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

Did you actually listen to what she has to say in order to make a judgement afterwards ? Or do you just judge in advance just because she is not a so-called expert and acquired her knowledge through a need to find out what happened to her child ?

I have great trust in parents. There are parents on here who my God know what they are talking about and I would trust them over my GP any day.

Gooseberrybushes and Rosi - everyone has to make their own experience. If you want to play with the obscure, go right ahead. Make sure to stop by the other pages on that server "CountDown 2012 - the Maya Calendar and the Now Time" and "Explanation of Crop Circles Part 1: Secrets of your Health"

ahem cough womeninwetlands.blogspot.com/2010/01/rude-scientists.html

Well, my German happens to be excellent and that parental "info" is surrounded by the "Count down" to 2012's end of the World as predicted by the Mayas and the free interpretation of crop circles.

It's not your knowledge of German or the links on that page that are I'm disputing C. Just pointing out that you (and others of your persuasion) might have more luck putting your point across successfully if you were a bit lighter on the sarcasm.

Catherina: there's no need to be rude - if you knew more about it you wouldn't associate those who question the safety of vaccines with the other areas of "interest" you mention.

But you don't - and by your own admission that ignorance is quite wilful. Generally speaking, ignorance associated with robust opinion might be described as prejudice, and so I do that here.

I take the point about the snark. I have interacted with those folk for several years (before 2005) and they are completely deluded (as in "there are no viruses", "cancer is caused by conflict", "you can heal homosexuality", "chemtrails are a government scheme to change the climate"). I can assure you, my opinion on them is very informed, based on hours of reading their material. Nothing they say has any informative value. It is all distortion.

Why don't you read this thread including its links and come back and say "nothing they say has any informative value". If you don't want to be wilfully ignorant, that is.

I read all 2900 pages of the Cedillo autism omnibus proceedings , about 15 of Wakefield' original papers and have a pretty good grasp on the past 40 years of measles and measles containing vaccine literature - I have corresponded with various authors to clarify questions (usually triggered by a Wakefield lie), for example Dr. Honda regarding the MMR in Japan - does that count at all? Will read the thread.... anything you want me to address in particular?

oh, and by "they" I mean Ms Kögel-Schauz and her troup specifically.

You can leave out the Cedillo part in that case: and I think we both then know that "nothing they say has any informative value" is rather a stretching of the truth on your part .

and the plaintiff's "experts" for Cedillo were really embarrassing.

I specified they and "nothing they say has any informative value" at least not regarding vaccines. Maybe in the in the psychopathological area, but that is not mine...

My 3 dd's have had all theirs.

My MIL didnt give her kids the whopping cough vaccine due to a scare at the time and both her kids were gravely ill.

DD2 still got mumps but it was mild.

and MIL's cousin died from TB. Her kids were brought up as MIL's siblings from a very young age

Gooseberrybushes,

I have started on the 900odd posts in that thread you linked to. Let me know what you want me to look out for, please, so far I have just seen the usual Wakefield believers and Evidence believers go back and forth.

One kind of comment that stands out is the "child regressed the very same/very next day of/after the MMR". Knowing a little biology, that cannot have been due to the MMR then, because the virus needs to multiply several rounds before it can cause anything. So encephalitis 10 days after MMR is very likely to have been caused by the MMR (about a 1 in 1 million risk), child "regressed/changed" within 24 hours most likely has nothing to do with the MMR viruses.

I am exceptionally busy these days, but I will keep on reading. As said, I would appreciate a hint what you want me to specifically look out for.

next point that is discussed "Wakefield's findings have been replicated around the world" - that is not true. There is not one independent verification of Wakefield's claims.

And there is also my friend's mum who died of polio after her child had been vaccinated against polio.

There are two paradigms. The one which is based on fear, trusts and does not doubt the 'experts' and gives responsibility to them - and the one where I take responsibility for myself knowing that a strong and healthy organism will be able to handle attacks from outside with the support of hundreds of different and very effective ways of healing which are out there today.

I chose the second paradigm when my first child was about a year old suffering from infections frequently, and I slowly grew out of my dependency of a system which for me now belongs to the past.

But it is up to any individual to make his or her choice and we need to respect that. Neither is wrong according to their understanding at that time and we will not be able to change other people's belief system.

But we need to be properly informed and this for me includes research and information about possible negative effects. To me it does not feel adequate that all we get is the information that vaccination is completely safe. This is not true. It might only happen once in a couple of hundreds of thousands of vaccinations - but fact is that it did happen and therefore it might happen again and therefore parents have to know that it might be their child who might suffer from a minor or major side effect with vaccination.

I would love to be able to hand over responsibility to someone else - makes life a lot easier! I did that though and as a result of not being fully informed and being more involved in the decisions that were being made for me, tragedy struck.

For a long time I blamed the doctors and but actually, I now blame no one but myself for not taking more responsibility and trusting myself more. I learnt the hard way that what doctors tell you, although well intentioned, is not always the right or best thing for you.

It's a lot easier to deal with things going wrong if it's you that has made the choices that put you in that position.

Oh dear. Rosi7. Wouldn't it be great if you were right.
Could you explain why. Unfortunately there are not lots of "very effective forms of healing" available outside conventional medicine. Never have been. If you look into attempts to validate them, then there is little of substance there.
This is why death rates were so very high throughout history and have been dropping steadily ever since scientific medicine started producing truly effective forms of healing. Just keep thinking positively, eating healthily and taking the odd herbal potion and all will be well. There is of course a huge, billion dollar alternative health industry that wants you to go on thinking just that.

I doubt I could change your belief system. I just don't want it to go unchallenged.

I probably ought to avoid threads like this but.... here's my story.

My baby got whooping cough at 3 months. My mil brought it over from Australia (in an area where there is a much higher rate of people refusing vaccinations :( ) and gave it to us when she stayed with us. To be honest it was the most terrifying month of my life. I had to call an ambulance when she went very blue, took her to hospital myself several times, and had to check she was breathing EVERY 20 MINUTES day and night for the first month (it lasts 3 months roughly but eases a little after the first). Few people have actually seen proper whooping cough - you cough and cough and then can't breath for a bit (and can turn blue) before breathing again. In America they routinely hospitalise babies if they get whooping cough at a young age and I was very close to begging them to take her in just to ensure she kept breathing. (Even though I was a co-sleeping, breastfeeding hippy mum who didn't want to be apart from her - I obviously wanted her to breath). Now the immunisations aren't complete for whooping cough at 3 months so she was completely reliant on herd immunity.

I also caught whooping cough which completely puzzled me - but it turned out I wasn't immunised as there was a scare when I was young and mum never thought to mention this to me. It was horrid. It honestly felt like I was suffocating/drowning/couldn't breath EVERY 20 MINUTES or so. After the first MONTH I got used to it a bit more but it was horrid. Managing a new born alongside this was just a nightmare.

So er yes. Pro-immunisations and get very upset that its due to those who think "it will do them good" that my baby was so ill...

emsies. That must have been very scary for you, and exhausting! I'm glad you have both fully recovered. I just wanted to point out though that there isn't herd immunity to whooping cough because neither the vaccine nor the natural infection provide lifelong immunity. The vaccine only protects for 4-8 years and iirc natural immunity lasts around 12 years + . Quite a few adolescents and adults are catching it because they are no longer immune so it does circulate in the community - even in those who were previously vaccinated so outbreaks can't really be blamed on the unvaccinated.

Perhaps you (and your mum!) can reassure yourself slightly that even if you had been vaccinated against whooping cough as a child you would probably not be still immune and would have caught it anyway.

So, I'm not immune to whooping cough either? I give up.