own conclusions (without immediately refuting them, talking over, etc) ... and ultimately for us, compromise. So I agreed to go with DH's view on one issue and he agreed to go with mine on a different one.

However neither of our issues were as emotive as vaccination. OP, I don't think anyone really can advise you here. If he won't listen to rational debate (and having read some of those conspiracies regarding vaccination, government plots etc I suspect he won't) then you are in an intolerable position. Ultimately you have to do what you think is best for your children.

The problem with talk of "conspiracy theories" is that your husband will not listen to it. You need to come up with evidence. Google is your weapon as well as his - most peer reviewed papers are available online. Ask for a couple of weeks to find the evidence ! Saying "that doctor was struck off" and "it's a no brainer" and " think of the children damaged by measles" will not have any effect if he has really done what he calls "years of research". It just won't at all.

The problem with most of the "evidence" out there is that many people believe it to be manufactured. For whatever reason and to whatever end, I suspect that the OP's husband won't listen to her if she quotes mainstream scientific research as he will believe it's manufactured, supported by Those Who Wish to Maintain the Power/Status Quo.

Peer reviewed evidence won't help if you believe that strongly that all the reviewers are also corrupt.

Brycie. Presumably if there were an underlying health condition causing concern, the op would have said so.

In that case nothing will work and it's one will against another. A compromise may be the best thing. In fact going an inch in that direction might help the husband move a little in his stance too.

Hi Elaine I'm not sure what your responding too, I didn't mention an underlying condition?

Tbh I am pretty open to conspiracy theories etc, I don't believe/not believe I just like to read about them.

The vaccine ones I am slightly dubious about, it's only the MMR that people bleat about, because it's been in the media. If the issue is diseases being introduced together, then why are the 3/4/5 month vaccines so accepted? Loads of vaccines, all in one, nobody seems to make a fuss about these though .

If the issue is the adjuvants etc, then why offer 3 x the amount of additives in the single vaccines

I honestly don't get it, I did fully vaccinate my children.

I don't trust flu vaccines though, I have never had one.

OP, in your situation I would just go and have the bloody vax.
My DD was born in Oman, within an hour of being born, she'd had measles, TB, Hep B and polio given. Measles is a killer - the others aren't much nicer.
When it became time for her MMR, DH was dead set against it. Remember this was at the height of the ridiculous IMO, Wakefield thing.
I had no qualms. I took her to the hospital and had her MMR'd. Once she was done, there wasn't a lot he could say.
Stupidly, in the meantime, she'd had around 20 other tax and he hadn't said a word.
It is virtually always the MMR one that people get anxious about.

not tax, vax(ignitions)

Oh FFS, you know what I am trying to say even if this cunting MacBooks doesn't.

I don't think anyone helped you with the ingredients. This is the Priorix MMR and I'll see if I can find the single one, but I don't know what it's called.

This is attenuvax a single version? no idea if this is used in the UK

this is rouvax another single measles

these aren't hard to find - arm yourself with information.

This is a difficult situation and I don't know what I would do in your shoes.

But I am posting because I want you to have confidence in the fact that your husband's "research" is so much bollocks unless he happens to be a top flight immunologist. I honestly despair of people on the internet who piss around pulling up research papers on Google and then yak on about having done some research.

If he's said that nothing can change his opinion on this, then, quite honestly, he doesn't understand what it means to make scientific judgements and shouldn't be making decisions like this.

I am a scientist. I would not DREAM of trying to evaluate research papers that were out of my subfield of specialism, even within my own discipline. There are just too many variables at play. I wouldn't necessarily be familiar with the underlying frameworks that papers are written in. I wouldn't know the personalities involved, or which departments, labs, or individuals are known to produce unreliable results. I might not be fully able to critique a research methodology or the way in which conclusions are reached without a very thorough grounding in that particular subfield, which takes years to attain. I wouldn't know the history of the research literature or research methods. I wouldn't be able to judge if the authors had done a full literature review. I might not be fully competent in the statistical methods used in a different subfield. I might not even be able to identify the top quality journals or conferences for that subfield, or have access to all the papers I needed - many are still only available through institutional journal holdings. If I read a paper, I wouldn't necessarily know if a more recent one had been published overturning part of its results - peer reviewed papers get superseded all the time in my discipline.

That kind of knowledge and ability only comes from being totally absorbed, full time, in a specialism for many years, being trained by people who know what they are doing. You cannot do it by yourself and your husband is deluding himself if he thinks he has the ability to come to scientific conclusions on the topic of this vaccine. If just anybody could do this, in their spare time, what the feck do we all bother doing PhDs for, or funding research institutes for?

He is clinging onto an article of faith, and is using a deluge of pseudoscience to bully and manipulate you into acquiescing to him.

The problem is Scare that exactly as Iteotwawki says, he'll pull up an assessment of how flawed peer reviewed papers can be so that all that detail is irrelevant. Ben Goldacre did a very convincing one about a week ago (I know because I linked to it!) I don't think he's trying to bully and manipulate and the first poster won't get anywhere if she assumes that. He's doing exactly what she is which is thinking of the children's health. He might be wrong, but accusing him of bullying would be a road to nowhere. It would be end of conversation and any kind of compromise. I would have thought the best thing is to get the children protected against the most dangerous diseases for a start. You don't get that kind of compromise by saying that oh you're bullying me with pseudoscience.

I've just read mothermars post again and I think mothermars all the phrases that come through about spouting and "evidence" - he'll have exactly the same attitude to what you say. Given that I would definitely try to meet him half way -eg what would he do if you say, took a hard line on single measles but agreed to delay mumps and put off rubella indefinitely?

There shoudl be a comma. Given that, I would..

otherwise it doesn't make any sense!

ScarePhyllis puts her finger on it. This is not a vaccination thread. This is a 'my husband is a domineering bully who ignores my wishes wrt our children and won't listen to reason' thread.

Move it to relationships, OP! Then we can all tell you to leave the bastard.

Couldn't agree more scarephyllis.

I was hoping that if the op can get her dh to go to a professional, especially a specialist, it may introduce a chink of doubt into his armor of google based omniscience.

OP

The problem with 'research' using google is you et all sorts of anecdotes taken as 'if this happened to me, it will happen to you too.

Back in the mists of time my parents had friends who refused to wear seatbelts (early 70s) because they knew somone who had been in a crash and couldn't get out of their car.

I think the only possible compromise is that you don't vaccinate but then don't allow your child to come into contact with childhood illnesses, so no trips to the park, no school, no public transport, no shopping trips - that just wouldn't work would it?

OK look at your DH arguments - miney. OK who makes money from vaccines? Well obviously the company manufacturing them, and possibly the GP for administerinf them.

But this is paid for by the government, why would the government pay for a vaccine and for it to be administrated? Well because it is a damn sight cheaper than a measels epidemic. And the phrma companies also make much more money from unvaccinated / yet to be vaccinated people getting ill.

As for vaccines containing 'nasties' - er yes, that is the point.

Some children do get ill after vaccines but this is usually a sore arm/leg, or a bit 'grissly', some reactions are more and rarely a child will need to be hospitalised.

Compare that with the recent measles outbreak in Liverpool earlier this year, 20-25% of people needed to be treated in hospital.

OP this is not just about a difference of opinions, this is the health of your child. It is potentially the health of another child or adult.

I've argued a lot on hee about scientist not saying vaccines are completely safe. And I will say it again, you will never get a scientist to say something has no side effects. If you drink enough water it can kill you, but you and I drink water everyday, we don't think about the hazard, the risk, the possibiliity of death or of brain damage.

Do you know what the treatment for measels is?

There is none.

Paracetamol can help with symptoms but basically your body is on its own. The cases treated i hospital were not cases of measels being treated, but of complications being treated.

So please ask your dh why he wants his child to be suseptable to a disease (and note I have only spoken about 1 disease) for which there is no known cure, that can cause complications leading life changing disability and kill?

Then ask him why he wants his child to be able to pass this on to another child, or adult.

Ask him if he wants to be responsible for the possible death of his child and the deaths of others? Perhaps a child who has had an organ transplant so cannot have vaccines. A child with cancer. A niece or nephew?

Brycie, I explicitly DIDN'T offer the OP a precise strategy for talking to her husband - I said I personally wouldn't know what to do in her situation. And at no point did I tell her to say, "You're bullying me," to him, although that is my assessment of the situation. I wrote my above post to give her confidence to trust her instincts to disagree with her husband on this. No, not a fully formed strategy, and not precisely what she asked for, but I wanted to give her some form of support. She clearly feels intimidated by the "scientific" barrage she is getting.

And I absolutely DON'T think that OP should try to pull up her own papers to try to counter him - I have no reason to believe that she is any more qualified to do that than he is. I don't see how anyone could reasonably conclude that from my post.

I still don't know how to advise her, given that all the indications are that she is dealing with a totally unreasonable person. I'd say that they should agree to make a decision based on the course of least serious risk, except he doesn't seem capable of sensibly assessing that risk.

Actually, my underhand strategy would probably be to let it be widely known that he won't let her vaccinate and let general disapproval come down upon him. Perhaps also casually mention that the neighbour's kids have measles.

You know he's a hypocrite, right, OP? If he was exposed to rabies he'd be down to the ER for the vaccine faster than you can say 'lyssavirus'. Is this part of a general pattern in your relationship, or the way he interacts with people?