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)

if its abusive not to vaccinate then its abusive to have children in the first place life brings upon us untold difficulties eventually killing us, whether we are vaccinated or not. Logically can you call someone abusive for not vaccinating a tiny fragment of diseases "widely available" when there are many diseases and risks in life which far exceed these. I always find it interesting how aggressive people are towards those who choose to do things differently. i used to be a veggie and people attacked me in the same way. We perhaps need to question why we are so frightened of those who dont follow the established "rules". and i do hope that all those who are illustrating such forceful opinions on this subject have thoroughly investigated it beforehand.

mmelindt - the data was never meant to be representative of the population.

the supposition was that up to 7% of children with ASD may have been affected.

which is why a lot of the paper which "disprove" the Wakefield hypothesis do not stand up - because they have not examined the right group.

it is a fact that mmr is safe for the majority of people.

but the question remains as to whether it is safe for the minority. and it is a big question.

the replication of Wakefiled's work - finding the new bowel disease following mmr vaccination points ot there being a case to answer.

and still people like to ignore it.

it is a problem, and it is not going away.

the science does stand - whatever Goldacre may say on the matter, Wakefiled found a form of bowel disease which had never been seen beofre.

yes, there was a "skew" of patients - he only saw patients with bowel disease! his paper was a case series which called ofr more research (which, incidentally, the Cochrane review also called for - it concluded that there wasn not enough evidence either way. not a great vote of confidence, tbh). it was never a study - it was a publishing of some case notes. perfectly acceptable.

and fwiw, the procedures were clinically indicated (unless you believe that a patient presenting with severe and chronic digestive issues including persistent and chronic diarrhoea, undiegested food in stools, bleeding copiously form the gut, and chronic pain in the gut do not need investigating)

Northern you tell me- the NHS got to you first.

IME, Val it's the semi-scientifically educated middle classes who choose not to vaccinate. It's those who are educated enough to be able to do all this 'research' but not educated enough to actually fully understand scientific research. That's why it's mainly humanities graduates who choose not to vax. People who understand science do vax.

Anyway, there is NOTHING wrong, IMO, with following medical advice. It's the hubris that I've seen here with people with zero medical or scientific training thinking that they know better than professionals that makes me engage on these posts.

That aside, yes, big pharma does do shitty things in the name of profit. But there's enough independent evidence that vax are safe and effective. Other aspects of big pharma worry me more.

The GMC found that the procedures were not clinically indicated. They found him guilty of unethical behaviour. I don't presume to know better than the GMC - I am not a medical professional.

Stata: That's why it's mainly humanities graduates who choose not to vax.

really?

do you have any data to back that up

do people even collect data on this?

"IME, Val it's the semi-scientifically educated middle classes who choose not to vaccinate. It's those who are educated enough to be able to do all this 'research' but not educated enough to actually fully understand scientific research."

I'm bloody glad that I pointed out that I wasn't amongst that generalisation now, StataLover! :o

Its personal choice, Id assume people try to weigh up the pros and cons to make the most informed decision they can.

Calling it abuse is insulting and very wrong.

tht's just hiding behind a dodgy decision, thoufh, Stat.

seriously - do you really think he should not have clinically investigated symptoms such as I described above?

I don't know. I am not qualified to make that judgement, neither are you tbh, unless you are medically trained. The GMC is.

The NHS doesn't 'get' to anybody. There is overwhelming evidence that vaccinating is safe for the majority and the risks involved are outweighed by the benefits.
Education is about seeing both sides of an issue. LOTM you said you would point out the 'dangers' of vaccinations. That is not education. Will you also be pointing out the benefits?

Vallhala. I think where the research is being done is the problem. If you look at the actual, peer-reviewed research there is absolutely no doubt that unless your child is in one of the excluded groups you should vaccinate. If you look at anti-vac websites for your research then you will get a lot of theory, speculation and often irrelevant links to out of date/unscientific research that is dressed up as being relevant. Either that or anomoly studies that show results that haven't been replicated. When 10 valid studies have been carried out into a subject why would you want to look at the one that shows a different result?
Anyone who looks at all the research at source and is able to understand it would vaccinate their kids. If the problem is that people can't understand the information then I think the decision should be taken out of the hands of parents and put into the hands of people who are qualified to interpret research.
Yes - big Pharma need to be more transparent and shouldn't automatically be trusted which is why you should look at the research yourself - at source - and not rely on secondary interpretations which are going to be swayed by the motives of whoever is interpreting it.

IME, Val it's the semi-scientifically educated middle classes who choose not to vaccinate. It's those who are educated enough to be able to do all this 'research' but not educated enough to actually fully understand scientific research

Purely anecdotal with zero evidence to back it up as well as being a sweeping generalization. Guilty as charged. But in my defence not as bad as Val saying that workign classes vax and middle classes don't (but I'm still yet to be proved wrong!)

yep, still hiding behind someone else's dodgy decision there.

you really cannot just come out and say whether someone presenting with severe pain, chronic digestive disorders, including blood and undigested food in stools, and persistent and chronic diarrhoea (who, of course, ahs been through the "usual suspects" line up of treatments) shoudl be clinically investigated for their symptoms?

get off the fence.

Northern- vaccinating because Parliament suggests it's the right thing to do isn't making an informed decision.

I shall be telling my dc the research into the said vaccines I am opposed to. I doubt they will care tbh. My ds had his tetanus (done privately) where I was informed that it wasn't crucial for the MMR to be done-and given research from the Dr.

Interesting. Do as you please, and I shall do the same

The people most qualified to decide about vaccinations are bookmakers, because that's what it's all about what are the odds for catching the disease v's the odds of being affected by the vaccines ?
Most people are affected by the vaccines but the symptoms are mild and seen as being the lesser of two evils.

umm i hate to disagree but many doctors i know do not vaccinate their children, id say they know a little about the issue, no i dont have data btw!! they are friends of mine and people ive come cross through my lo

Abuse, no. Fucking stupid, generally, yes.
and as for anti-vaxers "taking the time to research and read everything", judguing by the links that are given on these debates, they read utter drivel written by lone conspiracy theorists sitting in basements with tin-foil hats on.

emsy
The one doc I know who didn't vaccinate his children against chicken pox had the only daughter in kindergarten who has severely ill and hospitalised. All his little patients were fine, as he recommended vaccination.

Of course they should be clinically investigated. However, clearly what Wakefield did in the course of that clinical investigation wasn't clinically indicated. I don't need to get off any fence. If you don't have medical training then you're not in a position to determine if what Wakefield did was ethical or not.

Of course they should be clinically investigated - that doesn't have to follow that the first assumption would be vaccine damage does it?
You raise a valid point that the media frenzy was possibly more responsible for the scaremongering than Wakefield himself but the fact is that MMR uptake dropped and more kids died as result of the corrupt research and it's interpretation by journalists and editors who may not have a scientific background.

And although I agree with your sentiment OP - child abuse is the wrong way of putting it as it implies intent.

Stata - the procedures Wakefield followed, and the investigations undertaken are standard practise.

he (and his team - he did not carry out the procedures, after all) dd not experiment, nor did he investigate unneccessarily.

buttonmooncup - the "first assumption" was not that is was vaccine damage.

but the findings were what they were.

he found a new form of bowel disease.

the case histories taken indicated that mmr may be implicated. so he published the case series and suggested further research was necessary to help protect a small subgroup of children who may be extraordinarily susceptible to the jab.

that is all.

just one more thing and then im off. child abuse is horrendous and i have dealt with children who have been abused lets not undervalue what real child abuse is by using it to hurl insults at people with a different point of view. hmm