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)

I'll make judgements based on tone and bidy language: as I am the midst of crtiquiing an article on just that (specifically, gaze differences) for Uni on tuesday I find it rather sensible! Absolutely we can tell if people are defensive or inattentive absed on observation.

I am not anti science but I am anti this notion that being a GP or whatever makes someone Godlike. When they started running my MA, they asked the class what autism was: a GP raised his hand aand said 'It starts au so must be about the ear'.

Now quite apart from HTW they ended up there (anyone? covered CAMHs, VI and other course induction so hoping to goodness....) that's a preposterously high level of ignorance.

I think manyn of us will know people misdiagnosed or ignored (my eclamposia was dismissed as anxiety until ds1 developed IUGR) and we all know of research studies that were much vaunted and subsequently challenged or at elast the subject of much debate; whetehr youa re looking at ASD (refridgerator mothers, or the controversial stuff on TOM) or wider scince (dark matter versus differences in gravitation pull) nothing in science is static. And nobdy is infallible. But some of us have to live with the consequences.

That's right scram. Science isn't infallible and there are no certainties, only probabilities. But in the absence of hindsight you need to make the best decision based on the available evidence. Scientific enquiry isn't perfect but what is the other option? Intuition? Gut instinct? And also some things we know better than others and with a higher level of confidence. The safety of vaccines vis a vis the diseases we're protecting against is one with a high level of confidence.

And doctors don't always base their own decisions on the best evidence. Of course they're not god-like. I was just looking at a study about mis-diagnosis of malaria with anti-malarials being prescribed to children even when the lab results came back as negative.

And to say nothing of my old GP who prescribed antibiotics like candy. She had a great bedside manner - she was just wrong all the time. Ideally we'd have good patient engagement and good medical skills as well. If I had to choose though, give me good medical skills any day.

my eldest had an unfortunate reaction to the mmr. Of course I can't prove it was the mmr. However, he has never quite recovered from the loss of speech that occurred days within having it, as well as chronic bowel issues etc etc.
Needless to say none of my other 5 have had it.

Of course the mmr doesn't cause any risk and all us mothers who don't vaccinate are abusers.
I feel very bad that I blindly went ahead and had this done to my son. It was my fault. I assumed that because the medical world said it was safe and the right thing to do that they were not liars.
They are liars.
It is not safe and I think it is sheer luck as to whether it will be your child who suffers irrepreable damage because of it and I firmly believe that in decades to come it will be shown just how dangerous it is.

Is the Cochrane review part of the conspiracy too?

irreparable even

flipping
you made the right decision at the time. vaccines carry risks, mealses carries risk. The risk of vaccines is less than the risk of measles. The fact that your son may have suffered vaccine damage means you were unlucky, not wrong. You shouldn't feel guilty.

'Scientific enquiry isn't perfect but what is the other option? Intuition? Gut instinct?

A mix.

It is of course easier a few chidlren down the line when youc an assess your own genetic likelihoods.

flipping here is no guilt to be felt by anyone, ll we can make is a best guess at teh time based on what science tells us and our own family.

Based on science my decision to MMR ds3 was correct, regardless of the utcome (ds3 had no speech for eyars following it).

BAsed on my knowledge of the science, that it cannot test for small subsets such as my family (don;t get all this about testing for a negative- same study as wider pop MMR but assessed on those in a specific sub category: parents with auto immune disorders, famillial history of asd; reported unresolved bowel disorders- not hard), not gving ds4 MMR was best option for me.

Of course children suffer when it goes wrong Leonie. The point is that MORE children suffer when things go wrong with the diseases we're trying to prevent.

Vaccines are NOT risk free and some are safer than others. But we're not giving them vaccines for the sake of it. We're giving them vaccines to protect them from something which is more dangerous.

Given the number of children studied in these large scale studies, I can categorically state that the risk is lower from vaccines other than a few specific identified groups (who are protected by herd immunity hence lower risk than disease). Either the number of children for whom there is an elevated risk is tiny or the elevated risk is small. Either way, it's still the right decision to vaccinate.

Intuition and instinct are good when you are looking at patterns and deviations from them. For example, YOU know your child best nad know when they are ill or somethign is wrong because you know their patterns. Intuition is good for that. Intuition is NOT good for establishing complex, causal relationships.

It's not arrogance. It's based on the best available scientific evidence.

Cochrane Review states the best decision is to vax. Does that make them arrogant too? Or is it only individuals who don't agree with your "intuition"?

'Intuition and instinct are good when you are looking at patterns and deviations from them. For example, YOU know your child best nad know when they are ill or somethign is wrong because you know their patterns. Intuition is good for that. Intuition is NOT good for establishing complex, causal relationships.

That's all most of us are trying to do, work out what is best

But if we didn;t suggest causalities and question them then we would be negligent at best; only raised concerns can be follweod up after all.

I don;t dispute Cochrane Review for MOST chidlren. I still think if you suspect vaccine damage in one of your children, even if not provable, then it's a bizarre decision to vaccinate after that.

Of course things can be improved. But as more studies are done, MMR is shown to be safe than the diseases they protect against. Measles is dangerous IMO. I certainly wouldn't willingly expose my child to it and its consequences. It's more dangerous than vaccination (at one in 10,000 case fatality rate in the best conditions) That's why vaccination is the safer option unless you belong to certain groups who are already vaccinated.

If we all stopped vaccinating tomorrow, our child mortality rates wouldn't go sky high. They'd go up a bit, not much (although with the increasing antibiotic resistance I wouldn't be surprised if case fatality rates did increase). Vaccines in developed countries are far more effective in saving children's lives as they don't have ICUs for encephalitis - or even penicillin for pneumonia. No need for hysteria on either side. But these deaths and illnesses are preventable. What gets me more than anything is this pseudo-science and medical denialism. That's my crusade :)

They aren't dangerous are they? Well then you have just lost what scrap of credibility you may have had.

450 deaths PER DAY from measles. How about you find some mothers of dead babies and tell them how measles is not at all dangerous?

You do realise Leonie that that is conservative science speak for the MMR being safe? Especially in comparison to the diseases in question.

So most children who are vaccinated don't suffer long term damage.
As understand it most children who contact measels don't suffer long term damage either.