To wonder why on earth you would not vaccinate your DCs?

[olimpia]

I hear from another thread that some people choose not to vaccinate their DCs at all and I'm genuinely interested to hear why because I can't think of a single reason not to. I can perhaps understand opting out of the MMR if someone believes the bad press (not that I do) but all the other vaccinations? Why, oh why?
(not a troll! Just relatively new to MN)

good point bubbly mummy (nice name btw) but still we need to be reminded that such diseases can kill and damage young infants.

the doctors today certianly would find it difficult to recognise such diseases when you think about it. have been removed from general public for so long, that would they instantly think whooping cough? german measles? they are only just cottoning on to the rise of ricketts in this country.

one question i would like to ask everybody , if you are delaying vaccines until older, how old is ok to receive vaccination?

Blackcurrants

You said

" I remember thinking when I was pregnant, I'd sooner DS was autistic than dead. I cannot understand the opposing point of view, I just can't"

My son is severely autistic. My DD is unvaccinated as we seem to have a massively fucked up immune system.
Whilst I suspect you did not mean it that way, I think this is one of the most trite and upsetting things I have ever read on here.

You have no notion what having a very severely disabled child is like, how it impacts her siblings and how it affects him. I adore him but his life is filled with fear and distress.
To use some glib assessment of how 'at least he is not dead' as a reason to criticise people who, like me, may have reason to be fearful of vaccination is pretty upsetting.

As I said, I suspect you didn't really think it through but I find it pretty awful.

I understand the reasons why this is a heated topic - we fear for our own children and disagree about how to protect them. But really.

And fwiw I shouldn't have looked at this again and I will leave.
Sorry for jumping in.

Bumbleymummy.

The Internet has a lot of websites about UFOs too.

I am being a little flippant (sorry) but my point still stands. It is down to the relative amount of scientific support for each side of the argument.

I can find people on the Internet who claim to have evidence of the existence of God, but they only think they do, and it does not stand up to the challenge of the vast majority of scientific "opinion".

Eragon, some vaccines (such as whooping cough) are less important as you get older because the diseases are not as serious in older children and adults. I think the risk of hib greatly decreases after the age of 5 too iirc (someone else can correct me on that) Also, as mentioned earlier, certain vaccines (such as TB) become completely ineffective after a certain age.

Other diseases are milder and less risky in childhood eg. Rubella but obviously rubella can be very dangerous to a developing baby so some people choose to check their child's immunity before puberty and vaccinate if necessary to ensure that they are immune when they are pregnant. Similarly for mumps in males - while 'there is no firm evidence that mumps causes sterility' (HPA) it can cause orchitis in post pubescent males and can generally be much more unpleasant in adults so again, people have their child's immunity tested before puberty and vaccinate if required.

Some diseases (such as polio and diphtheria) aren't endemic in the UK so some people are happy to delay them if they aren't travelling.

Basically, it all really depends on the vaccine and the disease itself - it's incidence, risks of complications etc. If you visit the vaccination board you will see lots of different choices that people have made wrt vaccines whether it's delaying them,selectively vaccinating or not vaccinating at all.

Techno, here you go it's from pubmed, not a UFO site :)

"The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate. The evidence of adverse events following immunisation with the MMR vaccine cannot be separated from its role in preventing the target diseases."

I've not read the whole thread. The way I see it is that I find the way that the government implements vaccination programmes quite unethical and the total refusal to accept that vaccine damage can occur does nothing to make me feel reassured.

Personally I was more concerned about the infant vaccines than the MMR. I never could find a good reason as to why tiny babies need to be vaccinated at 8 weeks, other than a suggestion from the health visitor that it is only to catch babies before their mums resturn to work. To me, that is not a good clinical reason.

Bottom line - if the government wants people to comply with the herd immunity theory then it's about time they stopped gaslighting people and paid compensation to those who are vaccine damaged, as well as looking at a person's medical history before deciding whether ever vaccine on the programme is appropriate for them.

I agree with pagwatch's post above. I've heard people say that before and it does show a total lack of understanding and quite frankly stupidity. I have a severely autistic dd and certainly is a hard road to travel and also not one which there is ever a much of a solution to. There is always something to worry about next and the stress is unimaginable. And yes, the impacts on siblings is a big thing for us too.

Bumbleymummy.

The same study also says " Exposure to the MMR vaccine was unlikely to be associated with autism, asthma, leukaemia, hay fever, type 1 diabetes, gait disturbance, Crohn's disease, demyelinating diseases, bacterial or viral infections."

My point is, that the vast majority of people who have concerns about MMR will quote the Wakefield study because of the media's publicity of this refuted evidence.

That sort of reporting gets in the way of more healthy evidence based debate, which is dangerous.

I don't agree with the comment that the government say that vaccines are completely safe. They only say they are adequately safe - it is right that we promote debate regarding the threshold of what is "safe".

I do however agree that sufficient support should be given for individual patients, but sadly it is cheaper to pay compensation to a very small minority than it is to undertake a comprehensive screening programme. The problem then becomes that it is very hard to prove that the vaccine cause any new illness to a child and so it must be difficult to get them to payout. It is far from ideal!

I have to go to bed now, but will check for responses tomorrow night.

i have seen the results of measles and whooping cough in my family lets just say it aint pretty and visable impact on life is ongoing. it may be a mild disease for some, but when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong.

The world is full of people who were conceived accidently so the idea of testing for immunity while pregnant still strikes me as shutting the stable door after the horse has left.
I dont like the idea of waiting until puberty before vaccinating,as this doesnt stop the spread of the disease to pregnant woman, and god knows plenty of teens get pregnant, and also teens mix with mothers.

We are a country with a rather open door policy, so just relying on disease being abroad doesnt strike me as a reliable either. TB is one of those, and its concerning that current treatment is less effective.

Certainly as a family we have travelled around with the kids, who knows who we bumped into?

I think vaccination is the only form of alternative therapy that i agree with and so my children are fully vaccinated.

I breast fed all my kids for years, and it aint no magic boob juice, they get ill when an infection is bad enough.

they had a good diet etc, but still people have accidents and get ill etc. vitamins and fibre dont stop people from getting brain damage from whooping cough or curvature of the spine and deafness developing in the womb when your mother has measles carrying you.

I dont use any other alternative medicine, as its not tested, etc, and homeopathy is a load of bull. But that said , placebos i do believe in.....I wont part with cash for that though..

if anyone every says that water holds memory again I think i will just scream and hand them an ice cube.

There's no refusal to accept vaccine damage. It's treated in the same way as any side effect from a drug. Can happen but highly unlikel ( although since my dd was the victim of a highly rare medical event herself, thats no consolation when YOU are the 0.01%) and who knows, maybe those same children are the ones to react badly if they get the full blown disease. We'll never know but makes further the case for immunizing all those who should be immunized.

I don't get what the big deal is about getting a booster shot. Took the dog a few months ago, taking dd for her varicella one soon. Natural immunity also wanes if the immune system isn't stimulated when disease circulating. Totally not a big deal IMHO and still better than the dz plus, of course, if immunized usually milder case.

I dont like the idea of waiting until puberty before vaccinating,as this doesnt stop the spread of the disease to pregnant woman, and god knows plenty of teens get pregnant, and also teens mix with mothers.

But if the pregnant women had themselves been vaccinated just before puberty why would it be a problem? Teens getting pregnant by definition will have passed puberty.

If the protection of the vaccine wears off after a few years, there doesn't seem a lot of sense in vaccinating babies for something which won't affect them for at least nine years, mostly a few years more - thinking about rubella & mumps here.

Eragon,

Where did I suggest testing for immunity while pregnant? I said before puberty. (ie. before they are capable of getting pregnant so that also covers teen mothers)

I don't think it is a child's responsibility to protect a pregnant woman from a disease. She could be vaccinated herself. Depending on other people's immunity to a disease to protect you is not reliable - you do not know who is/is not immune. Both my boys had rubella when they were under a year old (under the age for MMR), vaccines are not 100% effective and they don't offer lifelong protection. So you could unknowingly come into contact with people who are no immune every day.

I don't think I spoke about the treatment for TB, I said the vaccine itself is ineffective after a certain age. In any case, it is only given to babies in high risk areas (not the population as a whole) and that is because it offers some protection to TB meningitis in babies. It does not protect against pulmonary TB.

Elaine, how do you know when you need a booster? It's based on assumptions. A) that you got immunity from the vaccine in the first place
B) that your immunity from the vaccine lasted a certain amount of time.

It's not exactly reliable. Personally I wouldn't like to risk my immunity to CP/rubella/measles wearing off before I got pregnant without me realising it.

I disagree Elaine - there is a deliberate attempt to cover up the possibility of vaccine damage and denial when it does happen - do you have evidence to the contrary, if so I'm happy to hear it and would be pleased if practitioners are now behaving more responsibly. There was a mner on here recently saying the nurse refused to let her see the information that came with a vaccine. With a drug you get a leaflet which details all the possible side effects.

Yes, Elaine, sadly many MNers have experienced first hand how difficult it is to get vaccine damage recognised.

random fact:

when I was adopted my Birth mother demanded I not have some vaccinations.

why could she do that when she was giving me up for adoption anyway? Surely once adopted the decision should have been with my actual mum? She had to just sit on her hands and not vaccinate!

And actually, when you say 'highly unlikely' that is not correct. The risk differs from person to person. For some people it's unlikely, for others it's far more likely.

My reason, not sure now. At the time it was a case of 'no smoke without fire'.

Hubs didn't want to. I now want them to have the MMR. He is still a bit off about our youngest (5) having it.

At the time, I was told by loads of sheeple, that I was being unreasonable because I didn't do it.

I am not sure if I have done the right or the wrong to be honest.

techno dad, 'unlikely to be associated with' isn't exactly concrete proof is it? :)

Or we could say that there are many conditions with an unknown aetiology. That's my opinion, sorry I know that may be hurtful to some but it's a sad fact.

There is no grand vaccine cover up any more than there are cover ups for other drugs. Of course it can happen, but no more likely than for antibiotics.

It's not so much a grand cover up as merely that health officials have a different priority to what's best for your individual child. They are more concerned about reducing the incidence of a disease generally, not wrong in itself but certain things are not investigated and studies are not done to find out things like the effects of vaccines on certain people because it is not in the interests of the government or pharma companies to do so! There are various conflicts of interest which unfortunately collide with what's best for the individual. That's life - but it does explain why some of us choose not to vaccinate.

I've never heard of antibiotics causing brain damage - has this actually happened?

Btw, very satisfied with those assumptions bubbly. Works at a population level, fine by me. We all know vaccines aren't 100% effective, depending on which vaccine. Better to have a booster earlier than later. Btw, don't rely on natural immunity, it ain't perfect either.