To ask for vaccine reassurance

[24hoursfromTulsamom]

My 15 month old is overdue for his one year immunisations and I’m feeling stressed about it. I want him to get them asap (postponed due to illness - his and the nurse’s) because I don’t want him to get sick and he’s in daycare, but also I have anxiety and there is a tiny part of me that worries about autism.

To be clear, I know the MMR stuff has been discredited and the guy struck off. But I have two autistic siblings, one very severely disabled, and there’s a tiny part of me that is fearful. I know it’s in his best interests to have his shots but I wish there was someone who could put my mind at rest. Are there any moms on here who have had a similar experience? I was nervous about the covid jab too but still had two shots of it while pregnant and was fine obviously.

I am not an antivaxxer and do not want to hear from antivaxxers - it’s an anxiety thing and I would just like some kind words to make me feel less worried. Thanks

We have all the jabs offered

My oldest ds has austism, and it was around the time of the dickhead doctor Wakefield, and I still went on and got all the vax for my youngest one.
Wakefield did his 'study' on 12 children who were at a birthday party "Wakefield reportedly stood to earn up to $43 million per year selling test kits" he is a complete arsehole and I for one would welcome the death penalty for him and the destruction he has caused

It's perfectly safe. Safer than the alternative.

If your child has autism he will have autism regardless of his vaccination status. Go ahead and protect him perfect safe vaccines. All you can do is repeat to yourself that the two things are separate.

The only one of mine who did not have MMR was youngest DD and that was down to medical advice. Eldest had autism [profound] but was very strange from birth and it was obvious something was not right from the word go. Youngest son has ASD too. Both had ASD before MMR jabs. Neither was made any worse by MMR. Youngest DD was very poorly with measles. She shared it with her dad. Measles came close to killing her dad and it was touch and go in hospital for a couple of weeks. I was only allowed to see him as he was in negative pressure HDU. He is still living with the ongoing health consequences of that time and it damaged his sight. In honesty the risk of death and risks of long term damage from measles far far outweigh the rather tiny chance of a bad jab reaction.

Since all the MMR stuff first hit the headlines, questions about any link between vaccines and ASD has been one of the most thoroughly-researched health topics out there. Because vaccines are so important for public health, and are (ideally) given to all healthy children, it's vitally important to make sure that they're safe, so there's been pretty much no effort spared when it comes to clearing this up. There's been so much high-quality research done, on such vast numbers of people, all of which finds no link between vaccines and autism, that medical authorities like the CDC are confident enough to say outright that there's no link: www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism.html

(Annoyingly, the relevant bits of that screenshot aren't visible unless you click to expand it.)

My child is fully vaccinated and he is completely NT.

Wakefield had a patent for single vaccines. He was described by the GMC as callous and dishonest. This wasn't a mistake. It was a fraud.

Measles kills.

Have you read this, written by Roald Dahl about his daughter?

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.
“I feel all sleepy, ” she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her.

My son caught measles just before he turned 1 (from an unvaccinated older toddler at a baby group - we know this as Public Health England got involved as several babies caught it).

The risks of measles are horrifying. Look them up and balance them against the disproven autism claims.

I understand your fear but would follow the science. The very valid fear when your baby has measles is overwhelming.

Thank you so much for this, and I’m so sorry about your husband and that your DD was so sick. I don’t want to risk him getting measles and know that it can cause death and brain damage. Thank you for so vividly confirming that.

With my sibling too it was very clear that he had severe autism from birth. My mother has finally come to terms with this but she was taken in by the MMR stuff for a while. So awful.

DD was born profoundly Deaf. She contracted measles at 6m and I was absolutely petrified she'd lose her sight too. People who did not vaccinate their child put mine at huge risk and I cannot express politely what I think of that.

This is so reassuring, thank you. I find science is very reassuring when I’m in an anxious spiral so it was the perfect thing I needed to fix in my mind.

and this might help, from the green book which is the UK gold standard for information on vaccines:

Evidence refutes the suggestion that measles-containing vaccines (including MMR) can
cause Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). In a population that received 900,000 doses of MMR,
there was no increased risk of GBS at any time after the vaccinations were administered
(Patja et al., 2001).
Although gait disturbance has been reported after MMR, a recent epidemiological study showed
no evidence of a causal association between MMR and gait disturbance (Miller et al., 2005).
In the past, a link between measles vaccine and bowel disease has been postulated and
dismissed by the evidence. There was no increase in the incidence of inflammatory bowel
disorders in those vaccinated with measles-containing vaccines when compared with
controls (Gilat et al., 1987; Feeney et al., 1997). No increase in the incidence of
inflammatory bowel disease was observed after the introduction of MMR vaccination in
Finland (Pebody et al., 1998) or in the UK (Seagroatt, 2005).
There is now overwhelming evidence that MMR does not cause autism http://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25344/). A large number of studies have been published looking at
this issue. Such studies have shown:
●● no increased risk of autism in children vaccinated with MMR compared with
unvaccinated children (Farrington et al., 2001; Madsen and Vertergaard, 2004)
Chapter 21 - 16
Measles
Chapter 21: Measles December 2019
●● no clustering of the onset of symptoms of autism in the period following MMR
vaccination (Taylor et al., 1999; De Wilde et al., 2001; Makela et al., 2002)
●● that the increase in the reported incidence of autism preceded the use of MMR in the
UK (Taylor et al., 1999)
●● that the incidence of autism continued to rise after 1993 in Japan despite withdrawal of
MMR (Honda et al., 2005)
●● that there is no correlation between the rate of autism and MMR vaccine coverage in
either the UK or the USA (Kaye et al., 2001; Dales et al., 2001)
●● no difference between the proportion of children developing autism after MMR who
have a regressive form compared with those who develop autism without vaccination
(Fombonne, 2001; Taylor et al., 2002; Gillberg and Heijbel, 1998)
●● no difference between the proportion of children developing autism after MMR who
have associated bowel symptoms compared with those who develop autism without
vaccination (Fombonne, 1998; Fombonne, 2001; Taylor et al., 2002)
●● that no vaccine virus can be detected in children with autism using the most sensitive
methods available (Afzal et al., 2006; D’Souza et al., 2006)
●● that no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism was detected in a recent metaanalysis of case-control and cohort studies (Taylor et al., 2014)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/855154/Greenbook_chapter_21_Measles_December_2019.pdf if you want to read it better formatted, P16

Hopefully this is more visible.

People like the CDC don't make unequivocal, definite statements like that unless they're really, really sure. The evidence that vaccines do not cause autism has to be absolutely undeniable for them to phrase it like that.

How utterly awful. That poor little girl.
I needed to read this.

Many autistic traits can be spotted between 6 and 12 months, does that mean eating solid food causes autism? The MMR job has had more attention on any possible side effects than any other vaccine, if there was even a shred of a link, we’d know about it.

I’m so sorry that you had to go through this.
There is zero chance that I would let him go unvaccinated - I hate that he still hasn’t had them tbh. I just needed to fix it in my mind so I can be calm for him on the day - thank you for posting

I am so sorry. That sounds absolutely terrifying.

Good luck with your little one! I hope it all goes smoothly.

Honestly, I'm ashamed to be from the country that exported Wakefield and his self-serving, fraudulent, child-endangering scam operation. Even decades later, his actions and lies are still sending out ripples, and making people feel uneasy.

Totally against the Covid vaccine for children but 100% for all other vaccines. They are really necessary.

A child died in my local town from measles as she hadn't been vaccinated due to the so called link to Autism. Her parents got her brother vaccination vvv quickly after her sad death. Talk to the nurse or GP about any concerns but even if there is a tiny link it's better than the diseases this vaccine prevents. You got this op. X

As someone who had mumps as a toddler, please get your kid jabbed ASAP. It's my earliest memory and it's of being thouroughly miserable for weeks in a lot of pain.

My cousins are unvaccinated. 1 has autism. I hope the above posts have provided you with some reassurance

Ok I’m really stressed now as we have to wait until Monday and I want him to have them this minute. What if he catches something at nursery tomorrow?

My dad and his sister were both lost significant hearing (and were hen profoundly deaf later in life) thanks to measles. But they were lucky - several of their schoolmates died. I think people have forgotten what measles as a disease is really like.