MMR at three? Or should I wait until booster age?

[SoBroken]

To cut a long story short, DS has had all his vaccinations except the MMR. After seeing mothers talk very passionately about the effects it had on their children, DH and I decided we didn't want to do it, and would get single jabs instead.

However, he lost his job and things have been very tight financially. We have never had a spare £300 to actually get it done.

Looking at DS starting nursery after xmas and I'm a bit worried about him catching measles or something while there.

The private clinic where they do the separate jabs told us there is no need to get separate boosters at five, as by then, the danger of autism has passed.

I just want to know at what age this passes? Should i go and get the MMR done now, or should I wait until he's five? Our financial situation is still too tight to get the separate jabs at the moment, at least while DH builds his business up a bit.

Catherina, I'm not sure that anyone is saying that MMR causes autism. Rather that it may trigger autism in a small group of susceptible children. Unfortunately there is no way of identifying which children are susceptible yet. I think that it is quite an important area that does need further investigation rather than just dismissing any anecdotes about children regressing after MMR. Those are the very children that could potentially help to identify any factors which do make certain children more likely to regress. Some of them may very well turn out to be coincidences but I think they deserve to be looked at and not just swept aside for the sake of maintaining the 'MMR is completely safe' stance.

Bubbley,

may trigger autism in a small group of susceptible children

exactly how small is this group?

What's the significance of how small the group is? My child could be in that group and I wouldn't want to take that risk.

Thanks, have already had two trips to Asia this year and many extended weekends. I do love going on holiday.

I said you would treat personal testimony as a lie. So you do.

How are we supposed to know the size of the group? The research was stopped, smeared, abandoned, deprived of funds and the people doing it were destroyed, remember? Somebody certainly didn't want to know how big the gropu was.

But it's a good sign that you'd like to find out -- you and Andrew Wakefield have something in common.

The sub group is up to 7% of asd cases, iirc. Not an insignificant number. But then any number is too big, imo, as long as there is no mainstream acceptance that this group should be being identified and protected.

And then there are the.mitochondrial disorders/dysfunction - very interesting research shopping these are far more widespread than previously thought. And out course, there is acceptance that vaccine damage occurs on these groups, but still no proper thought on how to go about identifying who might be the unlucky ones. Unacceptable.

I don't think it can be that small. There has been an enormous increase in autistic disorder.

You can see how an initial increse in autistic disorder would lead to an expansion of diagnosis. But the increase is so big it's difficult to understand how every case can be accounted for by just ..counting people we didn't before. Especially since we all know that it just wasn't like this thirty years ago. A third of children didn't regress. Incidence was about one in five thousand. We know these things to be true - it's not helpful to mislead and try to pretend it's always been like this.

So some of the increase might be explained by an expansion of diagnosis. But the trigger had to be therei in the first place. - and the increase has been so astonishing it might not be a small group at all.

My first sentence is not directed at silver ie "ie don't think it can be that small ie 7 per cent small. It was more - I don't think it can be tiny, in a general way.

Yes, "exactly how small is this group" soudns awfully callous.

And Bruffin said up to 33% of children in the 1960s were noted to have regressed.
Bruffin, did you really mean 33%?

Oh - and this ?

"MMR does not cause autism, there is no ..mechanism for the MMR to do so."

It's known that catching natural measles and mumps within twelve months can trigger autistic regression.

So there - wrong again.

really, really "up to 33% regressed in the sixties"?! I am speechless.

surely by this reckoning, there has actually been a decrease in asd dx since then? after all, the dx rate in only 1 in 64 now...

I would be very interested to see any verification of those sorts of numbers.

off the top of my head, in the sixties, dx was at around 1 in 50,000 or so. obviously dx procedure and criteria has led to a change in this rate, but this does not account for the difference between then and now.

iirc, the rate in the eighties was about 1 in 10,000 or so, and by the turn of the century was 1 in 3000ish. Has ben a while since I looked at those numbers though.

but one thing is certain, the increase in asd dx is perturbing. as is the increase in allergy rates. we were the most allergic family I knew when I was growing up, and we knew a LOT of people! my mum had a couple of severe intolerances, my brother is allergic to bee/wasp stings (as am I), and I had a couple fo minor food intolerances. and that was a big deal to everyone around us. it barely registers on the interest scale these days, and quite rightly. but there were not the same numbers of nut allergies, dairy allergies, coeliac was not as prevalent - all things which can be linked to auto immune issues.

It's known that catching natural measles and mumps within twelve months can trigger autistic regression.

Citation really really badly needed

also well documented for chicken pox and measles. which makes the enhanced mmr+CP jab look like a sick joke, really.

At age 5 the danger of autism has passed? Wtf?

Starlight, it would be funny, except there are real, actual people out there who believe this stuff. You know all too well how much bullshit just one professional can spread around. It makes me despair, tbh.

The danger of autism... I took to mean that autism is always diagnosed prior to this age. Is that rubbish?
I'd heard about the measles / chicken pox in quick succession causing autistic regression as well.

Will now go off and google measles / mumps.

autism is not always dx'd before 5, no. not at all. my dd1 was dx'd at 2.6ish, and that was considered extremely early (we had nbeen in the system for coming up to 2 years by that point). It is not unusual for children to not be dx'd before school.

regression after the age of 5 is unusual, though (but not unheard of). but not all autism comes about via regression.

Now, that is very interesting. Why so late? Or is it more a case that the autistic spectrum is so wide that it isn't always easy to say if a child is on it somewhere? Our child has a speech delay and we are trying to get to the bottom of it. No suggestion of autism has yet come up.

aw Caterina you just jump on the one point where you can say LINK PLEASE!

Nothing to say to all the rest. Bless.

Source? My GP, when he was trying to persuade me to give my children the MMR. It actually used to be a very popular argument among pro-vaccinists as a reason for having the jab, often cited as one of the adverse effects of wild infection. I often heard it in debate.

Oh there's a thought. Maybe I should have assumed they were all lying -- another popular pro-vaccinist stance.

Tabitha, it is pretty obvious I mean 33% cases of autism regressed rather than the popultion. There is a 2001 study comparing rates of regression with children with mmr and children pre measles vaccine. They include 3 studies from the 60s all showing rates of autistic regression in the 30%.I can't link because on ds's laptop and no mouse.

Actually my sister had mumps and measles within two weeks of each other and my husband had mealses, mumps and chickenpox all within the first year of school, the damage was missing so much school at a crucial time ie learning to read rather than anything else.

Both DH and I both come from highly allergic families and both have lots of allergies, there are no incidents of autism at all in either families. One of our children inherited the allergies the other is completely allergy free.

We can all give anecdotal evidence it is meaningless unless it is put into context.

Don't provide any links. They'll never be good enough to satisfy some on here. Yet, we are supposed to trust their information.

Bruffin "The percentage of children regress has not changed - back in the 60s there were studies that showed up to 33%"
That is what you said. Sorry I misunderstood, but your meaning was not obvious to me. So, you are saying that, of the children diagnosed with autism, 33% were cases of regressive autism? I would be interested to know to what the regressive autism was attributed.

They are not meaningless when temporal correlation is repeated many thousands of times.

Otherwise we would live in a very random world indeed.

I would say it's meaningful but not pointful or salient for Caterina and you to post your own experiences, or someone who says they suffered the adverse effects of wild infection.

It's meaningful for an obvious reason: however it's not salient because it's not under dispute. I don't dispute these experiences: I don't say you're lying, or wrong. So you had the vaccination and weren't affected? Excellent - I believe you. So you caught wild measles and went slightly deaf? I'm sorry for you - but I believe you.

I hope you can see the difference.

You dispute. You say these experiences aren't true, the tellers are mistaken, wrong. So you have to back that up, because you don't have any reason for saying that. You need to show us a reason for saying that.

So you have to go to the epidemiology, but lots of the epidemiology is flawed.

It's very straightforward. But it's why personal testimony that wild infection was damaging, or the vaccine non-damaging, is not salient.

Because no one disagrees that these experiences can happen. We don't accuse you of lying.

ASD is diagnosed late because parents concerns are ignored as they are not professionals in child development, there are inefficiencies in the diagnostic process with up to 2 years to gain access to a paediatrician via the variety of less qualified NHS screening professionals all with very long waiting lists.

Because it is a developmental disorder, medical staff hand the child over to 'education' for treatment, which doesn't start until age 5. To diagnose earlier would mean 'treatment' would have to come out of the PCT budget and there is very little expertise within the medical profession (although to be fair it isn't much better in education) to be able to refer to.