Why would someone say this about vaccines? Is it odd?

[PuzzlingPanda]

Was in a health food shop today and mentioned an ongoing issue I'm having with one of my do.

The man mentioned he thought the biggest thing going wrong with our children was all the vaccines they receive. He said they full of nasties, designed to make people ill.

It could be put down to a man having a pointless rant but why would he say this? Is there any sort of truth in it?

Not the first time I've heard negative things about vaccines.

Now I'm worried about it.

Y0uCann0tBeSer10us It is recommended for all adults who may have missed out.

"The MMR vaccine can also be given on the NHS to adults who may need it, including people born from 1970 to 1979 who may have only been vaccinated against measles, as well as those born from 1980 to 1990 who may not be protected against mumps.

Check with your GP if you're not sure whether you've had the MMR vaccine. If in doubt, go ahead and have it. Even if you've had it before, it won't harm you to have a second, or even third, course of the vaccination."

Most people born in the 70s/80s probably had mumps anyway.

I'm not so sure bumble. Most people my age (born 1958) had measles and rubella, but not so many had mumps. My sister and I never did and neither did our friends or cousins.

Really Bunbaker? All my family born around that time did - cousins etc (massive Irish family!) Around 1/3 of cases are asymptomatic though so you may have had it without realising?

I didn't know that, but I still think that measles and rubella were more common in the 1960s.

So when a child nearly dies due to complications of measles that's catastrophic, when a child nearly dies of complications from a vaccine its 'a bugger'?
Language is emotive, and how things are described differently depending on the cause is very interesting.

EddieStobbart The vaccination schedule in each country is tailored to the prevalent diseases (and national budget). We have given up on Smallpox, as it exists only in the back of freezers. In UK we have (perhaps wrongly) given up on routine BCG. In Fiji both BCG and Hep B are given on first day of life. I was born in NZ and then lived in Canada. As a teen in UK I was tested to see if I needed BCG, the Heaf test, a ring of 6 needles, on the forearm. Mine came up positive, perhaps a result of vaccination, perhaps previous infection, faded after a couple of months. I did not need BCG. As a junior doctor I covered the chest ward at night. The 8yr old Heaf site blew up a storm, I guess I had "caught" TB, my immune system rose to the challenge and also found a bit of the old Heaf test into which to put the immunological cell-mediated boot.

Mumps wasn't a notifiable disease in the UK until 1988, no there's no easy way of knowing whether most people born in the 70s/80s had it.

There were a few young adults I knew who caught mumps in the mid-2000's - so born in the 70s/80s and too old to have had MMR included in their standard childhood vaccines - and most other people of a similar age that I spoke to at the time were anxious about the prospect of catching mumps themselves. The people who recalled having mumps as a child were definitely in the minority.

I'm a NHS scientist, dh is a doctor, we've already discussed how we'll get our (yet unborn) baby privately vaccinated against quite a few things in addition to the jabs you get on the NHS. IMHO vaccinations are the best medical invention ever. Not vaccinating puts your child at risk, and the population at risk by lowered herd immunity.

I'm always in disbelief at people who won't let their kids have vaccines because it might give them a temp or cold-like symptoms for a few days. Surely that is much better than having an actual nasty disease, like meningitis?!

People will be on soon to trot out the 'I never vaccinated any of mine, and they came into contact will small pox and the plague and didn't contract anything' but that's anecdote, not scientific evidence.

Vaccinations are good. As someone said previously the eradication of smallpox didn't happen by accident!

I'm always in disbelief at people who won't let their kids have vaccines because it might give them a temp or cold-like symptoms for a few days. Surely that is much better than having an actual nasty disease, like meningitis?!

Those are never the reasons someone doesn't vaccinate. What a rediculous assumption!

special of all the cautious vaccinators I know, in not one - not one case - the reason being due to wanting to avoid a few days of mild symptoms.

In most cases, it is due to the concern that there are too many at the same time.

Like rooner I don't know anyone who refuses a vaccination to avoid mild effects like fever or redness. This sounds like a lazy assumption to me.

Never had mumps either, the only people my age (40s) that I know who definitely had mumps had it as adults.

I had mumps at 29 and my immune system has never recovered. It also triggered auto-immune endocrine disease which has left me chronically ill. I also spread it to a male friend who may not be able to have children now after it swelled his testicles. I got it at my bosses daughter's 4th birthday party from an unvaccinated child who was poorly but attended the party with her siblings so her parents could drink chardonnay in the garden with the other parents. I will never not regret offering to come into the office that Saturday.

How strange leedy. I don't know anyone who has had it as an adult. There were obviously enough cases for them to want to include a vaccine as part of the MMR.

"Before the introduction of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 1988, mumps occurred commonly in school-age children, and more than 85% of adults had evidence of previous mumps infection (Morgan Capner et al., 1988)." From here

Yes, Sky, it's usually worse as an adult. Although there is no firm evidence that orchitis causes sterility so hopefully your friend will be ok.

In most cases, it is due to the concern that there are too many at the same time."

Based on what?

Drat I know. I was given the BCG when I was 13 as were all my peers (after the "six pricks" which came first so I can't have caught it before then). My poor father spent a year in an isolation hospital aged 9 after catching TB (in 1943, the poor little sod). He never really mentioned it until just before he died when he became really upset talking about children on the ward who didn't get to come home.

For the decision to have been made to have stopped the BCG then it must be deemed a rare event to catch TB in the UK now but I would never have known about my exposure if it wasn't for that CT scan (doc said I must have fought it off myself). I'd like to make sure the DCs are protected just in case. We live in a very mobile world nowadays and if there are parts of it where TB is still very common I'd rather they were vaccinated.

Parts of London have higher rates of tuberculosis than Rwanda or Iraq, a report from the London Assembly says.

A third of London's boroughs suffer from high rates of TB, with more than 40 incidents per 100,000 people.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-34637968

I lived in London for three years (out of a total of 43). That was the only thing I could think of when the doctor asked about places I'd been. I must have just caught it out and about so I don't really understand why the vaccinations have stopped.

EddieStobbart Interesting, well worth checking CT report with hospital/GP. If it shows evidence of Ghon complex the children are at risk. The reason that children with grandparents from abroad are offered BCG is that these childhood scars may still contain viable bugs. Later in life the immune system declines and the grandparents may shed bacteria without being obviously unwell. Galloping consumption was reactivation of one of these Foci, usually the lymph node and classically associated with deprivation in 19th century A young Pavarotti as Rodolfo from 1986.

It is also interesting that your father had TB as a child, I suspect this is where your infection came from, and presumably after you were 13 as your Heaf test was negative. There will be a local expert, often a white haired chest physician, who can advise you and may well suggest Heaf and if negative, BCG for your children. Did your children have contact with your father?

Drat, my DF died when my eldest was 4 months old and that was nearly a decade ago so no, not really. I saw the hospital main pulmonary specialist - he pointed to something on the CT scan that he said showed I'd "been exposed" to TB at some point (as, he said, have 1/3 of people on the planet) but shaken it off. I told him about my father but he thought London (as an adult) was the most likely source He was more interested in other aspects of the scan for other reasons.

I would have hoped that the BCG would have afforded me some protection after having it done (at 13 and I obviously hadn't contracted anything before then) so for me it shouldn't be a childhood scar - unless the BCG stopped protecting me after a very short period of time which ruins the point I was trying to make in support of vaccines!

EddieStobbart You have already had better advice than I can give. The BCG protects infants against miliary TB and especially TB meningitis and peritonitis. It is less effective against pulmonary disease and is another vaccine that was probably given for herd immunity. Today in UK you must be at special risk to get BCG after the age if 16 and we are deemed too old for it at 35, even if working in a doss house in London!

Sadly I think our children, or grandchildren, will be at real risk of the pulmonary disease in middle age and the vaccine has been shown to offer little protection against pulmonary disease, hence current policy of vaccinating infants with forrin grandparents but no longer routine as teen. An alternative is desperately needed as TB becomes resistant to all available drugs.

WHO- TB vaccine development

Thanks Bumbley for link. I hope at least 1 of the 16 in trials gives some protection.

I'm hoping they make progress in finding new treatments. I know they've been investigating immunotherapy. As you said, drug resistance is becoming a big problem and there are so many people already infected.