To think that anti-vaxers may actually being onto something?

[viiz]

I don't have children myself yet but I don't know what I would chose when the time comes. Most of pro vax/anti vax threads turns nasty with people not even willing to try and look at things with others side perspective. Not willing to even consider points of view different than their own and that's a very silly approach. People believed a lot of things that turned out to be false over the years and centuries. Why not to doubt a little?

I was born in early '80s and not in UK. Myself, my siblings and friends were all vaccinated at the time. I don't even remember what I was vaccinated against but had to be pretty basic. Just a few jabs throughout my whole childhood/teen years and nothing 3in1 or 10in1 or whatever they'll bring next.

Now to the point. Reading through hundreds of threads it jumps at me how many children have neurological, behavioural or emotional disorders. No one else sees it really?? I don't know even one person from my childhood including friends, extended family , neighbours etc who would have ADS or ADHD or any other issues like that. I see their children to have it though.

AIBU to consider there could be a link here??

Please be gentle. I hope to have a discussion here. I don't disrespect anyone's views and I only ask to try and ask yourself 'what if'.

I am not anti vaccinations either, all my children have had all the vaccines and I do not for one second think they are linked to autism. We are so lucky to have vaccines available.

All I am saying is that it is huge amount to get in the first year of life, the vaccine schedule has increased by a large number in the last ten years and it should be ok for me to ask about this. I would love to know more about it.

Why so much aggression and name calling?

1. Look up Astro turfing ... it’s rife on these threads
2. Because people making a decision for their children don’t want to hear that they may have endangered their child by their direct actions therefore anyone who makes a different decision (and by default questions this) must be ridiculed and labelled a flat earthier
3. Because of mass media scaremongering

It’s the aluminium that is considered an issue ...which is found in most vaccines
www.alz-disease.org/downloads/Aluminum1.pdf
That paper is a load of nonsense it sites Tomljenovic & Shaw, which are known for their very poor research. Also the connection between Alzeimers and aluminium has long been discredited

Aluminium in vaccines

Aluminium is just one of the many fads in the antivax community , along with Thermisol, MMR (note live vaccines like MMR do not contain mercury or aluminium) chiari malformation, mitochondrial disease etc These fads come and go as they are easily disproved

"I’m in my late forties and no measles wasn’t considered a big deal back then"

Most people in their late 40's will have had a measles vaccine.

I don't really get why you see a rise in [diagnosed!] mental illnesses and disorders, and assume it must be linked to a rise in the number of vaccines. Like, that just seems like a random, arbitrary leap. There are hundreds of everyday things that have changed since the '80s, why not blame one of those instead.

Maybe it's all caused by cell-phone towers! Or wi-fi routers! Or high-fructose corn syrup!

Not where I lived they hadn’t

I'm in more than my 40s, and can attest to the fact that measles was known to be potentially a big deal "back then". OK, it was accepted that for most children it wasn't likely to be more than a fairly nasty childhood illness, but I think in general people were well aware that it could lead to lifelong disability and even death.

OP you won’t get anywhere because the only credible research is pro vaccine you see... anything that questions it even slightly is total quackery

Aluminium is widely considered a neuro toxin including in conventional fields

OP, I struggle with your perception that no-one had ASD or ADHD when you were a child. Are you sure? Both were very under-diagnosed in the past, and even if they were diagnosed the fact wasn't necessarily publicised. I can't remember anyone at my school who had any sort of learning difficulty apart from one girl who was hearing impaired, but with hindsight I can identify a number who are very likely to have been on the autistic spectrum, who had major attention and sensory problems, or who were probably dyslexic.

Yes @jacksonpillock
I remember seeing this graph...

Just to be clear I don’t think it Is organic food!!! It just highlighted the lunacy to me

Anti vaxxers basically don't believe scientific papers, peer reviewed ext, because a) they think ad hoc anecdotal evidence from Mary down the road is more believable and b) (which is closely linked to a) that the scientific community are all part of one massive conspiracy.

The huge conspiracy theory is so ridiculous. 3 guys in politics conspiring to hide something, perhaps. An entire professional community of possibly millions of people.... hahahaha.

Which means, basically, that anti-vaxxers are stupid.

I'm generally sceptical of the government, big business, etc. but the scientific community in general is extremely reliable and trustworthy.

In the absence of my own expertise, I would definitely trust global scientific consensus over an unqualified group of strangers online.

And yet we still have cancer that 1 in 2 people will get. It used to be 1 in 4. Huge populations in the world are not vaccinated are they and the majority seem very fit and healthy.

@viiz
So many things have changed in the last 30 years. I doubt very very much that vaccines cause adhd or autism.
I'm pretty sure that junk food, tablets, smaller gardens, busy parents and Low wages etc have a lot to answer for though.

I was born before you and everyone was vaccinated. Children with problems were called srupid or naughty or trouble kids etc. It makes me feel bad how they must have felt for something that wasn’t recognised at the time as ADHD, autism etc. Thankfully medicine is constantly improving.

Thank you user1457017537, for a perfect and timely example of why it is best to trust global scientific consensus over unqualified strangers online.

"Huge populations in the world are not vaccinated and they seem relatively fit and healthy".

I don't even know how to respond to this. Developing nations suffer massively from all kinds of problems, including the spread of PREVENTABLE diseases.

www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/world/europe/measles-increase.html

Don’t respond to it then I’m entitled to my opinion even if you disagree

It would also be interesting to know the cancer rate in developing countries.

You can't argue with a conspiracy theory unfortunately.

I get what you're trying to say OP.

But two things jump out at me. Firstly, there comes a point where some things are so fundamentally accepted by all schools of scientific study that they are commonly accepted as fact. Sugar causes tooth decay. Water expands as it freezes. Humans can only live x amount of days without water and y days without food. One side of this debate has thousands of scientific studies on its side. The other has a few studies that have been proven over and over again to be flawed, and a load of people who have done their own 'research' by you tubing people with an agenda (Often selling homeopathic products). There are enough people vaccinated and no vaccinated now, that if it did cause any disorder, someone would have been able to difinitely prove it. Why haven't they? The anti vaxxers can't answer that so will then come up with arguments that are impossible to prove like 'that's what they are paid to say' or 'that's what they want you to believe' or rely on useless anecdotes like 'why don't doctors vaccinate their own children then' when research says nearly all of them do. So it's not people not being open to others opinions, it's people not wanting to waste time arguing against a fact with someone who has no evidence. If someone's opinion was that the sun orbits the earth because youtube told them so, people would rightly say it's not an opinion worth arguing against because they are plainly wrong and to me, this is similar.

Note I'm not talking about people who can't vaccinate because immune system compromised, religious beliefs or possible adverse reaction

Secondly, lots and lots of lifestyle factors have changed between your generation arena the next

Less fresh food, less exercise, more processed food, more fat sugar salt and addatives, more screen time, social media, more single parent families, more working parents, more childcare, more travel, more cars on the road, less freedom, a much wider understanding of personality and behaviour disorders, less breastfeeding, women drinking more alcohol, I could go on and on and on

Why have you just picked the rise of vaccines as the one thing that's caused issues? Why not any of the above or a combination of the above? As there are lots of overlapping and interrelated factors, you would need lots of properly conducted scientific studies to unpick them. Not a random guess. Correlation doesn't equal causation

If you worry more about autism than about preventable diseases which can maim or kill... please, don’t procreate.

I was a toddler in the Andrew Wakefield era, so I received the MMR as three separate vaccines. Still autistic. And, if you look back at my great-grandparents, you can be pretty sure that they would have met the diagnostic criteria for autism as well.

A huge reason why more people are diagnosed with autism nowadays is that up until (I think?) the 1970s, a low IQ was a requirement for the diagnosis. Also for decades it was thought that only boys were autistic