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

I am just trying to highlight that some people on this forum are implacable and fundamental vaccine deniers.

Really? are you looking for an easy target, like Caterina was? You won't find it with bubbly, not me, not silver - not sure about rosi - not pagwatch - I've rarely come across implacabale and fundamental vaccine deniers. Who are you talking about?

Now there's a much more difficult area for you to address, which is the area that's brought most people who question vaccines to the debate. That's the question of vaccine damage involving MMR and thiomersal.

You chose to avoid those issues. I can see why. They're difficult for you, and you are more in the mood to create an easy target and attack that. But any time you want to talk about those issues, I'll join you.

Why don't you name some names imageine? Who are the fundamental and implacable vaccine deniers, and on what basis do you describe them as implacable and fundamental vaccine deniers?

You can't make a vague accusation like that without backing it up. Come on. Name them - and why?

OK. Let me get this clear in my head.

!. Some children are damaged by vaccines. This is obviously a fact. There are children for whom vaccines are contra-indicated and there always have been. I know that children with certain allergies and with some immune system problems should not be vaccinated. I don't think anyone disputes this.

1. Some children suffer autistic regression. This is also a fact. Nobody disputes this either. There is debate about the causal link between such regression and the MMR - with the vast majority of authorities saying there is no such link, but with a powerful group of parents and others saying there is.

1. On a completely separate point, there are people who question the benefit of ANY vaccine, theorizing that the decline in infectious diseases over the last century (ish) is largely due to an increase in public health and sanitation and a mutaion of the viruses to make them less virulent.

Does this sum it up?

"There are children for whom vaccines are contra-indicated and there always have been"

No. Or there would be no vaccine-damaged children. There still are children damaged by vaccines. There is an unidentified vulnerable group. This is denied.

Autistic regression: yes - it's a fact. Now a rather commonplace fact. Had you suggested this as a "fact" thirty years ago to any random group of parents the response would have been "eh?" and the next words probably "what's autism"?

There are people who question the absolute beauty of the vaccine icon. They might accept that vaccines can be helpful or useful or non-damaging for some people, they probably do.

But they question its absolute truth and called deniers - whereas the real denialists are people like seeker and imageine and caterina - denialists all. No link, no evidence, it doesn't happen, it's not real, you are imagining it la la la.

Pretty ironic for the "evidence" worshippers - you seem remarkably adept at avoiding and denying it.

So are you saying that my three statements are not true?

1. True - but implies that all vulnerable children are identified which is a lie.
2. True - but only since MMR was introduced
3. True - but are they on this thread? What's your point? Why do you prefer to argue with this very rare view than on the MMR issue?

actually 2. true but only on an industrial scale since mmr was introduced

of course you can't spot regression in eight weeks olds generally - possible role of thiomersal I mean

So now seeker - what on earth would your point be? because I simply cannot conceive of what it might be.

Have you somehow proved that there is no link between vaccines and brain damage, or MMR and autistic regression? Have you proved that parents are wrong to question MMR or infant vaccines for their child?

If you have a point can you make it because - to use your terminology - I'm struggling to get my head round it.

Just jumpng in quickly her but will be back later...

Imadgeine - you are misreading my post. "People were less likely to die from those diseases in developed countries prior to vaccines being introduced." as in - the reduction in fatality from these diseases occurred prior to the introduction of the vaccine (people were less likely to die from them) - I realise that it can be read a different way with a different meaning so apologies if that caused confusion.

To be totally honest, you are both very confusing. It is difficult to plough through the personality conflict to find the bare information.
GB I did look at some of the things you suggested.
The thing I particularly liked about the london GP was that he was very transparent and in no way suggesting that we should be anti vaccine.
To the contrary, he runs an immunisation clinic.
What he has shown and what I think you have demonstrated on both sides that the causality between two factors has not been completely established.
In medicine, if you look at SIGN/NICE guidelines, evidence is graded very carefully and in the absence of a multi centre randomised control trial, sometime we have to consider expert opinions.
So who are the experts in this field? do they have any conflicts of interest?

Im unclear GB if you are arguing for vaccines on the whole, or individually.
To be honest, you probably do need to consider each vaccine on its own merit and this is a HUGE task.
I understand that each vaccine has its controversy however there is a huge amount of potential good to be done.
Consider the HPV vaccine, one of my my best friends died of cervical cancer caused by HPV. We are now at the stage where some vaccines have the ability to prevent cancer. There is even talk of an Alzheimer's vaccine.
So are we arguing over the past? or are we arguing against the future???
IS the problem how we have come to where we are with vaccines?
Is there a genuine problem with our current vaccinations?
Is there a future for vaccinations and do you want to be a part of it in any way.

I realise that this is more questions than answers, but Im not claiming to have all the answers and I am struggling to see the answers in your posts.

"Have you somehow proved that there is no link between vaccines and brain damage, or MMR and autistic regression? Have you proved that parents are wrong to question MMR or infant vaccines for their child?"

No. But you kept telling me that because I, and others were saying that vaccines worldwide had had considerable public health benefits we were accusing mmr campaigners of lying. I did not understand this, and I was trying to separate the two issues.

'vaccines worldwide had had considerable public health benefits'

Seeker, where is the evidence that this is a true statement?

It is an assumption, a belief system. Nobody knows if it is true, but the vaccine lobby behaves as if there is no doubt about it.

rosi7, are you saying that you can prove that that statement is false??

I said that nobody knows. There are theories out there which claim that the elimination of illnesses is not necessarily the consequence of vaccination but a lot of other things. So who can tell what is true

Presumably there are cases of autistic regression amongst children who haven't had any jabs? At what age are they diagnosed? Two? Three?

As an aside, Vitamin A is good for measles even in well nourished chldren. Measles uses up our stores of it. I'm told it takes it from our livers first where we store it and then from the eyes. Hence the need to supplement to prevent this shortfall happening in the first place.

That kind of sums it up seeker. Lots yet to learn about 1 and 2 - and both subject to much controversy.

Inevitably no straight answers to my questions above.

I am therefore assuming then that you guys convinced that all vaccines are spawn of the devil - both useless and dangerous, all of them. That vaccination has done no good in the world.
And that if you were that hypothetical East African you would not waste your time in the vaccine queue. Anyone want to stick their neck out and say this is not what they believe?

I haven't vaccinated DS, but I am not anti-vaccine as such.

PIMS, did you go for the MMR? Our docs aren't even open at the weekends, so lucky you. If we get ill, we suffer until Monday.

You're making a pretty big (and ridiculous) assumption then imadgeine.
How does saying that things other than vaccination had a bigger impact on improvement in health and decrease in fatalities from infectious diseases equate to what you have assumed we're saying.

If I was a hypothetical East African I would probably have a lot more to worry about than measles tbh and the fact that I am probably vitamin deficient due to a limited diet, may be suffering from an underlying immunosupressing disease, be drinking contaminated water and living in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions would of course make me more vulnerable to complications from measles (all the things that I quoted earlier from the WHO). In those type of conditions I think vaccines are like using a bandaid for a bullet wound - there are much bigger problems that need to be addressed that would solve a lot more problems and would have a greater impact on morbidity and mortality rates as demonstrated in developed countries. Quite frankly it disgusts me that some of you take these things so much for granted and can dismiss them as having no impact on our health when people are dying from the lack of those basic things. Why don't you take your vaccinated children to live out there and see how well you get on without all the things that 'aren't that important'.

'vaccines worldwide had had considerable public health benefits'

Seeker, where is the evidence that this is a true statement?'

OK - let's take, for example, polio. Eradicated practically everywhere in the world apart from a couple of counties in sub-Saharan Africa, and in a couple of states in, I think, Pakstan. In Nigeria, one of the countries where it is not yet irradicated, in about 2003, I think there was a rumour that the polio vaccine was a trick by the CIA to render African girls sterile. Immunization take up rates dropped. Polio cases shot up from about 50 to nearly 300 in less than a year. No other changed variables.

I am old enough to remember polio. I suspect most of the people on here who say that vaccination has no benefit do not.

Tab, my heads up my bottom. Of course he wasn't going to get an MMR on a Sunday!! I've been thinking it was Monday since I got up. Thank god I realised before I went out!!!! X

Seeker Given that we now need 5 polio jabs to be immune, how many in this country have had that number? I had one or two of the OPV "shots" as a child so I'm not immune.

OK bubbleymummy I do get it. You really, truly, genuinely don't believe that any vaccines work and you are convinced they do more harm than good. You don't believe that measles vaccine might save the life of a malnourished child until the famine was over and they could get back to normal food intake and a safer environment. You don't believe smallpox was eradicated via vaccination programmes. Or that polio has been nearly eradicated in the same way. It is all down to factors like diet and hygiene.
This puts all your other arguments into a clear perspective. They are all a distraction and a smoke screen from your key beliefs that vaccines don't work and they do more harm than good.
So when you introduce your various quibbling-about-science arguments it is a lot like debating with someone who has an adamant religious faith that God created the world as a finished article a few thousand years ago, but nevertheless wants to use selected bits and pieces from science to convince others that evolutionary theory is wrong and that their religion is right. Implacable belief and science don't work terribly well together.

Please can I just re-iterate again about the HPV vaccine. HPV is one cause of cervical cancer. Just because you're immune to HPV does not mean you will not develop cervical changes. Having the vaccine should not stop girls from having regular smear checks.

The HPV vaccine is not a vaccine against cancer. It is a vaccine against one of the causes of cancer.

Sorry about your friend PIMS, heartbreaking.

I am therefore assuming then that you guys convinced that all vaccines are spawn of the devil

Why are you assuming that? You've totally lost me. Are you just making things up as you go along? Are you reading what people have written - at all? Don't get you really I don't, unless it's all just a straw man thin . Aha and uinless it's just anything to avoid the issues about MMR, autistic regression, thiomersal and so on. Yes that must be it, it must be, or why would you write such ludicrous nonsense. Too scary for you - that must be it.

Imagine I just read your last post to bubblymummy. You really are just making things up.

You're like my youngest child - he races his older brothers, comes last, and yells "I won I won". Not that anyone's won here - nobody's a winner in a debate about vaccine damage - I'm just talking about the blatant and shameless, almost joyful, disregard of reality or anything bearing any relation to what is actually happening or what's being said.

How pointless is this