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!

I agree with what you're saying to a certain extent. I think there is a difference between evidence based medicine and evidence based policy making. Evidence based medicine is more straightforward than evidence based policy making which has to deal and engage with the political environment. It explains why the chicken pox vaccine wasn't rolled out in this country but was in others. Same medical evidence, different policy decision.

And what we research is indeed influenced by what goes on outside. That's why the MMR and its effects has been studied so much. It's also why we don't have a vaccine for malaria or the other neglected tropical diseases which kill and maim children every single day. So i agree with you that there is an influence but certainly don't come to the same conclusion as to why.

I'm looking at the chart that Sausage posted and it doesn't seem to tie in with the HPA figures

Why doesn't it show the dip in 2007?

Why does it start in 1996? Is it just to avoid the peaks that were occurring before this? I also don't really see how Wakefield can be blamed for an increase in measles cases since the incidence continued to drop until 2005 and although it has started to rise again, the figures are still lower than what they were in the early to mid 90s - ie before the Lancet paper in 1998.

Did anyone else pick up on the inaccurate figures in the Times article that Stata linked to earlier? It mentioned that before Wakefield there were only a few hundred measles cases a year - which, if you look at the HPA figures, just wasn't true.

"You can't just refuse to investigate something and then pretend through it's absence of investigation that it doesn't exist."

This does seem to be the nub of the matter. Similarly your post Starlight about parents being forced to take issues into their own hands.

Thanks Starlight, and thoughtaboutit, for such coherence.

Oh Leonie, you are marvellous and I'm sorry to see you so bullied. I am so sorry to see you deliberately intimidated. A la prochaine.

Have just read thoughtaboutit's post again.

Such a well considered, informative and helpful contribution.

I'm a bit sick of this by now but just want to put the record straight re bullying.

I've been called a cunt, nob end, bitch, not a nice soul etc.

I've been told to fuck off and screw you.

I've had my qualifications ridiculed and laughed at.

I've had my emotions, feelings and motives questioned, discussed and laughed at by other posters as though I can't see.

I've been endlessly accused of causing offence and ordered to apologise countless times.

I've been accused of representing big pharma.

I've been told that I have said nothing sensible, that I am short of a shilling and that I look like I have spit at the corner of my mouth.

Then one of your friends comes on here and gives a whole pompous speech about the shocking lack of empathy when another friend has openly stated that she is going to be as rude as she can be.

And, to top it all off, I am then called a bully because your leader went off in a flounce.

All of this because I dared to question what you were stating as fact and didn't back down or get bullied off.

I know this may surprise you all as 'mothers of special needs children' but other people do have feelings as well.

I've said what I need to say about the issue and, for me now, this thread is closed. You can carry on if you wish. I do hope you're proud of yourselves. You've done a great job.

Stata, it is a little late in the thread for you to try to claim the moral high ground. Your behaviour has been far from exemplary.

For the record, we are not a gang. We do not have a leader. I "know" (as in am familiar with their backstory) starlight and Leonie from the SN section, although I rarely post there myself anymore.

I also (if this section the post refers to me) did not tell you to fuck off. I swore in reaction to something g you posted, but did not direct that at you personally.

You have repeatedly (am on my phone so cannot scroll back through and list your preferred insults) laughed at, denied and dismissed ill children. You have called me, and other parents of vaccine damaged children delusional and liars. You have repeatedly told us we are wrong, without knowing anything about us or our children.

You have refused to engage in sensible discourse on the actual subject, preferring instead to try to little us all.

Do not try to band us all together in one group - the non vaxxers on this thread have all arrived here for very different reasons. Some have never vaccinated, some have, with varied results. I don't think there are any two of us who even have the same vaccine as source for the damage.

Yet you still insist that none of us are right, that we are all ganging up. We are not.

The only attempts that have been made to actually discuss this subject rather than dismiss it entirely as mumbo-jumbo denialist nonsense have come from the non-vaxxers.

No, not a gang at all: I know I have stronger and different views than others. And not with a leader, either. That's a very paranoid view to take.

It does take the biscuit rather. I'm not sure why you think the mothers of children who you've posted "comic" poems about should be careful about your feelings.

I will hands up to "nob end": after the poem that rhymed autistic and ballistic and the "amusing", apparently, youtube link -- both very odd and unpleasant indeed.

I will also hands up to "go screw yourself": after you said you didn't believe half the mothers of damaged children on these threads are trolls or liars.

I didn't laugh at your qualification: I laughed at the fact that you seemed to think we should automatically agree with you because of it.

I think you've demonstrated extreme callousness. It doesn't occur to you that you've been "endlessly accused of causing offence" because you have indeed caused endless offence and upset: and that it would be appropriate to apologise, certainly. If somebody accuses you of causing offence, that's bullying? Physician, heal thyself. Motes and beams and all that.

"a whole pompous speech about the shocking lack of empathy"

I think this demonstrates your self-absorption and lack of empathy. Thoughtaboutit's post was very thoughtful, measured and intelligent: she has a child affected and her first few words were that there was evidence for both sides. She went on to reveal a lot of quite personal detail. The fact that you ignore and dismiss all of that as "a pompous speech" says a great deal about you.

I would also second what Silver said: that you seem to have resorted to these displays of unpleasantness when you realised people knew quite a lot about the subject and couldn't just be "told".

MNHQ: please don't delete this: Stata has complained about these insults and I think I have a right to defend myself. And silver too, for that matter. If you delete this, I think you should delete Stata's post too because it implies things about other posters that are wrong, unpleasant and unfair.

I must correct myself:

"I will also hands up to "go screw yourself": after you said you didn't believe half the mothers of damaged children on these threads, thus implying they are trolls or liars."

Sorry ladies.

Okay - I see we are now down to the level of I said/she said recriminations thanks to Stata. Looks like we are never going to get to any discussion of the actual science.

Well, I'm perfectly willing to examine what has been said up thread.

I said "the only reason I'm not flaming you good right and proper is because you come across as not being quite the full shilling."

I said it because Silverfrog and I had just linked to some serious stuff that we thought was relevant to the discussion.

Stata then interjected with a silly and offensive video - the message of which is that people like Silver, Pag, Leonie and myself are paranoid loons who believe everything they read on the internet and who put their children at risk of paralysis and 'retardation' (I quote) because they are paranoid loons.

Stata then stated that the video summed up her feelings perfectly.

I thought I was being pretty restrained with how I reacted to such immature nonsense - but it appears that I have terribly hurt Stata's feelings and bullied her. Whatever.

You see though - this is what happens when people polarize arguments. All sense of sensible discussion and examination of the issue goes out the window and all that is left is hyperbole and stupid characterization.

In addition, when you start out a discussion with the assumption that they people you are discussing with are loons who lie about their children in order to gain points on a fucking internet forum you are unlikely to get very far.

Thank you Thoughtaboutit for your thought provoking contributions. It would appear that you have personal experience of the issue under discussion. I just wanted to say I wish you and yours all the very best.

Just wanted to add though that the MOST offensive thing that was said was this idea of laughing at sick children. For gods sake, no-one laughed at sick children. What kind of frikkin pervert does that? For what it's worth, we're respite carers for severely disabled children. The idea of laughing about them is so odious that I couldn't put into words how I feel when some bullies on an internet debate accuse me of it because I don't agree with them and in order to 'score points'. Fucking pathetic.

Thanks, Beachcomber. I am pretty astonished that there are so many people following this subject in such detail on both sides of the argument. I'm delighted to learn that Statalover is a respite carer. She will have a glimpse of a world that I suspect a lot of the more passionate posters deal with each day. Statistics are a great thing but finally, each day, parents of a disabled child worry about only one thing, their child - actually two - the second is "what happens when I die". By being a respite carer you should not be surprised by the level of commitment and passion being expressed on this board.Too many people feel their lives "went to Holland" not by fate but by design. Solving the underlying reason for the explosion in autism may take statistics but it will also take some consideration of the anecdotal evidence of the people that lived through the events. From that perhaps a greater understanding will come - sorry if that comes off pompous.

But Stata don't you see that posting 'amusing' videos which take the piss out of people like me and Silverfrog and Pagwatch is laughing at us and our children's situation?

I don't doubt that it was not your intention to point and laugh at sick children and their families, but the video that you linked to, does precisely that.

Your amusing video contains an image of Jenny McCarthy. Her son is autistic and vaccine damaged - the video is mocking her and the plight of her son. (And suggesting that she is some sort of sick paranoid loon who pretends her son reacted badly to a vaccine. The video also suggests that people who have never met this child know more about him than his parents and the doctors who treat him.) You are probably right Stata - that video sums you up pretty well.

The problem with you Stata is that despite claiming that you 'accept that vaccine damage does happen' you think that people who talk about experiences of vaccine damage are lying or exaggerating or talking crap because they are paranoid loons who are a bit stupid and have been sucked into some sort of mad conspiracy theory.

Vaccine damage has to happen to somebody right? Well, hello, here we are.

Sorry if that upsets you and disturbs your world view.

Let me tell you that it disturbs one's world view a whole lot more when you join the ranks of the vaccine damaged - ranks that much of the population wish would just go away and stop being a boring inconvenience. (That is when they are not laughing at us and making videos which mock us).

Do you want to know why I come on MN and talk about this sort of thing? It is because I get to exchange with people like Silverfrog and Pagwatch and Saintly and Leonie and Rightpissedoff and all the rest of them. Why? Because it makes the bitter pill of having held my DD down to be jabbed just a tiny tiny bit easier to swallow to know that I am not alone and that other people know what I am talking about.

There's more I want to say on this but this post is getting a bit long and I have some stuff to do.

Hello Thoughtaboutit.

I very much agree with you.

When you said; "Solving the underlying reason for the explosion in autism may take statistics but it will also take some consideration of the anecdotal evidence of the people that lived through the events."

My reaction was; 'well that makes perfect and utter sense!'

You don't come across as pompous at all. Quite the opposite actually.

Welcome to MN . (unless you are a namechanger!)

I hope you will stick around, despite this unpleasant thread....

My personal irony is that, before having children, and before having to deal with my DD's situation, I thought that people who didn't vaccinate were a bit 'out there'.

Well, you live and learn.

There's no reason for bitterness - certainly not because of some of the remarks made here.You present yourself as thoughtful and pretty centred in the face of ...stuff. We all take for granted how easily we interact with each other- I certainly do and my experience has made my life richer and me slightly more exhausted. I think we all loathe injustice and we see it in our lives every moment of every day because our children somehow embody it. I have actually been bolstered by RPO and you Beachcomber and Starlight because you know so much about this story that i feel we have a shared history. I suspect that will be evidence, somehow, of a gang - but it isn't. I've never met nor do I know the backgrounds of anyone else - I got here and stayed here because of my fear that untruths might be spread. Statalover - who may or not be still watching this thread - is responsible for holding this thread together by posting provocative, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes thoughtless messages - which should not be disregarded out of hand, but who I hope will be responsive to an entreaty to tread gently on the real and present dilemmas faced by the parents or carers who might have points of view which don't agree with hers. There's no room for bitterness, no time for it but there are a lot of people - more than I ever knew - who all seem to be walking down the same path and there is some comfort in that - at least for me. So thank you.

Thoughtaboutit, thanks for your kind words - you are very wise.

I think I feel bitter because I blame myself for going ahead with my DD's baby jabs when I had niggling doubts about her health. I remember asking the doctor if we shouldn't try to find out what was going on with her before vaccinating her.

At the time I didn't have any misgivings about the vaccines themselves - I just thought it wasn't a good idea to vaccinate an ill baby, especially as we didn't know what was wrong with her.

I wish I hadn't let myself be influenced by a rather gung-ho doctor.

some interesting news today re: Japan and Prevenar; will be interesting to see what the outcome of the investigation is.

Thoughtaboutit: I too would like ot say Welcome to MN, and thank you for your balanced posts on this thread

And I did a sharp intake of breath at the way Stata was actually laughing at Leonie and her contributions.

So who's to say who's a disgrace?

Catrinm that is ABSOLUTELY not true. What a cheek to make something up like that which can't be checked because the post is deleted.

Yes thoughtaboutit. Sorry I got nosy about you. Best wishes to you and yours.

Leonie Stata was so very vile to you, vile vile vile.

I'm so glad this thread is over and done with. Though despite everything, there were some very informative links and very naughty info re: vested interest, some of which got deleted I think, but will find another way out there.

one of the many reports of the Japan Prevenar story

The response seems to be: "Good God we should look at this and sort it out" rather than ""God God we need to cover this up."

However I'm not sure of the timeline of events. Off to read.

"In February last year health authorities in the Netherlands said no relation was found between Prevenar and the deaths of three infants who had received the vaccine.

Three of the children that died in Japan were administered Prevenar together with ActHIB. In addition, three of the children also received a mixed vaccine against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus on the same day they received the other vaccines.

Three of the four children died a day after being immunized."