Debate on Vaccines

[Emsyboo]

I have seen a few threads where mums have an opinion pro or con vaccine and asking for more information I would like to know your reasons for being one or the other.
My MIL is very anti vaccine and told me 4 out of 30 children die from vaccinations - I don't believe this to be true think their may be a decimal point missing although I have seen some posts from people who seem to have backed up information about vaccines.

I am pro vaccine but like to see both sides before I make a decision so if anyone has any information pro or con and more importantly has info to back up I would be really interested.

Thanks

imadgeine, have you actually looked at the history of smallpox vaccines? The early vaccines actually killed many people (there were questions over which was more risky; the vaccine or the disease itself!), caused large outbreaks of the disease and certain areas actually found that cases only decreased when they stopped vaccinating! You'll find that the fatalities from smallpox were declining at the start of the last century in line with other diseases such as measles and scarlet fever and that they continued to decline even though the vaccination rate started to decrease.

Bubblymummy, its not just about fatalities. The current measles epidemic has left 6 people dead, 14 people with neurological damage and 444 cases of severe pneumonia. The last epidemic of rubella left 10000s of CRS and 10000s of miscarriages and still births. These things are just as important as the fatalities. The survivors of smallpox were left horribly scarred and at one point 1/3 of the worlds blindness was put down to smallpox. Just look at the SENSE website to see the effect of rubella (a disease you keep telling everyone is mild disease) has on unborn babies.

bruffin I am aware that rubella is dangerous for pregnant women. I have pointed out that it is a mild disease in children - do you disagree with that? If not, then may e you can exolain why it is a child's responsibility to avoid a mild childhood illness in order to protect a grown woman. Surely it should be an adult's responsibility to protect themselves (and their unborn child)

Re. Reduction in fatalities - do you think fatalities are the only thing to reduce? Do you not think complications reduce too? Particularly when treatments become available for those complications?

Yes I am familiar with the history of smallpox.

1. the very first inoculations were by the actual smallpox virus rather than cowpox and that obviously had its fair share of dangers!
2. Then in the 19th century, cowpox serum was used. The stuff they used to inoculate was essentially home grown, not a standardised scientific product.
3. eventually in the mid 20th century vaccine production was standardised.

So your red-herring arguments about early problems not very relevant to the point. Still noticing that you seem determined not to agree that smallpox was eradicated due to the use of vaccination.

I'm sure you're aware that vitamin A reduces the risk of complications from measles by 50% (from WHO). Surely that in itself proves the argument for better nutrition reducing fatalities and complications.

Compulsory vaccinationfor smallpox stopped in the late 1940s so the majority of people were vaccinated with those less safe vaccines. If you're admitting that those vaccines actually weren't that safe and effective are you saying that the eradication of smallpox was solely due to the 'safer' vaccines that came about in the mid 20th century?

But preventing the disease in the first place prevents any complications or deaths! Even in the unlikely event those that are vaccinated get the disease it is nearly always milder without any complications and they are less likely to pass it on.

You might be happy to be responsible for your child to pass rubella onto a pregnant women. Rubella only occurs in cycle it is easy to miss that epidemic, why do you think so many babies were damaged,died in epidemics, it was because their mother didn't catch it when they were younger. There is absolutely no benefit in having any of these diseases, so why have something you can prevent.
WHO advises vaccinating but you chose to ignore that, bit hypocrytical to quote WHO and HPA then cherry pick their advice.

The benefit is having lifelong immunity so that when you are older,pregnant, more vulnerable you are protected and, in women's cases, can pass that immunity on to your child so that they are protected when they are at their most vulnerable. If you do not think you had the disease as a child then it is your responsibility to have your immunity tested. You could as easily catch rubella from someone who was vaccinated as a child but whose immunity either waned or who did not get immunity from the vaccine or from a younger child who hasn't been vaccinated yet.

Don't get your point about the WHO and the HPA to be honest - I'm just posting official figures - not sure how that makes me a hypocrite. I'm trying to to use sources that you won't dismiss...

Well you don't get your facts right when you quote them ie being in denial that vaccine has caused the reduction in measles as per the HPA figures.

You cannot easily get rubella from someone who is vaccinated that is a ridiculous statement.

The current measles outbreak is completely down to unvaccinated children passing it one to children who are too young to have a complete set of vaccinations.

"You could as easily catch rubella from someone who was vaccinated as a child but whose immunity either waned or who did not get immunity from the vaccine"

Please read what I'm writing rather than what you think I'm writing.

This also applies to your first comment about the hpa figures - look at the reduction in fatalities - that is the reduction I'm talking about.

Iirc the current measles outbreak is mainly affecting teenagers and young adults.

"Goosberrybushes those points really don't make logical sense."

Yes they do - they make absolute sense. Much more than imagining that the history of smallpox vaccination has anything at all to do with the safety of the modern vaccine schedule. Now that is a non-sequitur. I'll leave it to Bubbly and Rosi - seems to me a convenient distraction but maybe some people are interested.

Millions survived unharmed and a significant proportion didn't a proportion that was significantly reducing by the time vaccines were rolled out

Polio for instance had very nasty effects in the unlucky ones. Paralysed breathing muscles for instance. vaccines for instance have very nasty effects in the unlucky ones. Death, for instance. Profound brain damage, for instance. Paralysis, for instance. (and so on and so forth)

Your point about vaccine damage is not self evident. It is. Vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases for some people.

You would have to believe that the risks of vaccine damage were significantly higher than the risk of catching a disease and being damaged by the disease. It is a case of assessing what you believe to be the relative risks.

Well as we don't know what the risk is, nor do we know the benefit, making a risk-benefit decision is rather difficult.

My argument rests entirely on evidence and the steps that follow. Yours is based on a white coat faith, so far as I can see.

Bubbly this has come up before. Apparently one isn't allowed to use official figures, one must only reference to iamaquack.com type websites which can then be duly scorned.

Some problem with the official figures bruffin?

"The current measles outbreak is completely down to unvaccinated children passing it one to children who are too young to have a complete set of vaccinations."

You should do some maths. Let's take a hundred people. Imagine there are - what -ten per cent non-vaccinators on principle.

A 95 pc vaccination rate would give herd immunity

"So the proportion of non vax by choice is have as low as the proportion of non immune according to the schedule."

nopedidopedi

this instead

So the proportion of non vax by choice is half as low again as the proportion of non immune according to the schedule

ie 10pc - rather than 15 pc of non immune according to the schedule

now you can follow

Bubbleymummy it was getting late and you seemed to be getting more and more desperate to find ways of not agreeing that smallpox was eradicated by a world-wide vaccination campaign. The smallpox vaccination in this country was near-as-dammit universal for decades. Whether or not early vaccines a bit home made and unreliable is a red herring. The vaccine in the 2nd half of the 20th C was produced in such a way and to such a standard as to allow the WHO campaign to take place (storage, shelf life etc always an issue with vaccines).
By denying the usefulness of this vaccine you just appear to have adopted a position whereby all vaccines bad and pretty useless. This does nothing to support your other assertions.
Vitamin A - we have done it before - yes it's true that in severely malnourished infants, Vitamin A supplementation makes them less vulnerable to ill effects of measles. This does not mean it is 100% protection or from its fatal and disabling complications though. Or that extra vitamins will be helpful for children who are already well nourished. If you run your car with too little oil it will be damaged. More and more oil over above the amount needed wont give more and more benefit over just enough oil. So the vitamin a thing does not prove that western parents can just concentrated on diet and all will be well. (we've been here before with this anecdoted- My cousin caught TB (meningitis) when she was 3 and she was absolutely stuffed full of vitamins)
Sorry you are the one dealing in "faith". And given that you cannot even give a crumb of credit to the smallpox vaccine, a pretty fundamentalist faith at that.

This conversation is taking a turn that I don;t understand.

Am I right in thinking that there are people who think that there should be no vaccinations for anything?. Not polio, not diptheria - nothing? Because they don;t work and the fact that children in the developed world don;t get these diseases any more is entirely due to increased public health and hygiene? Really?.
Wow

Compulsory vaccination in the UK (which actually still didn't mean anywhere near universal coverage - I think around 70% of children were vaccinated at the turn of the century and this had dropped to under 50% by the 40s) ended in the late 1940s so before that 'new and improved' vaccine became available. This means that when the biggest drop was taking place the less effective and more dangerous vaccine (by your own admission) was the one in use. A bit strange that with compulsory vaccination for nearly 100 years it still didn't eliminate the disease. Hardly a brilliant and effective vaccination campaign! Out of curiosity - how do you explain the drop in the fatalities of measles and scarlet fever that were occurring at the same time without the vaccine? Can you consider the possibility that the same things that were influencing them could be influencing smallpox too?

re Vitamin A I did not say that it provided 100% protection - I quite specifically said that it reduced complications by 50%. (All complications by the way - not just fatalities) This shows that nutrition does actually have an impact - something which you seem to be denying and giving all credit to vaccines which is a bit silly given that the greatest decrease in fatalities occurred prior to the vaccine being introduced. (Have you even accepted that yet?) Children who are well nourished are less likely to suffer complications from measles - quite dramatically so. From the WHO on measles:

"Some children infected with measles virus may have only a mild illness, with few signs or symptoms. This is fortunate for the child but makes the clinical diagnosis harder. Other children may have severe complicated measles with more obvious signs and symptoms and are generally much sicker. Children at greatest risk of developing severe complicated measles include:

? the young, particularly those who are under one year of age

? the malnourished (children with marasmus or kwashiorkor)

? those living in overcrowded situations (e.g. the urban poor, refugee camps) where they may be exposed to a high load of virus

? those whose immunity (the body's defence mechanism against infections) is affected, such as children with HIV infection, malnutrition or malignancy

? those who are vitamin A-deficient (see slide 6)

The lack of adequate health care for children with measles also increases the risk that untreated complications will progress to severe complications and ultimately to death. Even when a health centre is nearby, parents may not understand the need to bring sick children early enough, and often seek help when complications are well advanced.

"

Not sure where TB is coming into this now (there you go skipping about again) but I don't know how healthy your cousin is, whether she had any underlying conditions or whether the vitamins she was stuffed full of were sugar coated orange flavour things out of a plastic bottle. I don't really see how it is relevant anyway tbh - I don't think you'd approve if i started using anecdotes as proof of something. Your cousin's (very rare) TB meningitis is proof of what exactly?

"Am I right in thinking that there are people who think that there should be no vaccinations for anything?. Not polio, not diptheria - nothing? Because they don;t work and the fact that children in the developed world don;t get these diseases any more is entirely due to increased public health and hygiene? Really?."

YOu have hit it in one, seeker!

I will reiterate - the current outbreak in is caused by unvaccinated teenagers/children who are now passing it on to those that are unable to be vaccinated. Is that clear enough.

Secondly - Yes percentage of deaths were falling for measles, but it is ridiculous to jump to the conclusion that this would mean there would be no deaths if we did not vaccinate. The numbers (not percentages) of real people dying of measles have fallen because we vaccinate.

Less cases of measles = less deaths= also = less complications.

Do you really believe that we have gone from 700000 cases a year in 1961 to a few hundred if it hadn't been for vaccination.

seeker - We're just not giving all the credit to vaccines. We are recognising that other things have had more of an impact. People were less likely to die from those diseases in developing countries prior to vaccines being introduced.

There are also questions and doubts about the current mass vaccination campaign. If you want to use the smallpox example -which many of you are so fond of - it was only after mass vaccination was abandoned and a policy of selective vaccination and isolation was adopted that the disease disappeared. I wonder why so many of you still equate the eradication of smallpox with this whole 'herd immunity from vaccines' idea.

oops developed* countries

"it is ridiculous to jump to the conclusion that this would mean there would be no deaths if we did not vaccinate."

The number of deaths were decreasing consistently over the years despite there still being a high number of cases. That may very well have continued. Scarlet fever deaths continued to decrease despite no vaccination being available. Complications from it could be just as serious as those from measles - pneumonia, meningitis, renal failure etc... Is it ridiculous that happened?

"Compulsory vaccination in the UK (which actually still didn't mean anywhere near universal coverage - I think around 70% of children were vaccinated at the turn of the century and this had dropped to under 50% by the 40s) ended in the late 1940s so before that 'new and improved' vaccine became available. This means that when the biggest drop was taking place the less effective and more dangerous vaccine (by your own admission) was the one in use. A bit strange that with compulsory vaccination for nearly 100 years it still didn't eliminate the disease. Hardly a brilliant and effective vaccination campaign! hmm Out of curiosity - how do you explain the drop in the fatalities of measles and scarlet fever that were occurring at the same time without the vaccine? Can you consider the possibility that the same things that were influencing them could be influencing smallpox too"

What don't you understand about smallpox vaccination- They may have got things wrong in the early days but it still played a part of where we are today with no smallpox.

Do you honestly and sincerely believe that if we relied on good nutritipn and sanitation there would be no disease, because history does not support those facts at all.

Even scartlet fever can still be nasty today. My healthy BIL was bedbound for weeks with it and was threatened with hospital.

"The number of deaths were decreasing consistently over the years despite there still being a high number of cases. That may very well have continued"

and it may not have and probably wouldn't have looking at the current epidemic. Why take that risk if there is simple way of preventing it in the first place.

History does support those facts - many deadly diseases completely disappeared without vaccines. Good nutrition reduces the risk of complications from measles (WHO) and other diseases and improvements in living conditions, sanitation, nutrition and availability of medical care at the turn of the century resulted in a huge reduction in fatalities from infectious diseases -you've seen the figures yourself but you won't acknowledge them. Countries that do not have those basic things that we take for granted (quite obviously in your case) still have high rates of mortality and morbidity - even if vaccination is available to them.

"People were less likely to die from those diseases in developing countries prior to vaccines being introduced."

What does this sentence mean?