If you decided to postpone baby jabs...

[thehouseofmirth]

how long did you delay them for and what was the rationale for your decision?

I'm curious to know Katyee if the children you know who caught measles and had been vaccinated had the single vaccine jabs.

All of ds's jabs delayed but done including the Pneumococcal one even though he was beyond that age when it was introduced. Jabs delayed because ds was prem with developmental delay and health problems. Pneumococcal because he caught this disease and was very very poorly.

One of my reasons for deciding in favour was a sense of public duty. Sounds weird but the fact that ds was well enough to be immunised left me with a sense of obligation that he should be immunised because there are plenty of children who are too ill to be so. And I also felt incredibly grateful to have the choice when for a lot of ds's early days I didn't know whether he'd actually make it out of the hospital.

I think it's because it is doctor-related, sooty - there is still a prevailing attitude of "doctor knows best", even though it isn't the doctors who set the guidelines (although some are involved, one assumes)

I also wish we had the chickenpox vaccine available, routine in the US. When ds caught chickenpox he was ill for 6 weeks (compromised immune system).

@Sooty7: Well I'm afraid that study is never going to get done, simply because a double-blind trial of non-vaccinated children is completely unethical. You do not necessarily need such a study design to get enough evidence of proven benefit. The weight of evidence across the world is so far in favour of the paradigm of vaccines being associated with a reduction in risk of serious childhood illness that no-one with a human conscience would agree to allow such a study.

Secondly - and let's assume you bribed various people on the ethical committee to agree to consent, plus got a pharmaceutical company to go through 2-3 years' safety & efficacy trials of a vaccine placebo - I wonder how you would persuade parents of either camp (pro- or anti- vaccination) to take part in such a double-blind trial after you tell them they won't know whether their DC would receive vaccine or placebo? Countless parents on this board have rightly or wrongly shown that they're not interested in the public good of protecting populations, but only in avoiding causing perceived damage to their own children.

Who gives consent in this study? Mother? Father? Both? Oh yes, and they'll be followed up for how long? In proposing long-term studies there is a question that is often the death-knell of the application: "What is the estimated number lost to follow-up"?

What clearly end-points of disease would you propose for these poorly-defined conditions ("health", "immune dysfunction", "allergies", "cancer" etc). For each of these you would have to demonstrate biological plausibility.

I'm sorry because the sentiments are very well-meaning, but unfortunately as far as the science goes; these types of studies are way too difficult to be likely to tell us anything. Therefore it is not worth the risk of deliberately not protecting a group of children against childhood disease.

i have an unvacced severely atopic child.

Saw a retrospective study on Medscape the other day that showed that delaying the DTP vaccine by 2 months reduces the risk of developing asthma by HALF.

Thats a fairly big number IMO... obviously its pending further research which I shall watch for with interest..

I know these conditions can follow vaccination, but ITP and ADEM occur far more frequently with the wild-type disease. I was simply responding to the notion that rubella was harmless.

Re the number of pregnancies affected by rubella in the the UK pre-MMR, please download the rubella chapter 28 from the Green Book here:

www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publichealth/Healthprotection/Immunisation/Greenbook/DH_4097254?Idc Service=GET_FILE&dID=116052&Rendition=Web

...then look at the graph on page 345 and tell us whether that number of congenital rubella cases can be reasonably described as "tiny".

No one vaccinates out of a sense of public duty - they vaccinate because they think their child will derive a benefit. To vaccinate for any other reason would be unethical.

There's more than one way to be socially responsible. One way is to be very aware of symptoms and incubation periods. Ds1 caught rubella from a vaccinated child (who spread it to quite a few people). Ds1 didn't pass it on at all as we stayed in. Had he had rubella vax I may have believed he couldn't get it and taken him out at a critical time. Who was themost socially responsible -me-who took exposure seriously-of the other mum who thought the rash etccouldn't possibly be rubella because her child had been vaccinated.

Musukebba you are scaremongering horribly with your figures of 90% transmission and 90% rate of severe defects for rubella.

The official figures vary but a large study conducted in Denmark and it is generally considered to be reliable and large enough to draw conclusions from. This study gives a foetal infection rate of 21.34% and a malformation rate of 6.3%. Of 559 women with rubella infection in the first trimester 513 (91.77%) went on to have healthy babies.

The whole article is well worth a read.

Having said that CRS is devastating when it does occur and should be prevented whenever possible. Vaccinating toddlers however is quite obviously not the best way to prevent CRS and is also totally unethical. There are no two ways about it, medical ethics decree that it is unethical to carry out a medical procedure on a person that is not of actual benefit to that person. Vaccinating boy children falls firmly within this category. Vaccinating girl children is even worse as it puts them at risk from contracting rubella at the very time when they are most at risk from it. The much touted "social responsibility" argument is actually highly ethically dubious not to mention utter tosh. No parent in their right mind would take risks with their own child's health in order to protect others. Most people are just not informed of the risks that's all.

i think it is worth saying that most children can tolerate the vaccines in the current schedule very well and with no harmful side effects. The problem comes with identifying the small number of children who may be vulnerable to more serious side effects,and this is impossible when the medical industry refuse to acknowledge that some children may not be more vulnerable and suffer problems. I do believe mass vaccination has done a huge amount to eradicate disease. I see why, from a public health pov, a small number of children suffering bad effects [which is difficult to directly attribute to the vaccine schedule anyway] is worth eradicating a certain disease from a whole nation. However, it is unethical to prevent further research into those who might be susceptible, and the witch hunt over Wakefield, for example, has made this impossible.

I have a similar story to tell to saintly's regarding rubella and social responsibility.

When I was pregnant with DD2 my eldest child caught rubella from a vaccinated child. Vaccinated child's mother (who knew I was pregnant but was unaware of my rubella status) allowed her child to have contact with both me and my DD because her doctor told her that her child's rash couldn't be rubella because he had just had MMR.

Funnily enough when I took DD to the doctor his first question was if she had been vaccinated. When I said no he immediately said that we should assume this to be rubella. (We had it confirmed by a blood test whilst taking bloods for some allergy tests).

Musukebba don't you think the practice of assuming anyone who has had two rubella jabs to be immune is highly risky and shows a curious lack of scientific curiousity? Cell mediated immunity cannot be said to "undoubtably exist" as you claim. Some people just do not "take" a vaccine no matter how many times they have it. There is evidence that female nontakers of rubella vaccine have a higher risk of giving birth to children who develop ASD/PDD if the mother was vaccinated postpartum or in the period prior to conception. This is an area that urgently needs more study but of course the authorities won't touch it with a barge pole, presumably from fear of what they will find out.

may be more vulnerable i mean

Forgot to link to the study I had in mind that examines the above.

Are Some Cases of Autism Actually Subclinical, Congenital Attenuated Rubella Syndrome?

I waited until my lo's were over a year after dd2 had a horrible reaction to her first immunisations at 6 weeks, I just felt that once they were bigger their bodies were able to cope better, don't know if there is any truth in that but they haven't had any bad reactions again. It's a really difficult decision to make, have left the MMR until they were about 4 years old, but felt it was the right thing to do as I didn't want them to get caught up in a measles outbreak.

I'm not presenting anything as fact only opinion, but when we took ds for his MMR in Spain I spoke to the doctor beforehand about the risks. He thought I was mad. His nurse acknowledged that the thinking in the UK was that there could be links to autism etc, but in Spain not so. They were adamant that it was a "normal" vac, everyone did it (they do, pretty much, it's very much a doctor knows best society) and that the documented scares reported in Britain were not of any consequence.

Make of that what you will, but it's interesting to see another point of view on the MMR.

kitbit - Yes, I have also found the complete absence of debate about vac safety in Spain curious.
I told my GP that I would be happy to vaccinate the DDs against some diseases if they could find me the single dose vacs. Needless to say that was the last I heard of it...

Just to come back to the question brought up earlier of vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations being infected with measles.
It does seem hard to get figures on this. I haven't found any for the UK but if you scroll down to the bottom of this page there are some charts which show percentages for the US. The figures are sourced from the New England Journal of Medicine. They certainly make it seem very unlikely that only 2 vaccinated people have caught measles in the last five years in the UK.

In addition measles is well known to be hugely misdiagnosed on clinical symptoms alone. Any figures about measles rates and how vaccination may or may not have affected them must be taken with a huge pinch of salt unless they have been serologically confirmed.

That doesn't stop people in authority using unconfirmed rates to back up their own arguments however.

On the other hand, they were extremely keen for us to have the varicela jab, and I'm quite glad we did as ds still caught chickenpox but only had about 50 spots and wasn't too ill. Other kids in the village were totally covered and ill for a few weeks by comparison. But they are don't you think, quite keen to medicate here! No such thing as the british campaign of a few years back "be prepeared to leave your doctor's surgery just with some good advice", if you don't get told to buy some antibiotics at the very least, it's perceived they haven't done their job!

and yet antibiotics are no use whatsoever against viral infections and it was partly the over-prescription of antibiotics in inappropriate circs that contributed to the widespread resistance that arose (there are of course other contributory factors, including not completing the course).

beachcomber may I compliment you on the quality of your posts on this subject?

thanks

Musukebba - Could I ask about your background in this? You make very effective balanced points, a combination I rarely come across on MN (dare I say!). I am glad that I am not the only one that would have found the double blind trials completely unethical.

I believe as parents we have a social responsibility in having our children vaccinated, unless contraindicated, to establish "herd immunity" and maintain it. This obviously requires the vaccine to have few adverse effects and that the individuals value the community benefit. The public and individual interests need to be viewed as being the same.