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...

gosh I'm doubly pleased we made that decision then Think ds3 was a close shave.

i do wonder how things might have been too.

That's very interesting Yurt. It echoes the experience after the introduction of the Mengingitis C vaccine, where C cases dropped but there was no drop in the cases of meningitis overall, as the B strain seemed to increase to take its place. Just looked on the HPA site to find current comparison now but I could only find a link to the C figures. The situation may have changed.

So not only is a gluten-free diet beneficial to alleviate symptoms of severe autism, but it also prevents autism?

How come? I would be very interested to hear the mechanism through which gluten-free diet wards off autism.

Does that then mean gluten triggers autism in some cases?

cote
I think that you are making a leap there ( and sounding a little sarcastic in the process though not sure that is intentional).
I was also advised to avoid gluten and dairy in my DD's diet for the first year or so.

If my son developed ASD symptons because ( having been damaged by the MMR) his gut could not process gluten or casein without him having monstrous 'side-effects' then it seemed sensible to avoid that same trigger food with my DD until I was sure that she did not have similar gut issues.

cote earlier in the thread (think it was this one) I talked about work on leaky gut and autoimmunity and specifically work on milk proteins and gluten and type 1 diabetes (does that sentence even make sense?). There is a model that involves gluten/casein and leaky gut in some cases.

yurt - I missed that. Will search for that link now.

pagwatch - I just read my post again and can't see why you would think I am being 'sarcastic'?!? Have you read anything I wrote on this thread?

I was very serious, although admittedly quite ignorant on the subject. I am very curious about the biological mechanism that leads a 'normal' baby to autism. That is why I asked the diet/gluten question.

If doctors are advising avoidance of gluten to siblings of children with autism, I think that is very significant and shows that they believe (in certain children) gluten can be the trigger to regression into autism.

Cote there's a basic outline here;

"The ?opioid excess ?theory of autism,put forward firstby Panksepp and colleagues7 and later by Reichelt and colleagues8 and Shattock and colleagues9 proposes that autistic disorders result from the incomplete breakdown and excessive absorption of gut-derived peptides from foods,including barley,rye,oats,and caesin from milk and dairy produce.These peptides may exert central-opioid effects,directly or through the formation of ligands with peptidase enzymes required for breakdown of endogenous central-nervous-system opioids,9 leading
to disruption of normal neuroregulation and brain development by endogenous encephalins and endorphins. One aspect of impaired intestinal function that could permit increased permeability to exogenous peptides is deficiency of the phenyl-sulphur-transferase systems,as
described by Waring.
10"

From the Lancer paper, see the discussion section.

I cut casein and gluten out of DD1's diet and it helped enormously. Like Kerry's DS she was allergic to nearly all common foods. We also were down to hardly any foods she could eat. At her worst she only had lamb, pears, apples, cabbage, broccoli, rice, millet and quinoa as 'safe' foods.

Is autism the only concern with vaccinations then?

No Winky -- not at all. Some people have concerns about many autoimmune disorders, such as MS, and sadly, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

But before scaring the pants off you I would say these are denied by health experts and vaccine manufacturers.

I buy it, though.

cote
have read the thread but don't tend to remember every 'who said what' so many apologies.
i did say I just thought you sounded sarcastic and I wasn't sure you meant it like that. Clearly you didn't.

I'm with you on that Stuffitllama, I think the whole SIDS situation warrants further investigation and clarity.

I have a friend (a nurse) who at 27 suffers from MS that she and her doctor are sure is related to multiple Hep B vaccinations that she was obliged to have for her work.

There is research on this but like you say, possible links are denied by manufacturers and regulators.

intersting link, cote. thankyou. i have always thought the whole perception of risk thing is key- and i managed to come up with this conclusion without plotting a graph -lol!

for instance, if i was travelling abroad to a country where yellow fever was rife, and i had no choice but to take the dcs, i'd have them immunised. the risk from disease would be clearly huge.

back here in the uk, the way i perceive risk from disease is v different. i believe that many people routinely immunise there children, without really questioning the safety of doing so. saying there is 'no proof' of side effects is just not good enough for me.

i alos believe that there is a lot of scare mongering going on about these childhood diseases anyway. take the mmr, for example. i feel really strongly that there is no smoke without fire as far as the autism thing goes. and, as the mother of 2 girls, they are not at serious risk from mumps. they will have the rubella jab in their teens, when their little bodies are more robust. and without meaning to sound flippant, we'll just have to take our chances with measles. (dd 1 had a mealses scare aged 1, btw, when she was too young for immunisation anyway)

for us , as a family, the mmr just seems to be an unnecessary risk.

snicker snack, i just wanted to say that i was responding to the general debate about immunisation that you op has started. have just read my post agian, and it does sound flippant. i am so sorry your ds is poorly. am not trying to trivialise his illness at all.

i just wanted to emphasise that i was contributing to the public debate, not responding to your individual situation. sorry.

No worries, Noonar - I'm assuming no-one on the thread thought I was over-reacting by worrying about ds having measles (whether they thought I was over-reacting in my response to it is another matter ). He's fine, now, I think - bit my ankle today then crawled off chortling merrily to himself, so pretty much back to normal.

Snicker I understand how worrying it must have been but wanted to tell you the good news, which is that coming well out of measles is supposed to be a great primer of the immune system, and doesn't just mean no more measles.

it must have been terribly worrying snicker, so glad he is ok now. It is such a tricky subject, and i often feel caught in the middle of the debate. But glad he is ok.

Hey snicker, glad your little one is doing well.

You started an interesting thread which has stimulated much discussion, thanks.

Nobody is forcing you to vaccinate your children, Katie.

hope your wee one gets better soon, glad it's been caught in time. yes, this topic is one that really gets me angry. some parents think they have the right to put other kids at risk for not getting their own kids vaccinated. they have no idea how detrimental their decision is at all. sadly it's not compulsory to have babies immunised against everything as a general rule.

Read the thread folks. It's not that simple.

I wish people woulld read threads (or at least some of it!) before commenting - especially one this size. Do you really think this tread is just full of people noding wisely and saying "oh, yes, vaccinations should be compulsory".

I, for one, am bloody glad that I wasn't forced to give dd2 any jabs (that's right, any jabs at all, not just refusing the MMR) - I am glad that I haven't been forced to make her autistic (pretty likely given family history).

I am glad that I was not forced to watch another child of mine regress, and become ill.

Watch as another child slowed in her development to the point of standstill, before slowly and painfully being dragged back into the world in some small way.

Everybody I know who has decided against some or all of the current vaccination schedule used ot believe in jabs. Dd1 was jabbed because I believed in them. She will now struggle for the rest of her life, and we as her family struggle too - we struggle with the authorities to try to get her any help at all. We are lied to when we ask for help, and ignored if we do not ask.

THe part that really angers me is that when I knew something was wrong with my child, and went to ask for help repeatedly when she was a baby, I was fobbed off time and again and told I was being over cautious.

Why on earth would I risk putting another child through this same ordeal?

This is not the simpled decision that you are making it out to be, scottishmum007.