Vaccination and anti-vacc'ers

[Biddie191]

Hi, my daughter (17) is writing an essay on the uptake of childhood vaccinations, but other than as a response to the now-disproved link of MMR to Autism, she can't find much about why many people oppose vaccination in children. Can anyone point me (and her) in the right direction to find some more info, or can anyone give me their thoughts? Both sides of the argument would be really helpful, or if anyone has links to any threads on here that would be great. I did try searching, but haven't come up with any, although I know I've seen threads not so long ago discussing it, which is why I thought I'd ask. Thank you xxx

My SIL posts loads of anti- vacc stuff that she gets from American fb groups. Might be worth a look if you’re on fb.

There's a Facebook page called Arnica - parents support network, promoting natural immunity

They are all anti vaxxer and have lots of discussions about it,post lots of articles and videos. I would definitely look on there. It's an open group so you can read everything.

Peanut - Brilliant - many thanks. I will have a look.
shockers - any idea which groups?

One thing often mentioned is that some children do have an allergic reaction to vaccines.

I'd say the majority have had at least one child suffer severe adverse reactions and it puts them off vaccinating their younger siblings.

Don't forget a lot of parents don't give permission for the HPV vaccine in case in encourages underage sex.

Do a search on vaccine failures in history. The anti vaccination parents are often scared by past failures.

One such failure birthed the MMR autism myth. Like all myths, there is also a kernel of truth to the vaccine-autism link, but it wasn’t autism but mercury poisoning which gives similar symptoms as autism. Which is why thimerisol (a mercury based preservative) was removed from all vaccines in the late 1990s. So all these children who had mercury poisoning were misdiagnosed with autism. Today, scientists can accurately say, MMR or any vaccine is not and never has been linked to autism. But that does not mean there were never damaged infants from a vaccine failure- in this case a dodgy and dangerous preservative. Saying there is no link to autism also cleverly obscures that there was a link between vaccines and mercury poisoning. It’s all recorded on the FDA and CDC and other government pages if you look for it.
“However, depending on the vaccine formulations used and the weight of the infant, some infants could have been exposed to cumulative levels of mercury during the first six months of life that exceeded Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended guidelines for safe intake of methylmercury”
www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/safety-availability-biologics/thimerosal-and-vaccines#action

More from the FDA web page
“Other than allergic responses in some individuals, there was no known health risk from thimerosal-preservative at the concentration used in vaccines, but in 1999, the Public Health Service (including the FDA, National Institutes of Health (NIH), CDC, and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)), along with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) concluded that because of scientific uncertainty at the time, as a precautionary measure, that it was prudent to reduce childhood exposure to mercury from all sources, including vaccines, as feasible. On July 1, 1999, the FDA sent a letter to all licensed manufacturers of vaccines requesting their plans to remove thimerosal from U.S. licensed vaccines. This step was taken because the elimination or reduction of mercury in vaccines was a feasible means of reducing an infant’s total exposure to mercury in a world where other environmental sources of mercury are challenging to eliminate.

Much progress has been made in removing or reducing thimerosal in vaccines. All vaccines routinely recommended for children 6 years of age and younger in the U.S. are available in formulations that do not contain thimerosal. In addition, vaccines that do not contain thimerosal as a preservative are available for adolescents and adults.”

So to summarise, a real vaccine failure caused the MMR-autism myth to be born. Parents associated vaccines with causing autism because that is what the children were being diagnosed with by doctors. The parents did not know that the children actually had mercury poisoning. A study was published where a group of these children previously diagnosed with autism underwent chelation (cure for heavy metal/mercury poisoning) and for most their “autism” went away. Which was when they realised ooops there is no vaccine autism link, because you cannot cure autism, but there is a vaccine- mercury poisoning link. So then they decided to take the mercury out of vaccines.

I think some people do do a lot of research into vaccinations and make informed decisions whereas other people see links shared on Facebook to websites that aren't really medically accurate or spread information that is totally inaccurate. These people believe the articles they're reading and then share them to others spreading the misinformation. Everyone wants to do the best for their child, and if you're educated with the wrong information then you believe what you're doing is the best thing

Our reticence was because a family member my age was one of those rare people who had horrific, life altering side effects. Watching that happen plus the many decades of post-incident care required scared me. We ultimately chose to vaccinate, but I refused to follow the schedule of multiple shots at a time and instead spread them out in the hopes of avoiding those extremely rare side effects that are well documented.

Vaccine Successes, Failures and Controversy.
www.pediatricsconsultantlive.com/pediatric-skin-diseases/snippets-vaccine-history-success-failure-and-controversy

This article highlights the big successes and failures in the history of vaccines.

That's really great - thanks you. Any more info hugely appreciated.