Vaccines and Scaremongering

[expatinscotland]

Let's just put it this way: I do NOT trust the NHS when it comes to vaccines. These are the people who until last year were allowing jabs w/mercury to be given to 2 month old INFANTS, years after the substance had been banned in many Western countries, in order to save a few bucks.

I'll never know if this was what has caused DD1 to be delayed w/nearly all her motor skills. I had no idea they were still using mercury. I'm from the US, where it's been no longer put into jabs for infants. I just assumed that was a no brainer and the UK had done the same.

These are folks who allowed children to die, for years, of pnuemoccocal meningitis, b/c the vaccine is expensive.

So yesterday I bring DD2 for her 2 month checkup. I'd already understood that Prevenar, the new vaccine, would be out in Scotland sooner than April and I could put off DD2s vaccines for a fortnight until it was out.

Then I get there and they're telling me, 'Well, by the time the Health Ministers bring it out, maybe she'll be eligible for hte catch up programme.'

WTF?! The 'catch up' programme sounds like a load of shite to me. Upon further questioning, they're only going to give under 2s in the catch up programme two uptakes, one w/their MMR. As infants in the US, they get 3. I asked, what if they're under two but have already had their MMR?

Silence.

Seems the brain donors hadn't thought of that.

Sorry, but I smell a RAT. The HV and GP were encouraging me just to go and pay for it privately. Of course they were.

I told them flat out I trusted them about as much as I trusted a three-armed pickpocket and walked out. I mean, these were the ones who gave mercury filled jabs to infants.

Took some time out and composed a nice letter to my MP and MSP.

I'll post their response here when I get it.

TBH, I don't trust the jabs they give to kids here.

The GP tried to frighten me by telling me my daughter would contract pertussis if I waited until Prevenar came out to vaccinate her at all.

How, I asked? DD1 doesn't go to school and is fully immunised. In fact, we hardly go out at all and when we do, it's to play and walk outside.

Haven't read it all, and it looks as if it may have gone a bit AWOL, but chapsmum I do agree with your first post-- I'm all for vaccine programmes as long as an attempt is made to tailor them to an individuals needs in the first instance.

The Colombia paper (Hornig et al) basically showed that the response to thimerosal can vary depending on the gentic background of the recipient. Predisposition to autoimmunity + thimerosal appears to equal bad news.

Something which I have never seen discussed by anyone official is that when MMR was introduced the timinig of the dtp was altered, from over the course of the 1st year to 2, 3 and 4 months. Suddenly children were getting thimerosal doses much closer together. Add in ropy ability to excrete mercury and..... ???

Andy Wakefield these days thinks that thimerosal is the first hit, virus a second insult (whether live or vaccine). Interestingly ds1 went through a noticeable regression following a (live) virus- although there were signs of delays before.

whooping cough has become more prevelant because there is a new strain that has evolved- which is not protected by the jab- and read that in New Scietist.

i'm trying to find out the old schedules. my mum believes i didn't start any vaccine course until i was 4 months. then 6 months. then 8. i didn't get MMR until 18 months. she remembers that b/c she had to put it off b/c i got chicken pox.

thank jimjams

you trusted the NHS enough to look after you in pregnancy and deliver your baby, didn't you?.

Prescriptions aside ( I really can't think of anything else other than travel vaccines and boob implants ), the NHS is free. I break my leg, I go to A&E and I don't have to produce insurance documents. I get treatment that is comparabel to that medical utopia - the USA.

BTW, DH has recently worked in Canada - believe me, we've got a good deal on the NHS. Apart from post-natal care and the dreaded HV system of course

Personally I also think that increased awareness of things such as autism and even IBS leads more to an increase in diagnoses than a link to vaccines.

Wouldn't loading children up with higher doses of thimerosal closer together be likely to have more of an effect than chernobyl?????

Yes autism has a genetic input in predisposition, if it didn't I could merrily jab ds2 and ds3 in the knowledge that ds1 was a one off, but variation that is heritable has an environmental input as well. That's what we're interested in. it is known now that 99% of autistics have problems with metallothionein fucntion. And what does it do? Well lots of things inlcuding........ ahh detoxification of heavy metals. Well I never.

The vaccine still offers some protection against WC though. People who have had the vaccine are not as badly affected as those who did not.

There has been re-evaluation of the Danish study that purported to claim no evidence of a link between MMR and autism. I took the time to read the studies by the 3 scientists who disagreed with the official findings and was sadly not surprised with any of it.

I am not a child, Highlander. I can speak for myself. If a jab makes me feel not right, I can say so. A baby cannot. My brain and personality are fully developed. If I take a medication that alters my brain function or personality, I can recognise that and communicate that to someone. A child cannot.

If the NHS is free, then where the hell is all that money they take out of my pay packed for NI going?! Please tell me, b/c I could use every penny of that.

I lived in the US for 31 years. In fact, I'm from there. I'm not saying it's utopia. FAR from it. But believe me, when you get sick and you have top insurance or money, there really is no comparison to the kind of care you can get there w/the NHS w/little fuss.

expat in the UK it used to be something like (I have the schedule somewhere)

3 months DTP
5 months polio
6 months
2nd DTP
7 months polio
then around the year 3rd dose DTP etc

no MMR

Also its enough for me to know several consultant paeds who "off the record" have told friends that they believe the MMR to have been a trigger in their child's case. Lets see MMR, 24 hours later very long (non-febrile) seizure, followed by regression. Coincidence? Would you risk it again?

I really don't want to get into a NHS/Private insurance debate. I find the fact that poor people don't get good/any treatment aborrhant. Also the NI dosen't all just go to the NHS. I am sure in the states you still have to pay in some way for the sevices which are provided free of charge at point of use.

THANKS, JJ! I had a feeling it didn't start till 3 months or later. I think I might still have my 'shot record' here somewhere.

It used to be you got one uptake of MMR at 18 months and now booster. Well, 34 years ago.

The year before I matriculated into uni, however, measles broke out in the dormatories. Since immunisation was mandatory in order to matriculate into this state-funded, public university, scientists began to study the immunity conferred by MMR.

I had to have a second MMR before matriculation and the schedule for children and infants was altered to include the present two doses - one at 13 months and the other before entering school.

Well ds2 was exposed to whooping cough aged 4 months repeatedly (friends 4 kids had it), and he didn't get it. Funnily enough nor did I as a child and my friend (the mother did). My friend coughed all over me when I had measles (her mum looked after both of us once I wasover the worst but in quarantine).

2 morals of this story.

1. susceptibility plays a role, not being jabbed doesn;'t automatically = getting the disease (just as being jabbed doesn't automatically = not getting the disease, prevenar is 80% effective for example- read on a pro jab piece)

2. our parents didn't worry so much about childhood illnesses compared to today. WOuld you let your child with whooping cough play with a child with measles (and take them into town adn then shout loudly at the bakers "get your hands off the counter you've got measles").

Oh and my mum is deaf in one ear from measles. She'd rather be like that than like ds1.

Final moral- there are no certainties, you can only make a guess at what is best for your child and act on that.

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I'm not arguing w/that, Flossam. I do take issue when people refer to the NHS as 'free', b/c it isn't. It's free at the point of service.

And I agree, Flossam. What if you can't afford Prevenar just now. So that means your child is offered no protection until they come in for an MMR at 13 months b/c they were born in, say, November, 2005 instead of February, 2006? That's wrong.

I'll try and dig the figures out expat- from a standard medical text written by a paed in the 1980's (where measles is described as a "mild childhood illness" incidentally and he says if you can't be bothered with it you can get the jab (but nothing of the killer it is today).

Don;t promise though as tomorrow we have our second night away in almost 7 years (not counting an autism conference we went on recently) so I may avoid this as I'm meant to be relaxing!

And JJ, I agree. My gran did not contract Spanish Flu. But her husband and daughter died from it.

Agree expat.

It aint free if you need something like SALT either. You either pay or don't get it.

Aw, JJ! A night out! That's excellent news indeed. You should start a hair/clothes/makeup thread - my favs .

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Or physio. The magical 6 sessions and your developmental delay goes away. How about that!

jimjams the short answer to that question is no, there are still cattle in scotland grazing from feils deemed to be radioactive. The effect of radiation are just as devidating, no one knows the long term effects.
We have telepnhone masts in our front yards.
Carbon monoxide emissions that have reached uncontrollable levels.
Turkey twizelers that are being offered toour children under the pretence of being a healthe#y diet.
The human race is eating a diet that nature really didnt intend for it

I recognise what your saying jimjams and can see the logic, I am consedering allot of other environmental factors which should be consedered rather than pointing the finger at one specific item.

In short I see the potential of what you are saying but think that it should not be consedered in isolation...

Allot has happened in the last 15 yrs

Exactly expat- your grandmother's story has really stayed with me btw- I remember reading it. Susceptibility plays such a role. I guess ,y concern is that in our family our children are highly suscpetible to the added ingredients in the jabs (and now they've taken out thimerosal I don't have much more confidence in what else has been added), and only normally susceptible to the viruses. Would like a single tetanus jab(thimerosal free) though!

socci, wasnt suggesting, appologies if it seemed that wasy, it was a huge study based on over 60,000 people. Was merely stating the results.
If I was suggesting anything it was that even in the most rigourus medical investigations, the result do not nessecaraly indicate what is implied, if you see what I mean??