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!

You are soooooooooo credulous.

No you don't "have" Occam's Razor. It would say that there is no link between ASD and MMR, not least because no one has a credible theory (do you?) of what that link might be or what the pathological mechanisms are.

Oh look. You're wrong. Here's the paper that says that MMR actually PROTECTS people from getting asthma, but it was only based on the tiny sample of, oh, eight hundred thousand people, so, you know, it could be wrong...

aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/168/11/1277

If you do have data to the contrary, PLEASE do post it here, as I note that you are yet to link to a single item of data which backs up your point of view.

Sausage, the data from the HPA website actually shows that measles cases continued to decrease from 1998 (the year the lancet paper was published) except for slight increases every 3/4 years - the typical pattern that was occurring prior to that - so I'm not rely sure what you are trying to blame Wakefield for there. :)

Regarding the wording, I was genuinely curious and wondered exactly when the vaccine was released because of it. It's a bit hazy because it may very well have been released the year it was licensed or it may have been released later. Do you know either way?

Ummm- I'm not sure where I've said that it hit 'rock bottom' I was simply pointing out that even before the measles vaccine was introduced the number of deaths was rapidly declining. From several hundred cases at the start of the 1940s to 30-40 cases is a more dramatic decrease than what occurred after the vaccine. Can you prove that the downward trend would not have continued if the vaccine had not been introduced? There's really no way of knowing.

Your final comment once again refers to developing countries that do not have the benefits of sanitation, nutrition and healthcare that we do. You have already admitted that these things made a dramatic difference in the UK so why do you think it is an accurate comparison?

Sorry sausage but you haven't managed to disprove anything...

Rely = really

Yes, I certainly do have Occam's Razor: of course.

Large numbers of people report regression after vaccination. Large rise in ASD since vaccination. No credible alternative explanation for rise in ASD.

Which bit of that don't you understand?

And that Oxford study -- that would be like the Japanese study that "proved" that MMR protects against autism?

If it wasn't so tragic it would be funny.

"as I note that you are yet to link to a "single item of data which backs up your point of view".

nor am I going to

this will never go away because the children won't go away, and you can't do a damn thing about it -- though you might wish them away, or wish that people were too stupid to believe the evidence all around them

your epi studies are worthless -- I bet you haven't even looked at them closely yourself

the headline is enough for people who want ever so much for it to be true

Here's some evidence for you.

Child 1 regresses after vaccination. Child 1 fails to appear in peer reviewed journal. Post your response to that.

Here's some more.

Children 2-2000 regress after vaccination. Children fail to appear in peer-reviewed journal. Post your response to that.

All credible explanations welcome.

That's not evidence - it's anecdote.

I'm afraid it is evidence Seeker. It's just not proof. It's especially evidence when it involves testimony from a number of different sources, clinical, sub-clinical, videographic and developmental milestones met, recorded and regressed from.

Large amounts of evidence published in peer reviewed journals is nothing of the sort, and a lot of peer reviewed MMR epidemiological research is rubbish deeply misleading -- well, completely wrong really.

Do you deny their existence Seeker? I dare you to type the words: these are just stories and it didn't happen.

If you can, I have a question -- how the hell did you become so omniscient?

Seeker: "And unfortunately, the time in a child''s life when autistic tendencies are beginning to be noticable is also the time - around 18 months - when the MMR vaccine is routinely given.

People understandably casing around for reasons have a ready made hook to hanf the diagnosis on. Sad but true."

what complete and utter bollocks.

is the same true now, of children who regress when mmr is given at 13 months?

is it true when children regress at 4 (yes, it has happened) - are you still going to say "oh, that is the time autistic tendencies become apparent"

honestly. do some reading on this.

I'm afraid I can't accept your post as a credible explanation.

"They are just stories" really doesn't do it for me. On what grounds do you dismiss the regression evidence? Got any actual grounds as opposed to an airy, oh, someone might just have made all that up?

Of course you haven't, it's just something you keep hearing without any clue what it means.

"walking, talking, starting toilet trainng, and then the next starts to lose all skills and becomes a screaming wailing ball of fury, with little communication, regresses in toileting etc - this is just the parents "beginning to notice", is it?"

oh silver, they're just fairy stories remember, these children are just the figments of someone's imagination

yeah, it would be funny, if I didn't have a vaccine damaged child.

what is also intriguing about this, is that if you even begin to think Wakefield et al are right (hypothetically speaking - you know, once you have that child that really wasn't vaccine damaged, no sirree), and then treat said hypothetical child as though they were vaccine damaged - treat the gut, avoid stuff that is known to be an issue in vacine damaged children, etc - they improve

oh, and seeker, fwiw, I don't need a hook to hang dd1's dx on.

what I do need to do is understand what happened, in order to help her. if I, as you do (form your luxurious position of not having to research this so that your child can have a pain-free life), dismissed the vaccine link, as the doctors (on the whole) want me to do, then dd1 would still probably be non-verbal, self-injuring, and stimming her little life away.

but, by daring to believe, I have helped her. a lot. and been told I am wasting both time and money in doing so, and had my results dismissed as coincidnece and anecdote. gets fucking boring being told that, you know.

Of course I don;t deny that there are children whit autism, and children who regress. Of course I think it a ghastly situation for anyone to be in. I just think tht the vaccine damage hypothesis is a red herring - and is absorbing huge amouts of energy and money would be best applied to credible research into the issue, or in providing more support for families.

I don;t know why people seem to think that if you don;t believe in vaccine triggered autism regression, you don't believe in autism regression at all.

Lots of people saying "I think this is what happened to my child" is not the same as proper evidence.

DD2 ate honey roasted carrots for dinner last night.

DD2 woke 3 times during the night.

Carrots must therefore disturb sleep patterns in toddlers.

Should we ban carrots? (Or honey? Or perhaps dinner?)

If we repeated the roast carrot eating experiment on tens of thousands of children and found that many of them (and I mean by that a statistically significant amount**) didn't sleep after eating carrots then perhaps it would be an idea to look into this.

However, as there are quite a lot toddlers who would have a disturbed sleep pattern one night simply because they are, well, toddlers, we would have to ensure that the carrots were having an additional affect if we wanted to ban carrots.

There are around 3 million under-4s in this country. I am not sure whether you are suggesting that 2000 of them have (what does children "2-2000" mean?) "regressed after vaccine" - either way, there are lots of illnesses which become apparent in seemingly "healthy" children as they are developing from babies into toddlers and then children.

Babies are not just "mini adults" they have developmental biology all to themselves. If something goes wrong in this complex development, it may not be evident until they are maturing into children. This can still be a sudden change. This can (and often does) happen at the same age as vaccinations happen.

Just because an observation of regression is made in the same time-frame as a vaccination does not mean the vaccine is to blame - only large controlled studies can prove a link like that. If the link was a big one, or a clear one, it would become obvious very quickly. Yet study after study after study has shown that there is no such link when you look at a half-decent sized sample.

**statistical significance a mathematical way of separating real events from events that could be expected to happen by chance. In any population of 3 million, some kids are going to regress anyway. What the studies have shown is that there is no significant difference in the numbers who regress in vaccinated groups of kids compared to unvaccinated groups of kids.

I

however, lots of people saying "I think this is what happened to my child", coupled with clinical investigations which found a new form of bowel disease, onset post mmr, is enough for a proper study to be carried out.

and, apart form Wakefield and a few colleagues continuing the work (which has and is being carried out, but due to the general witch-hunting agenda of the media at large, what most people would consider to be "proper" journals (and I use that term very loosely following the BMJ's shocking articles based on nothing but lies and speculation) do not publish them.), apart form that, this has not been doen.

you can all jump up and down and shout as loud as you like that it has, but it hasn't.

most of the mainstream studies go out of their way to not include anyone that could possibly be int he subgroup Wakefiled identified - and if you're not looking in the right place, you are not going to find anything.

seeker: what do you think happens, then? (and, please, don't jsut answer with "I don't know. I haven't been in that position. it must be very temptin g to find somethign to blame, and all the other rot).

but, take a child (hell, take a few thousand!) - development all fine. health all fine. has mmr (at whatever age - so none of the "that's when you notice shite. honestly, the symptoms that develop are not ones that could have been overlooked before), and bingo - regression. with gut damage. a child who happily ate everything, now self restricts to a few feeds. and has constant diarrhoea. a child who was talking stops. a child who was happy screams constantly, avoids human contact, and cannot communicate in any form.

and the common factor between thses children? mmr. Fact.

sausagerolemodel - there has not been a study of unvaccinated children. lots of people are calling for one, actually, but it has never been carried out.

How many children did this happen to, silverfrog?

And what do you mean by "a proper study'?

ANd there have been studies and papars concluding that there is no link - there was one published in "Pediatrics" in 2006, i think.

Wakefied's study of 12 has been disredited, and has not been replicated.

yes, seeker, thre have been studies concluding no link. they have consistently ignored the very hypothesis Wakefield set out, and have gone out of their way to not include the sub group he identified.

Wakefield's work has been replicated, around the world (as I said earlier - do some reading. and not just Bad Science and Brian Deer-inspired junk)

"a proper study" is one which looks at the hypothesis that has been set out. not one which ignores it, and looks the other way, and then declares loudly that (as well we all know) that mmr is safe for the majority. good good. now, what about the minority?

Wakefield's case series (NOT a study, never was, never will be, however many times it is mis-quoted) has NOT been discredited. it still stands. one of his biggest detractors said of it "good science, which still stands" and that he wished it could be considered without the whole media circus, as it raised an important point, which deserved to be investigated.

as to how many children? funnily enough, i don't hold the records / I personally (in RL) know of 4. granted I move in different circles to you, but that is a large number for me to know, given (and you'll have to take htis on trust) my circle of acquaintances is not that large.

the hypothesis is up to 7% of ASD cases. ASD dx now stands at 1 in 64 children in the UK. That number just keeps growing, in frightening proportions.

"Wakefield's work has been replicated, around the world "

Has it?

Where?

Was there a significant dip in ASD diagnoses to correspond with the dsignificant dip in MMR take up?

""a proper study" is one which looks at the hypothesis that has been set out. not one which ignores it, and looks the other way, and then declares loudly that (as well we all know) that mmr is safe for the majority. good good. now, what about the minority?"

I thought a proper study is one which does not look at any hypothesis but which looks at the the facts.

I have 3 children and they have not had the mmr (have had all other vaccinations).

I simply cannot bring myself to get it done a big part of it is the negative publicity surrounding the mmr when dd1 was small, also they all have underlying health issues and ds and dd2 have severe egg allergy (gp says they would have to be vaccinated in hospital)

Every time i go the the gp about anything they remind me that mine are the only children at the surgery not vaccinated.

Iam in a terrible muddle as to what to do, its a very hard decision.I can really sympathise OP.

tbh, seeker, if you did not know that Wakefields work has been replicated, then you clearly know not a lot about htis whole debate. yet you still think it ok to dismiss what people say regarding their children

will find some links in a while - sorry, am on wrong computer.

at your thoughts that studies do not look at hypotheses. so, they all just start up without a focus, and miraculously end up examing mmr/ASD? (or whatever they do focus on).

jeez.