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)

There is quite a lot of evidence that the broader autism phenotype (BAP) runs in families - this probably has contributed to the number of kids with AS being recognised.

But autism is not one thing. So the fact that AS seems to run in families isn't that relevant to someone like ds1.

We are a 'simplex' family. We have three boys, only one on the spectrum (severely). Incidentally I have 21 first cousins, many of whom have now had children and there are no autism diagnoses (and no undxed autism) anywhere in the extended family. In tests for AS features DH and I score very low. ie we do not show autistic features. Ds1 regressed after an immune event and our family history is full of conditions related to the immune system.

I don't look to people with AS, or what happens in AS, to get answers about what happened to my severely autistic son. I look at his immune system.

Me "rude"? "Slinging mud"?
When was a bit of sarcasm in MN not allowed?

Fully agree with SoozyWoozy.
Hence I am avoiding chemicals as much as I can in daily life. I hardly use Abs, ibuprofene and the like.... and would think twice about using any medicine at all.

Why? Because I have in the past used drugs/medicine, all given to me by kind doctors and consultants and I have learnt that they DO have strong side effects. And also that you might be given some very strong medicines just because they are there and not because they have been proven to be helpful. Did you know that only 15~20% of the medicines/treatments given have actually been proven to be efficient? And that about the same amount are given to patients even though they have been proven to be harmful? (That's from the BMJ by the way!)

Vaccines are the same. For a very long time, some vax were live vax and at the origin of most of the cases of the disease (sorry very well known name of the illness is escaping me there). But it was still considered to be the best ever, that benefits outweigh the risks etc... Until one pharmaceutical company decided to try another one wo live bacteria and... oh now that is the best and the first one should never be used (except in poor countries of course...).

I might be very cynical but I do not trust what pharmaceutical companies are telling me.
I prefer to make my own choices, taking into account my dcs needs and the needs of people around.

For me, it means that I would chose to vax my dcs but only at a later date when their immune system is much better developed than the one of a 2 months old baby. It also means that I would chose which vax to do and only do some of them after careful check of the risks associated.

I think it comes down to making informed choices and not relying on what the medical profession/the NHS/ the pharmaceutical companies are telling me to do.

I can only say why my DS is not fully vaccinated (My DD is boosters and all) . He is vaccinated but is yet to have the MMR because he has an allergy to Egg and the specialists and GPs can not agree on whether a) he can have it at all and b) where to have it (hospital or GPs).
Once they decide whether it is safe for him and where is safest (I personally think Hospital to be on the safe side and GP agrees 100% - consultant dissagrees but this is a consultant that isn't bothered about keeping parents informed or issuing Epipens despite clinical proof proving he needs it!) he will have it.
We will probably have to take the risk of an allergic reaction as he is not protected by heard immunity any more with people refusing to have it on a basis of being scared. That Dr Wakefield has a lot to answer for.

Have you got a link to that study lady? Would be interesting to read.

I hate the fact that DS has too take medicines on a daily basis but they keep him alive so it's the better of two evils really. He also has his flu jab each year as for him the risk of flu outweighs the risk of the vaccine.

I think some people do assume that those who vaccinate do so with no consideration of if it is the right thing to do which certainly in my case is far from the truth.

olimpia-we have been abroad to lots of places including a couple of less developed countries,Including India,we didnt vax.

From my personal experience of friends and aquaintences, the most common reason people give for not choosing to vaccinate is because they are paranoid that it is a conspiracy to poison their children. The "autism study" and homeopathy have a lot to answer for.

Second reason is they don't get around it to,

Third reason is allergies in child or family.

EasilyBored I remember reading something about that with regard to the tech industry / silicon valley. But that would be to do with people who have Aspergers and HFA. Interesting though. DH and I both have many traits and DS has been diagnosed. We have incredibly similar interests and personalities and met online so that would be a factor too presumably.

Johnny "he is not protected by heard immunity any more with people refusing to have it on a basis of being scared. That Dr Wakefield has a lot to answer for."

We have never had herd immunity to MM and R in the UK - even before Wakefield. People were anxious about getting the MMR (which is actualky the MMRII) even before Wakefield due to the MMRI being withdrawn due to bad side effects - encephalitis. These side effects were known about before the UK introduced it. The vaccine had already been withdrawn in the US and Canada prior to its introduction here.

cuddler you're either very brave or very irresponsible, whichever way one choses to look at it.

Really Jenny? I've never met anyone who thinks it is a conspiracy to poison their children - in RL or on any forums.

here is the link to the BMJ evidence.
Scroll down at the bottom of the page, you have a nice pie chart with all the number.
11% of treatments are beneficial and 23% are likely to be beneficial.

When my DS was due his first MMR several years ago I looked up the Danish study that was widely quoted by health professionals as the one which proved, once and for all, that the MMR vaccination was perfectly safe. I remember the study saying that there were zero cases of autism in the 250,000+ children in the study. There was a little asterisk next to this statement which led to a comment saying 'well, none that are attributable to the MMR vaccination anyway". I'm paraphrasing this quote obviously, but for me, this was enough to indicate a massive flaw in the study - there was no explanation or investigation, it just seemed like any autistic children were deleted from the data. As a result of this (and other research) my DS has not had the MMR.

I was just googling to find this study to quote the exact phrase used and came across this instead. Apparantly the Danish study only included children up to 4 years old and yet in Denmark autism is not diagnosed until 5 years old. Flawed much?!

When the original data from the study was re-analysed recently it was found that actually the children who had had the MMR were 45% more likely to have developed autism than those who did not have the MMR vaccination.

And when the study was re-run, this time including children aged 5 and over, autism was found to have increased eight-fold.

What worries me is all the anecdotal information about regressive autism. There is mention upthread about a child that regressed after the MMR vaccination. It seems to be the case that doctors say a link cannot be proved and everyone just gets on with their lives. Why are these cases not being officially recorded and investigated and results fed into the vaccination damage statistics. As far as I am aware researchers don't even differentiate between general autism and regressive autism.

I had a discussion with a paed along these lines once. I said I thought there was a relationship between X that dc2 had and his MMR.
he said that there was no proof that there was any link between the MMR and that illness.
I said 'that's true but there is also no proof that there is NO link.'
He stayed silent for a bit and then just said 'Yes that's true'.

And that's the issue isn't it? We have no proof there is a relationship between the MMR and autism. but we haven't proven that there is no relationship....

I am also very about regressive autism. If a child develops normally and then suddenly stops talking etc... and it happens just after a specific event the surely there should be an investigation going on as to whether there is a relationship in between.
If your child has a fall and stops talking, you look at the fall and where he got hurt on the head etc...
But with vax, not only it is dismissed but it is not even recorded....

Btw, this attitude re vax isn't just about autism. It is true for all sort of issues linked with immunization where there seems to be a very strong reluctance from health professional to even say there might be a relation between vax and whatever issue there is (autism but also allergic reaction, breathing problem, death etc...)

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22336803/?i=116&from=mmr

Don't know if I posted that already but it is interesting.

I was never vaccinated against TB due to moving schools and going up a year.

Given that we were living in rural Scotland at the time it wasn't an issue.

If however I were running my hand along the escalator hand-rail on the northern line on a daily basis it might be a different story.

I can only assume 24 years on that I have natural immunity.

You see the issue that I have with the MMR done so young is that all studies are done on children.
My understanding is that the vaccine 'wears off' and as adult you have little protection from these illnesses from the vax itself. But this is also the time when, if you catch the illness, you will be very ill from it.
Knowing that the illness will always be around (even at a low level), what is going to happen to all these adults that are not protected?

Would this be better in the vaccinations section of MN?

I know of a girl, aged 18 now whose parents were against vaccination. They lived in a commune so no herd immunity either.

She became pregnant last year, came into contact with Rubella,and gave birth to a child with catastrophic developmental abnormalities due to Congenital Rubella Syndrome and needs round the clock care, will never walk, talk, sit up, be continent. Her grandmother, aged 40 who made the decision not to vaccinate her children now has this on her conscience.

There may be farther reaching consequences than meets the eye.

^If she had had proper prenatal care, she would have been tested to find out if she an immunity to rubella. So it's not just her Grandmother's fault. Also, as an adult she could have made the choice to go and get vaccinated. I'm pro-vax, but that example should lay the blame at a couple of different door really.

Lady I thought you were meant to have a booster in your teens? I've had it three times (my mother couldn't remember if I had had the booster, so I had it again shortly before starting uni).

Alpine, the TB vaccine is ineffective anyway.

bumbley really? Why's that? Because of all the new strains and drug resistance?

I think it's the new strains AP. apparently it still offers some protection against TB meningitis in young children but it no longer protects against pulmonary TB. Other countries abandoned it years ago.