To think my friend is mad for refusing to vaccinate?

[FannyTheFlamingo]

I'll admit, I'm a bit ignorant on this subject. My DD is nearly 1 and she's been vaccinated. It wasn't something I gave too much thought to, I just did it because I thought it was for the best.

My friend has done her research and says that she doesn't want to risk her son getting brain damage from a vaccine. She says if he catches something and dies, she could forgive herself, but she couldn't if something happened as a result of a vaccination. Is she mad?

I'm hoping MN users have differing views and are much better informed than I am. I don't want to convince her to change her mind, but would like to offer her some pro vaccination advice.

Or do I just keep my beak out?

This is my friends little boy Ewan. His Mum didn't realise she wasn't vaccinated against Whooping Cough.

We grew up in the 70s amongst the Vaccine scare. So after I had my 1st Whooping Cough vaccine I had a convulsion. Turns out it was simply a febrile convulsion and I had a few more as I got older. As a result though I only had one of the jabs and my siblings none. All 3 contracted Whooping Cough and I was despatched off to my Nans for weeks until they were well enough for me to go home. Luckily they did pull out of it.

My mate lived up the road and a lot of parents avoided the vaccination as well. To this day we're not sure if that's what happened but she wasn't immune anyway. The vaccine in pregnancy was introduced a year or two after Ewan was born.

When he was 4 or 5 weeks old, before his first immunisations he was diagnosed with Whooping Cough. His little system couldn't cope and he was airlifted from Southampton to Leicester to the nearest available ECMO machine. His Mum & Dad raced up in a car after having to leave his brothers with grandparents. They didn't know if he'd still be alive when he arrived. His blood was removed, oxygenated and replaced into his tiny body.

Eventually he did pull through, but he's been left with damaged ears, eyes and brain. He's a happy lad with lots of brothers and a ready smile.

His Mum happily lets us use his image to support our reasons for being pro vaccine.

I read quite an interesting article some time ago by a journalist who chose not to vaccinate her child on the basis of not wanting to put unknown / unnatural chemicals into the child. The baby got whooping cough and was very ill. She described her desparation listening to him whooping and struggling for breath. There is no treatment for the illness, but she was quite honest about how she was willing for the doctor to give the child any medication, even stuff not licenced for use in children just to try and bring the baby some relief. She pointed out how hypocritical her position was - wouldn't give the baby one 'chemical' to keep him well, but prepared to give him weeks of treatment with many chemicals to try and cure a disease which she knew couldn't be cured. Anyway, I would keep out of it with your friend, you won't change her mind and it isn't worth falling out over.

And when her unvaccinated children start school, they will be exposed to all sorts of bugs carried by immunised children who can transmit them, but not suffer from them - because they have been vaccinated.

habibihabibi
A compelling reason to vaccinate

"But the reason we see them so rarely is because we immunise our children."

This ^^

Can the anti vaxxers not understand why smallpox has been eradiacted? Do they not understand why we don't see children affected by polio these days? Do they not understand statistics? The risks of being damaged by vaccination are far, far lower than the risks from the diseases they prevent.

The research skills of people who make these 'informed' decisions are sorely lacking.

My friends are intelligent and rational women and that's part of the reason why they're my friends. If one of them came out with this kind of wilful ignorance in the face of science, I'd be wondering why I was friends with them.

Why you wouldn’t vaccinate your child against these diseases I’ll never know or understand. I personally couldn’t be friends with a person like that. Is she going to refuse all medical help if her child were to catch one of these awful diseases because it’ll be the same doctors she chose to ignore that’ll be helping save her kid... i bet their advice will be good enough for her if her child’s life ends up hanging in the balance!

I'll show your friend a photo of my father's distorted legs. He had polio aged 17.

It has affected him for the rest of his life and now he can barely walk.

As a young man he could swim, walk and play golf. No football, rugby or cycling or skiing.

Yanbu. Anti-vaxxers are, to be blunt, fucking idiots.

We have one at work.

The other week, someone came in when they felt ill. I said I thought they should maybe go home.
Apparently it would do us good to be exposed to it & it would help us build up an immunity.

A stomach bug can hospitalise me, so erm no ta.

She hasn't done research, she's read a lot of wank on the internet. Of course she's being unreasonable.

The level of research and science knowledge skills needed to properly understand the ACTUAL research in this area is high. Like, you need at least an actual science background to understand the academic papers. You can get the jist of it as a lay person - I can read papers in other fields and do research myself in a very unrelated field so I can get the very basics - but I can't understand them fully.

But helpfully there's all these people who have trained all their lives to understand this stuff and aren't paid shills like Whasisface that was struck off for publishing the ridiculous paper that led to people refusing to vaccinate. So I listen to them, and I vaccinate.

Well, actually anti-vaxxers can only take the moral high ground and make these choices because 95% of parents do vaccinate their children. If there actually was polio raging among children, you can bet your arse that Mrs Brain Damage would vaccinate.

The loss of herd immunity due to people transferring vaccine risk to others is happening more often, with serious consequences.

www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html

I don't like the principle of the state effectively forcing parents to get their DC immunised, but it is a pretty effective policy nonetheless.

It's for the protection of all of the children, including yours, and there are other options for schooling and camps.

"done her research"

I didn't realise that you could get a PhD in Googling

I have a very intelligent friend with a very senior job in pharmaceuticals.
She has partially vaccinated her older children but is choosing not to vaccinate her baby. Her reasoning is that the vaccines especially mmr might trigger autism as both her dbro and dbro in law have severe autism. I respect her decision and can see why she has made it.
She has not told her dh however who is pro vaccine!
I also have a family member again senior in a major pharmaceutical company who chose not to vaccinate his children 40 years ago. They in turn work in the industry and do not vaccinate either.

Rachie1973 oh bless him. So glad he pulled through. Whooping cough is an evil disease where you are left gasping for air and you cough so much that your ribs can crack. How anyone could want to risk exposing their child to that is beyond me. Especially a tiny baby (although obviously in your friend's case it was obviously not her fault).

Sohurt17 that's awful, I'm sorry. I don't understand why people take these obvious and known risks with the most important people in their lives.

Have you looked into having them done as an adult? It might be worth asking if you can have them as you weren't allowed as a child.

One of the other issues with anti-vaxxers is that they are not considering what will happen if they want to travel. We do have pretty good herd immunity in the UK (I would still vaccinate though) but surely we have n even stronger moral obligation to vaccinate if we take our children abroad.

* I'll show your friend a photo of my father's distorted legs. He had polio aged 17.*

It has affected him for the rest of his life and now he can barely walk.

I work with a Syrian refugee who had polio as a child and is now confined to an electric wheelchair as he only has the use of one hand. People forget the level of disabilities these diseases cause....

Rachie1973 Thank you for sharing that. I honestly don't think people realise how horrific these childhood diseases are.

Unless someone has done 15+ years actually doing real medical degrees, masters, phds, post docs and serious academic research in this exact area I don’t pay any attention.

Funnily enough, no anti vax person ever has that background 🙄

And GPs follow official advice from the first group. There’s a reason for that. It’s the one based on actual peer reviewed research rather than google.

My baby daughter pre her MMR vaccine caught Mumps from a baby whose parents “didn’t agree” with vaccination.

While my baby daughter survived mumps (as we all did !), she was cuddled in the meantime by a friend’s child who had zero immunity as she was in the middle of chemo for a brain tumour. Can you imagine what we all went through?

Anti Vax parents are the ultimate selfish uneducated idiots who cause real worry and anguish with their stupidity.

It is their choice but if by done her research you mean studied immunology then why would she think that vaccines are a bad thing?

Mylittlehelper, MMR has bugger all to do with autism. Wakefield was exposed as a charlatan.

Both my kids have autism.

Her reasoning is that the vaccines especially mmr might trigger autism as both her dbro and dbro in law have severe autism.

This is most thoroughly researched question in the history of epidemiology and such a link has been repeatedly and conclusively disproven. Her family history of ASD is irrelevant to the safety of the vaccine.

www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/no-mmr-autism-link-large-study-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-kids

Secondly, she can do that without excessive risk to her child because so many others have vaccinated their children. Until that number drops further. See the link above to the CDC website regarding measles outbreaks.

I presume the friend was vaccinated herself ??

Always the same on mumsnet. Very one sided.

No mention of the fact that the diseases mostly died out when hygiene in hospitals and hand washing came about. It was very soon after this that most vaccines were developed.
Pharmaceutical companies make millions out of this.
Measles has been eradicated in the uk by the way.