Has anybody decided not to vaccinate their child or to only selectively vaccinate them?

[arabella2]

And if so, how did you come to that decision. Ds has not had any vaccinations as yet, but once he goes to nursery I think it may become more important. Even then though we do not want him to have the whole lot as we think it's too much for the system to absorb, but it is very difficult to know which ones are more important and also better tolerated by the body. We would also go for mercury free vaccinations which my gp told me were available. I want to know, if they are available, why aren't they offered as a matter of routine - expense presumably.
The whole thing is a minefield because it seems to be very difficult to get a balanced viewpoint of the whole issue with the pro people being very pro and the contra people being very against.
Any thoughts appreciated but no lecturing please.

Whoa that IS scary!!! I had no idea!

A 1 in 20 chance of contracting Viral Menigitus with Mumps!!?? Bloody hell! Very informative, Thanks Zebra.

And nearly half of all men who get German Measles get inflammed testicles??? I wonder how many of those suffer from fertility problems as a result?

DS has had everything so far (he's 2). DD will have the same if there are no medical reasons not to. I did agonise over MMR and when it came to the actual jab I was the one who was bawling not ds!

My decision was based on reading, feeling a sense of wider social responsibility, and talking with my SIL. She's a hospital doctor (and mum of 3) and she told me some horror stories about cases of brain damage she'd seen which were triggered by measles. In the end I felt the risks of the vaccine were outweighed by the risks of the actual diseases. I would not wish measles on my worst enemy, never mind my own kids! Good luck with your decision - it isn't an easy call.

GladTidings - it's mumps that causes inflamed testicles, not rubella. And only in post-pubertal males, not children. It is extremely unusual to affect both testicles and the incidence of infertility is vanishingly rare - and indeed may not occur at all. The evidence is not conclusive.

Ooops - Sorry Aloha. Got mixed up. Those stats are scary though aren't they?

GladTidings - it's mumps that causes inflamed testicles, not rubella. And only in post-pubertal males, not children. It is extremely unusual to affect both testicles and the incidence of infertility is vanishingly rare - and indeed may not occur at all. The evidence is not conclusive.

Yeah Aloha... and I said Oops - Got mixed up!

Well, viral menigitis isn't a serious illness at all. It causes 2-4 days of headache and sometimes vomiting and gets better on its own. It's nothing like bacterial menigitis. And it affects as few as 1 in 5000 people who get mumps. I'm not convinced that mumps is such a terrifying illness. I would vaccinate ds against it if the gvmt would allow the vaccine into the country.

That was an accidental double post - don't even know how it happened - wasn't deliberately repeating myself!

This is one of the best easy to read articles I have read in a long time:

From this weeks Sunday Times

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-931673,00.html

So Aloha - How come your figure and Zebras figure is SO different? Where do they come from? Which is correct?

I thought it was viral meningitus that children were now being vaccinated for. I have never heard of meningitus being described as not very serious no matter whether the cause is a viurs or a bacteria.
For my own piece of mind I must look this up on the NHS website.

BTW there are recorded cases now of children contracting SSPE from MMR.

glad tidings. Children are vacinated against 2 strains of meningitis- hib and men c. BOTH are bacterial. Viral meningitis - alos called aseptic meningitis is not very nice, but certainly not considered serious.

OK mumps figures for you- from the centers for disease control.

Encephalitis and aseptic meningitis occur at a rate of 2 to 4 cases for ever 1000 reported cases of mumps. Only and estimated 70% of mumps cases are reported (often mumps infection is subclinical anyway).

Deaths from mumps are rare but have been reported in persons over 20 years of age (so maybe we should be giving MMR boosters as they do in the US- after all MMR based inmmunity supposedly lasts about 20 years.).

I'm not particularly pro MMR or pro singles or whatever (although ds has had MMR - the first batch anyway), but I too remember having measles (I was 11 years old, suffered quite badly from it and then suffered from unhelpful teachers when I was trying to catch up over 2 weeks of school work). I didn't have the vaccine as a child because at the time they were recommending not to have it if allergic to eggs (and I was very allergic as a young child, grew out of it though).

There was also a little girl in ds' nursery in Croydon who got measles quite badly. She was just under MMR age. One of the spots was right by her eye or in her eye or something. I remember there were MONTHS where her mum was worried that she was going to have damaged eyesight in that eye as a result - went to see so many doctors. Was really a very scary time for her.

So yes, if nothing else. I believe protection against measles is important. (The other two are probably important too... but don't have personal experience of them)

Jimjams, this is probably a stupid question, but what's SSPE?

My stats are from the Institute of Biomedical Science.

Actually, I found the article that Jimjams cites very long winded, insinuating, brain-hurting, rambling, uninformatively so. GT: I gave the link to where I got my stats (a Scottish NHS publication). I know that there is controversary in the figures, though, with bad reactions to vaccines being under-recorded, as well. But Aloha's incidence of viral meningitus is something like 250 times lower than mine, which is a pretty major discrepancy.

And I don't think statistics is the only or even best way to decide these things, anyway. It is perfectly valid for people to make their own subjective judgements on relative importance in balancing the risks.

horrible fatal brain disease that happens very rarely in children who catch measles before the age of 2 (and at what age do they give live attenuated measles virus- durr). Several cases of SSPE have now been recorded in children who have been vaccinated with MMR but never had wild measles. Now according to the authorities this is impossible because it is not possible to develop SSPE from MMR (becasue they say so). SO their explanation is that the children must have caught wild measles without their parents noticing it (rather like these children who were autistic all the time except their parents didn't notice it).

The average age for catching measles used to be about 5-8 ish something like that. The problem now is that children are being vaccinated as babies. This wears off after 20 years- leaving young adults at risk, but also meaning that no immunity (or less effective immunity) is passed across the placenta. The vaccination policy may be putting young babies at risk (although the lower incidence of measles all round may mean that the actual numbers affected are smaller even if the % isn't). This risk could be reduced by giving a booster just pre-child bearing years. I think that if you go down the vaccination route then really you need to consider whether boosters should be given regularly. It may be appropriate for some diseases it may not for others. The whole vaccination policy doesn't seem to follow logic half the time.

the centers for disease control agrees with aloha's figures.

looked it up in my health book from the 80's - written by a pead when mumps was considered mild.
Of meningitisit says:

"mild meningitis .....is found in less than 1% of of cases....The patient complains of mild neck stiffness, headache and possibly vomiting. The symptoms subside within three of 4 days on recovery."

In fact its the encaphalitis that is dodgier- but that is described as "extemely rare" and can happen aftyer any viral illness. The only person I know who had encephalitis had it after chickenpox.

I cannot find anything that says 1 in 20. Most serious sources say between on in 200 to on in 5,000 - mumps is not a serious illness, rarely requires hospitalisation so stats aren't definitive - obviously cases that lead to complications are most likely to end up being recorded so skew the figures iyswim. And anyway, viral menigitis may be nasty sometimes, but it's not serious. It sounds much worse than it is!
And of course, flu and chickenpox have, in rare cases, serious complications including death, but we don't habitually call them 'killer diseases'. However, the push for a chicken pox vaccine will mean the NHS will soon be exaggerating the dangers of that illness too, I expect.

My dd had encephalitis after chickenpox, and it was very scary indeed. I think the discrepancy in the figures for mumps is because different strains give different incidences of encephalitis; some of them are really high, some are low. The lower incidence is more common, but you don't know which strain will come around next, of course,

gladtidings, I had chickenpox as an adult, it was very, very painful, so I was delighted when dd got it and spread it around

I cannot find anything that says 1 in 20. Most serious sources say between on in 200 to on in 5,000 - mumps is not a serious illness, rarely requires hospitalisation so stats aren't definitive - obviously cases that lead to complications are most likely to end up being recorded so skew the figures iyswim. And anyway, viral menigitis may be nasty sometimes, but it's not serious. It sounds much worse than it is!
And of course, flu and chickenpox have, in rare cases, serious complications including death, but we don't habitually call them 'killer diseases'. However, the push for a chicken pox vaccine will mean the NHS will soon be exaggerating the dangers of that illness too, I expect.

Aaargh! must stop doing that. Sorry everyone.