Choosing to vaccinate. Honestly how much research did/do you do?

[stroppyknickers]

I am interested because I do not think that the people I know have actually done much more than gone along with the reminder letters (vaccinated) read a couple of articles in the press (either/ or) or googled it (again either/or). Genuinely, how easy is it to make an informed decision because imo who has the time to download research papers and analyse them? I think a lot of people go with tabloid horror stories/ strident hvs or gut feeling. Is it actually possible to make a genuinely neutral and informed decision?

But re your last point, if it was a measles strain that came from a vax, that still doesn't say anything about whether MMR would be any worse than single jabs. Also I have been firmly told on here that in the Japan natural study, the single jabs were really no different from MMR as they were only a month apart. So how far apart should they be to be less damaging than MMR and where is the study that shows that? I'm not being nasty i would really like to know this. As the OP says, it is extremely difficult to get to the very bottom of it all find find the evidence behind all the claims.

Ive always been in the "vaccinate at all costs" camp, so have never wondered if i should or shouldnt.

All 3 of mine have been fine so far, but DS is due his MMR next month, but im still not going to research it, ill just do it.

There wasn't a control, as I understand it. He looked at twelve children. It wasn't a designed study. There was also controversy over the method he used to detect the measles virus.

I think it showed what he said it showed, which is that more research was definitely needed and in the meantime it might be wise to hold off. He said it in the presser afterwards and not in the conclusions of the paper itself, which hasn't, contrary to received wisdom, been discredited.

muffle, you asked "but did he show that? - for example by looking at children who had single jabs in the exact same way? From what I understand, he didn't, and what he "felt was more likely" shouldn't stand as a scientific discovery"

as far as i recall (and my memory too, is not what it should be) the subject of the paer was a certain type of bowel disease that had been found in autistic children. as an aside, it was noted that the measles strain had been found where it shouldn't, and this was flagged up for further research.

the bowel disease was not linked (in that oriinal study) to the MMR, but it was suggested that there was a possibility of a link, and that it warranted further study.

those further studies have never happened, because wakefield has, apparently, been discredited. what has actualy happened is that a lot of ournalists have spent a lot of time disproving something that wakefield never claimed in the first place, while the interesting fact (the possibility of a link) has been swept under the carpet.

I think the key thing is that it 'warrants further study' and while I am can see that it is probably less risky a child having the MMR jab than contracting measles, I would like to see more study done into the subject.

I plan to get Measles done soon and then hold off on Mumps and Rubella for some time. As far as I am aware they are low risk until puberty anyway so can wait a while before having them.

The trouble is that you are asking muffle if he simultaneously did alternative study as a control to the 12.
That assumes the premis that he was looking for a link with the MMR - he wasn't.

He was looking at similar gut problems including inflamatory gut disorders and crohns in children who had regressed and had asd.
the fact is that there is a pattern of gut problems which seem specific to children who have regressive asd. ASD and inflamatory gut disorders are linked.
That was what he was looking for and found.
The fact that the MMR was part of some speculation as to why these children regress was all that anyone heard once the press picked up on it.

For mums loke me the factthat someone recognised that our children - who often cannot verbalise pain - actually had serious gut disorders was a huge relief and offered the oppertunity to minimise the symptons and help our children in pain and discomfort.
No one had ever taken that seriously before but now it is commonly accepted

I guess there is an issue of where you feel the burden of proof is. There is no significant benefit to the children being vaccinated to having the MMR as opposed to the singles - in fact the MMR offers lower protection than single measles, and mumps and rubella can be given at puberty if the child does not have a natural immunity by then.

So in my mind, there would have to be EXTREMELY conclusive evidence that there is zero added risk from the MMR in order for me to even contemplate giving it to ds for the sake of the rather tenuous 'social' benefits usually quoted.

ib - interesting - I haven't heard that single measles offers better protection than MMR. What is that based on?

I am only inquiring as my DH (goaded I suspect by his parents) keeps telling me that it is 'selfish and stupid' not to have DD innoculated yet (she is just 22 months). I plan to get measles done in a couple of months when she is around 2.

I am bored of discussing the relative merits of the Wakefield study with him (he hasn't read it anyway - or any other studies on the subject for that matter, just what the papers tell him) so any evidence in support of my argument to have them done singly would be helpful.

But pagwatch - I thought he was interested in the role of MMR well before the controversial paper. This BBC profile for example says:

"By the mid-1990s, Dr Wakefield had started to consider whether there was a link between the three-in-one MMR vaccine and autism and bowel disease.

His study focused on tests carried out on 12 children who had been referred to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead for gastrointestinal problems.

At the same time, Dr Wakefield was paid to carry out another study to find out if parents who claim their children were damaged by the MMR vaccine had a case. Some children were involved in both studies."

I accept that article may be mistaken but I have seen this in many (non-partisan) places and I thought that was the whole point - that some parents thought there was an MMR link and that they went to Wakefield because he took them seriously about this and was prepared to research it. You suggest the MMR link came about afterwards and was completely incidental.

See this is why researching this is so hard! The more nitty-gritty you get down to, the more contradictions you find...

Thank you all - it is v easy to be told to trust your instincts by your Daily Mail reading mother, but those instincts are based on half facts and rumours unless you either a) do no reserach/ reading and decide if immunisation per se is safe or b) read everything (scientific reserach) you can get hold of. I really appreciate your taking the time to reply. Hopefully, I have a beter idea of where to look. The instincts thing is not the same as instinctively 'knowing' your child is unwell etc.

iirc, single measles confers about 97% immunity, MMR 89%. These are the figures quoted by the manufacturers, I believe.

No - none. But not in a flippant way - more that I knew that if I started doing a 'proper' investigation then at the end I would probably come to the same conclusion anyway (to vaccinate) and would just be adding worry about side effects to the mix as well - I dont see any point in worrying about things before you have to.

I do not want to get into the whole MMR debate here but I wil say right away I had DC1 and DC2 vaccinated with the individial jabs with a private doctor.

However, what I strongly recommend is checking that your local helath authority will give your young child a TB jab.

In London it gets done for every young child automatically by the NHS for free as TB is very prevalent in London but outside London it is not always done.

I strongly recommend you pay for it if you your local health authority will not give it for fre.

TB is a silent killer that is becoming much more prevalent in the UK. Also if you take your children abroad and ever use childcare on holiday some hotels insist on seeing a certificate stating it has been done.

TB can take years to manifest itself. It is not known as white plague for nothing.

The problem, betadad, is that the TB vaccine is not very effective and has really nasty side effects.

yes - I refused the TB one and am pro vaccination generally.

ABetaDad - it depends where you live - there isn't a Londonwide policy on TB. We were living in the borough of Wandsworth when DD was born and there only babies with direct relatives from 'at risk' countries were innoculated. So DDs half indian friend had it and she didn't. Friends nearby in Lambeth authority were all given the jab regardless where their families came from. I now live in Richmond and I believe no-one is given it.

LuLuBai - out of interest, at what age do you plan to vaccinate for mumps? Is that a DS or DD?

A very recent press statement reported that in the latest stats for measles, 80% of those infected had not been vaccinated with the MMR.

Therefore... drum roll... 20% i.e. 1 in 5 HAD.

There was also no mention of the strain of measles/atypical, or whatever.

I didn't research - I'm not a trained scientist (although DH is) and I don't have access to the sorts of peer-reviewed literature that I think would be appropriate research material. Not wanting to cause offence, but I don't set much store by books produced for lay readers with scaremongering titles! Nor in tabloid hysteria. I am just presuming that my GP and the NHS in general don't actively want to risk my children's health, and that they don't use vaccines with proven ill effects. Of course, I know that there are always going to be a very small and very unlucky percentage of children who react badly, and I'm really sorry to read about that here.

There are very small risks in vaccinating, and there are rather larger risks in not vaccinating, as I see it, so it didn't take much browbeating to go ahead with the regular immunisation schedule. TBH, it still brings me up short when I encounter someone in RL who is 'vaccine sceptic'.

I'm currently consuming as much information as I can as ds is due for his mmr in two weeks. I want him immunised one way or another but my dh and I are wavering daily over whether to go mmr or single jab. I think we have now decided on single jab. What has swayed it for me is the discovery that autoimmune diseases (I have hypothyroidism) are thought to be connected to autism. It's my personal opinion that the mmr can trigger autism in children who have some kind of auto-immune issues already.
I know the chances are mimimal and the mountain of information (reliable or not) is overwhelming. But I think you have to do what you can and consider your own personal circumstances.
My only decision now is whether to go to Manchester Independent Family Doctors or The Children's Immunisation Centre. Anyone out there have any experience of either?

I've felt the weight of responsibility with this. I started researching and reading around it initially because I have autism in my family, but increasingly view the policy to readily vaccinate for MMR with suspicion as it throws up questions for me about whether it will work for the greater good at all in the end.

There's a real lack of information/balance too. I find it hard to find articles in the media that actually seem to research rather than trotting out the same old. For example, this one in the Guardian a few weeks back: www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/10/measles-mmr-vaccine - essentially about US making MMR mandatory for school but quoting the same stuff that keeps doing the rounds. At the risk of being an MMR bore, I made a note of the things which occurred to me when reading it as:

1. "In fewer than one in 1,000 cases, acute encephalitis occurs, leaving a quarter of those affected with brain damage". According to the stuff I've read through research, this and the complications risks are based on worldwide data which includes third world stats. The risk of encephalitis is 1 in 100,000 in developed countries, but this is never quoted. Why don't they ever state that these are WHO stats and comprise developing countries?

1. "In 2006, a 13-year-old boy who was not given the jab became the first person in 14 years to die from measles in Britain". I've read that he was vulnerable because he was taking immunosuppressive drugs for an underlying lung condition.

1. "Infection during pregnancy can cause the death or premature birth of the baby." - How come no one ever questions the fact that measles is the biggest risk to under-ones and if the mother has the jab as a child then her immunity will have worn off by pregnancy whereas if she had acquired measles naturally, she would pass on her immunity for at least the first year of life via maternal antibodies.

1. The government states that MMR is 90% effective against mumps and measles, which means that 1 in 10 children aren't protected until they have their second dose aged 3-5.

1. the protection is said to last up to 15 years, therefore exposing our future population to the disease in their teenage years - something not declared. If measles if acquired naturally, you gain a lifelong immunity.

I go along with the consensus that you also have to follow your instinct as you'll have to live with your decision rather than the government (that sounds melodramatic, but you know what I mean!).

I pretty much agree completely with MamaHobgoblin.

Like you I read and read and read, mumsnet at times became very very emotioanlly draining (sorry mums but you know what I mean)and talked to as many people as I could.

At the end of the day, the risk of NOT vaccinating was far far greater than the risk of vaccination itself. The government wouldn't knowingly harm children.

I think google has changed our lives and in many ways makes this sort of thing very hard. My advice is to stick to medical reaserch and look at your child as an individual.

FWIW - I was quite anti vaccination at first but after all my research DS has now had all his first year vaccinations including MMR AND Chicken Pox!