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.

I think we agree on that, and I appreciate you sharing your experince and information in helping to make the decision for my wee chap, who like you and your children, is my priority.

I really hope you get a great night out, and would like to offer you this wee dram as a way of saying thanks
(hand jimjams a glass that looks like pee but tastes allwarm and fuzzy)

Message withdrawn

socci, i am on the fence there. I think on the whole medical professionals are aware of whats best and clinical evedence. However as I mentioned before the introduction of clicincal goevernance and NHS trust has given a new managerial dimention to the role of the professional. In addtion to that conflict of interest you have the politics of the government influencingguidleines and protocols. NICE was about national guidline implamented at local levels. Politics has a very very limited if any roll in health care.

It is an interesting point to come to.

For the record, I have an hons degree in pathphys so am not completely uneducated despite my attrcious spelling!

Um, politics has a huge role in healthcare ? it dictates what gets funded and what doesn't. NIHCE rules on cost as well as clinical effectiveness. A drug may be fantastic, but if the cost of treatment is huge, patients won't get it on the NHS. I used to sit on a committee involved in all this so saw some of these decisions at first hand.

One recent example - a major London trust (Royal Free, IIRC) shut down their stroke rehab beds due to financial problems. Now it is very, very clear, that outcomes for stroke victims are many times worse if they don't get proper rehab. Politics - ministers insisting financial balance takes priority - knocks decent medical care for six. But dead or severely disabled elderly people won't be high profile on the TV news, unlike cancelled ops or overflowing A&E departments, so they are an easy target.

Dead people don't vote! (nor do vaccine damaged).

fgs edam, I never said that it didnt, I said that it shouldn't. I think your maybe looking for an argument here.

I work in a and e am perfectly aware of what happens when budgets are cut, but didn't get that experience sitting on a commitee, I got it doing the job first hand experience of budget cuts, looking after people waiting on beds for days and dealing with major sickness trauma and intesive care patients at the same time.

Dh will be pleased to read that Fio

My post was entirely polite and calm, responding to the post suggesting that politics doesn't affect clinical decisions. I never said sitting on committees makes you a clinician, I mentioned it as relevant to my knowledge of NICHE and it's decision making process.

yeah, just look at prevenar's introduction. the headline emphasised the jab's cost; not 'X number of British children died, and Y number were left permanently disabled, b/c this jab was considered cost-prohibitive.'

and decisions are always made about where money will be spent. Some diseases are more 'sexy' than others and get more money, others equaly worthy, get less. Autism gets next to bugger all. My mother is dying by inches of repeated strokes that have robbed her of her personality, memory, ability to communicate and move. But old ladies dying by inches doesn't get a lot of people dipping into their pockets, or Government ministers pledging money.

Edam i never said politics didnt, what I said was that it very much did but it had no right or place too.

my mum's dying in a very similar way to yours MB. if the gp had bothered to prescribe certain [expensive] medication earlier, she might have had a better quality of life for a bit longer.

Grim isn't it?

I was always worried about dying young....now I know there are other things which are equaly as bad.

Hugs to you

and you.

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Like the old saying goes, 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'.

Sorrymnone are really sexy, I put the '' round it to try to show that, sorry if you misunderstood me.

Quite a lot of money goes into cancer research, for example, because so many people are afraid of getting it. The british heart foundation also does well. Now, I'd fully agree that there can still be short falls, but these tend to get more cash than, say, parkinson's disease, which tends to affect older people, and it doesn't tend to tug at the heart strings so much.

All diseases diserve funding, don't get me wrong, but some do better than others was the point I was trying to make.

And on a global scale the diseases of the rich west, ligh high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes bget far money money than malaria or diahraoea

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mb - as the baby-boomers get older, I think you'll find more money going into that end of the age-range illnesses, more in the media about the problems of older people, etc.

Bearing in mind that they are going to be representing a large chunk of the population with disproportionate spending power and more likelihood to vote.

The older you get the less likely you are to change your vote, the products you choose or the services you buy. Politicians and businesses - including the media - intend to keep chasing 20 to 34 yos for the foreseeable future.

In NHS terms acute care gets the money and the attention. In fact something like 90 per cent (estimates differ) of all patient contact is in primary care - GPs and community health. And the burden of disease is there too with long-term conditions. But services for people who will never be cured have always been the cinderella of the health service. The Department of Health's white paper aims to change that focus. Good luck to them - it's been tried for the last 30 years and hasn't worked yet.

I do beleieve that especially where I work people see health as something that they are entitled tonot womething the have and nurture themselves. I'm not generalising, I know there are allot of helth conscience people out there, but allot of people turn up to a and e min heart attack and expect to be completely fixed without a change of lifestyle etc...
Money gets poured into 'fixing people' instead of trying not to break them in the first place.

Got the latest dose of scaremongering yesterday from the HV.

She phoned to 'discuss' DD2s vaccination 'schedule' as I refused to have her jabbed at her 8 week check in light of being lied to w/regard to the thiomersal in the old DPT jab and DD1s motor skills delays - which have no genetic explanation.

I told her b/c we've decided not to vaccinate her until she is older - 6 months - and that the Prevenar vaccine is now £168 privately. £168 extra that we don't have.

She got all in the huff. So I asked her how she slept at night, having knowingly injected babies w/a known neurotoxin, when there was an alternative available at the time - Infatrix - that was more expensive, and having played on all those parents' fears and desire to do what's best for their children to pursuade them to put poison in their babies?

She had no answer.

I said, Well then maybe you understand a bit how I feel, b/c I'll probably never find out if that mercury caused my daughter's developmental delays, but it's something I get to live with every night, knowing her quality of life was worth $1. But I will never, ever trust healthcare 'professionals' fully again.

expat good for you.

i'm v lucky, ds is unvaccinated and my gp's have never put me under pressure to do so. it is a far more persuasive technique tbh and means that i'm constantly re-evaluating and going over our decision with dh....in short it makes me trust her more.