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

Caterina: safety testing on vaccines is dubious. Don't give the impression as Limbo attempted to do that it has the highest safety testing levels. It would be misleading.

"Are you suggesting that we stop vaccinating at all?"

No - why do you think that? I am not absolutist, as so many pro-vaccine people seem to be. "The safest, the highest safety levels, no value to any argument questioning vaccines, the diseases will harm you for sure, good nutrition does not help to fight infection, there is no link, no evidence" and so on and so forth.

All of them dubious and some of them downright wrong.

imadgeine - it still didn't amount to the expected pandemic though, not by a long way. Yes some people caught it with tragic consequences but the advertised widespread levels of serious illness did not materialise.

bruffin, I said that it wasn't widely used in those countries. The isolation method alongside selective vaccination reduced the spread in several countries - as someone pointed out earlier, quite a small percentage of people were actually vaccinated.

imadgeine, yes, I made a mistake calculating a percentage. It didn't negate the point that I was making about outbreaks of diseases in countries with vaccination rates above the 95% 'herd immunity' target. Bruffin, as much as you like to think you have, you haven't explained how herd immunity is supposed to protect the vulnerable who can not be vaccinated when outbreaks still occur despite the target for herd immunity being reached. You have pointed out that more unvaccinated people than vaccinated are affected in those outbreaks but the people you are trying to 'protect' with herd immunity are unvaccinated too.

RE antibiotics - where did I say it would stop you catching it? I'm only pointing out that they can be used to treat complications and could therefore save lives so they are not actually useless. The strain of smallpox was also quite important at the time too and shows how diseases do evolve and can become less deadly over time. Also worth noting where the biggest smallpox outbreaks were still happening ...areas where there was still poor nutrition and sanitation etc. Same as now, with diseases such as measles. Over 95% of measles deaths occur in countries with poor health infrastructures (from WHO).

Limbo. Are you really trying to suggest that EVERYONE who catches any 'vaccine preventable' disease will be damaged? Really? How on earth did anyone survive before vaccines then? You are aware that people vaccinate against some very mild diseases - yes? I think you need to be a bit more specific with your argument.

Re swine flu. Media scaremongering is right - but it's clear that it worked on some people! Swine flu killed fewer people than seasonal flu does. Of course it is tragic that people died but people die from complications of flu every year - we just don't get a daily/weekly breakdown of each one thrown at us in every headline. No doubt it will be starting up again soon to get people lining up for their flu vaccine even though most of them have probably already had SF without even realising...

www.prisonplanet.com/finland-suspends-swine-flu-shots-after-vaccine-linked-with-neurological-disorder.html

I am really glad that the government made a full-on response to swine flu. It was a useful trial run and chance to learn lessons. In 1918 millions died and a large proportion were young adults. Something like this will occur one day - we just don't know when. So the more health agencies can learn the better.
Also if they had not responded with alarm, then more children and pregnant women would have died. A lot more. If older people had not been immune to H1N1 (something similar went round in the 1950s) it would have been a much bigger tragedy as they are usually the ones who suffer most.
I pay for my annual flu vaccine every year as I would prefer if possible to avoid the prevalent varieties..

and I did not get my annual flu shot this year, because there was so much going on in our lives and we all had the flu (and I wish I had thought of the shots, because our Christmas was just rotten - DS ran a 41.1 deg fever for the first time in his life, urgh).

Wasn't there a recent study into the Spanish flu epidemic that found that most of the victims died of pneumonia because antibiotics weren't available? Also, the 'healthy young men' who made up most of the victims had come back from fighting in WWI and were really not in the best of health after living in rat invested trenches on limited rations... Of course,according to some people on this thread things like that would have no impact on their ability to fight of illness at all...

There are all sorts of doubts surrounding the Spanish flu epidemic.

I wouldn't get a flu shot. I don't know why people do.

Actually, here's something to think about for those who think pharmaceutical prophylactic or treatment is essential to any human surviving any disease.

Maybe you remember SARS, well, you could look it up.

I think the highest death rates were in Canada and Singapore, the most highly medicalised countries of all those to suffer. In fact I know that some recovered SARS victims sought legal inquiry over their "robust" drug regimes and it was thought some died not of the virus but of the treatment.

I've never had a flu vaccine in my life. But then I don't think I've ever had the flu either, unless you count the odd 2-3 days in bed drinking hot lemon and honey and reading books. But then we could all do with that once in a while right?

A friend of mine however has a vaccine every year. He always gets flu in the winter and always gets hit hard. But that's men for you. ;-)

I've had flu about 3 times. Proper flu, hot and cold, head and everything aches, temp and sweats - yuk. I would never have a flu shot.

"If my child becomes ill there is a reason or even a message in it"

This is the sentence from this thread that is haunting me - it reminds me of a nun I used to know who said that a friend's catastrophically brain damaged baby had been sent to them "as a special gift because God loved them so very much".

I'm not sure I agree with that seeker. I believe rosy's ideas are anthroposophic whereas I think the nun was probably just trying to reassure the parents and help them through a difficult time by saying that they were not alone and the baby was still a special gift and trying to help them to cope with a difficult situation. Depending on the parent's beliefs it may or may not have helped much. I've heard several religious people say similar things such as 'God only sends us challenges he knows we can cope with' when they are faced with difficult situations and this seems to help them through.

Finding comfort is one aspect which might help people to accept a reality which they cannot change.

But for me there is quite a different message in many illnesses which is basically about finding the true cause which created or creates the problem.

To me the present medical model does not do that at all. It ignores the fact that lifestyle, stress, nutrition and very much emotional stress all contribute to our state of health and instead gives us the impression that all we need to do is take a few pills or vaccinations and we will be 'safe' and can carry on as we did in the past. This attitude for me belongs to the past. It is not true and it is very much based on a model where we give away responsibilty to others. We can find a simple example of how inadequate this belief system is in the film 'Supersize Me'.

Another hidden message in an illness then might be that if we find out the true cause of an imbalance that we then might also be able to heal it - even though the present medical model will tell you that it is not possible.

For me there lies a big problem in our present system, that the only truly valid and accepted truth seems to be that given by the present medical understanding - even though it is just one way of looking at things. The problem is that it holds all the power and acts in a very authoritarian way having the right to make decisions for the people, even force them by law to do what is 'right' for them. Who on earth has the right to make that decision for me or anybody else?

If you have a look the the Family Hope Center www.familyhopecenter.org
you will find one example of how one could look at things differently and treat children differently. Their biggest task is to help parents to grow out of their belief system that their children cannot be helped, that if for example their child was born blind, there is no way of changing it - because the doctors have already diagnosed and labelled their children. That a blind person might see again is not part of the present mainstream medical understanding. Therefore they will no even look at finding a way of healing it and in fact it is this belief system which limits true development.

Here an example of the most 'honerable' goal behind a vaccination progamme in today's Telegraph:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8631420/CIA-set-up-fake-vaccination-programme-to-capture-Osama-bin-Ladens-DNA.html

Oh dear well we will believe anything of the CIA, even if it is in the newspapers, sigh. I suppose the up-side is that some children had vaccines that would not otherwise have received them.
The prevailing theory about Spanish Flu was that it caused death not by bacterial pneumonia but by "cytokine storm" , an over reaction of the immune system in the lungs. Antibiotics would not have helped if this was what happened. Cytokine storm affects younger people more than older people due to their more lively immune systems. Bacterial pneumonia on the other hand affects older people a lot more. Hence the hypothesis. But after all this time we can't tell. Lots of people died who were no where near the trenches.
Rosi7 I am not averse to the idea that if you get ill, there may be a psychological reason sometimes. This does not mean we can reverse engineer diseases by non-medical means. Even in ourselves. Lots of interesting possibilities but no demonstrations of how they might actually work. Once a car has broken then adding oil won't fix it. And most certainly if a child becomes ill - well that's where the psychological stuff falls apart for me. Perfectly well loved and well nourished 1 year olds get ill and sometimes seriously ill. What hidden message or even psychological cause is there in those illnesses? Unless maybe you believe in re-incarnation?

"
To me the present medical model does not do that at all. It ignores the fact that lifestyle, stress, nutrition and very much emotional stress all contribute to our state of health"

But we are being bombarded by health information from conventional sources that talk about all of those things. That's one of the reasons that people who read the Daily Mail are always going on about the nanny state!

Imadgeine - the 'cytokine storm' was just one theory. There was something quite recently that showed that it was bacterial pneumonia that killed many of the victims. Iirc it was talked about a lot around the whole swine flu pandemic. Also, I didn't say they were in the trenches - I said they had been fighting in the trenches so they would hardly be returning home in the best of health. I think the Spanish flu pandemic actually started in a WWI hospital amongst the soldiers.

imadgeine, yes you are right, we can't tell - but this is also true for the claims of the positive effects of vaccination. It is all claims and assumptions that this happened because of that.

Concerning a psychological reason for a child to become ill. My friend's daughter used to suffer from inflammation of the middle ear frequently and had used antibiotics again and again. My friend then went to see a homeopath with her daughter and got some of this stuff where one does not 'know how it actually works' (even though one does know meanwhile) which triggered another inflammation of the middle ear but this time weaker and the little girl then could express that it was afraid of losing her father. Her mum then realized that her daughter had had her first inflammation when her father had to leave for a couple of days and each time dad went away for longer the girl was sick with an inflammation of her middle ear.

But of course - you can argue that it might have happened anyway and it is nothing to do with the remedies she took. It is your choice. I made mine.

Where did I say that we should 'reverse engineer diseases by non-medical means'? That is what you assume and believe but it is not true. What I do not accept is a behaviour which claims to hold the only truth and labels the rest of the world as stupid ignorants, a behaviour which lacks humility and therefore is not willing to listen, cooperate and integrate all the other good stuff out there in the world.

Acupuncture e.g. has for a long time been ridiculed as one of these funny healing methods where one has to believe in things like energy flow, meridians and chacras. Can't possibly have an effect as one does not 'know how it actually works'. Meanwhile it has been adopted in the Swiss system to such an extent that is been paid for by the legal health insurance. One still does not know how it works and according to mainstream science it is still very dubious. But fact is that it does work. And more and more people prefer a system which cannot be explained but which does work and has no side-effects to a system which tells you exactly how it works but has a rather dubious outcome if you look at the side-effects.

Give me one convincing reason why I should use antibiotics which might kill the bacterias which cause the problem but also kill all the bacterias that my body needs, if instead the frequency of the green colour might have the effect that I just get rid of the bacterias that are causing the problem but has no negative side-effect?

.. - I forgot to mention - the girl's infection of the middel ear never came back again after that. So - no need for 'incarnation' at all.

Gooseberrybushes - read Rosi's last post - see why I may be just a wee bit cynical/sarcastic?

Seeker, I grew up in Germany with a well-known history of its population not being critical towards a 'nanny' state. So I have learnt to be critical and think for myself.

'Seeker, I grew up in Germany with a well-known history of its population not being critical towards a 'nanny' state. So I have learnt to be critical and think for myself.'

This does not answer the point I made about there being significant publicity in the UK at least about the impact of diet, lifestyle, stress and so on on health. You say that conventional medicine ignores these factors - this is obviously not true.

Yes the cytokine storm theory cannot be proved and no doubt there were lots of bacterial secondary infections as well. But it is a known medical phenomenon which is more likely to affect younger adults.
Lots of "stuff" out there in the world rosi7 but very little evidence that stands up to any scrutiny. Just because Swiss government pays for something does not mean there is scientific backing. It would be lovely if all this alternative and dietary stuff could be proved to be really useful. It would be brilliant for all kinds of reasons. However there is no evidence to support it. Some aspects might prevent illness but curing (or "healing") is a taller order. If any of these practitioners could start with preventing and curing mild illnesses and prove, scientifically they can do this, then that would be good. And the next step would be to test their methods on themselves for preventing and curing more serious illnesses. I am not holding my breath for either of these things to happen. All they do is make excuses why their particular ideas are somehow not suitable for systematic investigation.
Nobody called you a "stupid ignorant" - I just think that some people make a decision based on the "heart" and then look for logical reasons to support their decision and maintain their own conviction that they are doing the right thing. Trouble is that logical evidence is in short supply. Just wish you would stop trying to convince the rest of the world that you are right, rather than just convincing yourself.