Help me make sense of MMR - hype or theory

[felicity10]

OK, so I've been through a few pages of previous posts, I must be missing something because I can't make sense of it!

DD is 1 and I've had a letter about the vacs from the GP. I've heard about the MMR in the news few years ago and about the link to autism, but I just would really value your views.

Single vacs with no mumps or the MMR? Can anyone point me in the direction of key MMR issues?

I just don't want to get to the gp's and then feel like I am getting bullied into having the mmr - it is normally very no nonsense nurses who barely speak english, so will be unlikely to give me a clear answer as to any risks.

I am amazed that we have this lack of clarity in the UK.

Many thanks in advance!

there are no implications for me.

my daughter's health problems are well documented and accepted.

so, by using your theoretical knowledge, you have decided that roughly half of the posters who say they have vaccine damaged children are lying.

I ask again - how do you come to this conclusion (on number, not the reasoning behind your decision, which is clearly wrong. but it a nice opt-out option for you, I suppose)

and which half? because surely you have an opnion on that too. or is it just down to luck again? you are awfully fond of that argument after all.

the lucky chosen ones, with childrne damamged by the vaccinations that wre supposed ot protect them. and the poor unlucky ones, as deemed by the all-knowing Stata, who "merely" have developmentally delayed and ill children.

how are you making the distinction between the two (and why are you ignoring the point i made that all of us have medically accepted cases?)

It's a guesstimate.

I don't think you do all have medically accepted cases.

I'm still waiting for the link or even jsut the citation to Wakefield's replicated studies. I'm very interested as a quick search of pubmed didn't come up with anything.

I am so jetlagged and can't sleep.

"You can shout and scream and say 'fuck off' as much as you like. I find it quite telling that you feel the need to resort to such language. Again, it reflects the strength of your argument. "

I find it quite telling that you've had to flash your Phd, flash your "professional" job and resort to saying "I don't believe you, you're lying or delusional" to parents. What do you expect, an invitation to dinner? It definitely reflects on the strength of what we'll laughingly refer to as your argument.

"no need to get upset and use foul language, is there?

"The reasoning behind my thinking is the established epidemiological fact that people falsely attribute events to illness."

You are in lurve with epidemiology. You cannot see that correlation multiplied many times over, with other evidence to back it up, clinical, sub clinical, the epidemiology of natural disorder and disease, treatment protocols, etc etc, may indeed indicate causation.

"As well as the fact that vaccine damage is exceedingly rare."

This is almost funny. How do you know it's rare? "Because alleged vaccine damage is usually a coincidence." How do you know it's a coincidence? "Because vaccine damage is exceedingly rare." But how do you know it's rare? "Because what people think of as vaccine damage is a coincidence." How do you know? Because vaccine damage is exceedingly rare". But.. isn't your argument a bit circular? "Go away, you're hysterical."

You either laugh or set fire to yourself in frustration. It's that pathetic.

By the way what is the difference between evidence and proof stata? Have you looked it up yet?

Have you had a little think about your claim that "there is no evidence that mmr and autism are causally related"?

In your own time. Have a little "guesstimate" if you're not up to thinking clearly right now.

search the threads here ofr the link.

I said it earlier, but you clearly can't be bothered.

so you really are saying that we are lying?

bluster, stuff and nonsense

guesstimate my arse

silly person

oh now I'm so jet lagged and stata is going to run away again

I need someone to bore me to sleep with a load of old rubbish and it was just the job

well stata you've let me down

where the heck is a barrelload of ignorant pomposity when you need it?

YEs, I am in love with epidemiology. It's what I did my PhD in. Causation is set by a number of criteria. Correlation multiplied a million times does not mean correlation. The correlation doesn't exist anyway. We all know epidemiologic studies have their limitations, but it's pretty clear to the scientific community, beyond a reasonable doubt, that vaccines successfully and safely prevent disease.

Of course you'll laugh at my credentials. That's all part of medical denialism.

To paraphrase some points made elsewhere regarding any possible link between vax and autism:

Previously, anti-vax people said that mercury in vaccines was the reason for the purported link with autism. Mercury hasn't been in childhood vaccines for a few years now - no effect on incidence of autism. Why not?

SO what next? Ah-ha, we'll make up some stuff about formaldehyde. During the vaccine manufacturing process, it?s used to inactivate live virus, and traces do remain after manufacturing. Why on earth would those traces be allowed to remain? In trace amounts, formaldehyde is not dangerous. Also, it doesn?t last long in aqueous solution, such as vaccines. Moreover, exposure to far more formaldehyde than any vaccine contains happens in modern life. So it's not formaldehyde.

So, what else since you can't blame mercury or formaldehyde. Ah-ha, there's aluminium, which has been used as an adjuvant in many vaccines for over 80 years to increase the ability of antigens to provoke the desired immune response. It has now become one of the top two chemicals that antivaccinationists like to cite to demonise vaccines. True, aluminium is not nearly as scary-sounding as mercury, but with mercury falling by the wayside, antivax are certainly trying very hard to make it so. Now the antivax are climbing aboard the aluminum scare train as well because the scientific evidence is becoming so clear that their previous favorite bogeyman vaccine ingredient, thimerosal, is not associated with autism that even the die-hards are having a hard time arguing that it is anymore, particularly now that thimerosal is no longer present above trace amounts in most childhood vaccines. Consequently, they have no choice but to branch out to other scary-sounding ingredients in vaccines and invoking vague (and, conveniently enough, almost impossible to demonstrate) ?environmental toxins? or risk becoming irrelevant.

One thing to remember about resistance to vaccines by most antivax posters is that it is not scientific in nature. It is either due to an excessive reliance on anecdotes or confusing correlation with causation (usually with a distrust of science and medicine), or it is ideological in nature. No matter how many of the ?toxins? scientists remove from vaccines, it will never be enough because it?s all about the vaccines and the very concept of vaccination itself, not any individual ingredients in the vaccines.

Antivax people will never come to a point where they say, ?OK, now I believe that all the toxins are gone and vaccines are safe.? They?ll either fixate on the viruses or the viral or bacterial antigens themselves, or they?ll make the claim that vaccines are made using ?aborted foetuses? because some cell lines used to grow up virus stocks were derived from aborted fetuses 40 or more years ago. If every trace of formaldehyde, aluminium, or any other chemical with more than two syllables in its name were somehow to be removed from all vaccines, they would still be saying things like this:

"It is the toxin, or germ, contained in the shot itself that causes the adverse affects on the immune system."
or
"Dead-virus, or live-virus vaccine etc?who cares? The cultures for polio vaccines are grown in the kidney tissue of dead monkeys in third-world countries with little or no controls and the virulent pustule toxin is put in vaccines to be shot into you little kid?s arm. I wouldn?t go into a room where that putrid stuff is, let alone inject it into my blood stream! Would you?"

All of which is BS.
What interests me is that if, somehow, the only thing that would remain in vaccines is buffered salt water and the necessary antigens, be they killed virus or bacterial proteins, or whatever, would you then happily vax? If not, why not? Because then there's no reason whatsoever other than opposition to the idea of vaccines.

Yes, we know about your Phd put it away now there's a dear.

Now then, despite your very lovely scroll with a ribbon you still aren't convincing me that you know the difference between evidence and proof. This does have some bearing on the little lie you told earlier, about there being no evidence of causal relation.

There's also your other lie, about you being neither anti or pro vaccine. It's clear you are absolutely pro vaccine, and far from being impartial, your prejudice is overweaning. When presented with evidence, to simply say: I don't believe it, you are lying or delusional -- is demonstrative of the deepest prejudice.

So no more pretending you're impartial. Let's pop that lie back in the box and not revisit it. But your lie about the evidence -- we can wait a little longer for you to address that one.

"Mercury hasn't been in childhood vaccines for a few years now - no effect on incidence of autism."

A lie. It's been in flu vaccines, sometimes repeated annually, and most perniciously, it's been in vaccines recommended for pregnant women.

"So, what else since you can't blame mercury or formaldehyde. Ah-ha, there's aluminium, which has been used as an adjuvant in many vaccines for over 80 years to increase the ability of antigens to provoke the desired immune response....other scary-sounding ingredients in vaccines and invoking vague (and, conveniently enough, almost impossible to demonstrate) ?environmental toxins? or risk becoming irrelevant."

Is this anything but a rant? Where's the point? Where's the cogency? Where's the impartiality? Where's the evidence?

There is so much unadulterated blither and crap in your last paragraph it's almost indecipherable.

This is just ranting about anti vax people and what would they say if this or that. It's not evidence based anything. It's just your random, prejudiced stream of consciousness and hatred of "the anti vax lobby".

hey, RPO - maybe qualification top trumps would help send you off to sleep?

we could start listing all our qualifications, and tick them off one by one - make sure ot keep referencing them - you never know, it might make someone forget what the thread is all about.

whaddya reckon?

Quoting Specter:

"When you start down the road where belief in magic replaces evidence and science, you end up in a place where you don?t want to be.?

Unfortunately, for many here, it seems, when it comes to vaccines that?s exactly where they?re going. They don?t want to be there, but unfortunately they won?t realise it until they're there. They might not even realise it even then.

Unfortunately, society will.

No matter how much evidence is arrayed showing vaccine safety, the elder statemen antivax mumsnetters always finds a way to spin, distort, or misrepresent the evidence to combat it and not have to give up the concept that vaccine are dangerous or cause autism. It bears repeating often in the light of the disingenuous and even outright deceptive techniques used by promoters of anti-vaccine pseudoscience to sow fear and doubt about vaccines among parents. These arguments may seem persuasive to those who have little knowledge about science or epidemiology. Sometimes they even seemed somewhat persuasive to me; that is, at least until I actually took the time to look into them.

THe idea that vaccines don't matter and aren't effective. All we have to do is look at the experiences of several developed countries after they let their immunisation levels drop. Three countries ? Great Britain, Sweden, and Japan ? cut back the use of pertussis vaccine because of fear about the vaccine. The effect was dramatic and immediate. Here, a drop in pertussis vaccination in 1974 was followed by an epidemic of more than 100,000 cases of pertussis and 36 deaths by 1978. In Japan, around the same time, a drop in vaccination rates from 70% to 20%-40% led to a jump in pertussis from 393 cases and no deaths in 1974 to 13,000 cases and 41 deaths in 1979. In Sweden, the annual incidence rate of pertussis per 100,000 children 0-6 years of age increased from 700 cases in 1981 to 3,200 in 1985. It seems clear from these experiences that not only would dz not be disappearing without vaccines, but if we were to stop vaccinating, they would come back.

The fall of ANdrew Wakefield has been dismissed as conspiracy, lies, whatever. False heroes. To quote the GMC "The Panel is satisfied that your conduct was dishonest and irresponsible'. Wow.

A study by Kaiser Permanente (an NGO if you're interested) found that found that the act of refusing to vaccinate against pertussis placed children at a 23 times greater risk of contracting pertussis in the US. That?s a 23 fold-increased risk of a disease that, in children under 12 months of age from 2000-2004 in the US caused 62.8% to require hospitalization, 55.8% to have apnea, pneumonia in 12.7%, and death in 0.8%.

Even in a community with intact herd immunity, the choice to remain unvaccinated places children at a markedly higher risk than their vaccinated counterparts. The delusion that hiding children within the herd provides them with protection even remotely equal to vaccination must be abandoned. It gives some but not enough.

choice to refuse a vaccine, to ?hide in the herd,? is an active decision to accept a markedly higher risk of infection, its complications, the associated medical costs and lost wages, the responsibility of spreading the disease to others should an infection occur, and to choose to undermine the very herd immunity on which we all depend.

Parents want to be fully informed about the medical decisions they make for their children, and rightfully so. To that end, we do everyone a disservice by allowing the public discussion such as on Mumsnet to be dominated by the risks of vaccines to the exclusion of other equally important topics, including the risks of not vaccinating. That's why I bother posting. It's not fair otherwise.

Stata who are these 'anti-vaccination' people of which you speak?

The vast majority of the people I have come across who are cautious about vaccination, are cautious because they did vaccinate their children, and were unhappy with the outcome.

Parents are not stupid - when the same story is told time and time again, people tend to engage their brains and start analysing their personal situation.

They then tend to look at the safety data - unfortunately it is very wanting (that is when one is actually able to access it.)

What makes you think that parents would wish to think their child is vaccine damaged when they are not? Can you imagine how painful it is to think that one's child has been damaged by one's own actions? (Taking a child to have a vaccination). The vast majority of parents would much prefer their child's ill health and suffering to be anything rather than something that they unthinkingly consented to being done to their child.

Trust me - I know because I consented to my daughter being vaccinated despite nagging doubts about her health profile. I wish I could blame genetics or infectious disease or a car accident - anything rather than a government endorsed routine medical procedure that was designed to protect her and which I unthinkingly consented to.

The guilt is unbearable - nobody would make it up if there was an easier reality, believe me.

Paraphrasing someone else who expresses things perfectly.

Vaccines are not perfect. They are not 100% effective, and there can be rare serious side effects. What differentiates anti-vaccine cranks from, for example, scientists who deal with issues of efficacy versus side effects and potential complications, is exaggeration far beyond what the scientific data will support. For example, if the influenza vaccine is less efficacious than perhaps we would like (which is true), then it must be useless. This is, in essence, the Nirvana fallacy, wherein if something is not perfect it is claimed to be utterly worthless. Part and parcel of this approach involves the complement, namely vastly exaggerating the potential side effects and complications due to vaccines to paint them as being far more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. In addition, anti-vaccine activists frequently attribute harms to vaccines that the existing scientific data definitely don?t support as being reasonable or legitimate. The claim that vaccines cause autism is the most famous, but far from the only one of these sorts of claims. It?s not uncommon to hear fallacious claims that vaccines cause autoimmune diseases, asthma, and a general ?weakening? of the immune system, among others.

Overall, the anti-vaccine claims that vaccines are dangerous and don?t work, can be differentiated from scientifically valid concerns about the efficacy and safety of vaccines on the basis of how evidence is treated and the types of arguments that are used. Scientists, of course, tend to be a lot more measured and express the level of uncertainty in their claims; anti-vaccine activists are under no such constraints

hey Beach

well, first up - now that there are 2 of us here, by Stata's reckoning and guestimation - one of us is lying about having a vaccine damaged child. so, shall we flip a coin? is it you, or me?

secondly, you're not playing fair.

Stata would like us to just be quiet.

it isn't fair to speak up, you see. to let other parents know that this can, and does, happen.

even when we actually say (repeatedly) that vaccines are safe for the majority, and even when we never say "do not vax", it is not fair to speak up and say we have vaccine damaged children.

it is not for parents ot worry their pretty little heads about - after all, they won't understnad it anyway, without the benefit of Stata's PhD

no no. parents should just line up, like they always used to before the inconveneient pesky lying parents of vaccine damaged children started speaking up.

oh ROFL at you hinting that you are being measured in your posts, Stata.

and that I, and others, are being over the top.

I (and others) have repeatedly said that vax are safe for the majority, but that the current levels of acceptance re: collateral damage are disgusting.

I (and the others you like to term antivax) have never said to not vaccinate.

I have never said a vaccine is useless.

I have said I do not see the point in some, and that others are not as effective as the provax like to make out. which is true.

you, on the other hand, have been relentlessly rude, disparaging and dismissive about the very real problems tha tour childrne face.

you have calle dus liars, and insulted our intelligence.

you have still neglected to comment at all on the interesting inks given to you last night.

What distinguishes science from the way movements like the anti-vax movement approach evidence, it?s that the anti-vax movement values anecdotes over careful science. You may find numerous stories using the classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (as a poster mentioned earlier). And there are indeed many stories of children who regressed or had development problems or whatever after vaccination. On the surface, these stories seem convincing. However, given that millions of children are vaxed each year with many different vaxes, and that developmental problems aren't uncommon, it is not surprising, given the law of large numbers, that there will be a significant number of children who regress in fairly close temporal proximity to a vaccination by random chance alone. Even though such cases are random, they appear as though the vaccine caused the regression. What?s difficult to accept is that it?s impossible to tell if vaccines are actually correlated with regression unless careful studies are done comparing large populations to determine whether children who are vaccinated really do have a higher chance of autism. Those studies have been done, and the answer is a resounding no.

To the anti-vax movement, anecdotes trump evidence as right clearly demonstrates.

The characteristics of the anti-vax movement are same as those shared by virtually every denialist movement, whether it's denying climate change, evolution, or scientific medicine. The use of logical fallacies, cherry picking of the evidence, false heroes, conspiracy theories and distortion of the science

Hello silverfrog you brave and wonderful thing.

About sums it up for me.

I would love to have faith in the vaccine programme. On paper it sounds bloody fantastic - a free lunch as it were. You take practically no risk and you get a great benefit.

Except that the free lunch does not exist for everybody. Somebody has to pay.

Wish it wasn't our children (or anybody else's children though).

Stata - by definition, people like myself and silverfrog cannot intelligently be dismissed classed as 'antivaccination' because we vaccinated our kids.

Your determined attitude to portray us as antivaccination is illogical and offensive.

That's sums it up precisely. People take a very small risk to avoid a larger risk. There is not a risk-free option.

and for some people that risk is not very small, and the benefit is not very large (as per the interesting info re: vaccine efficacy in autistic children)

You can portray yourselves as you wish.

I have noticed that you are all extremely sensitive about offence to yourselves but think that 'fuck offs' and 'screw yous' are perfectly unoffensive.

Yes, we have silver. And we can go back to the fact that you are fitting in with the anti vax stance of exaggerating that risk beyond anything that the scientific data show.

erm, not "extremely sensitive" but yes, I do take issue with being called a liar.

I think fuck off was mild, tbh, given hat you were implying (especially following the outright namecalling from your side)