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)

Of course it includes them but when you are talking about which groups is at the greatest risk it is infants - ie. those under 1 even out of the group of under 5s.

which group* is

YEs, that's true bubbly. I wasn't specific enough. Does that make you happy?

My work focuses on developing countries and we usually refer to under fives as our target populations for immunisation since they are at high risk.

No cat because no-one knows what happened to him. The latest (as of this month) is genetic predisposition + environmental factor. There is a lot of immune dysfunction in our family (and there is a lot of recent research which demonstrates a role for immune dysfunction in the development of autism). The neurologist has said it could be a mitochondrial dysfunction but the tests are invasive and with no clear treatment protocols even if obe was found we have put further testing of that sort on hold. He is having some genetic testing.

At the time of the regression he became ill, was treated with strong medication, developed gut problems and received a vaccination (single measles). He also had about a 8 courses of antibs in his first 2 years. The younger two have had none. The consensus seems to be that any one of those may have been the elusive environmental trigger. Of course the genetic tests may reveal more but we're not expecting them to tbh.

Our interest in finding out what happened is more for ds2 and ds3. I feel we owe it to them to provide as much information as possible for any future chikdren they may have. Ds1 is 12, non verbal (he used to speak but he lost speech sounds as well as speech so it's very hard for him now) and most of the time pretty happy. If people are willing to invest in him he'll have a happy life - it will be 24 hour care- but it will be happy with funding. We didn't really want the same to happen to ds2 or ds3 though and immune system wise ds3 in particular seems very similar.

If we discover the environmental trigger then of course that helps with ds2/ds3 decisions. My guess though is that it was an unfortunate combination of factors. I also guess that ds3 and maybe ds2 have the same predisposition.

Yes altinkum - and they are all under five sigh

Stat a you are working on populations. I am fully aware that at the population level vaccinations make sense. I am however concerned that my younger two do not end up needing lifelong care like my eldest. I would like them to have independent lives. Population level data does not tell me whether my younger two are at a higher risk from vaccination. Given the family history (not just ds1 the wider family history or immune disorders and the knowledge that the immune system seems implicated in some cases of autism) then it would seem possible.

However safe they are at a population level.

That's not quite true saintly. The samples studied were so huge that if there is a group at additional risk, then eitehr the group is tiny or the increased risk is trivial.

Oh the genetic predisposition plus environmental trigger came from nhs hcp's btw. Although we figured that was the most likely course of events 9 years ago when ds2 was born and we were faced with the decision.

I said under fives are more at risk. They are.

Infants are more at risk than 1-4s. That's true. If that's your beef with what I said, then that's fine by me.

I don't know what causes autism. All I know is that sutdy after study after study after study have not found a link with the MMR.

Well the increased risk group is small isn't it? That's the point.

And it doesn't include those chikdren for whom vaccination affects the immune system allowing a later hit to then trigger autism.

Check out th1 th2 balance and autism - the recent stuff - initial findings were confusing.

And study after study has treated autism as one thing. Which it isn't. That's the first lesson in autism. So study after study is pointless.

I suspect the group is small. I know very few children who regressed as ds2 did or share the same gut/bowel/allergies problem.

But small is not the same as non existent.

There is no link between allergies and vaccines.