What on earth is wrong with vaccinating children ffs?

[poshsinglemum]

I'm sure this has been done before a million times.

A friend of mine who has gone all woo recently isn't vaccinating her dd because some quack gave a lecture on the evils of vaccinating. My ex boyfriends mum was a complete quack/chrystal healer and begged me not to vaccinate against typhoid, encaphalitus, rabies etc when I went to the third world. She gave me a homeopathic kit. Needless to say I got the jabs anyway.

I think that the ''evidence'' not to vaccinate is coming from the woo crew and is fuelled by paranoid conspiracy theories concerning the pharmeceutical industry. I am not completely convinced by the industry myself but I'd rather take a chance on them than my dd getting polio etc.

I just read the MIL thread but I have been meaning to discuss this for ages.

bubbleymummy i couldn't agree more.

Newgold Why would i think theyare nobs.because they disagree? The op is nobby because its stupid ignorant badly informed opinión and assuptions.and others have used the same style. for example mental bullshit scaremongering woo quacks blah blah blah. you might like to take thehigh ground but the same can't be said for your chums. but you don't mind that, do you? how hipócritical.

Actually it is the opposite. Compare levels of asd, auto immune disorders between vaccinated and unvaccinated and you will see why.

I have not read the whole thread - not enough time, but I will at some point.

I have no issue with parents who have good evidence to suggest vaccinations would harm their children because of medical conditions or family history.

Surely we all have a duty to protect the most vulnerable in society? And if some of those vulnerable are those who are or could be damaged by vaccination, all the more argument for most of us to be vaccinated, to protect them?

If I'd not been vaccinated I would not have been able to care for my mother during her most immuno-supressed periods of leukaemia. I would not have been able to see my father during his terminal brain cancer.

If DS2 catches measles he will probably lose what hearing he has left. I wonder if the parent of the child (non vaccinated by choice) he could catch it from would be happy to take responsibility for that.

toerags - what about the adult who was vaccinated as a child and whose immunity has now worn off? What about those who have been vaccinated but whose vaccine hasn't worked? They are just as likely to pass measles on to your son.

More likely.. because they think they are immune and won't take precautions.

Diseases could be eradicated by vaccination. Have you ever heard of smallpox? Have a look, the picture of the sick child is quite disturbing, but the message is impressive: 2 million deaths in 1967, but after vaccination campaigns, the disease was eradicated by 1967.

Vaccination is one of our most powerful, effective and amazing tools against disease.

So it really is a shame when people dont get vaccinated and allow diseases to continue destroying lives.

• eradicated by 1979.

Point taken, bubbley.

I just get so emotional about it and feel so frustrated that someone else's choice could actively harm him. I want to be rational about it, and respect a parent's right to choose but it just makes me see red that someone else's otherwise healthy child could put him at risk.

But then I guess that argument can go the other way, can't it...

As I said earlier, I've not had time to read the whole thread but it's sad it's disintegrated into nobs and fucking at times.

Of course the unvaccinated are at more risk of death and disability from the illnesses others have been vaccinated against. I assume that parents taking that decision understand that.

Rubbish.

Actually that was for life in limbo but it's handy for lurker too.

northernlurker, my dds are not at a higher risk of disability form the illnesses they could have been vaccinated against thean they are at risk form disability form the vaccinations themsleves.

that is a factor that a lot of people choose to ignore.

the majority of people with an unvaccinated child have made that choice for very good reason.

Lol at thread descending. have you read the op? It didn't have far to go. In fact in calliing it nobby i think i raised the tone.

Im so sorry Appletrees but its true. If you havent vaccinated your children you are taking risks with their lives.

I know the media has irresponsibly run scare stories that made people worry about vaccines, but I dont understand why people dont take the opportunity when they have had the facts? Have you had a look at the link on smallpox?

No, there is a lot of rubbish there. The last two sentences are rubbish, and the historia of smallpox vaccination is more ambivalent than you think.

I am a bit of a lentil weaver in the co-sleeping, extended bf sense but i had to have dd vaccinated.

I do know that some children have been harmed by vaccinations and I am so sorry to all of those who have had that happen to theirs. I don't blame them for hating vaccines. I am even aware that mercury was put into vaccines etc (even though it was a mercury compound rather than the element), I know the risks. However, I assessed the statistics and odds and decided it wasn't worth the risk.

It is one of the most difficult parental decsions because you feel that you are damned if you do and damned if you don't and it makes us all feel awkward I'm sure.

Yeah, you really don't want to be giving me advice. You're wrong in lots of ways and your opinión is based on credulity and ignorance.

This is exactly what I mean. You're all missing the point.

Whether you chose to vaccinate or not doesn't actually have a huge impact. The state of modern medicine is such that most of the vaccinated diseases are manageable nowadays (which is not to say that these diseases are not serious and can have life threatening / changing implications - quite the contrary).

The vaccination isn't really for you, its for the immunodeficient individual that can't have the vaccine or the pregnant mother at risk from Rubella or the new born baby too young to be vaccinated against hooping cough.

These people and others like them, who don't have the luxury of choice about vaccination and who these "harmless childhood diseases" hit the most rely on everyone else having had the vaccination to reduce the risk to them. The so called "herd immunity" that everyone talks about and nobody knows the meaning of.

Every idiot / misinformed parent / fuckwit who thinks they know better than 200 years of medical research and refuses the vaccination because of what they're read on the internet is another percentage point increase in the risk to the groups I've mentioned above.

Instead we get idiots talking bandying about unreferenced numbers about Saudi Arabia like they mean something or morons banging on about vaccinations wearing off like they have the first idea what they're talking about because they read it on the internet.

Idiots.

Refusing vaccination is a giant "fuck you" to the rest of society.

Rubbish. Utter twaddle.

I think my op came across as rather condescending towards those who don't vaccinate. I don't think parents who don't vaccinate are quacks; i'm just not sure about the people who perpetrate the myths and alternative treatments.

the lecturer told parents to give their kids carrots; what if tehy don't liek carrots?

I didn't find it a hard decision at all. But then I am a historian - by inclination and university training rather than profession as such - and I find an appreciation of the damage done by illnesses in times past makes one rather appreciative of advances such as vaccination.

Yup it's a stupid offensive op.

I haven't read all of this thread, don't have time.

But YANBU. My mum was one of those. My brother couldn't have the MMR jab for medical reasons so my mum inexplicably decided not to get me vaccinated against it either. I had the illnesses measles and mumps and rubella in childhood.

I'm absolutely fine and made a full recovery from each and I guess it good that I never really have to worry about getting boosters. As far as I know having had the illnesses means life long immunity. But tbh I could have done without them. I wasn't really old enough to remember measles and rubella but I am conscious of the fact that they can kill. I really remember mumps. I was off school for days. I had a hugely swollen and painful face and I couldn't eat as it was too painful. I was only about 7. Add to that the temperature and generally feeling unwell, it was a really shit illness. Why the fuck didn't she just vaccinate me?

There is also the risk of older children who haven't been vaccinated giving the illness to a very young child prior to vaccination age.

If everyone vaccinated, the illnesses would eventually be eradicated. Small Pox is proof of that.

Mum's in to all this homeopathic crap too, it doens't work!!! I get a health warning when i tell her about my PCOS medication and that I shouldn't take it but funnily enough she'll take every modern drug for her heart problems.

So the medics are talking as much shite as the anti-vaccine bunch? Sheesh; no wonder we are so bloody confused about it all.