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)

Well if you have had measles and have breast fed (or even not) then the risk of a 6 month old catching measles is pretty slim. And the risk of a bad dose is smaller still. MCV isn't given before 12 months because maternal antibodies interfere with the development of immunity.

Of course once again the risk is individual and will depend on whether the mother had measles herself, and her antibody levels and whether she breastfeeds etc. But that's up to the individual to assess.

LeBFG - rather than trying to get information from population level studies I prefer to read the papers on the conditions my children are at risk of. DS2 and Ds3 were at very high risk of autism, so I read those papers. So far we know that the immune system is often implicated in the development of autism. Actually the evidence wasn't quite so clear 8 or so years ago when we had to make these decisions, but there were some suggestions the immune system was involved in some cases of autism. Today that's not controversial at all. Now I await the papers that will explain exactly how it is involved (probably many different ways).

How about brain damage following a vaccination?

Or brain damage following a regular common every day virus that really shouldn't cause brain damage? (For which there is no vaccination and never will be because it's not 'serious' enough).

The government can't know everything and I think its naive to think you can.
There was a recent study that showed delaying certain vaccines to 4 months instead of 2 months reduced the risk of asthma.

I'm not anti vaccination. I just think some babies can't cope with 15(?) vaccinations by 6 months or so.

exexe - way up thread somewhere I linked to a (pro vax) paper from the BMJ which talked about the timing of vaccinations, and how altering the timing might have consequences. Interesting.

That is an interesting link, but as far as I'm aware, there IS no link between MMR and autism - it's been studied so much, surely they would have found a link by now.

Substite measles for polio if you like...

There hasn't been a case of polio in the UK since the early 90s.

Argue away about the timetable of vaccinations, whether to combine vaccines or not etc

OP asked why people choose to not vaccinate AT ALL.

Well this is the reason, isn't it?
The adverse effects of vaccintions. Which may be caused possibly by the timing and the combination and thus, the overloading of a very young and, in some cases under developed immune system.

Thanks goodness, bumbley. Btw, measles was down to 40 in 2006/7 in France. By 2011 it was over 3500 cases. Things can change over a very short time frame when the people decide to go with their feelings and not vaccinate.

I had a big argument debate with a couple of friends on facebook about this.

I realised that although they'd done loads of research on the risks of vaccinations (some reasonable, but much of it from pretty dubious sources) they were woefully ignorant on the dangers of the actual diseases that the vaccinations were preventing.

They thought that Measles, Mumps and Rubella weren't that serious, and that they certainly couldn't kill you

One of them didn't want to take a tetanus again as she thinks it gave her eczema the last time she took it. She had no idea that tetanus could be dangerous, she thought if she caught it, she'd just get treatment for it, wouldn't she? (My flatmate is a nurse and has been treating a patient with paralysis and brain damage after getting tetanus),.

They also had no knowledge of the risks of epidemics or pandemics.

I heard a very interesting podcast recently about the power of stories in assessing risks, and they related it to vaccination scares. It said that stories are a powerful way to get messages across, often more powerful than statistics.
They were saying that stories about vaccinations causing Autism etc stick in people's minds,. no matter what the evidence says, and that the health profession should try to counteract vaccination scare stories with their own stories, rather than rely solely on stats and evidence, as they don't fire the public imagination. I'll see if I can find the link ...

Story-telling rather than using evidence is a technique Cameron is using very effectively to manipulate the public at the moment, incidentally, but I digress

oh yes I was just reading about polio this morning www.issuesinmedicalethics.org/202co114.html

I haven't vaccinated ds2 or ds3 AT ALL. Because of ds1.

The report I linked to above regarding autism and the immune system was nothing to do with the MMR. It was reporting on one of the latest papers showing that some types of autism seem to be linked to a dysfunctional immune system. If YOUR child regressed - lost speech sounds, never regained them - following an immune event, and you knew that autism was in some cases linked to a dysfunctional immune system, what do you think might have happened to your child?

And ha ha ha at 'they would have found a link by now'. Erm - well they won't if they carry on refusing to examine the subgroup of children and instead spout nonsense about 'autism' (not one thing) and MMR.

saintly we're going around in circles.

How about brain damage following a vaccination?

Given the choice of a chance of 0.0002% of brain damage through a vaccine and 0.002% as a consequence of contracting a vaccinatable disease, yes, I'l choose the vaccine. Wouldn't you?

I'm very sorry about your DS1 saintly - just realised my post was insensitive.

I just mean that it is all about assessing the risks. They really have done a lot of reasearch wrt autism, I think they really wanted to find a link tbh (such was the public feeling at the time). I don't know the ins-and-outs of it all and the cuurent research looks very promising.

Why did you pick 2006? There were over 5,000 cases in 2002, over 4,000 in 2004, a drop down to 40 in 2006 and over 5,000 again in 2010. It tends to go in cycles.

I don't think mumps is a big killer is it? Or rubella unless contracted very early in pregnancy (i.e. dangerous to a very small, specific population). And as I have said multiple times on here, when ds1 had rubella he didn't pass it to anyone. But he caught it from someone who wasn't socially responsible enough to find out that being vaccinated doesn't guarantee immunity.

I'd quite like to give ds2 and ds3 tetanus, but it can only be given as a 5 in one, which I'm not giving. If they end up with a tetanus type wound they'll have to have immunoglobulin. Not ideal, but they give that to people with full vaccination for high risk wounds anyway.

I'm well aware of the dangers of tetanus disease which is why I've asked my GP on more than one occasion whether he can source single tetanus vaccination for ds2 and ds3 (and yes I have said I would pay).

Check out figure 1

Alice, rubella and mumps are extremely unlikely to kill you. Risk of death from rubella is 1 in 30,000 from a link someone posted earlier. You might want to do a bit of reading up on the diseases yourself before you start criticising your friends.

Alice again, the treatment for tetanus is tetanus immunoglobulin. If you have a serious wound that would be a tetanus risk you are given it regardless of whether or not you have been vaccinated.

I also think that an issue with my friends who are not vaccinating their DCs is that they see distrust the system, for reasons totally separate to this. They are then more likely to give credence to ideas which challenge the system than those which come from the government.

For intelligent women, they have a very tenuous grasp of scientific method, they think it's all controlled by people for financial gain these days and simply don't trust medical advice.

They also seem unable to see beyond the individual, it's about their personal choice; responsibility to society doesn't come into it.*

It's a sorry state of affairs IMO, this kind of behaviour risks an epidemic or worse a pandemic which will be absolutely catastrophic for humanity.

*(Note I'm not talking here about all people who chose not to vaccinate, just the ones I know personally).

Who has really does a lot of work wrt autism? The only work that was done directly with the children affected by autism and bowel disease was stopped- along with a lot of treatment for children with autism and bowel disease.

There have been lots of population studies looking at 'autism' and MMR which is a nonsense as no-one has ever suggested 'autism' is caused by MMR. Rather that a subgroup of children with regression, autism and/or CDD, and bowel disease may have been affected by MMR. This is different.

Anyway it was irrelevant to us as DS1 doesn't have any symptoms of the MMR group, so we didn't base our decision making on it. More on autism and the immune system psychcentral.com/news/2012/01/04/mouse-study-links-immune-disorders-to-autism/33272.html It's a pretty big area of research right now, yet rarely mentioned

"If you have a serious wound that would be a tetanus risk you are given it regardless of whether or not you have been vaccinated."

Please tell that to the patient my friend was nursing who had paralysis and brain damage as a result of tetanus.

My point is that my friend thought it wan't dangerous. It is of course.

Sorry saintly, x-post. I think babyjabs offer the single tetanus vaccine.

Yes if course they're extremely unlikely to kill you!

But if the risk of death from rubella is 1 in 30,000, for example then that is a risk of death, yes? My friends thought there was no risk.

Yanbu, but i suppose they have their reasons, not sure what but hay ho its a personal choice.
My dds will be having them all

LeBFG - given that is seems very likely that ds1 has some sort of immune system abnormality. And given then ds3 certainly seems to share whatever immune system dysfunction ds1 has (given the results of various tests we have had over the years - which give a little further information) - ds3's risk from vaccination is not the same as 'average Joe'. If I had an average child then probably I would vaccinate (after all I did, when I thought I had an average child in ds1). But I don't so the figures are meaningless. They're meaningless for anyone as some children will have a near zero risk, some a very high risk. It would be nice to identify them beforehand.

ANyway I don't really care what anyone thinks. DS2 and DS3 can talk, can write, can go to the cinema, can go to the theatre, can go to pizza hut, will not need 24 hour care for the rest of their lives, can dress themselves, bathe themselves, cut up their food and feed themselves. And so on and so forth. Which is all I ever wanted for them (ds1 can't do any of those things).