not to challenge this antivaxxer mum at playgroup?

[CaptainWarbeck]

Chatting to a nice mum this morning about child health nurses, she says she's really struggled to find a 'good' one because they've made the decision not to vaccinate their youngest child.

Cue a bit of a monologue from her about how their oldest suffered a 'vaccine injury' (not sure what this was, he seems a regular kid) and it's really much better to vaccinate later, if at all, and her doctor has been very pushy and they've annoyingly had to switch practices because of it.

Argh. I diplomatically made sympathetic noises and did say we were big vaccination fans but each to their own and you've got to do what you think is right for your child yada yada.

Now I'm feeling like I maybe should have challenged her a bit more, rather than just being supportive of what I perfectly honestly think is mad anti-vaxxer nonsense. AIBU?

NO. Just because you THINK you have a side effect from a pill doesn't mean you actually do.

My DS had a side effect. It left him very poorly and his own GP reported it themselves, and no, I'm not antivaxxer.

For clarity I meant my DS had a side effect to the MMR jab, NOT the pill!

But you can't "prove" something causes a problem until enough people report and document it, and they won't report and document if people like you refuse to listen to them and dismiss their concerns saying there's no "proof for them". Do you get what I'm saying?

"No arguing with stupid" is in itself a stupid dismissive statement where you can't add anything to a debate or prove your point.

Ah shit Walrus, you better go chat to the uni that gave me a science degree. Clearly I'm stupid and don't understand how science works, they're going to want to take it back

If your GP reported it, it is an actual thing. If you just say so, it isn't.

It's not that hard.

Lot of people have science degrees and can't understand some basics. I know someone with an MSc who practices fucking reiki, ffs.

And here it goes again... same thread.

Yes, I agree there's a lot of quacks and scary idiots out there who promote fake science - but that's besides the point. If a doctor misses or dismisses or doesn't report your side effect, does not always mean it never happened and you must be bullshitting. It's not that cut and dry.

The woman's first child is vaccine damaged. She is now wary of vaccines.

And she is the stupid one?

You do understand that vaccine damage is a "thing", right? I should add that many vaccine damaged children are completely shut out and denied compensation because they are told their problems are not related to the vaccines (and I refer you to the vaccine given to teenage girls to prevent the cervical cancer causing virus).

you sound utterly ignorant. So yes, you did the right thing.

DH actually makes vaccines. It's his job.

A vaccine is made in three ways:

1. By subjecting a live virus to heat or chemical treatment (normally a chemical called formalin) to weaken it.
2. By growing a virus in animal cell cultures so that the virus evolves to reproduce in animal cells and not human cells, meaning it has a weaker effect on humans.
3. By separating the part of the virus that provokes an immune response from the part of the virus that replicates and only using the provoking part in the vaccine. Formalin is often used in this process too.

Then you need to put the virus into some kind of liquid to inject it. These liquids are made of saline and have polysaccharides (types of sugar molecules) to piggy back the virus. Sometimes they contain aluminium salts as well.

I asked DH about the vaccine injury fund. He said it only existed because injuries are so vanishingly rare it almost never gets tapped. With perhaps a one in a million exception, if there is a negative reaction to a vaccine at all, it's because the individual is particularly susceptible to that virus and if they were to have caught the virus proper, their reaction would be the same or more severe. So even in those cases, they were still better off having the vaccine. However it's impossible to prove that of course.

In short, vaccines are safe. Unless you're unlucky enough to react badly to a particular virus. In which case, if you don't vaccinate and catch it anyway, you will end up worse than having been vaccinated.

So logically, on the balance of those probabilities, far less risky to vaccinate than not.

vaccine wife "vanishingly rare"/ Maybe rarely reported, that's for sure. That is completely different to actual harm.

There are many, many mothers on a campaign group asserting completely the opposite in relation to the HPV vaccine. There are also many parents who claim their child has been damaged by a vaccine who are shunned and ignored.

I really envy those of you for whom this is so easy. I remember being exactly like that, but then I had my second child.

He nearly died from allergic reactions on a number of occasions. The doctors were extremely worried about certain vaccinations and how they may affect him. We had to have them done in hospital with a crash team on standby.

Not so easy a decision as it was with DC1. I cried with relief when he was ok, and I dread any future vacs.

Oh how I'd love to have that complete trust in vaccines, but I don't. Not for him.

If a doctor misses or dismisses or doesn't report your side effect, does not always mean it never happened and you must be bullshitting. It's not that cut and dry.

Nobody said it was. But you cannot just decide on your own that you have vaccine damage, or an adverse reaction, and have that accepted as medical/scientific fact.

But Charlie, noticing a change in the health of an individual after a vaccination is not in itself robust enough scientific proof that it's down to the vaccine.

So many other potential causes - genetic, environmental, incidental - would need to be investigated and ruled out before you could say with certainty that it was down to the vaccine and nothing else.

As I already said, people who genuinely react badly to vaccines would also react badly to the actual virus if they were to catch it. In that instance it's not the 'fault' of the vaccine.

There are many, many mothers on a campaign group asserting completely the opposite in relation to the HPV vaccine

With no proof of any kind, and even proof that it wasn't the hpv vaccine. There are many groups, that doesn't mean anything.
People say a lot of things.

Likeaninja that's because some vaccines use chick embryos in eggs to weaken the virus.

So if your DC2 was allergic to eggs, that would be why they were extra cautious.

Vaccinewife yes, he's allergic to eggs. I just wanted to make the point that, for some of us, vaccinations are a very difficult decision, to counter the 'vaccinations are a no-brainer' comments.

I took the decision to take a calculated risk (crash team available etc), but by god it was hard.

"Thalidomide and similar". What are the "similar" ones please?

Oh god, Charlie and her "enquiring mind" strike again!! There were many questions asked on the last vax thread that you didn't answer - shall we dig it out now?

Likeaninja that's a very valid reason to think twice about vaccinating.

Unlike some, who believe vaccines can cause autism, etc, with absolutely no proof or scientific substantiation.

There have been lots of mentions of vaccine injuries on this thread but no one's actually gone into detail about the symptoms of these injuries.

Do people talking about 'vaccine injuries' even know what they mean by that?

I have never said I have the answers.

But neither does medicine nor that wonderful catch-all "science".

I do not believe that the current vaccine schedule is rigorously tested and that is because it cannot be. I believe that vaccine damage is far more common than we know about. Of course I have no proof of this!

God forbid you end up being one of these parents. I know one and it's heartbreaking and there is fuck all support or help because there is no "proof".

Here we go again. Are you on a wind up?

It is NOT for you to challenge. It's HER decision, not yours. She told you, she didn't ask for your opinion on HER decision

I don't know, I am pro vaccine and didn't think twice about it with my first 3 DC. Then DD3 had a severe reaction to the MMR (we think it was the Mumps element) and ended up hospitalised. She was totally fine with the first dose it was the pre school booster that she reacted to, so total luck of the draw I suppose. Since then she's had periodic swelling and hives for no apparent reason, so obviously nowhere near as unpleasant as mumps itself. At the time though when my toddler was rushed into hospital looking like the staypuft marshmallow man I was terrified!

I went on to vaccinate DS2 as normal after that, but I've deferred the pre school booster as long as possible for him as I just feel more comfortable that he's a year older before he has it. The health visitor has been totally understanding and supportive so I think in cases where there's a family history of side effects it's worth being honest about any worries.

That said, no one at all is interested in investigating the cause of the reaction. The instant MMR is mentioned the shutters come down. Which isn't helpful when you have a child who has had a serious reaction to something and you'd like to know what to avoid in future.
I posted here at the time in panic and was roundly scolded for being gullible, for perpetuating MMR myths and for buying into Andrew Wakefields scam.
I was posting about an allergic reaction

So I can understand why lack of reporting is an issue. People aren't exactly queueing up to hear stories of adverse reactions.