to be cross my ds has measles because other parents didn't vaccinate their children

[snickersnack]

He's 11 months old, poor little thing . Fortunately he's going to be ok - he got off quite lightly, I think - but it was scary and he was really poorly for a day or so. Spent 10 hours in A&E yesterday while he had chest x-rays, blood tests, IV fluids etc. Now we're just waiting to see if his sister,who's 2, gets it - she's had one dose of MMR already so fingers crossed she's immune.

We live in an area where immunisation rates are among the lowest in the country. Now I have to go and tell all parents of the other babies he's met recently that their children might be at risk as well...

Cote d'Azur you're right about rubella and the responsibility of women. And your defence of choice.

Couldn't agree with you more CoteDAzur.

Kerrymum, I just went to your link.

the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program ruled in favor of a child who regressed into autism as a result of vaccinations

So it's 'proved' then that vaccinations can cause autism. Surely this vindicates Dr Wakefield? Even if we said that the US decision was mistaken there must be reasonable evidence to convince the courts there so it wasn't simply invented by him.

It is the first time that vaccinations have been accepted by a court anywhere to have triggered autism. Poor girl.

I'm pretty sure the case in the US was due to thiomerosal aggravating an underlying medical condition, and is unrelated to Andrew Wakefield's studies on MMR. As I understand it, the MMR doesn't contain thiomerosal.

Did it at the time?

I think she did have the MMR but I think it's unrelated Andrew Wakefield-wise (I could check the jabs she had.) Well yes there was the mitochondrial thing -- but if she hadn't had the jabs it wouldn't have caused a problem and she was "symptom-free". How many children have this condition and wouldn't know it all their lives if they weren't vaccinated?

The link is talking about the Poling case. Hannah Poling is part of the Autism Omnibus, there are about 4000 cases waiting to be heard, hers was one of the first ones.

What is significant is that the evidence never even got heard, the case was conceeded.

Most of the information is not yet available so how much the case relates to Dr Wakefield's work is difficult to say. Hannah Poling received vaccines for nine diseases on one day, MMR was one of them. MMR has never contained thimerosal but some of the other vaccines that she received did.

Whether or not Hannah was ill in the way described by Dr Wakefield and his collegues, this case does show that they are not the only ones drawing a link between vaccines and autism.

The case is of course being largely ignored by the mainstream press. They are too busy predicting measles epidemics and misinterpreting the Cochrane Report I guess.

Is it really true that 10% of children may develop an adverse reaction to MMR? I thought the numbers were much lower than those likely to develop complications from measles. In which case, if you're statistics-minded, you'd obviously go for MMR, unless you knew your child was likely to be at a great risk for whatever reason.

Beachcomber, I'm not saying that they are to blame for the media handling. I just think that most medics have probably just heard the more superficial coverage of the case and rightly or wrongly, blame Dr Wakefield for setting off the whole business.

Eh? Which link?

riven actually i have and i my sister is dead because of measles..and she was only 6mths old!
As i said there are risks with any drugs/vaccines.
I agree there are some children that perhaps wouldnt be a good idea to give vaccines to, but much more research is needed. And actually try dealing with the death of a sister from measles, its hardly a bed of roses either but i will never see my sister again or see her grow up!! That is what i meant, i never intended it to me that autism was a walk in the park or not a serious condition at all..i know lots of people with children that have autism and all have a large variety of problems..i dont wish to make light of the plight of parents and it would make much more sense to me to have single jabs available on the NHS until the MMR and Autism link was researched properly and no proven links were found and that it was something parents could trust. This government should put childrens welfare before saving a few bucks.

its not just the autism link,though.children have died from the MMR.i dont see why parents should be forced to put their childrens lives at risk.

anyway,i found this when i was looking into vaccinations.i found it pretty interesting reading....

You are never going to get any vaccines or drugs that are going to be completely safe, for every child and rare side effects can happen! Everything carries a risk but its how much of a risk, and what the benefits actually are that needs to be looked at and investigated and researched properly..and i dont think that the scare mongering that has come about really helps the situation, in helping every parent to make decisions for their children..its causing so many problems which is why i think that single jabs now need to be made available on the NHS, to make sure we are protecting the more vunerable and keeping these nasty illnesses such as rubella and measles at bay.

fark me! HOW COME THAT ISN'T HEADLINE NEWS????

that is HUGE.

i agree with you there BITCAT.good post.

Funny how those starting out with a determined "non-vaccination is irresponsible" standpoint usually end up agreeing with the need for more research.

That's exactly the point. Think about why it's not being done. They have the money for it, and the willing volunteers.
But they don't want the extent of the problem to be known, neither the manufacturers nor the governments who bought the sales rap.

You can do quite a lot of reading yourselves of the other side of the argument. Most non-vaccinators have read both sides and made their choice. I suspect many more people who looked at the same analyses might edge even further to the pro-choice standpoint.

Haven't read the whole thread either.

I had measles as a child. it was not pleasant. At all.

My children have not had the MMR jab but they have had the single measles vaccine. I don't want them to suffer like I did.

Stuffit I think al ot of pro vaccine feel uncomfortable with statements such as "But they don't want the extent of the problem to be known, neither the manufacturers nor the governments who bought the sales rap."

It smacks too much of conspiracy theory and the faceless government are real live people with families.

The fact is ANY vaccine or drug can cause a side -effect and this is never denied. That's why there is a vaccine damage fund. What the government is denying is that it causes autism as that has not been proven... yet. That doesn't mean it will never be proven, there's just not enough evidence at the moment.

Real live people with families. like Tony Blair who didnt want to say if his son had MMR as I recall and like MPs who say state schools are wonderful, but send their own to private ones.

The fact remains that the government have resisted allowing single vaccines even if the alternative was people not having one at all. That's not a secret thing that's happening in plain sight.

It's also true that that tell people it's all fine yet we KNOW that people have adverse reactions even if Autism isn't 100% proved.

This is probably going to be a bit off-topic - I promised beachcomber a link a couple of days ago and this is the first chance I've had. I haven't read the intervening posts so apologies if it's totally irrelevant.

Beachcomber (if you're still reading!), I think that this is a good sound study and it brings together the theory and practice of herd immunity very nicely. There's a non-technical summary at the end.

It's a 28-year review of measles cases in the Netherlands, and it's relevant to the UK because in the Netherlands most children are vaccinated but there're clusters of unvaccinated children in certain groups, which is similar to what's happening in the UK today.

(from the non-technical summary): "They found that only when the number of people who could potentially get measles exceeded a certain level was there a chance of a major outbreak, and they showed that one additional person who refrains from vaccination is associated with more than one?almost two?infected persons in subsequent major outbreaks."

And that (to me) is the ethical dilemma in a nutshell: When we decide to vaccinate or not vaccinate our children, we're making important decisions about other people's children too.

Which only makes it all the harder to work out the rights and wrongs of it IMO.