to think it's not terribly helpful to keep referring to parents who haven't MMR'd as "whack jobs"...

[MsGillis]

..or morons, or unfit parents, or up there with people who drink and drive?

I appreciate that people have very strong feelings around the subject, but I think that we need to understand that there are a significant number of parents who didn't/haven't vaccinated, not because they are crystal waving nutjobs, but because they are actually scared shitless and paralysed into indecision?

Surely there are ways and means to communicate information, and arrogantly shouting about how one person is right and anyone who disagrees is all kinds of nobhead is not going to be conducive in opening up reasonable dialogue?

Quite verbatim -should be quote (I really do need to sleep now

Just read all of this with interest and not responding to the latest stuff but..

This thing about Rubella and only immunizing girls at a certain age, allowing it become common again, seems a dangerous argument. We don't live in an isolated society but a global one. We may be able to test and vaccinate at at a later age but the whole world can't and won't. I don't think we can see this argument in isolation based upon first world levels of immunity and health care.

I do believe we are extraordinarily lucky to live in a part of the world and society where we can vaccinate and these major childhood killers have in most cases disappeared. I do have personal experience of adverse reaction (my older sister died from a reaction to the OLD polio vaccination, I had no jabs at all) so I am by no means denying legitimate grounds for not doing so BUT we chose to vaccinate our child as I firmly believe it is best for him (and others).

"People would be more inclined to listen to the medical profession on this, as on other issues, if the professionals available were of higher calibre."

What, like ex Dr Wakefield?

I never understood why only the girls in my school were vaccinated against rubella at 13. I was not vaccinated as I had turned 14 at the time the shots were done. It seemed to me a really poorly thought out programme. (Ireland, late 70s). All of my DCs had MMR (US early 90s)

Karlos if you are looking for some medical professional who will agree with you (perhaps someone who has done as much googling as you) why not some straight out and say it?

There comes a point where asking for assurance about vaccinations becomes a case of reinventing the wheel.

When - Eric Fonbonne is an epidemiologist working in Canada - presumably he was giving a guest lecture. In the years after that lecture one of their immunologists has been quoted as saying (& I have linked to that repeatedly) that children who have an immune dysfunction & autism might well do better having their vaccinations spread out.

A difference of opinion - who do you listen to? If you have a child born into a family with a family history of HFA & BAP I can see the epidemiologist might be quite reassuring. If you had a child born into a family with no autism or BAP in the huge extended family, who lost the ability to produce speech & developed new health issues following an immune event (and had a family history of immune related issues) would you listen to the opinion of an epidemiologist or an immunologist working directly on immune dysfunction & autism? Remember you don't want the same thing to happen again.

WaynettaSlobsLover

So will you be taking your children to one of the two labs that still study small pox?

They can't come in to contact with it 'in the wild'

I don't think we can see this argument in isolation based upon first world levels of immunity and health care.

The trouble is, I think that is exactly what they are doing. They appear to be trying to eliminate it in the UK, but IMO they aren't explaining their policy particularly well. They are not telling you to check your rubella status before ttc. They are only telling you in passing when travelling to an area where rubella is still endemic e.g. from NHS choices "You'll need this jab for travel if you've not been previously fully vaccinated or you're not already immune." (that's referring to MMR, not single jabs).

Bah wish I could edit posts on here - should have said immune dysfunction leading to a risk of autism would do better with vax spaced out. She makes the point in various places that currently you can't easily work out who is at risk in advance (although I would have thought that anyone with half a brain cell would put my son's siblings in a higher risk group)

Measles has been eradicated from Australia ... because they make vaccination a compulsory pre-condition for school entry

No they don't. I know of one family who isn't vaccinated & the children are at school.

Centrelink (people who pay benefits akin to child benefit) will refuse to pay a child care subsidy for those who refuse to vaccinate. But then, if you sign a form to say you object to vaccines, they will pay. So far as I know, they do not stop children attending school because they aren't vaxxed.

My understanding is the same as yours differentname - it's to stop people not getting around to it, but you can still make a decision to opt out.

I was told by a lawyer that EU law makes it impossible to introduce a compulsory vaccination programme (although you could have something like the Australian system).

I know France supposedly has a compulsory system but I also know people who have gone to school there unvaccinated so presume there's an opt out (esp if the lawyer was correct). I know one mum in France told me they wanted something to file & happily accepted homeopathic vaccination slips (something I don't think the mother particularly thought much of - she just didn't want to vaccinate).

saintly I know an epidemiologist is very different to an immunologist but Dr Fombonne is a leading expert in the epidemiology of autism. Therefore I think his opinion is valid in this debate.

An immunologist saying children might do better spreading out jabs is not the same as someone conducting their own research into the field, reviewing other trials and papers and coming to a conclusion.

You could be right there could be a small group of vulnerable children who react badly to the mmr. These children could have developed autism anyway even if they didn't have the jab or possibly the mmr changed their brain function somehow. At the moment though this is just a hypothesis and there is no evidence to back it up (any evidence shows vaccines are not linked to autism).

Sorry if this sounds rude I don't like feeling like I am dismissing what happened to your son. This debate is much more focused on the general population and it is important that people feel reassured by the evidence.

Whenshewas - I do not believe that epidemiology is a good way of l

I agree with Karlos. It is difficult to speak to a professional who will acknowledge the complexities of vaccination, let alone is knowledgable enough to talk through them. Fine, GPs cannot know it all. They should be able to refer on to a specialist for families where this is indicated. Referral criteria exist for access to other specs, why not for immunologists or paeds with expertise in this area?

Whenshewas - I do not believe that epidemiology is a good way of looking at something that is not yet well defined (autism). If a research group are finding immune dysfunction in children with autism I believe their work looking directly at what is going on is of more value. Yes it's work that is in it's infancy but with high risk children you have to make decisions based on opinion. I did the same with diet for ds1 12 years ago. His paediatrician at the time ridiculed us. A decade later his neurologist suggested it to us.

And of course you are dismissing what happened to my son.

Bruffin - not really your place to post that and for that reason I am asking for it to be deleted (& true although an oversimplification of what went on - albeit an oversimplification I have made myself on here before).

If immunity to rubella from the MMR wanes after 23 years iirc (Source NHS) then women could be left vulnerable during their child bearing years. It makes more sense to vaccinate them later. Also, if it wanes then how can herd immunity exist? Even if you have 95% of children vaccinated there will be a high percentage of non-immune adults still wandering around - unless they contract it naturally.

A poster on another thread made an interesting point on another thread - the rubella vaccine only used to be offered to teenage girls. Now it is offered to all children. So is the reduction in rubella/CRS due to the MMR bring more effective or because both sexes are now being vaccinated? Could the same/better result have been achieved by offering all teenage boys the vaccine?

No confusion raspberry - the work is on autism & immune dysfunction & the comments made were about spreading vaccinations in children you might suspect to be at high risk of an immune dysfunction. If you have an immune dysfunction then the timing of any trigger may be as or more important than what the particular trigger is. Well - at least that's what i've heard people working in the field say. I'm happy to talk about it - just not happy for ds1 to be used for point scoring. FWIW ds1's infection was very atypical (to the point where I was asked to come back at a later date with photographs to show medical students), was treated aggressively (as ihis particular manifestation can be fatal) but did not as far as anyone knows include encephalitis.

Put together with family history it's an indication we may well pass on immune dysfunction in this family. Hence I end up interested in what immunologists are saying rather than epidemiologists.

But like I said that's the short version.

Oh and before someone leaps in with 'but you said mitochondrial dysfunction elsewhere' - yes & research groups are looking at both & how they're interlinked. Ds1 has red flags for both mitochondrial dysfunction & immune dysfunction. Lucky chap.

Saintly, not using your DS for point scoring but given that you seem post a lot referring to him and medical stuff on vaccination threads, I did rather have the impression that you thought vaccination had caused his problems. If that isn't the case then that is probably my fault for not reading your posts closely enough but might be something to be aware of if you don't want people to get the wrong end of the stick.