To think this takes not vaccinating to a whole new level

[Swanlaked]

DD has a child at school who has cancer. The school sent a letter home asking all parents to please think about giving their child the MMR if they haven't had it and also to inform them immediately if any child was in contact with chicken pox.

One of the mums at the school is still refusing to have her 3DC vaccinated. No health issues it's big pharma/poison/conspiracy theory crap

AIBU at this point to think the school should seek removal of the children and tell the bloody thicko to find another school for them?

leedy I agree that the problems with the mumps component are much more established, however there is some indication that the measles component also wanes. I found this from the CDC in the US:

"Measles Outbreak Associated with Vaccine Failure in Adults"
www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6438a7.htm

and this on Pubmed:
"Measles Outbreak Associated with Low Vaccine Effectiveness among Adults"
ofid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/23/ofid.ofw064

I remember similar reports from the UK. It seems unclear whether there were cold-chain failures or waning immunity, but in either case it does suggest that vaccinated adults may not have the level of immunity they might think, and could also contribute to the spread of disease. The wealth of studies in the literature showing that the vaccine is less effective in certain groups might feed into this.

I do agree though that it is also misleading to suggest that 'natural' immunity lasts a lifetime, as it clearly doesn't, with whooping cough being demonstrating this perfectly.

are you reading your own posts?

Refreshing that there are some people who can think for themselves and are intelligent on here!
The beginning of this thread made me curl my toes up at the lack of respect for other people's views and intelligence...
Hmm, thickos eh? and to think my post grad biochemistry degree allowed me to be thick!!!

I read my own posts before posting. Where have I backtracked on peer review?

I'm pretty sure Bertrand only "backtracked" if you somehow managed to read her talking about peer reviewed science as meaning "anything that has been peer reviewed, even if it is rejected by peers as absolute piffle, is reliable". Which is such a strangulated interpretation that I don't think I could make it if I tried.

"Hmm, thickos eh? and to think my post grad biochemistry degree allowed me to be thick!!!"

Oh, fantastic- a proper scientist! Could you link to some reputable papers about the damage caused by vaccination, please? And some about the statement that vaccination doesn't work?

Vaccine studies are flawed and have bias - could you direct us to your unflawed and unbiased sources that you used to do your research?

Read the vaccine inserts - so studies are flawed and biased, but vaccine inserts can be trusted? Why?

OK you're making me laugh now... go to Quora and have a proper discussion.

stig I agree that all parents should carefully consider what is in vaccines before going them to children, I'm astonished that some don't. However, many of the toxins in vaccines are present in trace amounts and are unlikely to be a problem. Shedding is only a problem with live vaccines and, generally, is only a threat to the immunocompromised (which is why the request in the OP is a little reckless).

I genuinely believe that most people developing vaccines do the best job they can to make them as safe and effective as possible, and for the most part they do a great job. Initial trials have to be small because it's not practical otherwise, and the idea is that any problems are picked up in post-marketing surveillance. It's the medical profession, and then society in general, that doesn't overestimates what can be achieved with vaccines and how safe vaccines are, meaning any reaction is put down to coincidence, the recognised under-reporting of side effects, and the perverse situation wherein parents of vaccine injured children are disbelieved. It also leads to the misconception that EVERY outbreak must be due to 'anti-vaxxers', even in cases where most of the patients are adults, like the recent whooping cough outbreak, and the distasteful bullying of people who question vaccines. I think a bit more understanding of the science on all sides would prevent a lot of problems.

Well either peer review is reliable or it's not

Seriously I don't have a dog in this fight

You said it was then you said sometimes it isn't

Just make your mind up

"that overestimates what can be achieved.."

Could do with the some proofreading myself!

Winchester surely you must know that 'peer-reviewed' in this context implies that the study actually clears the review hurdles. Why are you playing such a silly semantics game?

1. Wakefield's paper was peer reviewed.
2. 4 of the 6 reviewers rejected it.
3. For reasons of his own, the editor of the Lancet decided to publish it anyway.
4. The paper was challenged. And very quickly discredited.

Peer review does not cause defective papers to spontaneously combust They still exist, and people who are stupid or venal or both can continue to use them- relying on the fact that many people would not bother to check.

Coming in late to the Wakefield debate but the issue wasn't so much the peer review thing it was that he lied about his research. His claim was that there was a temporal relationship between the MMR vaccine and regressive autism and gut issues. He described 12 children - interviewed more but chucked out the ones that didn't fit. Some of them didn't actually have autism diagnoses, some had developmental issues before the vaccine that he glossed over (this included a child that paediatricians had described dysmorphic facial features in and who had a genetic abnormality) and he fiddled the time scale when the symptoms started months rather than days after the MMR. The histology results were also changed from the original samples from the gut. His solution was to provide the components on the vaccine in separate vaccines that - unsurprisingly - he had a financial interest in.

Very very dodgy. There's a great BMJ paper on it, I'll see if I can find it.

www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full

It's not too long and it's absolutely fascinating. Note that when challenged he denied that he ever said there was a relationship between MMR and autism.

So sometimes it's unreliable

Christ if i see peer review on a paper do I trust it or not? Well sometimes you can and sometimes you can't

Ok? Christ alive

"So sometimes it's unreliable"

Hang on- do you actually know what peer reviewing is? I feel as if we're talking at cross purposes.

I can't tell if you're being deliberately dense.

Some of the anti-vaxxers above are claiming there's never been a study comparing the health of the vaccinated with unvaccinated. Total rubbish - this article lists a few of the recent ones.

To quote the article, with links to the studies

Summary of the studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated populations

German study on lower rates of asthma among the vaccinated <a class="break-all" href="http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(13)01860-5/abstract" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(13)01860-5/abstract</a>

Another German study: prevalence of allergic diseases and non-specific infections in children and adolescents was not found to depend on vaccination status. <a class="break-all" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057555/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057555/</a>

Philippine study on cognitive benefits from vaccines: <a class="break-all" href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036846.2011.566203#.VM4Ni2TF8o" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036846.2011.566203#.VM4Ni2TF8o</a>

Pregnant women who are vaccinated have better birth outcomes compared to non-vaccinated mothers, three studies: www.cmaj.ca/content/186/4/E157.long,
www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f393.long
and www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20630123.
update from 2016, study of 60 000 women finds flu vaccine cuts stillbirths by half: cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/10/cid.ciw082.abstract

A 2013 meta-analysis finds the flu vaccine may lower the risk of heart attack jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1758749

Comparing unvaccinated and vaccinated people who do catch the flu – vaccinated people are protected from the most serious effects: www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/rccm.201401-0066LE#.VSfg-ZSUcoa

And this one is a corker.

“Vaccinated versus unvaccinated children: how they fare in first five years of life.” Nigerian study of 25 unvaccinated and 25 vaccinated children: one vaccinated child had a mild case of measles. Unvaccinated children: 3 dead, plus 11 non-fatal cases of measles. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2260220

I have a few friends receive these same / identical letters (all kids go to different schools). I now firmly believe it is a concerted effort by (fill the gap here - government, big pharma, whoever has a vested interest in this) to get as many childern vaccinated as possible. This time the approach being playing the smallest violine in the world. Thankfully, not all parents fall for this crap. I feel sorry for the kids whose parents surrender to this artificially evoked guilt.

Christ if i see peer review on a paper do I trust it or not? Well sometimes you can and sometimes you can't

Generally you're not going to see a paper unless it's peer-reviewed, because those that are debunked are not widely published. So the successfully becomes implied over time.

Correction:

Generally you're not going to see a paper unless it's successfully peer-reviewed,

You're just goading now - deliberately goading

Most of us who have actually worked in science will have read many papers and wondered how they made it through peer review! Even if you just consider the papers without glaring flaws, a lot of it (maybe even most of it) can't be reproduced, negative or unsurprising results are much more difficult to get published than results that generate headlines (even if these are more likely to be wrong), and it can be hard to convince reviewers to accept findings that go against the established dogma.

There are clear flaws to the system, and clear biases in the types of study that will be published, however it's the best we've got and is better than no critical review at all. Anyone who is trained in science will (hopefully) keep this in mind and look at the picture that emerges from the literature as a whole.