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.

Which point was interesting appletrees, I made several!

I am a claimant lawyer all the way, always have been! I would never go defendant. But we have to admit when we're beaten.

pagwatch it certainly would not have cost a relatively small amount of money to proceed. With 1800 claimant's going to trial, medical experts, QC's, junior counsel, solicitors for all of those claimants to go through a complex trial, I would not be surprised if the legal costs of continuing to trial ran into 7 figures. I'm not joking!

I absoloutely promise you, you have no need whatsoever to explain to me the potential costs incurred in running a multi litigant, multi defendant case through the courts.
It is an area with which I have been very familiar since about 1982.

The cost of continuing to conclusion, given the huge amount already expended by both sides, made the additional anticipated £10,000,000 a snip.

So it was not a "relatively small" amount of money for them to proceed in that case. A further £10,000,000 of tax payers money is not a snip.

I don't want people to get hung up on the fact that the LSC wanted it proven before trial. I deal with them every day and they do it with all cases, in all areas of law, general litigation, housing, etc, no matter how big or how small.

If you don't have proof to support your case, they pull your funding. End of. The LSC want some sort of proof that your case has a reasonable chance of suceeding or they wont fund it. It wasn't a conspiracy to make them prove the MMR link prior to trial, they do it with all cases they fund.

A1980: my point is the denial of evidence. Where's the evidence? There's no evidence, etcetc.

Actually there is a sod of a lot of evidence. As evidenced by this case. "My" side is not the side claiming proof. The pro-vaxers do claim proof of no link and they do claim there is no evidence of a link.

Both manifestly untrue. Incontrovertibly untrue.

Re: relatively samll -- pag said it was small relative to the amount already spent. Definitely had the whiff of political expediency about it.

Yes, the only agenda is that it's tax payers money. Again, it happens if every case not just MMR. No matter how much money has already been spent, the LSC will pull the plug at any time if your prospects drop.

Perhaps relatively small to the amount already spent. But you cannot spend another £10,000,000 of tax payers money wihtout a good prospect of succeeding at trial.

Appletrees - I still maintain there is no scientific evidence of a link.

All the studies show this. I realise you are dismissing them all as "flawed" - but as you admitted above you are likely to do this however many studies there are, so it is relatively pointless showing you any more.

I have yet to see any studies showing that there is a link.

Looktowindward - you've said a few times that vaccines have 200 years of evidence of safety behind them. Actually, vaccines have had several safety problems over the years and have been withdrawn. The oral polio vaccine for example and the whole cell pertussis vaccine. Mercury containing vaccines were only withdrawn from the uk a few years ago. The smallpox vaccine used in the 1800s was actually very dangerous, killed many people and didn't prevent killer epidemics. In fact Leicester was more successful in eliminating smallpox after it abandoned the vaccine!

With all that history I don't think it's entirely inconceivable that in a few years we will find that there are problems with current vaccines and/or their schedule. People make mistakes and medical professionals are no exception.

At the time, there were several people saying that they were 'safe' and there was 'no evidence of harm'.

Mito: of course you do. You are able to maintain your position by cherry picking your evidence. So what would, be example, be admitted to court in a médicas malpractice suit, having endured stringent tests of acceptability, you just wave away for not suiting your point of view. You desperately cling to your jornal mantra, pretending no other kind of evidence exists in the world. You insist you know better than the children's doctors and clinicians, though you know nothing of the children and the records, and not a shred of doubt invades because you simply can't allow it. For if there is but one case of mmr-asd admitted in a normal healthy child, your entire believe system crashes around you.

I, however, do know about your evidence, which is not proof. It don't approach proof. I have read the papers, and mantra, it not mostró of them, are reasonably straightforward to analyse and examiné for flaws. But you can't accepts the flaws, because they were in a journal. You can't compute. It is too frightening for you.

.."many, if not most"

"doesn't approach"

etc

And by the way, i haven't admitted any such thing. If a study is flawed, what is its value? Are you suggesting that in the end flawed work should wearily be accepted, simply because of its volume?

Is that what you think evidence is?

is it time to point out, yet again, that the 1998 paper has not been discredited? that the science was described as exemplary - that it's conclusion seen as a natural one, ie more research needed, because it appears that children may be being damaged by vaccination?

and before all of you start, no the studies you are loning to do NOT show that the link (between mmr and bowel disease, btw, not mmr-autism, as per 1998 paper) has been disproven.

the studies do not even look at the right group of children. this is not damage on a national scale we are talking about. it is damage, to a susceptible group of children. to begin to explore that link, you need to look at the right group (which has been done, several times over now, and the link has been established)

it's a bit like me coming along and saying all apples are red. then you (meaning mito, lookto, etc) looking in a boxful of oranges, seeing no red apples, and saying they don't exist.

the studies you quote are all showing no link, and apparently disproving Wakefield et al's hypothesis. they haven't even started to look at the hypothesis, so therefore they cannot disprove it.

the studies that HAVE started form that premise, are, unsurprisingly, corroborating what was found in the 1998 paper.

LookToWindward - You have not responded to me. All you said was "Your assumptions are incorrect".

Which assumptions?
How are they "incorrect"?

Do please answer. Or forever hold thy peace.

They are bloody useless. It's like arguing with cheese.

SF the whole diet thing fascinates me; ds1, ds3, ds4 and I are all medically diagnosed casein intolerant. DS4 was followed carefully as an infant as he had a heart murmur (resolved itself) and growth concerns so diagnosed by people who really knew their stuff.

I spent my childhood veering from engaged, high achieving extrovert (the goodbye message from my last primary teacher says he will be proud when I am PM LOL- maybe not ;-) ) to exceptionally withdrawn, sometimes sucidal, disengaged low achiever placed into SN classes. I descrived myself as feelinga s if a pane of glass had been erecetd between me and the world, or I had a four minute processing delay. These times accompanied cravings for gluten foods and dairy (I wasn't picked up with the casein until after ds1 born- I sort of relaised but was of that working class allergies and intolerances are for wusses culture: oh how much better I know now!).

I can;t prove there's anything in this, or in MMR, for anyone but equally I can absolutely beleive my won experiences with myself and my ds's, becuase nobody else baring DH ahs anything like the knowledge of them we have. Interstingly even if I did decide to jab ds4 DH admits I would never get the chance as he would pack him in the car and run for the hills. It's a joint decision.

Interesting about the parents NOT knwoing the best.

I;ve workedfor parenting charities and within the NHS, incluidng briefly with HVs.

Unless there was evidence to the contrary we were always told to assume the parents DID know what was best for their child. Current SEN law assumes this as well, LEAs need very good reasons to turn down aprental requests for things such as school placements.

It's quite a radical and horrific view that aprents usually don;t know tbh: society certainly doesn;t, or medicine, or teh state- it only knows what may be best for the amsses absed on current scientific evidence (and anyone who follows breastfeeding and weaning research will know that changes daily!)

yes, I find the dietary thing fascinating too. LOTS of evidence (all anecdotal of course ) form within my (ie dh's and mine) family for links - the signs were there, but we didn't recognise them, iyswim?

dh is the dairy intolerant one here, but again, it is casein intolerance, not the (more) common lactose intolerance. dd1 didn't test positive according to Sunderland for casein, though , but does react very badly. dd2 also. d1 off the scale for gluten - seriously, they commented they'd rarely seen a peak as high...

wrt parents knowing best. I find this one an interesting one. I have found that I am told this all the way - you know your own child, do speak up if oyu think there is somehting wrong, mother's instinct, etc UNTIL I say somethign which goes against current policy - be that medical, educational, legal etc. it's all well and good, and I know best if I happen to agree with whichever departement's policy, but if I don't, then I know jackshit, apparently.

seen it itme and again - with school placement, with access to services, with predicted outcomes for services (SALT etc), with issues like jabs.

it all gets a bit tedious, tbh.

just found a radio link where ANdrew Wakefield discusses the controversy surrounding his research

I haven't listened to it. He's pretty fit, though, if that helps...

the GoldenHAwk videos are worth watching too, for interviews/discussion of the whole case.

He is an amazing bloke. You only secure that composure when you know your opponents are wrong.

the thing that always gets me is he never once loses his temper when he is not allowed to address the points being put to him.

so, he gets to sit there and listen ot al the accusations time and again (I am sure he is well aware of them already thankyou) and whenever he tries to discuss, he is interrupted, cut off, talked over by the interviewrs putting yet another accusation across.

they might as well just read out the whole list, and not pretend that they are giving him a chance ot speak, tbh.

Silver I didn't mean to suggest earlier that I think the case preparation is the only evidence far from it. It's just that the sneering ensues when Wakefield's study is mentioned nobody ever understands that it has never been discredited as a piece of science, a case study, evidence that more research would be needed.