Starting to have MMR doubts and panicking

[SneezingwakestheJesus]

I had finally decided to give my dd the MMR and she has her appointment next week. But now I'm having doubts again and panicking. Her uncle has autism and his mum is utterly convinced it happened after the MMR. I know that study was a fake/discredited etc but I'm finding it hard to see past her, and other parents online, strong belief that the signs of autism appeared overnight in their children. And those recent court cases where parents were given compensation on the basis that the vaccines their children had may be linked to their condition worry me too.

What if some autism is caused by the vaccine in some way? What if there is a genetic predisposition to having autism and all it needs is a trigger? What if my dd has a genetic predisposition from that side of the family?

I know I sound paranoid but I'm really struggling with this. On one hand I could give her a vaccination that will protect her from diseases but isn't guaranteed not to harm her. On the other, I don't give her the vaccination but she may catch one of these diseases and may be ever worse off than if the vaccine did harm her. I'm so torn and muddled about it.

I just don't know what to do and I don't know what I expect from posting here but I can't talk to my family about it.

But not to anyone who has taken an interest in the question.

If you dig deep, you will find that all the studies to say that the MMR is safe, are all funded by the drug companies who make the drug. And all the evidence to discredit Andrew Wakefield was funded by the drug companies.
I would never inject something (that I have no idea what is in it - preservatives, mercury etc) into my precious child that a doctor cannot give me 100% assurance that it is safe......Didn't you find it strange that Tony Blair never came out and told us that his children had the MMR? Because they didn't.....
And if you have the MMR, you can still get the illness.
Start feeding your child a healthy diet and cut out all the processed junk, sugar and fizzy drinks, to improve their immune system.

"you will find that all the studies to say that the MMR is safe, are all funded by the drug companies who make the drug"

Pecky, if that can be proved to be untrue, will you publicly apologise?

"And all the evidence to discredit Andrew Wakefield was funded by the drug companies."

And that?

Will not need to - as it's all on google.

there's a lot of stuff on google, and I can't tell which bit you mean.

Would you like to divulge your source?

"all the studies to say that the MMR is safe, are all funded by the drug companies who make the drug"

2 clicks on google later

The Cochrane review - "We could assess no significant association between MMR immunisation and the following conditions: autism, asthma, leukaemia, hay fever, type 1 diabetes, gait disturbance, Crohn's disease, demyelinating diseases, or bacterial or viral infections."

Cochrane funding - "national governments, international governmental and non-governmental organisations, universities, hospitals, private foundations, and personal donations. They are not permitted to accept funding from commercial organisations such as pharmaceutical companies."

So, Pecky is it to be an apology, preferably abject and groveling, or are you going to try and wriggle your way out of it?

The same science used to create vaccines is the same science enabling you to search google for crackpot claims about MMR.

Btw Leo Blair was vaccinated.

Those who campaign against vaccines or undermine campaigns to produce community (I'll refrain from using the term herd) immunity can be lumped with the religious fundamentalists who recently murdered nine health care workers in Nigeria for trying to ad mister polio vaccines. In the same way that anti vacc people are convince that MMR causes autism (and even if it doesn't their gut feeling says it must be wrong), these Nigerian extremists (not the mums and dads who are desperate for the vaccine to avoid polio) are convinced the polio vaccine will sterilise Nigerians!

That's the company anti vaccine campaigners keep.

Stop all this nonspecific google derived nonsense. MMR is the best possible protection. Where outbreaks have occurred (eg Germany and Chicago ) it's been among unvaccinated communities.

Measles as an R0 of 15, meaning that an infected person (ie before symptoms appear) will infect on average 15 others.

And if you're adamant about single measle vaccine, read today's letter in the guardian from a woman representing Sense - the charity for rubella victims.

I would never inject something (that I have no idea what is in it - preservatives, mercury etc) into my precious child that a doctor cannot give me 100% assurance that it is safe......

No medication or food is ever 100% safe.
So let me get that straight, if you do not vaccinate, what do you do in case of illness? Surely your DC will at some point take medication in which there will be stuff that you don't know. What will you do then?

I am amazed that in this day and age people still thing like you Pecky.

I see that a vociferous anti vaccine person is peddling nonsense that you just need vitamin A and if you eat plenty of carrots, mangoes and dried apricots you are safe-added to the fact that people don't die from measles-just 'mismanagement of the fever'.
I do hope that people ignore and get the vaccine.

Sadly this is a person who holds a lot of sway. I thought of commenting on her blog but dismissed it as a waste of time.

I also don't think she has the slightest idea when she talks of epidemics. I was reading the log book of a school in Victorian times and it quite often had to close entirely with an outbreak of a disease and then they had to disinfect the premises before they all went back.

There is a (popular with antivaxers) anti-disease model of understanding measles (& similar microbes. The idea is that all these bugs are truly only mild, almost benign microbes, and that only people with run down immune systems / inadequate nutrition ever actually become ill from any of them. The logic is that if you feed yourself the perfect diet and breathe the perfect air and live in a toxic-free environment, then viruses & bacteria can't ever make you ill.

it's very very weird thinking!

I witnessed my husband coming down with a 41 degree fever for the first time in 20 years, literally overnight after a cancelled flu shot appointment.

The same person says that Polio hasn't been wiped out, it has just been renamed- very odd when there are older people who are still suffering the effects of having it as a child and you just don't get it now. I don't understand the logic- she would be against tetanus too- despite the fact that diet won't stop an infected wound.
I know a baby who has just been exposed to measles and they haven't had time to have a varied diet full of vitamin A.

I am fed up with the way people expressing concerns about vaccination are being treated here and will not follow this discussion anymore.

They told us thalidomide was safe. They said that we would all get AIDS. Official advice on avoiding cot death switched from 'babies must lie on their fronts' to 'babies must lie on their backs' with barely an apology. The wise person responds with deep caution to the words 'Trust me, I'm a doctor', and with even more caution to the words 'Trust us, we're the Government'.

Official advice on avoiding cot death switched from 'babies must lie on their fronts' to 'babies must lie on their backs' with barely an apology.

And the push for the change came initially from parents who had lost a child to a cot death.

However-people didn't vaccinate their DCs and now we have an epidemic of measles- and I think it is only the start. It is now in my area.

where's pecky's reply?

Fish oils - the three things you mentioned, thalidomide, cot death and AIDS are great epidemiological studies of populations.

Thalidomide paved the way for drug regulation. Once data came in it was withdrawn (it was in use for 3 years - I just missed out), thenMcBride et al crunched the numbers.

MMR has been in use for 40 years with billions of doses, there is reems of data and nothing linking it to serious side effects.

The interesting one is cot death. In south east, the culture was to lie infants on their backs. And I rembemr in Australai, that's what we did (even in the 60s). It was women, in the UK, who promoted front sleeping not doctors. Again epidemiological studies tracked sleeping patterns.

As for HIV, once statistics became available, infection rates declined (in the 90s) because condoms were used.

If you want more stats have a look at the relationship between vaccination rates and measles infection - vaccination rates up, infection down, vaccination down, infection rates up.

And more stats. According to NHS, about 1 in 10 measles cases will end up in hospital. Now call it a conspiracy, but at the moment of the 900 cases 85 have been hospitalised.

South east Asia where babies usually slept on their backs

'And I can't understand why the courts have awarded compensation if it doesn't happen. Or why there are funds for vaccine damaged children.'

could anyone please put into simple words a response to this, because this is what concerns me...thankyou

This is interesting

Why does France have a huge number of cases and so few complications/deaths reported?

The measles epidemic in France ( and likewise in Germany and Chicago) occrurred in unvaccinated communities. They stayed within those communities because as a rule we do not mix outside our own ethnic / socio economic group. There are CDC studies on these outbreaks with all the data.

It was women, in the UK, who promoted front sleeping not doctors.

Sorry, I disagree there. My children belong to that generation. We were distinctly told in the maternity hospital that we must do this.

Anne Diamond, a newreader, was one who lead a campaign against this policy.