Advice on how to deal with an Anti-vaccer

[frankencunt]

Help. Posting here for traffic as I need to speak to my friend in the morning.

My dear friend is in a relationship with a complete prick who is trying to stop her vaccinating their new baby.

She of course wants the vaccinations but he has said he will not allow it and is going to write to the GP to say he doesn't give his consent.

He is a total arsehole who refuses to speak to her about it, refuses to speak to medical professionals and gets all of his information from crappy American websites from what I can gather.

He has now threatened her as well if she had them done without his permission.

Could anyone point me to some easy to understand research/info that I could get for her?

Does anybody know if he can block the vaccines or if they will do them with just her consent?

We are in the UK.

Thank you!

He may have valid reasons for feeling as he does. He might be an abusive arsehole. None of us know.

That page is out of date. The case law is quite clear. Of course we don't routinely ask for both signatures, the issue is that we had been made aware of the mum's refusal and so couldn't un-know that information. The consent of a competent 14 year old would of course override it, this child was an infant.

If he has threatened her then that is wrong and would be a red flag, however, she needs to actually talk to him and actually listen to why he doesn't want the child vaccinated and he needs to do the same for her. Adults need to act like adults when children are involved and both are being quite childish and stubborn to be honest.

Anyone looking for a guarantee of safety for vaccines ( or anything else) needs to get real. Nothing is totally safe, it is a matter of intelligent risk assessment. For most of us that comes out as 'get vaccinated'

What is risky is spending any more time with a partner who threatens.

Being 'antivaxx' without specific, evidence-based, medically backed concern for your own specific kid is one of those red flags for a person being wilfully ignorant and not to be relied on. Like being into homeopathy. Or thinking the moon landings were faked.

Reanimated....have you tried homeopathy? Surely just dismissing it as rubbish is being wilfully ignorant too.

I think that if you know anyone who's had serious complications post vaccination it would put you off.

I do and I am very pro-vaccine.

my mother as a child had serious complications with vaccines, so it was advised not to continue with hers, also advised not to vaccinate my sister and i, so my children are also not vaccinated, but both have been given the choice to do so when they are older ( my 18 yr old is going to as she wants to travel my son hasn't decided yet) .

I think every parent has to make the decision based on their own research and do what they feel is right for them, very hard to make a decision when one is very anti vax,
she could go to another doctor who her partner/husband doesn't know about maybe or leave him and then do it ( can the doctor be charged if he/she vax's with out his permission?) , but if she isn't strong enough to make that decision i dont know how it will be done, maybe she can speak to her doctor and get some social services type help for herself and her child which is no doubt being effected or will be in the long term with his form of abuse.
and before anyone freaks i support vaccination even if i am not vaccinated at all, as i know it is important especially when so many people live in such crowded cities and towns where it is easy to become infected and in an epidemic its hard to treat everyone as resources do run low, and its also for myself and families heath as the vaccinated keep us safe too when we were advised not to do it. And as a side note weirdly all of us ( sister, children and myself) have only ever contracted chicken pox even weirder all have had it twice
( thats an optional extra here and only protects against the 3 common strains) and my friends children have contracted measles, whooping cough, chicken pox and something else i cant remember despite being vaccinated for everything possible...... hard decision...

If it were me, I'd show her a video of one of my twins in hospital at 10 weeks old with whooping cough, down to 5lb and struggling to breathe - he caught it just before he came home from nicu at 8 weeks old, days before his jab. The following month was complete torture - they wouldn't admit him until his o2 levels dropped enough (they didn't know what it was, thought it was bronchiolitis) so I had almost a week of watching him 24/7 to make sure he could breathe, then 11 nights in a recliner next to his HDU bed, where they basically starved him to give his lungs room to work and he screamed and coughed for hours at a time.

People don't think it will happen to them, but it can and does. If people could see the reality of these illnesses, they'd realise that even if they did cause autism (which they don't) that's preferable to watching your child almost die (or actually die) when you could have prevented it.

(And before I get flamed, I had the pertussis jab during pregnancy but was late due to a scatty midwife and then they were early - unfortunately it didn't work for one twin, possibly because of his growth restriction, but myself and the other twin managed to avoid it thanks to the jab)

molly499 it's not ignorance - no one has ever been able to prove any efficacy from homeopathy, and the method itself has absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever. And yes, I have had it - back when the NHS still had a homeopathic hospital I was referred to it for treatment. Fortunately they've since realised they can't find something with zero evidence when they can't even afford proven treatment

He may have valid reasons for feeling as he does. He might be an abusive arsehole. None of us know.

Well we do know, if the info in the OP is correct and this dickhead threatened her. I am sure if he had genuine reasons (ie. having a bad reaction as a child or something) he would have said that. As it happens he seems to have read the bunch of scaremongering nonsense on the internet and believed it all. Hell theres someone on this thread trying to make out its a huge conspiracy and GPs are anti vax and so on. its ridiculous how many people try to scare others into not doing the right thing for their childs health.

Yes its the best thing for a very small number of children to put them off, or not do it at all. But most kids, will be fine and you are reducing risk of serious illnesses too. What sane parent would not do this for their children when its an option?

I actually have a fairly close friend who was vehemently anti-vax and was constantly posting memes and such on facebook about how vaccinations were sooo dangerous and anyone who got them done was harming their kids and so on. Her child actually died of meningitis aged 15. Of course, this may have happened anyway, but she will never know for sure if it was down to not getting the vaccination or not. Which is just awful and I see her suffering on a nearly daily basis. She can barely function 3 years on and feels so guilty. I do try to tell her that it could still have happened even without that, but she won;t have it and has convinced herself that its entirely her fault, and worse, that she 'deserves it' for being taken in by the various websites full of lies.

Went off on a tangent a little there, but I am very passionate in my views around this and do think that unless the child is at risk from vaccinations, they should be compulsory really.

Tammy, it's a shame that homeopathy didn't work out for you. I'm a great fan but I think it's uses lie more with preventative treatment rather than acute illness. When my dc's were toddlers I got so fed up with colds turning into ear infections etc that I went down the homeopathic route. Each autumn they would take a progressively decreasing dose over two months and then stop. Each winter they would only get sniffles, no temperatures or other problems associated with cold viruses and it was such a relief.

As a family we have taken Oscillococcinum every winter and in 15 years not one of us has had flu, ever. It may be a coincidence but over this period of time somehow I doubt it.

Dear god. The plura of anecdote is not data.

It worries me that people are so ignorant. Homeopathic medicine has no active ingredient. It doesn't work. End of story.

I've never had flu either - I'm 30. It must be because I drink wine every day. Cant possibly be coincidence.

*plural

homeopathy doesn't work out for anyone. What with it being absolute bollocksology that could never work for anyone.

Or or it could be that as I have grown I have developed a stronger immune system so don't get ill as much as I did as a small child.

Nah it's probably the wine.

The only people who believe homeopathy works are idiots and con artists. Idiots like to go on and on about how it 'works' on all these illnesses that... get better whatever you do.

As to vaccine damage, side effects do happen but they are very rare. Unless you know there is a family history or an existing condition which could increase the risk of side effects, the risk of an unvaccinated child getting seriously ill, losing eyesight or dying from a preventable (by vaccine) is a lot higher, particularly with all the antivaxxer fuckwits damaging herd immunity.

Tell her to just take the baby to the GP for the vaccines and not mention it again. They don't ask for OH's permission.

What a fucking twat of a father!

He's an asshole for threating her and not putting forward an actual argument as to why he's opposed to vaccinations. They need to go the GP together so he can get the real facts and statistics but these anti-vaxxers are ignorant like global warming deniers they don't believe in evidence. Hopefully the GP will be able to go ahead with the vaccination without his consent.

My mum thinks the MMR jab caused my epilepsy as not long after it I started having seizures and opted not to give my younger sister the jab on her own unconfirmed theory on the basis of her experience however I will be vaccinating my DS to be honest I'll rather take the extremely small risk of it have an adverse affect rather than him contracting meningitis and having to get limbs amputated I'd never be able to forgive my self if something like that happened all because I didn't want to vaccinate my child!

The problem with asking the GP for advice is that they have to give you the response that the government has prescribed.
The facts given to you will be those approved by the government.

Was it Tony Blair that wouldn't say whether he'd vaccinated his son? I would conduct my own research based on my individual child before deciding which vaccinations were most appropriate.

hornytortoise (love the name by the way, i actually have one of those!) I do agree that from the info given this man sounds like a prick. however, we are only getting one side of a story and his version of events may be very different.

I didn't vaccinate my children, i've talked about it here many times, so i'm not going to go into it, but needless to say had my DP taken them behind my back I would have been very upset and I don't think its right to do that. If necessary, and the parents can't agree, then a court should decide, setting a precident where one parent can just completely disregard the opinions of the other in medical matters, is pretty dangerous and not a path i'd want the world to go down.

I think that if you know anyone who's had serious complications post vaccination it would put you off.

But likewise if you've been severely ill from not being vaccinated you are extra wary.. i had Rubella as a small child (the MMR cane out after I got ill) and developed encephalitis. I've been left disabled in several ways and live in constant pain. No way was I going to risk my DC going through the same. My DParents got me every vaccine they could after that and my sibling was never allowed to miss theirs deithefespite being severely needle phobic.

Like other posters have said, I'd be more worried about him being an abusive dick.