Anyone researched vaccines and can help me make informed decision?

[rimsky]

Posted this in Children's Health also.

My DS received his 8 week jabs 3 weeks ago (the 5 in 1 and PCV). He was ill for 2 days, with a fever of 38.1 degrees c. He was inconsolable, and doses of calpol didn't seem to help at all. I was quite surprised at his reaction as he is a robust baby (75th centile) and assumed he would be ok.

I'm not sure if this is related, probably coincidence but since the jabs he hasn't seemed the same baby, very jumpy amd easily upset.

Both of these things are worrying and upsetting for me.

He is due his 12 week jabs next week and I really need some help making a decision.

What concerns me is many people say the reaction is worse for the 12 weeks than the 8 week jabs - is this true?

Is it possible that 6 immunisations too much for a small baby to cope with? Would single vaccinations be better?

Can I delay the jabs due at 12 weeks until I feel he is old enough to deal with a reaction better? Are there implications to this?

Or (and I really don't want this to turn into a debate) should I stop immunising him? Could someone has decided not to immunise tell mewhat research they have done, and could somebody summarise it or send me links (big ask I know!).

I just haven't the time to research the pros and cons and I haven't got much time to make my decision!

TIA

I'd like to second pawithabra - the vaccinations issue can get extremely emotive but I would urge you to query carefully the sources of all your information.

Not least because some people talk absolute nonsense, for example, this quote

"With the right care these diseases go away/self-right on their own, then the child will be immune for life, rather than temporarily like with most vaccinations."

This is nonsense. And its wrong. (Tim O' Shea's degree is in psychology BTW and he is a "chiropractor" = quackery - see Simon Singh libel case for proof) I have a PhD in Infectious Diseases from Imperial College. Who do you trust?

All I'm saying is - look at the evidence, look at the quality of the evidence and look where its coming from.

(for example a large clinical trial published in a well-known peer-reviewed journal is worth far far far more than an abstract of a case study or a small trial presented at an obscure conference - but the citations may look similar)

Look who is trying to make money/fame out of it (andrew wakefield has been struck off and discredited but is still rolling in money) and be careful.

As pag says however, only you can decide, and its you who must take responsibility for that decision.

Personally I couldn't live with the risk of not vaccinating my child. I have read up about and understood the vaccines and the risks. I know they are not entirely risk free, but the numbers (in my opinion, and in terms of the risk level I am prepared to take) stack up strongly pro-vaccine. You may feel differently and that is your call

(and though I'm tempted to jump on my herd immunity high horse, I won't but that was a factor in my decision making also)

I don't think anyone can make this docision for you, but fwiw DD had a minor reaction to the first set of jabs (diarrhoea for a week) but none to the second and all the subsequent ones. She had MMR as well.

My kids paediatrician said that nothing is 100% risk free. However, she said that she has never in her long career met a vaccine damaged child but she has treated children (she also works in the hospital) with a horific after-effects of measles. Obviously there are vaccine-damaged children. But you need to work out where does the bigger risk lie iyswim.

Sausage, regarding herd immunity , how would you explain outbreaks of measles in countries with above 95% vaccination rates such as Saudi Arabia (97-99%)

It may not have been measles in many cases. 154 of 226 tested negative for measles antibodies. There were only 48 lab-confirmed cases, and the vaccination status was 44% among the ill.

jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/2/306.2.full

They also showed that the most susceptible group were the unvaccinated children of 6-11 months.

But nobody said it was a perfect system, and nobody said it was risk-free. If you vaccinate everyone in a population there will still be a very small number who don't seroconvert and remain susceptible to measles. This is all the more argument FOR vaccination, because the measles virus can stay active in the environment because there are still susceptible hosts. If no one was vaccinated and everyone was susceptible then outbreaks would be much bigger and more serious.

Here a measles outbreak in a fully vaccinated school:

1746 vaccinated students. 1732 ended up seropositive. Not one of them got ill. 14 who remained seronegative despite the vaccination contracted measles. How many would have got ill without vaccination?

www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM198703263161303

There are still 450 measles deaths a day - mostly children under 5. This could be reduced with better vaccination. There is absolutely no doubt about that. The fact that outbreaks still occur does not negate this point. They are smaller, further apart and the rates of disability and mortality much lower in vaccinated populations.

research a dr call dr sheri tenpenny
she tells it as it is from documents from CDC, BMJ, lancet etc, she is an ex ER director who has in her lifetime given many vaccines untill she herself reserched them and now she has over 10,000 hours of vaccine research under her belt.
i spent years researching after i was injured with a vaccine and my research led me to never vaccinate again, buts thats my own personal choice
yes kids get ill, always have always will, no vaccine will ever stop that, in fact many modern cases of vaccine preventable diseases are in the vaccinated, my owns thoughts is you need to let your immune system work for itself and build up, due to better health care, sanitation, nutrition child deaths due to these diseases has dropped off to near nil. (even the britsh medical council said we should not be vaccinating against measles as no childern was dying from it (and that was in the early 80's) , it had nothing to do with vaccines, research mortality rates from mid 1800's to mid/late 1900's, you will see all the main diseases were gone BEFORE any vaccine was introduced, including smallpox. (this data is the official death rates for countries such as UK, USA, Canada, australia etc, and they all tell the same story)
i will also say i myself am vaccine injured and if you believe that vaccines cant hurt you why does the uk government have a vaccine damage payment scheme (if you become over 60% disabled through a vaccine you could get £120,000)
i could go on for hours giving you sources and even parents who have seen there child die or become a vegetable just after a shot (not just mmr) in fact the hpv in the USA has KILLED 89 children and caused 20,000 to have severe reactions (source VAERS)
my child is vaccine free and healthier than most kids.

vaccineliberationarmy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Vaccine-Graphs-Ineffective.pdf

where does your number 450 a day come from? could a better solution be found rather than injection toxins into a young body?(formaldahyde, aluminium, mercury, sorbitol80 to name a tiny amount of the rubbish in vaccines), these chemicals cause havoc in human body,better nutritian, sanitation could help ,
we in the west are deficiant in vitamin d3 (due to our stay indoor culture playing pc gamesd etc,) d3, arms our immune system, could increasing this help? seems to with my child she loves cod liver oil and never gets ill, same with me, but my gf doesnt take them and you guessed it shes always getting colds etc.

btw i used to believe in vaccines untill they ruined my health, and the lies from the doctors is what made me question there knowlege on the subject, for instance i was told last years flu shot could never cause GBS, then i showed the doctor the insert where it says may cause GBS!!!!! he couldnt answer, during my time when i was suffering the most after the vaccine i was put on steroid tablets so many times and they never worked, they just kept giving them to me as thats what there trained to do(its also what einstein would call insane doing the same thing time after time and expecting a different result) i found my own cure online and im now semi cured!(still have chest problems) so you can see why i have no faith in doctors anymore, ive had enough of them lying to my face and the terrible mis-diagnosis which has caused me so much pain and suffering

450 deaths a day comes from the world health organisation. Generally regarded as experts.

your pdf by the way links to this

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The page you are looking for no longer exists.

Its OK though, because I know what's on it - its the same shitty graphs - poorly extrapolated, wrongly analysed and redrawn to look pretty that frequently get posted by Jenny MCarthy and WHALE and vaclib and the AVN and such like. Oh look! Mortality was already declining! It was nothing to do with vaccines!

Of course mortality was already declining (yeah DUH - antibiotics became available, sanitation and nutrition improved).

Some of these graphs don't even show the point at which vaccines became available so what on earth is the point of them? And they don't show any variability so you don't see the highs that occur when outbreaks happen. (data points should have a margin of error attached - this simply isn't shown here)

y- graphs aren't labelled and vary all over the place and as for the scary (ooh red is dangerous, yellow is not) colouring in under the graphs - it is utterly and completely meaningless except as a marketing tool for the bull that these organisations are peddling

Just because the overall death rate from a disease in a given year has gone down to what looks like almost nothing on one of those graphs, doesn't mean it is negligible.

Take for example, a disease which has "dropped" from an 18th century high to a new "low" of just 1 in 10,000. That would still equate to 10 in 100,000 or 100 in a million, and that would mean in our (UK) population of 60 million people - 6000 deaths. A year. That's more than 16 people dying every day (and these are childhood diseases, so it would mostly be children).

The year before measles vaccines were introduced in the USA there were over 2500 deaths. Statistically, vaccine benefits so far outweigh the risks that its laughable to suggest otherwise. But that is not the same as saying they are risk-free. Nobody did say that. But compared to the risks from the diseases, these are tiny.

@sausagerolemodel
"I have a PhD in Infectious Diseases from Imperial College. Who do you trust? "

that my friend is what is called a conflict of interest.

anyone interested in researching vaccines should consider the book "the truth about vaccines"
www.amazon.co.uk/Truth-About-Vaccines-Making-Decision/dp/1906142440

written by some you runs vaccination clinic

also this one hour film about Brian Deer the reporter who complained to the GMC and ever since has been writing about it!! (hmmm conflict of interest anyone!!!) is worth looking at

certainly take the advise of anyone claiming to be an expert on a forum with a Very large pinch of salt! and away remember your doctor gets paid to vaccinate your child so may not always be thinking of your childs health foremost.