Why are SINGLE Vacs safer? is there still autism risk with singles?

[kalo12]

Can someone tell me the pros and cons.

my ds reacted badly to the 4 mth jabs, and has very sensitive stomach and quite allergy prone so i'm a bit hesitant about the next lot at 12 mths.

anyone?

Are they safer? I think your opening question is open to scrutiny? Some people would say they're not.

oh yes. Thats what I mean. Are they? and why? / why not?

Well, it depends who you ask and what sort of proof you want.

Sorry to be so unhelpful. I would say that as a general rule, members of the medical profession think MMR is the better option.

But if you stick around, you will receive a flood of opposing views.

There isnt believed to be an autism risk from MMR, so I guess singles would be just the same. They are less tested, but I dont think there is any reason to suspect a risk of autism from the singles.

i suppose what i'm after is some opposing views so i can get a full picture.

bump

I think the short version is that a slim chance of an autism/mmr link was considered. The government screamed "don't say that' stop talking about it!!!" and so it was never really examined properly or resolved and now you will find so many opinions and websites biased one way or another that there is no way to judge.

i think that single vacs are not safer because there is actually a longer period of time where your child is not vaccinated and therefore succeptable to dangerous diseases.

i dont know what age you are onager, but my memory of that time is certainly not the same as yours. on the contrary, the alledged link between MMR and autism was constantly in the media for years, and there were numerous tv programmes about it (and not everything was tabloid crap).

i personally feel that it is all very well for us in a first world country to shout about wanting single vacs, knowing that if our children get sick we have quick access to medical treatment. it is a different matter in developing countries where there is not the same medical treatment avavilable and measles, mumps and rubella are common killers.

i also seem to remember that the alledged "link" arose from one dodgy doctor at the royal free in london who touted spurious results from some unreliable case studies, for his own ends.

Jimjams is your expert really but i have just returned from see Dr Richard Halvorsen in London who is an NHS doctor and gives single vaccs to people who want them.

This is what he told me.

DD who has hemi and PDD-NOS,chronic stomach problems which she is on medication for, in his words he said to DH "if i was DD,s dad i would not dream of giving her the mmr,she falls into the "at risk" category".

He told me that 2 children have died from measles in the last 8 years but they had other serious medical difficulties and their immune system was already under extreme pressure and their body couldnt cope with measles.

He told us not to worry about mumps,and that the rubella she can have when she,s 12 just like they used to give you.

So yes for the majority of children the mmr is relatively safe,if however you have a child who falls into the at risk category who,s stomach problems could worsen and who,s PDD-NOS could get worse would you take that chance?

Because we certainly arent.

As I understand it (and I'm no expert) the jab linked to gut problems is the measles one. The single could have the same effect as the MMR. The difference is that by giving singles you are not giving their immune system such a huge load at once.

My eldest children all had the MMR, except DD1 who had an egg allergy and the GP said no. She got it when she was about 11.

I have IBS (and was a guinea pig for the testing of the original single measles vax in 1964...) and DS1 and DS2 have ASD plus bowel/ gut problems. DS3 is fine.

We took DD2 to see Dr Halvorsen and had the single measles. She will not be having the mumps, and she will have the rubella at 11.

Until someone can tell me categorically that DS1 and DS2's problems were not caused by the MMR I would not subject any more of my children to MMR. If you don't have the family problems then it is probably safe, and preferable to getting the disease. IMO.

what is pdd-nos?

how old is your dd? i live in south east london and they are always going on about measles outbreak. they want to give 2 mmr a month apart at 12 months.

i'm terrified.

thanks catweazle - so dd2 had single measles and is fine? What age did she have it?

My son reacted to his baby jabs and all our children have had, or are having, the single jabs.

Hes lovely Dr Halvorsen isnt he catweazle .

yes thats what he told us,its the measles part that is linked to the gut problems.

kalo12 DD is 4.7.

she didnt get to have the jab because dr halvorsen didnt want to give it to her as she had been on antibiotics for yet another UTI.

PDD-NOS,is Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not otherwise Specified or Atypical Autism.

so if you don't have the measles jab then is it scary to be at risk for measles?

my ds is 9 months . i thought i could see some early markers for autism, not babbling, little eye contact, hand twirling and stimming. i went on gfcf diet and within weeks he improved massively. but he is intolerant to dairy defo and seems intolerant to lots of food/hardly eats any solids at all just bf.

most people tell me i'm being ridiculous and there is nothing wrong, but i had anti biotics after he was born and it really upset his system, now i'm worried he has weakened immune system.

sos, i'm babbnling. any advice? how soon can you get appointmsnts with dr r.h?

I did loads of research on this 7 years ago when my eldest was due the MMR and the risk of autism/bowel disorders etc was believed to be associated to the measles vaccine (but this study was flawed: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/mmr/cip2/121.asp. However, many believe there are risks with the single vaccines:

[[http://www.jabs.org.uk/pages/single.

There's a seriously misleading statement on this thread: "I also seem to remember that the alledged "link" arose from one dodgy doctor at the royal free in london who touted spurious results from some unreliable case studies, for his own ends."

Not a fair representation of the facts at all. Andrew Wakefield led some research - not on his own, medical research doesn't work like that - and has been villified for answering a question honestly, at a press conference held with the approval of his trust. He's been hounded out of the country, howled down by the establishment for daring to question whether there are any undesirable risks from MMR.

That is not what evidence-based medicine is about. Any honest scientific approach would be to investigate what Wakefield thought he'd found and establish whether he was right, wrong or misguided. Sadly this has not happened - everyone's been scared off.

The Department of Health-led campaign against Wakefield is a classic example of 'kill the messenger', using the same dirty tricks they used against doctors who dared to suggest Seroxat increased the risk of suicide in young people. Sadly in the case of Seroxat the dirty tricks campaign will have caused several deaths.

It's entirely possible that Wakefield is wrong. But we don't really have any way of knowing because no-one is doing the research that would actually answer the question. (We really need JimJams here to summarise what IS going on.)

Expert, reliable, authoritative and independent reviewers at Drug & Therapeutic Bulletin and the Cochrane Collaboration say that MMR is safe as far as they can tell BUT the safety studies are not sufficient. That's just not good enough.

Vaccines are like any other medicine, they can have unwanted side effects. To pretend otherwise -as the DH does - is to tell a downright lie.

and what did you decide saggy?

thanks edam.

Edam - what did you decide to do then?

what Edam says is true - and Andrew Wakefield was demonised unnecessarily.
A similar thing happened to a researcher in GM crops, Arpad Pusztai, when he discovered that using snowdrop lectins in potatoes caused problems in the rats that were fed the potatoes - he published in all innocence and was removed from his research post and all his work rubbished by his colleagues from then on.

The scientific establishment is a very political arena, not least because of funding issues - there is no "pure" science these days. Most, if not all, labs in Universities are funded by pharmaceutical corporations and they are more likely to look kindly on research that doesn't rock the profit boat.

One place you can try for more answers is the Austism Research Unit at Sunderland University, headed by Dr. Paul Shattock, himself the father of an autistic son.

Another researcher, a Dr. Rosemary Waring of Birmingham University, has written some interesting papers on the types of children more at risk from vaccines than others. Risk factors include a high allergic history in the family - i.e. family history of eczema, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, migraine, autoimmune diseases. Dyslexia, dyspraxia and ASD in the family might also increase risk.

If your child has a good diet with plenty of vitamins and minerals, has good bowel bacteria and is generally healthy, they are unlikely to suffer ill-consequences from the MMR - but they might, as they might from any vaccine.

I have this decision to make for my DS very soon and have already decided not to give him the MMR as he didn't much like the PCV vaccines; so it is good to know that there are still docs prepared to give the measles vaccine separately. I will be getting that done for him in the next 6 months and then the others before he is 2.

gosh, its really difficult isn't it?

yes, it is a total minefield - damned if you do and damned if you don't - a friend of mine has this with her DS (aged 5 now) as well - she doesn't want him to get measles but is scared of the vaccine effects as he IS high risk and reacted quite badly to previous vaccines.
So potential situations - no vaccine, he gets measles, could get nasty.
OR - she gets him vaccinated and he has a reaction to it, possibly to the level of ASD.

What to do?

No real help, I'm afraid (and just about off to bed, so won't check this again until morning), but before my ds had his MMR I looked into this as much as I could. You can find info to support both sides of the arguement on the internet, so once your decision is made you will be able to find something to back it up, but it can get quite confusing. I looked at the original article that was submitted by Andrew Wakefield. IIRC, it was 12 children, diagnosed with Autism, and their medical history was then checked. I don't know if I can put my hand on the article easily, but could try if anyone's interested. A few things stood out:
12 is not a huge number for a study of this type
It was not a randomised placebo controlled double blind etc study
The children had either had MMR, or single measles vacc, or Otitis media, or measles the disease.
Which gets us back to the damned if you do and damned if you don't! The decision is yours and yours alone, but my feeling was that if all of the above were linked to Autism in susceptible children, I would rather take my chance with a vaccine than run the risk of the disease itself. And I chose to go for MMR because in my opinion there was little to chooose between singles and the triple in terms of safety.
Good luck with your research and decision!

You really do have to make your own mind up. You will find people on here extremely anti any vaccines and also those anti mmr based on their own experiences. Equally you will have others who have had bad experiences of the actual diseases who are very pro mmr.
The dilemma here is you can't 100% know how your child will react to the mmr or the single vaccines or catching the disease. The vast majority will be ok which ever route is taken. That is most children are not harmed by the vaccine and most children who catch measles do recover. The main problem is that as vaccination rates fall these diseases will inevitably become more common and so the risk of your unvaccinated child catching measles will obviously be greater given that measles is very contagious. I'm not sure but am assuming that if your child has other health issues that make having the vaccine more risky then so would catching measles itself. Another factor to consider is that from what I've read how well a child recovers is dependant on how quickley measles is diagnosed and treated. I have heard that it is a hard disease to diagnose and most gps will never have seen a case.
My view on this is you have to decide which outcome you could best live with should the unlikely happen. But it really is a rock and a hard place!! I'm just glad that my 3 had already had their mmr before the Andrew Wakefield study and the surrounding controversy hit the press. My dd had only had the first mmr and she didn't have the booster till recently at age 11. The publicity surrounding measles epidemics prompted me to change my mind.
As others have said good luck with your choice ...sadly there are no definitive answers anyone can give.