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?

Sock it seems you're right & mn towers agrees it doesn't break talk guidelines. nonetheless in poor taste IMO..

Magdalen I didn't say the majority are choosing not to vaccinate because of reactions - I directed you to a paper for the general view (a survey of a few thousand people iirc). I said that the people I know have chosen not to vaccinate due to sibling reactions and regression. Why do you think that might be? Why would my sample be non-representative? What do you think happens to your social circle when you have a severely disabled child? (Come now, this should have taken 2 minutes to work out)

As for your evidence. If you had a severely autistic child you would just ignore any of the research on the immune system and see it of being of no relevance. Of course you would. Of course you would.

And yes as always you can have the final word. Thank you to the people on this thread who have remembered that some of us are making decisions with more at stake than the chance to think you look terribly clever.

So there will of course be a small group of children who have a family history of adverse reactions to vaccines who should not get vaccinated.

People often generously make this concession but I don't really get it. Sometimes an adverse reaction will come entirely out of the blue. No bad reactions in our family until ds. His older sister was fine with all her jabs. Someone has to be first. We need something much more accurate in identifying vulnerable children than 'oh well the rest of the family are fine'.

God there's no hope of people on this thread getting their head around that pixel. On this thread having a child who regressed, children with red flags for immune/mito disorders & researchers who work in the field suggesting spacing out vaccinations isn't enough of a reason to switch to singles from the MMR.

Just one final point magdalen. You said your child took part in a vaccine trial because it was the right thing to do (& if you think taking blood from a small child is hard - just be pleased they weren't severely autistic). I said that you presumably took part because (a) you thought the risk of damage to your child was low and (b) you thought your child might benefit in some way. You replied (rather smugly) that no, you took part because you thought it was 'the right thing to do. For Society.' If that's true - if you put your child through a trial without considering whether they might be damaged - or even worse if you thought they were likely to be damaged but you thought 'society' was more important- then frankly I'm appalled.

And now I really am done with this thread.

saintly I done with this thread too (well nearly). Before you go I was wondering if you wouldn't mind responding to my last post. I have done my best to respond to all of your posts as honestly and politely as possible.

Just to clarify your views on how you think vaccine policy should be developed.

Inspite of you accepting that
^(1) MMR is safe for the majority of children
(2) MMR has not caused the rise in autism rates
(3) any possible (I emphasise possible there is no proof) link with mmr and autism would be in a tiny tiny subset of the population.^

You think vaccine policy should not be complied based on the best option for 99.99% of the population. The entire policy should be drawn up revolving around the idea that a small subgroup might be at increased risk.

I'm really sorry but vaccine policy is ofcourse going to designed for the majority of the population. Now if vaccination were then compulsory for everybody then I could see why you would have a problem with this. I've already said there are groups of people who can't be vaccinated (eg people with hypersensitivity reactions to vaccines).
The national policy applies to most people but obviously if you can't have a vaccine you shouldn't be treated in the same way as the masses.

just wondering how you think vaccine policy should be organised

Oh just re your suggestion that magdalen may have put her daughter at risk by enrolling her in a clinical trial. Clinical trials need to be approved by an independent ethics committe. A trial that could potentially put the participants at risk would not receive approval and would not be allowed to take place.

"And LazyJaney I can only assume you are deliberately either on the wind up or lacking in empathy to an almost inhuman degree"

What is truly lacking in empathy is choosing to not inoculate, thus putting vulnerable people at risk and causing dangerous diseases to resurface after being largely eradicated in tbe UK. And to use, as a reason for doing this, a bunch of 15 year old fully debunked "theories".

That is not a wind up, but it is an inconvenient truth for the anti vaxxers.

Lazeyjaney I commented oooooo about 300 pages ago that I am currently on chemo. I am extremely vulnerable to infection. Measles probably will kill me.

So I share your sentiment. Interesting that you get slated but the poster at the beginning who won't vaccinate her children and considers people like me the acceptable 'collateral damage' from her choices, did not-so far as I recall - get the same type of criticism.

Oh for goodness sake! Despite no evidence that MMR causes autism and that the vaccination programme is necessary to reduce risk of serious disability certain people on this thread keep perpetuating myth and crap!

I wish science was compulsory until people are 18 and that actually it was taught properly! Listen to Magdelen!

Saintly isn't saying 'don't vaccinate' - she's simply acknowledging that, for certain children, the single measles vaccine might be a better alternative.

Fwiw, here is some of my personal understanding & position on decisions to vaccinate or not.

The hypothesis that mmr may be a trigger factor for a small subgroup is ONE possible factor in choosing (or not choosing) vacs. If you have reason to believe your child is in that subgroup of course it is likely to be a sufficiently significant factor for you to base vac decisions on that alone.

There are other factors that may play a part in a decision to / not to vaccinate. These might include (and are likely to be different for diff vacs & diseases):

RISK of disease (dep on further factors inc. where you live, whether your child has other health problems. Another impt consideration here is whether the disease is more serious in childhood or adulthood- if the latter it may inform a decision to vac later on (if the child has not developed natural immunity) so the indiv has immunity when they need it most)

EFFICACY of vaccine
Overlaps with my point above that some vaccines seem to have better staying power than others & some don't seem to 'take' as we'll as others (pertussis for example). The recent Cochrane review of the mmr found no studies looking at effectiveness of Mmr in preventing rubella.
Efficacy of vaccine obviously has implications for effectiveness of herd immunity.

Vaccine SAFETY both short & long term
Some of the newer vacs have not been around long enough for decent long term safety studies.

Given that each disease/ vac may have a different cost/benefit profile for different individuals I am not surprised that there is an overarching policy based on what is best for most people, most of the time.
That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't, as parents, spend the time looking at the individual profiles for our own circumstances.

Lastly, it is not black & white. It would be nice if it could be recognised that for all if us these are ( and should be, IMO) complex & difficult decisions.

Like many parenting decisions often it is only after you've made them that you find whether they were the 'right' ones or not.

And lazyjaney was talking about people who refuse to inoculate.

Thus I share her sentiments, as would, I suspect, the vast majority of those with suppressed immune systems.

bubbly you either haven't read or haven't understood the recent posts between saintly and I. They were about how vaccination policy should be formed (no saintly did not say no vaccines for everyone).

When I have not been talking about policy - I have been talking about factors you should take into account when deciding to vaccinate your child. I have no opinion on anyone else's decision. FWIW my personal decision making was made exactly as outlined by spink, which is why my decisions changed after ds1.

In terms of policy I believe an individual approach to vaccination should be taken so for each vaccination it should be considered what is in the best interests of the individual. That's it. No more no less. This would fit in well with the development of genomic medicine & I expect to see all drug administration to become more personalised over the next few decades. It wouldn't be that difficult to take an individual approach now - allowing GP's the room to make their own clinical decisions (eg by being able to give single vaccines spaced out) would be a start. This was perfectly easy for them to do for many years (in fact could have been easily arranged for ds1 with no fuss or bother) so I don't think there needs to be huge barriers or an expression of how difficult it is. It's not.

In terms of vaccine trials. You misunderstand me. Magdalen said she put her child forward for a trial 'for society' and no other reason - rejecting my suggestion that she put her child forward because she assumed taking part was safe. If she/he vaccinated her child 'for society' while assuming it was unsafe then I don't think that's great. I think we can both agree it's unlikely that even he /she would have made that decision though.

saintly a reminder of what you said about vaccination policy.

So immunisation policies can only be made for populations and if there's good evidence that a subgroup are more likely to have immune dysfunction we just ignore it because the 'right' sort of statistics haven't been done yet? Obviously they've used statistics to ascertain the differences between autistic and control groups (& siblings who share features with the autistic group)

It does sound rather as if you don't see any need to alter the schedule because YOU have an average child with no concerns so why should anyone else be?

It sounded like you arguing against the vaccine schedule, if you weren't and you accept the current policy makes sense then fair enough.

Urgh just re read your last post. An individual approach to vaccination. I'll be honest that scares the shit out of me. It would probably cause the biggest drop in vaccine uptake since Wakefield (actually it would probably be much worse). Outbreaks would occur all over the country and people like spero wouldn't dare set foot out of the house.

Oh stop getting hysterical. An individual approach just means a GP being able to say something like 'this child has a history of seizures so might be better off without a pertussis containing DT & polio hib' & so in an so forth. It was perfectly acceptable to do that when ds1 was a baby - easily organised - GP's were allowed to used their clinical decision making skills. It worked for years - & if such a system were still in place I'd have no complaints about the vaccination programme.

I have no idea why you'd be anti such an approach tbh unless you really don't give a monkeys about children more at risk of vaccine damage than your own.

WhenSheWasBad well I can't see that it would necessarily lead to a lower vac uptake.

If people were making fully informed choices & guided by health profs to information relevant to them presumably people who are afraid but uninformed now may have more vaccines than they are currently having?

I wonder if this gets lost because often those who raise questions about vaccines are labelled 'anti (all) vax (at all times)'. Which isn't really the full picture.

Um Cherriesarered - which aspect of science do you think we should all be taught exactly? Given that there are plenty of immunologists and paediatricians and GPs who accept that there are issues with multiple vaccines for some children. There is no special scientific fact/study in existence that can tell us that all vaccines are safe for all children at all times.

Saintly talks a lot of sense and is clearly well informed as are others on this thread. Yes there are people still erroneously claiming that there is a significant risk of autism from MMR but there are others who are measured and educated (in science and ethics and life) who are saying that their personal circumstances make the decision less obvious.

Of course it would lead to a lower uptake. Just spreading the vaccines out alone would mean it would be harder to achieve coverage (it's more difficult organising 25 jabs than organising 5 jabs and because it will take longer to immunise children would be left at risk of disease for longer).

Telling parents they need to speak to a specialist re the individual risks makes it sound like there are huge flaws in the current vaccination program (which there aren't).

Even if you could achieve complete coverage the cost would be enormous.

1. companies would have to reapply for licences of single vacs, that's not a huge cost but it would cost more.
2. if we give out singles to everyone (or a lot of people opt for them) that costs more money in terms of staff available to administer the, staffing costs in the nhs are one of the biggest costs.
3. everyone needs to get advice from their GP as to what would be the best option for them. Again huge cost in term of man hours needed to chat to all these worried parents. A) would there be any point speaking to a GP about vaccines, probably not as most GPs don't have specialist knowledge about immunisation. So all the GP would do is repeat nhs policy. B) so GPs aren't suitable to administer this advice. Therefore parents have to go to specialists in immunology. We don't have enough which means the nhs would need to train hundreds more doctors to be able to give this advice (massive massive cost).

So even if the moving from a standard nhs policy to a everyone gets there own individual advice policy didn't result in a drop in vaccination rates (which it would, vaccines are more spread out) it costs about 10 times what the current system does.

The nhs is currently trying to save money any which way it can. It makes no sense to change a policy that works for one that has no medical basis whatsoever and would cost a fortune.

I know people are worried but you have much more to fear from the diseases vaccinated against than the vaccines themselves.

But it supposedly doesn't work - according to you. You're the ones whinging about a low MMR uptake (although I keep pointing out the only paper looking at uptake found uptake with paid for singles was 94% for measles).

Why are you so anti safe vaccination for all children? I don't get it. It does sound rather as if you don't give a monkeys about children at higher risk from vaccination.

And can you really not understand that some children are more at risk from the vaccination than from the disease. Do you just not understand that, or are you simply pretending such children don't exist?

But it supposedly doesn't work - according to you don't pretend I'm just making this up. The mmr is safe and there is no evidence it causes autism. Now if one day it is shown there is a small sub group who are affected and we are able to identify this subgroup - then yes of course they should be tested and an alternative found for this subgroup.

And can you really not understand that some children are more at risk from the vaccination than from the disease. Do you just not understand that, or are you simply pretending such children don't exist

There is no evidence that the subgroup you are worried about is at risk from regression caused by mmr.

I'm not anti safe vaccination, we have safe vaccination. I'm very much pro it.