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)

Out of interest, why do you think that your daughter couldn't cope with the immunological challenge of vaccination?

Oh and we have seen several specialists who agree that it would be foolhardy to see if DD2 is more resistant to vaccines that DD1 proved to be.

They think she stands a better chance with out having her immune system tampered with at unknown risk.

So far they are right. She is much healthier than her vaccinated sibling. Hey and you know what - they BOTH had whooping cough a couple of years ago. Vaccinated DD1 was terribly ill and went on to develop asthma. Unvaccinated DD2 was pretty poorly but came out just fine.

Stata - you need to do your power calculations - if only 7% ish of children with autism are affected and no attempt is made to identify that group and separate it out you do not have enough power to see an affect.

So many alterations are made to the data anyway - to take account of gaps between development and dx etc that unless you have a pretty big effect (which this obviously is not) then you are going to miss it. It makes far more sense to look at the affected children - tells you a lot more.

Which bit of my interpretation don't you agree with? All I have said is that the immune system appears to be involved in the development of some cases of autism. I have gone onto say that our family history suggests to us that our son may fall within this group in some way and therefore we have chosen to be very careful with his younger siblings. In all sorts of ways. As I said earlier they have not had antibs - they sat out ear infections instead - we wanted to protect their guts.

Prenatal rubella exposure is a known trigger of autism - although ds1 caught rubella from a vaccinated child - who spread it far and wide incidentally. DS1 didn't spread it anywhere - there is more than one way to be socially responsible. As is herpes. B

But in many of these cases as I said before timing is important.

We have children who are more likely than average joe to have some sort of unknown immune disorder. We have the choice of exposing them to something they may otherwise not meet. Exposing them will provoke some sort of immune response (or not as there is a paper out there somewhere detailing poor immune response to a certain vaccination amongst children with autism - if I can find it I will link), whereas if we don't expose them they probably won't meet it anyway. I'm certainly not giving them a multiple vaccination if only because if they had an adverse reaction I wouldn't know which bit had caused it.

They're old enough now that autism isn't really a risk, but there are other immune disorders in the family so we remain careful. That's our choice, and of course we have no way of knowing whether it's the right one as we don't have clones to test the immune responses on!

Stata, the evidence is both before my eyes, in my daughter who was damaged, and my daughter who has been shown to have dubious mitochondrial issue markers, and in the studies which are saying "oh look. mitochondrial issues may be implicated"

yes, they are saying "may". it is not concrete. but it is also not dismissed.

which is why it is a sod of a decision to make.

I have never said that I just sat up one day and thought "I know, I don't think I'll bother with any more vaccines. my girls will be ok - after all, most people jab, so why worry?"

most of the people on these threads who have not vaxxed are aware of the issues. and are aware that there is a possibility that the wild disease would cause as much harm, potentially, as the vaccine would, potentially.

but that is Hobson's choice, isn't it?

there is no right answer.

just as there is no way you can definitively say "this is not happening"

The fact is though that for each child who is vaccine damaged, hundred would be dz damaged. Obviously, that doesn't give you much consolation but that's what someone considering whether to immunise or not needs to consider. Vaccine damage is rare and unfortunate and I'd support research to make them safer. But it's still safer than being exposed to the dz.

It is not why do I think she couldn't cope. It is why the doctors who have had the honesty to study her case think she couldn't cope.

They agree with me that the current situation is as follows;

Jab child number 1 with everything you are told to - wait to see if child resists or not. If child resists continue jabbing subsequent children. If not, accept our apologies and we suggest that you refrain from performing the same experiment on any siblings.

Gee thanks, medical community. That is some great bloody comfort for my eldest daughter - not.

threads like these make me want to cry.

lovely to see you saintly.

actually we wondered about the full blown disease

so went through one by one and assessed our kids risks from vax and from disease - this included the likelihood of catching the thing. We concluded that given our current state of knowledge we were safer waiting. This could change with further information about ds1 - we are waiting for genetic results for example. It's not fixed in stone, we just make the decisions we do based on the evidence we have at the moment.

I'm sure you didn't silver. But you've signed yourself up to a movement which touts conspiracy theory (a la wakefield) and a rejection of scientific enquiry.

I think it's perfectly rational to look at each dz separately, the prevalence, the complications if you suspect that you may be at increased risk - even if it's just suggested in the literature but not really explored. But at least acknowledge that you're benefiting from herd immunity, i.e. that you may be able to benefit from the best of both worlds. If you KNOW that your child will get measles because it's being trasmitted, then maybe vaxing IS the best choice. And acknowledge the doubt. What i hear from Leonie, for example, is that she's sure she made the right decision for her children. Well, no-one can be sure, either way.

stata - you are treating every child as exactly equal but they are not. The majority of children will be more at risk from the disease (well some of them, really don't understand the logic of vaccinating against mumps), and it depends on the age - for a child prone to seizures then pertussis vaccination might be more of a risk than whooping cough. But for some children they will - because of their particular makeup - be more at risk from the vaccination.

Every single child will have their own individual risk/benefit ratio.

That makes sense to me saintly.

stata- I have a child who at 12 years old cannot speak, who will require lifelong 1:1 care - I hardly think I am benefitting from the best of both worlds.

but Stata, what the person considering whether to vaccinate or not also needs to know is what the current research in the field is saying - re: the caution if family history of autoimmne, gut disorder etc.

which is where these threads all start out - with people who have reason to be cautious popping up and saying "erm, you might want to be cautious if XYZ".

My previous post was for your previous post saintly!

What i've said is that we don't know which children are more at risk other than certain identified groups.

As I've said silver. i'm not anti or pro vax - I'm pro evidence based decision making. That's my crusade ;)

agree with saintly on that one - I'm not so sure that my family are getting the best of both worlds

"Vaccine damage is rare and unfortunate and I'd support research to make them safer. But it's still safer than being exposed to the dz."

Well not for my daughter it wasn't.

Saying "Vaccine damage is rare and unfortunate" is very very offensive to people like me. It is the reason why I very rarely enter in discussions with people like you anymore. I do not wish to continue this discussion with you. I have made my point and shall now rehide this thread.

and not much attempt is being made to find out stata. For some reason the concept of identifying children before they are damaged seems to be heresy.

So when considering ds2 and ds3 I have read widely and identified what I feel to be risk factors. No-one else is going to do it for me. I believe that my children potentially belong to a group that is more at risk than average. We have acted in a number of ways that may reduce that risk.

If we get further information then we may make different decisions.

Just one last point.

Fuck off with your best of both worlds would you please?

but you ignore studies which are showing stonking great question marks over immune involvement.

to say over and over agian, as you have throughout the thread that parents are crazy to not vaccinate.

that there is no reason for people to be cautious.

that parents like me shoudl be ignored when we say that sometimes caution is the right route; and that parents like me are basing our decisions on a big fat nothing.

which is untrue.

your family's risk/benfit ratio is not the same as my family's.

I have never told anyone NOT to vaccinate. I have frequently agreed that the majority of vaccines are safe for the majority of people.

your position is that it is not possible to search and pre-select the minority groups who may be affected.

I disagree, and think that there is growing evidence to support my position. yes, this evidence does not yet have a fully grown conclusion - but these things do take time.

and I do not htink that the suggestions should be ignored inthe meantime.

they could screen Ig levels

this is also interesting as MMR doesn't appear to work as well in autism groups So all the risk and none of the benefit for some??? Who knows.