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

Bm, why not campaign for both.
She died from a strain that is preventable by the vaccine.
Please don't suggest I am wasting my energy by personally supporting this.
Screening and vaccine offers a belt and braces kind of approach.
It is totally unfair and unsympathetic to say that screening alone would have prevented this.
That is simply untrue, it would not have stopped her contracting HPV and screening would not have stopped the mutation to cancer.
Colposcopy/lazer treatment/radiation
None are 100% guaranteed to cure. So please, reconsider ur argument

And bm, I never once claimed this was clear cut! Completely the opposite in fact! I said this was a HUGE grey are and really very personal.
To me there is a positive in this vaccine, it's a shame that u can't see why

But PIMs - contracting HPV does not guarantee it developing into cancer. In any case, the vaccine is ineffective once a woman has become sexually active - your friend could not have been vaccinated against it at her age having already had a child (so obviously sexually active). If she had been screened, the abnormal cells could have been detected early enough to treat. There is a huge window between being vaccinated at 13 and having your first smear at 25. No one knows how long any protection from this vaccine will last - it's too new. Screening needs to start much sooner.

I only didn;t name her because it was so obvious. I suspect there are others who feel the same but they have not overtly said so , so I would not name them.

I don;t understand why such diversionary tactics would be necessary either - but they are certainly being used - and very rudly too.

"In any case, the vaccine is ineffective once a woman has become sexually active - "
Citation please.

Here you go seeker.

Bm you are avoiding answering my question by refusing to accept that this vaccine had the potential to save a life.
Of course screening plays a part as a said but it can not prevent contraction of HPV.
and I didn't say or even suggest that ALL HPV can be prevented by this vaccine or that ALL HPV will cause cancer.
You are twisting what I am saying to keep urself comfortable in ur belief.
If u feel the need to do that, please keep it to urself. I've given u very personal facts to show a positive use for this vaccine.
Absolutely it can not stand by itself in the struggle to prevent HPV that in the case of my friend led to cancer and death.
It must take it's place with screening and good education, but there is absolutely a place for this vaccine. I have demonstrated this with a very real very personal loss.
For what it's worth, her daughter will absolutely take the vaccine, go for the screening and practice ultra safe sex!
Belt and braces bm. If you twist what I am saying again, u are only making urself look bad.
As Duncan bannatyne says "I'm out"

Sorry, misunderstood. I thought you meant that the vaccination, once given, only worked until a woman becomes sexually active. I must be very thiick tonight.

The virus doesn;t cure HPV - it can only prevent it.

PIM, I'm not ignoring it. I pointed out that it couldn't have saved your friend's life because she was already sexually active - she couldn't have had the vaccine - it wouldn't have been effective. I know this is a hard subject for you but it is a fact - you can check the vaccine information on the internet.

You are missing the point again Bubbleymummy. Again you are going on about not preventing death but completely forget about the problems of the illness itself. Even if Cervical cancer is caught in the early days, the precedures to cure it are really unpleasant. My sister had early stages, it was a horrible time for her. It may have been too late for PIMS friend but if it had been around when she was 13, then she most likely not have had to suffer at all.
The same with measles why put a child through pneumonia to be cured with antibiotics when you can prevent measles in the first place or are you still denying that vaccines prevent measles.
Why put anyone through something that may be preventable.

Bruffin -we're talking about a real situation here - not a hypothetical one. The vaccine wasn't available when PIM's friend was a teenager. She was sexually active when it did become available - it could not have saved her life.

I am aware of what the procedure is for removing abnormal cells - I have had to have it done twice thanks to a botch job by the first doctor. "Problem of the illness itself' - are you aware that in the majority of cases people don't even know they have HPV, it causes no problems and clears itself up? Are you aware that the vaccine doesn't guarantee protection against all (over 100) strains of HPV - only a few of them? Are you aware that no one knows how long protection lasts from it? Someone could be vaccinated and still end up with abnormal cells that they need to have removed and sadly, many people don't seem to realise this and may not actually go for their screening tests because they think they are protected.

When you say that I'm denying that vaccine prevent measles do you mean that I have pointed out that the vaccines aren't 100% effective and that even people who have been vaccinated can contract the disease?

that's exactly how I feel, bruffin, wrt to vaccines and vaccine damage.

Until there is sufficient screening to even try to keep susceptible children safe, my girls will not be given routine vaccinations.

I have one child who has reacted already. I will not line up dd2 for a reaction (which she is highly likely to have) which is preventable.

Bm, ur leaflet says it is effective as long as it is administered before there is contact with the virus!!!
This does not necessarily mean that just because u have had sex once it is ineffective.
It will only be ineffective if u have already contracted it. (from your own literature)
So unless u know for a fact when my friend contracted HPV, again you are wrong

But there many real people like PIMS friends in the future who may be saved.

To be honest bubblymummy it is a extraordinary mentality to make the assumption it might not be a 100% effective so we don't use it all. And it has been explained to you on numerous occassions that even if they do catch the disease it is almost certainly without the worse complications. It's throwing the baby out with bathwater.

Screening didn't save my sister going through a horrible and humiliating time, vaccines if they had been around then may have.

PIMS, cervical cancer takes several years to develop. The vaccine was only introduced 3 years ago. For HPV to develop into cancer would take longer than 3 years.

More people would be saved if screening started earlier. There isn't enough known about this vaccine yet to know how well it will protect people and for how long - screening saves lives now.

I'm not saying don't use it at all - it's your choice whether or not to use it. I'm just pointing out that it doesn't guarantee anything. Not sure what evidence there is that HPV is milder in vaccinated people tbh - HPV is harmless in the majority of cases anyway.

HPV is harmless in the majority of cases anyway?
Hope ur sleeping soundly, cause your clinging to a wonderful reality full of healthy people, seen through Rose tinted spectacles.
For the very last time. She died of cervical cancer, caused by a strain of HPV that the vaccine prevents. I am aware she contracted it before the vaccine was available. In this lifetime, and as you said urself, she may have survives. That reality is worth clinging to.
You Will probably try and squirm ur way out if accepting the positive in the vaccine again, but at the end of the day I know that I've made my point and you are simply being blinkered for the sake of it.
I hope my reality never hits ur world, I wouldn't wish what I've been through or what she went through on anyone.
This particular vaccine has a positive place in health care if used correctly in conjunction with the right tools.
I suspect if u were sitting where I am u may think differently.
AND don't you DARE say otherwise, you don't know the hell that's it's been and u can't imagine what you would be feeling. Please do not insult me by saying otherwise.
If the vaccine saves one person from going through what she went through and save a family the loss of a loved one, then it would be more than worth it to me anyway.
An opinion I know I am justified in keeping
Goodnight

And to do what you gave done to others!
"screening saves lives"
No it doesn't.
Screening can identify the need for treatment that CAN save a life, but the screening itself does not, fact!
Screening CAN HELP save lives. And do u know what? So could an HPV vaccine!!!'
So enough, let it be and let this very personal situation rest

I can see PIM's point - it is almost certainly going to be the case that the HPV vaccine does prevent some people from developing cervical cancer. I can see why she thinks it's important.

I would not vaccinate a DD, if I had one. I speak as someone who has had lazer treatment and a portion of their cervix removed due to abnormal cells. Several treatments over about a 12 year period.

The doctors were bemused as to why I kept getting abnormal smears and assumed I had HPV - I was tested and didn't. I believe the changes in my cervix were down to lifestyle choices like smoking.

In my case, a vaccine would have made no difference. It might have made me less vigilant about smears and that would have done more damage. As it was, things were caught early enough.

I would want a DD to know that she needed to be vigilant about her smear tests from a young age. I'm not sure that the vaccine would contribute to that.

"it's not quite so clear cut"

this is what I'm trying to say - but the pro-vaccine brigade are being so absolutist

I agree that the adverse effects and the benefits of cervical cancer vaccine are too ill-known to make a judgement - it's seems really down to everyone's personal opinion because the evidence isn't there yet

I agree GB - this issue isn't clear cut at all! That is why I am pro-choice about vaccinations. It's great that they are there as an option but it's also great that they are not compulsory and people have a choice.

I sometimes feel as if the pro-vaccers would prefer it if they were compulsory and I can't get behind anybody who would be happy to force or coerce anybody to do anything.

For me, I simply cannot understand how anyone can say - without seeing a child, without seeing its medical records, without meeting its care professionals, without reading a diagnosis, without seeing a child BEFORE a regression, without knowing about its treatment protocol, or its test results, or anything about gut disorder - how they can say they know for certain sure 100 per cent that the child's autistic regression was NOT caused by the event that happened a few days before. And to say that not about one child, but about thousands of children. They know very little about the disorders, and nothing about the children, and yet they do. Insistently and repeatedly. They know better than the parents - often than the doctors, who have sometimes privately acknowledged the cause of the regression - in every single case, for ever and ever. They know.

Like, what, magic or something. I really don't get how anyone can be so arrogant and insulting.

Pims, I am not deceiving myself. If you read about hpv you will see that the majority of people (over 80%) will catch it at some stage in their lives without any ill effects. It is a virus, in many cases our immune system fights it off. Of course it can lead to cervical changes and in some cases, such as your friend's, it can have tragic consequences but the occasions when that does happen are very rare and would be even rarer if screening was started earlier. I dint really see why you are disagreeing that screening saves lives. They wouldn't know that treatment was needed if they didn't screen! In your friend's case, early screening was the only thing ghat could potentially have saved her and tragically, it was not available to her. That is so very wrong.

"
Like, what, magic or something."

But how can you know that the regression was definitely caused by MMR?

PIMS Did your child have her MMR today? How is she?

No one has yet answered my question about unvaccinated children regressing into an autism like state. How many are there? There must be examples?