AIBU to think non vaccination is child abuse

[alittlevoice]

There was this discussion in another thread and i thought i would make a new thread so it doesn't over taken someone elses

To me not vaccinating your child is akin to child abuse because you are putting them at undue risk of disease which is preventable due to scare mongering or from quack doctors that have long been struck off the medical register and shunned from the medical community

I hate the assumption that because there has been no reported cases it means you shouldn't vaccinate your children it's because children have been vaccinated regularly that there has not been a epidemic

leading doctors (not the quacks) have been worried for some time about the rise of mumps because of the scare mongering and children not getting vaccinated and get seriously Ill and have to be saved by modern medicine (which quack parents are always keen to take up on with there anti vaccination stance)

rubella has a incubation period as many other diseases so if your child has it and you dont know and child is near a pregnant woman and she loses her child due to non immunisation I don't understand how as a parent you'd do that to another person

So the long and short of it is why are some parents touched in the head and think they have the right for there child to possibly kill unborn children and infect younger babies too young to have the choice (and for those saying this is far fetched its as plausible of something going wrong from immunisations)

thefirstMrsDevere As you say, it still affects you now....

GorgeousX my stepfather died after a car accident. While he was dying a little girl was also brought into intensive care. She had been hit by a car. She died. My Mum never forgot her devastated parents and her two year old sister running around the ward oblivious to the awful situation when the life support machine was switched off.

A couple of years later Mum heard that the little sister had died, from measles. The parents had no children left. This was in 1976.

My Mum begged me to have MMR for my DCs - I was wavering as I did and do worry about it. (Another reason for my Mum begging was because my sister was so ill with measles she couldn't wee. The Doctor came every day, the 1960s equivalent of being in hospital.)

One of my best friends' parents are both deaf due to meningitis, which I think came from childhood measles but am not sure.

Another of my best friends lost a brother to severe birth defects caused by her Mum catching rubella in pregnancy.

What do you mean gorgeousx ?

YABU and I am on behalf of so many people on MN for having to read such a stupid, thoughtless, sensationalist thread title.

alittlevoice? alittlefuckwitted more like.

Yes this is a personal attack [shrug]

Sorry my stepfather died in 1976. The little girl must have died a few years later. Made a mistake as 1976 is etched on my memory!

Leoniedelt where's the evidence that vaccinations probably make autism worse?

Also, for what it's worth, I don't think comments like 'fuck off', calling someone 'disablist' or saying 'suck my phantom cock' add much either. Always strike me as a clear sign your views/arguments are on shaky ground if you have to be so stridently rude.

I wasn't vaccinated neither were my siblings or my cousins on both side and we were all fine/lucky. But i feel although my son is a very healthy resilient boy who may not need vaccinations im am not happy to rely on others giving there children something i wouldn't give mine.

I'm not prepared to do that or run the risk on infecting more vulnerable people.

My mums wanted to use homeopathy instead and as a result i nearly died.

"I will add that my brother nearly died from whooping cough in the 1970s because my Mum had been scared out of vaccinating him."

..and my eldest was vaccinated - it was that one that nearly killed her as a baby . Despite that, she caught whooping cough at 5 and was hospitalised for ages. DD2, unvaccinated, 18 months, also caught it. She was checked by the hospital every day because DD1 was so ill and yet shook the worst of it off in 2 weeks. DD1 was so ill she was off school for a term and a half.

It's not always as black and white as you think.

Still waiting to know what georgeoux means........

mum*

Valhalla - the chances of being harmed by a vaccine if you are not in one of the groups that shouldn't be vaccinated is less still than the risk of being harmed by a preventable disease.
And in your defensiveness you managed to entirely skirt the issue. If vaccines were unlike all other medication and 100% risk free would you vaccinate your kids if the making of the vaccine had harmed animals in any way? From reading your stance on animal welfare on other threads I very much doubt it.
If that is the case then it is totally relevant and you are in good company with the majority of people I have come across who don't vaccinate - they have their own negative views about vaccines first - then they research and believe what confirms their previously held views and reject the rest.

I never said it was black and white musicposy - in fact if you read my posts you will see that I am very much on the side of parents makeing their own decisions. Just saying it's a balancing act and in mny experience (as a sibling) it was that experience which swayed me in favour of vaccination - you have a different experience. Vive le difference and all that. I still think though that we have forgotten how serious some of these illnesses can be. I also think the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks but that's ME. It's not my decision to make for anyone else.

any side effects should be reported. but any medical intervention has some risk involved, even taking paracetamol. no-one claims otherwise. if there was any significant effect on child development or health outcomes, then this would have been picked up after 30+ years of modern vaccines

vaccines can, in some cases and depending on the disease, lead to eradication (how was smallpox eradicated?)

I personally know many doctors - many of whom work in fields related to immunology - they all immunise apart from one who decided not to do CP.

My kids have not had the MMR and frankly you can say what you like - I know I was right not to subject them to it.

Herd immunity is all very well, if it works but vaccines are not 100% effective.

I'm "touched in the head" as you so delightfully put it and haven't had DD's MMR done because after DS2 had the MMR, he suffered bad damage and developmental delays. For me, to risk inflicting the same on DD would be (in your words) child abuse. If she suffered the same way and I'd made her have it, knowing full well there was a chance it would happen, what kind of mother would I be? I'm happy for her to have the single vaccines, but it's very expensive and very difficult to arrange. And everywhere has been run out of the mumps vaccine for some time.

Don't bother flaming me over this either, OP, I will be hiding this thread now. You are a horrible, arrogant and rude person and when you fall off that high horse, I hope you really hurt yourself.

No-one says vaccines are 100% effective. That makes herd immunity all the more important as it prevents transmission of the virus when vaccines aren't 100% effective.

Glad you can say you know you were right, shame that it's not based on scientific evidence (unless you belong to one of the very few groups that can't be immunised).

Not at all. I don't 'know I was right' to vaccinate. Based on the current scientific evidence, it was the right decision. I don't 'know I was right'.Such certainties tend only to exist where scientific enquiry isn't the basis for generating knowledge.

Would anyone like to explain how herd immunity is supposed to work when vaccines don't offer lifelong protection? It's all very well saying 95% of children have been vaccinated but what percentage of adults are still immune? Also, if herd immunity is so reliable then why are there still outbreaks of disease where the vaccination rate against it is over 95%?

Herd immunity reduces transmission of the virus and prevents it becoming established in the community. It's not 100% either and each disease will have its own threshold depending on the basic reproduction number and other factors. You may get localised outbreaks but generally you won't get a generalised epidemic.

Stata - i know how it is supposed to work but how does it do that if a large proportion of the adult population are no longer immune from their vaccine? Also, there are large outbreaks of measles in populations with over 95% vaccination rate.