why do parents refuse their baby / childs vaccines?

[bethjoanne]

in the uk we are so lucky to have an nhs---- doctors ,nurses ,treatments and vaccines we should be so grateful.in third world countries babies /children die of terrible diseases and also our relatives eg great great great grandmas would have done anything to have their children vaccinated IT WOULD HAVE BEEN THERE DREAM TO HAVE AN NHS AND VACCINES, instead they had to witness their child suffer i dread to think what they went through.
what country you are born in is luck of the drawer.
we should be grateful for medical care and vaccines available to us and have our baby/ child vaccinated.
i cannot believe some parents are so selfish and ruthless putting others at risk and starting an epidemic what happened in history and other third world countries .when the nhs is here to help and protect us now.x
ps think about babies 0 day old to 15 months who are too young to be covered /vaccinated.10 babies have died recently from whooping cough.also there has been 2 well known footballers had meningitis recently so there is reported cases,surely this needs nipping in the bud .
why are parents still refusing to vaccinate?

No, I wouldn't but I also wouldn't bury my head in the sand and pretend there are no consequences for society.

The primary beneficiary would be your own children. That's why parents should vaccinate. But we're not going to agree on that one, especially since they are indeed benefiting from herd immunity.

Furthermore, if a decision not to vaccinate is taken against medical advice, it is not then right that you should then be allowed to knowingly put others at risk. It's your right not to vaccinate but it's not your right to put others at risk. That's why I totally agree with the US policy. And, as I said before, New York State only allows medical and religious exemptions - so I don't think you'd get one here anyway unless you lied.

Qualifier - no I wouldn't if there were any evidence that that is the case, which there isn't, so it's a non issue.

I've never heard of a right to bodily sanctity .

But glad you think you have the right to put others at risk. Charming.

Oh, and the right to lie to get what you want.

Very ethical...

Leonie- presumably younhqve been advised not to vaccinate if your children are immunocompromized? Which means that it's a non issue as far as you are concerned.

And on earth is "bodily sanctity"?

But it's not against medical advice because not all doctors are as keen on vaccinations as you'd like to think. And my child IS and will always be more important to me than your child. Just as your child is to you.

I have made a legal choice which is best for my family. Why do you think a random off the interwebs is going to change my carefully researched mind?

Posieparker said: I'm guessing to be qualified to comment you have to be a medical professional involved in administering vaccines or compiling research regarding vaccines. Alternatively you could be an advisor to the government or a minister.

I don't think this is true at all, it takes all the comment and decision making out of the hands of parents, and as I am one of them, I think I am very much able to comment on this thank you. If you compare a very well qualified/educated person like RubyStolenGates with your average health visitor (if you'd shown mine diagrams of an arse and an elbow she would have been hard-pushed to tell them apart) it's aboslutely impossible to say the health visitor is mroe qualified to comment!

Sorry that has made me really cross. What about Bruffin and the study she explained, what about parents with experience of a vaccine reaction they can share and help oethers with, I just think that's a really controlling thing to say.

Unfortunately I'd have to agree with you about health visitor Brycie.some of the advice they give is truly appalling! But I don't think they're the ones making vaccine policy and if I had concerns about vaccines for my children, I'd want to see a doctor, ideally a paeditatrician or immunologist.

Ruby, I dont know who is trying to change your mind, if you've made a decision together with your doctor about your dc's care, I certainly wouldn't try to change your mind! The only thing which I would comment on is if you came out with some of the anti vax claptrap from the crankosphere.

Of course we all look out for our own children's interest but you also can't ignore the impact your actions have on others. I think it's very unfair for children who are unvaccinated against medical advice to expose other children who can't be vaccinated to increased risk. Of course, it should be legal but I think there should be sanctions, as in the us. But since your children fall in the latter camp, this would actually benefit your children (who of course you think of first and foremost).

Realistically, nobody who was making a difficult and controversial choice about their child's health care would rely on the advice of health visitors alone. And anybody who said that they had researched and then made an informed decision and this turned out to mean "I asked the health visitor" would have very little credibility.

And Posie, whilst Doctors do have a general education in the drugs that they
administer, I doubt that they have the time to do specific number-crunching and report analysis for each one and for every patient. My view of qualified health professionals may however, be a little jaded.

In the case of my GP and his wife (also a Doctor) I wouldn't trust their opinion as far as I could throw them.

Mr Dr. Vinaygamoorthy was struck off last year and his delightful wife who found clearing ear wax a challange was on conditional registration

Their practice was shut without notification and we are currently without a GP. (And we haven't needed to visit one anyway for many years)

Christ alive, Why don't we just open our mouths and shove in anything?

Regardless of underlying health issues or family history.

We are all a cookie mould aren't we - exactly the same.

Yawn . . . .

"Christ alive, Why don't we just open our mouths and shove in anything?

Regardless of underlying health issues or family history.

We are all a cookie mould aren't we - exactly the same.

Yawn . . . ."

Because this is what anyone is suggesting........

These threads are always dense, IMHO. Some pople do what they're told because they have absolute faith that the establishment always acts in the best interests of them. Where would we be as a society if we couldn't rely on any bit of information that our government/professionals gave us.

But you also have people that understand that this is not always the case. The UNBIASED evidence available to parents when making vaccination choices is ZERO. WHen posters quote the research in respected medical journals, the research is always asking the wrong questions, or asking them in the wrong way.

SO in answer to the question of the thread, as a parent who refuses to have my babies vaccinated, the reason is that, on balance and based on a wide array of research from all sources, my child alone is better off without vaccination than with.

Nobody on this thread has the right to call me stupid, ignorant or anything else for that matter. I saw mentioned earlier that parents who don't vaccinate their children take a handful of random terms, like histamine, allergies and aluminium, and jumble them up into their own weird science.

Really?

As an aside, if your child is vaccinated, how are they at risk from my unvaccinated child?

As an additional aside, do you know that when I was vaccinated against Measles as a youngster, and subsequently caught it, as did all of my friends, my mum was told that of course we would still catch it, we would just have a milder version.

My child is at risk from your unvaccinated child before he has had his vaccinations. Or he is immunocompromized and cannot be vaccinated for sound medical reasons.

Then your unvaccinated child (sorry, I thought we were talking about vaccinated children!!) is also at risk from you, and me, and everyone else he comes into contact with. Except, apparantly, vaccinated children.

The whooping cough vaccine barely works and the MMR don't work for a lifetime either. Basically, your child is at risk from everyone except the recently vaccinated (although that is also arguable) and those who have acquired natural immunity through being exposed to the actual disease. Now that often is lifelong.

Lots of children are at risk.
For lots of reasons.
It is your choice not to have your Hilda vaccinated but please do not minimize the risks to others if our child becomes I'll.
And the is out of place. This ubject is not a matter of 'what ifs' to some of us.

Immunity rarely lasts forever, however it is aquired. Whooping cough vaccination certainly lasts long enough to protect babies until they are old enough to deal with the illness.

And vaccination certainly lasted long enough to exterminate small pox, and to nearly exterminate polio.

Except of course, where the polio vaccine actually causes polio.

"the problem is that while the oral vaccine has reined in wild polio, the wild virus is being replaced by vaccine-derived polio virus (VDPV), which causes acute flaccid paralysis. (Health officials don't call it polio because it isn't "wild.") The international meeting, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Japanese Ministry of Health, is scheduled for May 30-June 1, 2012, in Geneva, Switzerland.

According to polioeradication.orgii:

"The meeting will review the available scientific information on VDPVs; discuss the scientific, policy and programmatic implications of continued VDPV emergence and transmission; and, help inform the 'roadmap for VDPV elimination' for the post-oral polio vaccine (OPV) era."

Environmental surveillance for VD

jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/203/7/889.full

Analogue
The whooping cough vaccine barely works

I didn't know that, have you evidence to support your assertion?

Do you disagree with this:
"Before vaccines, an average of 157 cases per 100,000 persons were reported in the U.S., with peaks reported every two to five years; more than 93% of reported cases occurred in children under 10 years of age. The actual incidence was likely much higher. After vaccinations were introduced in the 1940s, incidence fell dramatically to less than 1 per 100,000 by 1970"

The whooping cough vaccine is very effective against severe whooping cough. If you're vaccinated and get whooping cough, you're far less likely to have it severely.

Analogue, if you were as well researched as you like to believe you are, you would know that if you get breakthrough illness after being vaccinated, it is far more likely to be mild. True for whooping cough, chicken pox and measles. I think your skeptical emoticon exemplifies exactly the slightly paranoid crankosphere of non vaccinators.