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?

And the alternative to having the right to choose is to make it compulsory, how would enforcing that work? Criminalise parents who feel uncomfortable or not sure about giving their children the jabs as they are?

I think it should be your choice whether to or not... but they can't be allowed to start school without up to date vaccines unless medical reasons.

But you came on the thread anyway sossiges?

Not everyone's on the same thread, I don't think I've ever posted on or read a vaccine thread before because it's not something I'm passionate about.

But calling people selfish and ruthless for doing the best by their children is pretty blinkered.

I don't get why people get so angry about it.
I couldn't have the whooping cough jab when I was little ( same as my 3 siblings) as my nan has epilepsy, I didn't get whooping cough. Not sure people were concerned that We were a risk to their kids .
Funny though how my GP had never heard of this before and insisted I immunised my Ds. Wish I looked into it more now. In fact I don't think I was asked any questions about health/ family history, which is a gamble.

Shoot me now [closes eyes, holds hands up]

Much as I disagree with what the OP wrote, it wouldn't be fair to leave her to clean up your splattered brain matter off the thread soss

Oh, I don't know...
I think she deserves it for the x's

You're all selfish and ruthless x.

ZigZag DS had single vaccines at about 13 months and then booster at 3 and a half which gives lifetime immunity. Although it's several years ago the jab was about £100, so not completely out of reach, hopefully.

SarahStratton appreciate your point on the question of 'mildness'. What I was trying to say was that these diseases are rarely fatal. Yes, I know rubella can cause terrible problems if you catch it when pregnant - but whose responsibility is that? I obviously wouldn't want my child to infect a pregnant woman, but she can hardly wander around unvaccinated expecting everyone else in the country to make sure she isn't put a risk, IYSWIM. And actually, with my eldest DCs they gave MMR at 15 months and BOTH eldest two caught rubella literally about a fortnight before they had jab!

Soss has a point.

Brain splat seems a fair punishment for x abuse.

Problem is, most diseases have a window where you are infectious without knowing you are ill with it. We'd all have to stay indoors, frantically washing our hands to avoid catching anything. And some children can't have the vaccinations for various reasons. Herd immunity is incredibly important for them.

There is no scientific proof that the MMR vaccination causes autism.

Measles, mumps and rubella kills and disables babies and children.

These diseases kill and disable more babies and children than death through adverse reactions/infection due to injections. In an unprotected population they are devastating diseases.

Herd immunity requires up to 95% (for some diseases, about 85% for many others) of the population to be immunised in order to wipe out disease in the total population.

Choice is indeed sacrosanct. Science is factual. Feelings are not facts. If people exercise the choice not to immunise children, or children cannot be immunised because of illness, I hope that herd immunity has been achieved by everyone else.

I really must stop posting, it's dragging this poor old thread on and on, instead of kindly letting it die a natural death as it should have done about 36 posts ago.
See y'all
x

'Science is factual'

A bit of an aside, but I suppose relevant, 'science' portrays itself as factual but really it's only educated guesses.

Which creates the problem in the first place because one 'side' says it has certain 'facts' and the other disputes them.

How are parents supposed to cut through to the truth what some scientists spend their whole working lives trying to unravel?

It might be difficult to measure feelings, but that doesn't mean they're any less real than something physical you can see, and they definitely shouldn't be discounted.

That's saying what these parents feel they are doing for their children isn't important, and that's just not true.

sowornout just because you haven't seen first hand how deadly measles is doesn't mean it is a "mild" illness. It may have been mild where you were, (possibly because of immunizations) but it is one of the leading causes of death in children world wide. More than 160,000 children die of it every year.

In 1980, before widespread immunization 2.6 million died of measles each year. So it is far from "mild." Which is why so many people get so riled up about vaccinations.

I do think parents should have a choice, but they also need to educate themselves about it too, the risks are real, and need to be weighed against the risks of the actual vaccine. After that, I agree, do what is best for your child.

I'm only going on my experience monster, but I would say the parents who say they'd rather not are much more clued up on the different sides of this than people (like me) who just do as they're told go along with what's recommended.

Whoa Agent, way to infer something and ride for the hills on it, that's not what I said at all. Still, whatever you choose to read into it, you are free to do so.

I also dont like the fact that our children are treated as lab rats. Some trials take place before a vaccine is released but it is monitored for years afterwards through children who have it.

Thread about a thread - kind of?

Two broad categories why people don't immunise their DCs.

1.) there is a genuine medical reason no to, as advised by health professional.

2.) they are misguided, idiotic, selfish, feckless, ignorent etc etc etc Anyone who believes that is ok to choose not to immunise their own child as they are so special threatens heard immunity, and threatens everyone.

Agent I would hope so, but in my experience many parents seem to rely on more anecdotal evidence.

However it is, it certainly is out of order to say that by doing what they believe is best for their children is ignorant or worse.

Gosh! your Clip board has taken some serious hammering since the last post on this subject, copy,paste,copy,paste,copy,paste
I only charge £68 an hour for OH advice RSI but I imagine you carpal tunnel syndrome wouldn't just be down to that...;D
bless.

Gawd...

My DH used to market vaccines - I'm as pro as you get. But honestly, there's another live thread on this topic, on this very page.

My kids are immunised, along with additional immunsations which we paid for privately. I'm happy that they're protected. If others don't want to take those steps, fair play to them. Let people make their own choices.

A bit of an aside, but I suppose relevant, 'science' portrays itself as factual but really it's only educated guesses.

That is completely and utterly untrue. If you want to be pedantic about it, nothing whatsoever can really be considered "factual". It's not 100% "factual" that the sun exists & supplies us with solar energy (in theory, it could be a figment of our collective imaginations) - but the likelihood that it's really there is so close to 100%, that it may as well be for all practical purposes.

So science simply cannot proclaim anything as a "fact". But that most certainly does not mean it only amounts to "educated guesses" - and I find that viewpoint really rather ignorant. Are you not familiar with the notion of evidence, data, research, the scientific method?

I don't doubt that parents who refuse to vaccinate feel they are doing the best for their children - but their doubts about the safeness of MMR are based entirely on nonsense & misinformation. Interestingly, people on here have written about reading reports that suggest MMR is not safe. I say interesting because no such scientific reports exist. All studies that have been done have shown over & over & over & over that MMR is safe, and there is no link to autism & Crohn's disease.

I suspect what they're reading are not the reports themselves, but the interpretations of them by unqualified hacks in the Daily Mail like Melanie Phillips.

The only people who can justify not vaccinating their children are those where it's medically contraindicated - and those children are very, very much in the minority.

I agree that the problem is not the motives behind people who decide not to vaccinate (against medical advice of course).

The problem is the massive amount of misinformation, scaremongering and conspiracy theories on which their information is based and the deluded belief that this somehow constitutes 'having done research'.

I'd never criticise an individual decision, just the information on which it may be based.

'and I find that viewpoint really rather ignorant. Are you not familiar with the notion of evidence, data, research, the scientific method?'

I'm very familiar with how it all works, which is why I said what I said.

If you find every 'truth' science comes up with equally as valid as the theory that preceded it, that's up to you.

I was really speaking generally about how scientific beliefs work and how they influence society as a whole, because as I said, this isn't a subject I feel passionately about.

Obviously you do, enough to try and discredit my view as ignorant.

It's not for you to say what is and what isn't valid about a parents decision to do what they think is best, to brush their feelings off as though they're not important just because they're not tangible, could be seen by some as equally as ignorant - which I would never say to someone just because they have a different viewpoint to me.

On the "science is factual" point, Ben Goldacre wrote a really good piece in teh Guardian quite recently about how we can't rely on many scientific studies. About four days ago? It was about how little we can trust the studies scientists produce to support their proofs and they often aren't proofs at all. e was specifically referring to studies funded by the manufacturers of medicine and drugs. So science is factual in the sense of, an apple drops to the ground, the sun is 93 million miles away etc, but not in the sense of xxx drug doesn't cause heart attacks etc. All science isn't the same.