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.

another point to make, I suppose, that really won't help much is that the vaccines are not 100% effective anyway - so even if you do let him have the vaccination, there is still the potential that your child is not protected.

I think the dilemma with single vaccines has arisen because when Andrew Wakefield first advocated them at his press conference he hadn't done enough, if any, research to assertain whether they were in fact any safer. I'm trying to remember this from another thread which I can't find but I think this is the case.

I went for singles as I felt concerned-dd was autistic anyway.

There has been lots of research, lots, but none replicated Wakefield's findings. No other country has the hysteria about the MMR as there is in the UK.

If you want to research the topic please do it with medically qualified people, not dodgy interent sites.

except, cthea, that many medically qualified people have gained their info from financially-interested parties. And from government directives. not always the most balanced sources of info.
Agree about the dodgy internet sites though (assuming you are NOT including MN? )

Great post Edam. Cthea, using the word "hysteria" is really off, especially when you're posting just a few replies after mothers who have seen problems first hand and been offered no explanation.

I have no experience to relate, except that I haven't done mine and they are still alive and haven't infected anyone, but I think that's not what you're looking for.

I have a great deal of faith in mothers. I believe a mother knows her own child better than a doctor or researcher or DoH official who has never seen it. If two thousand mothers say something terrible happened to their child after this jab then I don't really need Andrew Wakefield -- that's good enough for me until I'm told exactly what HAS caused their problems.

Remember, the problems didn't START with Wakefield. He was researching a phenomenon that existed. These are pro-MMR parents they had it done, after all! who changed their minds after seeing what happened in their own families.

Anyway that's why I held off. I am very angry of behalf of those parents. It made me realise that even if you do walk the walk with MMR, you will be abandoned without support if there's an adverse event. Nobody's going to say "thanks for being a sacrificial lamb".

DD (now 9) had a bad reaction to the first MMR (all other jabs were OK), so I refused to let her have the second.

DS (now 7) had both MMR and booster, and had no bad reactions, he has now been dx'd with Asperger Syndrome (similar to High Functioning Autism). HOWEVER I have it too (only recently dx'd), and I've never had the MMR, so I don't attribute that to the jab.

My DD was 18 mo when she had the single. Partly because we wanted to wait, partly because she had chickenpox which delayed her Hib and Men C jab (Dr H recommends at least 6 weeks between cpox and a jab, and 6 weeks between jabs), and partly because it took me a while to get around to ringing for an appointment. Once we did ring it was very quick.

Dr Halvorsen was lovely, yes jenk He did explain that measles itself could also cause the problems we were trying to avoid and said it is a question of weighing up the risks for the individual child of the infection versus the MMR versus the single. You make a decision based on your interpretation of that risk and on balance we felt (and Dr H agreed) that the single was the lowest risk of the 3 options for our DD.

Oops, sorry Kalo, I went to bed!

I got ds singles from the Breakspear clinic in Hemel (recommended by MNers and my HV). However, in your shoes, I'd go and see Halvorsen because your ds does have a more complex history than mine.

thanks everybody. i'm veering towards dr r.h. can you have a cosultation with him to discuss alll your queries. does he offer consultations on gastro intestinal /allergies aswell or strictly vaccs?

Yes you can have a consultation with him. I think it was £75 for 1/2 hour (it says on the website)

Thumbwitch - I disagree completely. Most doctors have no shares in vaccine companies. (You know, if I were unkind I could suggest that those offering singles have considerable financial interest in doing so, but oops, can't say that, can I?). Most doctors have far more knowledge to assess the pros and cons of vaccinations. Most doctors got into the profession to aleviate suffering, not be instruments to it.

Bluesky - sorry if "hysteria" offends you but there's mountains of research into the non-existent link between autism and MMR. If people deliberately choose to ignore reputable sources and go for dodgy websites and what their untrained homeopath or whoever tells them, then you tell me a better word than "hysteria" in this context.

Kalo - don't forget to ask about the current shortage of mumps vaccine, what will you do? Not vaccinate for mumps, delay it until it becomes available? (Just flagging up things.) Good luck, not an easy decision.

And to get back to your original question, here's a recent news story.

cthea, for the record, I didn't for a moment suggest that doctors have financial interest in vaccine companies, I said most of their INFO comes from people with financial interests i.e. the pharmaceutical companies. There has recently been a study done to show that the vast majority of doctors use the pharmaceutical company blurb on drugs etc. as their main source of information - hardly an unbiased source.

Cthea.. the term "hysteria" offends me very much, especially since the only person getting carried away here is you! I've read plenty of studies and I also know how to pull apart many of the studies that discredit the MMR link. Calm down a bit.. it's a hard decision for everyone and as thumbwitch points out, people just need to be aware of where their information is coming from.

Bluesky - not really getting carried away at all. In fact my post was very short. I somehow don't see any similar level of outrage or even reporting after the news stiory I linked to further above. Now imagine if this was not 4 cases, but 12, and not anaphylaxis after singles vaccines, but parts of measles vaccine in the bowel of children with both autism and bowel problems. You see where I'm getting at? If 12 cases of research never since replicated, partly retracted, much published in disagreement etc, causes such a problem, then sorry but this is an irrational answer.

Thumbwitch - and hardly an unbiased source when you get info from people who sell you the singles vaccine, one might similarly claim. And I don't get your mentioning of Pusztai in this context. What did he publish on MMR and autism that was true (says who?) but rubbished (by whom?)

cthea.

This is actually a pretty rational discussion.
It would be really helpful if you weren't so aggressive in your postings.Your use of Hysteria and references to untrainned homeopaths and dodgy websites is rude, judgemental and not really called for.
If you can make your point without being rude and offensive that would be really nice.

You may be enjoying point scoring but there are parents of vaccine damaged
children on this site - including me

We've just decided AGAINST immunising our son with the triple MMR vaccine, and NOT because of the possible links between the MMR and autism. For me it was far more important to look at the bigger picture and decide what he absolutely needs to be immunised against right now, and what are the ones that are currently unnecessary in my mind, therefore we won't "poison" his body with those at this early stage.
He'd only received the measles single vaccine to start with. Mumps and rubella will probably follow in his early teens, if he's still not immune to them by then.

With regard to those "killer" or "very dangerous" diseases (MMR) mentioned by some people here earlier, here is a link to Dr Halvorsen's answers:

www.cryshame.co.uk//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68&Itemid=81

cthea - I know for a fact that Dr Halvorsen offers the single vaccines for free for his NHS patients.

iirc NAS (or one of the autistic societies) believe that 7% of children with autism are autistic as a result of the mmr. (Am sure pag or jimjams or someone else will correct me if that's wrong.) Now that is quite a small risk by comparison, but there are lots of people who believe that there are certain children who are more scseptable (sp?) to autism due to certain conditions, ie bowel conditions and other auto-immune conditions, and that those children would therefore be more likely to regress as a result of vaccinations.

I don't think that calling people histerical is necessarily helpful. After all, there are people whose children have regressed following mmr - is it really a good idea to suggest that those people are histerical? I think not.

Op - ultimately only you can decide what you want to do. but I think that it's a very logical assumption to make that if a child has issues with immunity, then overloading that child's already compromised immune system with viruses isn't necessarily a wise move.

If you do a search on mn you will find many threads relating to vaccination, and many links posted by people like jimjams.

Just for the record, I remember my very first posting on mn about vaccinations, during which I said that people who didn't vaccinate were irresponsible because it was all histeria I was summarily jumped on by someone, and after that I did a lot more reading of the threads before posting and I now believe that it's really not as black and white as all that.

Vaccinations are safe for the majority of children. But if you have a child who fits into the auto immune group then there's nothing histerical about being concerned.

cthea, I think it would be most helpful if you actually read the posts properly before reacting to them.

I was drawing a comparison between Wakefield' public vilification for the MMR thing and Pusztai's similar (although less popularly publicised) professional discreditation for producing results that could jeopardise the GM crop movement.

And the majority of GPs are likely to follow the Govt info that the single vaccines are less effective, so very unlikely that the single vaccine producers are capitalising massively.

Your child and your decision. I did alot of reading when DS was due his MMR - he had the MMR because as far as I could see the evidence was overwhelmingly in favour of it over the singles. DS had his MMR and was fine apart from a rash a few days later.

I've never been one to believe the "overloading an immune system" theory - our bodies are subjected to much more bacteria every day than in a vaccine and we cope with it.

If your child fits into an auto-immune group (and am not well read enough to be sure how you'd tell then it may be a different story).

Nothing is ever black and white but I feel that for the majority of people vaccines are safe.

OK, guys, a reminder of my original post that so irritated you: "There has been lots of research, lots, but none replicated Wakefield's findings. No other country has the hysteria about the MMR as there is in the UK. If you want to research the topic please do it with medically qualified people, not dodgy interent sites."

Apart from my link to a recent report showing a number of negative reactions to single vaccines and a lack of accountability for practitioners of single vaccines, I don't see anyone addressing the issue of singles being any better than the MMR, which is what the OP was after.

Of course if you have particular reasons to be concerned about your child you need to discuss them. But I can't see any responses on this thread addressing that.

MMR-GM crops, yeah, let's introduce GM into the discussion, build a straw man to have something to knock down.

And the reference to homeopaths was because I saw another thread a week or so ago in which the OP had been "advised" by her homeopath not to have vaccinations. I know, should have posted on that one, but couldn't be bothered.

cthea if you read the thread you will see that I did address this question, with "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." on 8/11 at 20.16