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)

Your kids might not need it Vallhala but I know kids who have to take an inhaler every day.

Re Wakefield - I think that he did a massive misservice to non-vaxxers. If there is a link, and if he had done the research in a way that conventional medicine would be able to accept it - then it would be much easier for people to make an informed choice.

Because of the flawed research claims, anyone arguing against the autism/mmr link is automatically discredited.

Bad science linking putting the scientific evidence in simple, easy to understand terms.

Silverfrog, no need for insults. It hasn't been replicated and it HAS been withdrawn by the Lancet. If you say otherwise, please do show me where.

Sure, if you search long and hard enough you might find a doctor who wants to go out on a limb and support Wakefield. Do the vast majority of doctors? Absolutely not.

Lady of the Manor, yes you are, poor little things.

What if in years to come, they go off on a gap year travelling, do you want them sick on the other side of the world?

LadyOfTheManor - and there lies the typical anti-vac argument - make it sound scary and dangerous and therefore it must be.
I bet you can't believe all these people who strap their kids into a piece of metal and propel them around at 70mph either.

If they need vaccinating when they are 18 they will be adult enough to make that decision. Until then, it is my decision.

If you don't like it, tough. You made your "informed" decision for your children, I have done the same.

Obviously YABvU

stata - it is not "the odd doctor going out on a limb"

the science form the 1998 paper (which ahs been repeatedly described, by Wakefield's detractors, and as part of the prosecution case at the gmc, as "good science, which still stands" - by the very same person who then withdrew the paper form publication!) has been replicated, several times, around the world.

you not looking for it, does not make it untrue.

and the fact remains, there are strong links betwen autism and vaccine damage.

wakefield (and the others! et's not forget them) 1998 paper followed protocols which hold up to this day.

it was not unethical.

he followed procedure.

he found a new form of bowel disease which he reported. this finding has been replicated several times.

StataLover, again if you ask a non-vaxxer where to read up on vaccinations, they don't send you to vaxareevil.com. And yes parents do need to read up on the subject if they're asking the question. Because in most cases vaccination will be fine for them and they'll be reassured by what they find. There are GPs out there who will discuss this with you in a calm, rational and non-biased manner. Though I've only met two of them admittedly. They recommended that my eldest niece was vaccinated in hospital and thank God they did because she wouldn't be here if they hadn't. And the younger two have followed a different vaccination schedule to the one recommended as per the GP's suggestion.

And while you acknowledge there are children for whom vaccination is dangerous, you can't make all the sweeping generalisations you do.

And Andrew Wakefield's science is still considered 'good' btw. All ethics aside. There's no getting away from that.

buttonmooncup, yes but that is as a result of being diagnosed with an illness, and not as a result of possibly preventing an illness which might but hasn't already happened, IYSWIM.

Wakefield's science isn't good. Ethics aside. If you bias your sample then your results aren't representative for a start.

Ladyofthemanor - no actually your children could have medical autonomy way before that age. No doctor wants to act against a parent's wishes but if a child asked for a vaccination and could demonstrate that they understood the issue then I think there's a good chance of receiving it. It's a fallacy to assume that parents have the right to know everything about an under 18s medical history or that they have the right to make all decisions.

Buttonmooncup

I don't have an anti vac argument. I am not trying to tell other people what to do with their child.

I only have responsibility for making my decisions for my child. Without any knowledge of my children I think I am entitled to view anyone who judges me for those decisions as an ignorant twat.

That's all.

And it was unethical. You cannot perform non-clinically indicated risky procedures on children for research purposes. You simply can't. It's unethical.

SOH
Can you link to a pro-Wakefield piece, something recent?

From what I understood, the children he used were not representative of the population, so the results were skewed. Was that not the issue?

Northern- Oh don't worry I shall educate my children against the dangers of vaccinations

but like I and few others said earlier, if all your kiddies are vaccinated, you have nothing to worry about our germ carriers!

Actually no Wakefield's 'science' is not good or robust in its evidence and reporting.

Please see Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.

Will hide thread now, 'informed' maybe, intelligent evidence based decision making - no.

silverfrog if you can show me a paper in a peer-reviewed journal that replicates wakefield's work, then I'll happily stand corrected. Such is science. I've looked (and I have access to pubmed and other databases) but nada.

Exactly blackbag 'informed' and 'educated' here doesn't equal scientific evidence based decision making which to me is absolutely at the heart of the matter

The difference between medical treatment though and vaccination is that refusing medical treatment for an already existing condition would almost certainly mean harm (or worse) to the child. But not vaccinating does not guarantee that your child will catch the diseases he/she should have been vaccinated against. And vaccinating does not guarantee that the child won't catch those illnesses.

Furthermore, catching certain of the illnesses we vaccinate against creates life-long immunity, whereas vaccinating against those illnesses does not, and in fact in some instances increases the risk. Mumps for instance is rarely harmful to children. However it is extremely harmful especially to adult men. Therefore, we vaccinate against mumps at the time when children are at least risk from the side effects of it, thus putting them of greater risk of catching it and thus serious complications when they are adults and the vaccination has warn off. If we just let children catch mumps instead of thinking of the here and now and vaccinating them against it, most would catch it and be fully immune for life. But now we have a situation where mumps in adults is on the increase.

Am not going to go into the other reasons for not vaccinating - there are others on mn who can make those points more elequantly than I can.

But ultimately if your child is vaccinated and you're happy about that then it's really none of your business what anyone else does.

What's the problem?

If you don't want to get your dc vaccinated don't, if you do then do.

Stop slinging mud.

No I can't. I'm in a library on a clunky old computer and need to go and pick up my dd.

Andrew Wakefield wasn't looking at the general population was he? That's the point I think.

Really got to go.

And I've read Bad Science btw. I've even bought it as a gift for people.

Really going now.

LOTM - what's the difference between 'educating' and 'brainwashing'?

Do people think that until Big Pharma stops contributing to the Government's coffers there will for some always be doubt about the motivation for advocating vaccination? Likewise until Big Pharma are a lot more transparent in what they do, how they research and so on?

I've found that the majority of non vaxers (and yes, I'm a "non" not an "anti" too), have done more research than those who just blithely wander into their local vax clinic because it's almost just something you do, a rite of passage, a marker in a child's history... sat at X age, cut first tooth aged Y, vaxed at Z...

I've also found that class has much to do with it, with the middle classes more likely to research and be non vaxers than the working classes IME. Not a generalisation I fit into but it's how it seems at large IME.

(Genuine question, not an issue which troubles me either way per se as it won't affect my decision and not said with intent to inflame).