Apparently children who have had good nutrition would just 'shrug it off' if they contracted measles. Why don't they say that in the UK?

[bumbleymummy]

Article is here discussing the impact that poor nutrition has on children in developing countries.

Considering that the majority of children in the UK have no problem with good nutrition (fruit shoots and Greggs aside ) why aren't parents being reassured rather than terrified into having their children vaccinated with images of coffins plastered over the promotional material?

Thank you, Crumbled :)

I've got to say - stating the obvious - that the cheery GP with the adorable bedside manner, popping over to see how you are every evening, was already a dying breed by the time that article was published. I do not dispute value of 'caring' to good health, but it's a whole other discussion from this topic, surely!

But then so is MMR effectiveness Garlic, and autism etc, but people need to scratch an itch I guess.

I love the idea of a rosy-cheeked doc with a little bag coming to tuck you up and just making you better by giving you a warm feeling! I bet it's true

Personally I would prefer to be attended by a Dr with a good beside manner, than one who went on about how there was no treatment and I might die.

Really - style over substance? I'd rather be treated by a doctor who bases their decisions on good clinical practise than off the wall hearsay.

Crumble, volcan and etc, you may not be saying outright "don't vaccinate", but you are sowing the seeds of doubt. There's a book about this sort of behaviour - merchants of doubt how the anti tobacco campaign was derailed by a handful of the pro smoking lobby by "sowing seeds of doubt" despite overwhelming evidence that smoking is bad for your health (same for global warming, acid rain, ozone effect). These merchants railed against Rachel Carson (remember her - silent spring and all that).

What the "anti vaccine / anti MMR" mob are doing is not openly stating a case, but rather "sowing seeds of doubt" against overwhelming evidence, that MMR works, is safe and offers the best protection. Throwing in red herrings like vit A, nutrition and autism is simply using the same tactics the pro smoking lobby used when they tried to fight doctors over smoking. They used to say it wasnt cigarettes causing lung cancer, but poor nutrition (sound familiar), living near factories and poor lifestyle choices, elements of which are true, but derailed the issues and led to huge doubt over the links. it took decades for anti smoking legislation to come in as a result. The same method is used by climate change deniers, "sow seeds of doubt" - is it really man made??? Ask the questions enough times and even without the evidence, people will question the knowledge.

Using thes tactics, you're aligning yourself with big tobacco and big oil. If you want to peruse this path, fine, but look at who you model your behaviour on. Not to mentio those who claim Obama is a Muslim stooge born outside the US .....

For the avoidance of doubt, Dr David Miller did not say in 1964 that measles had become a mild childhood disease with no public health implications. He said that, because the number of deaths from measles had declined, due largely to the introduction of antibiotics, people were starting to think of it that way, and the point of his article was that this was not the case, there were still people suffering severe complications, and that he considered vaccination to be the way forward.

But in the BMJ article of a few years earlier, the two doctors in question did offer the opinion that it's now normally a mild illness. They were writing at a time when the extremes of poverty of the 1930s had been eliminated, the NHS now gave access to health care for all regardless of ability to pay, and antibiotic use was coming in to treat secondary infections. Those conditions improved the situation for a majority. I think 'normally' is a key here - it leaves open the possibility that for some people it still might not have been a mild infection.

Coorong, no one has said anything against MMR bring safe, effective or offering protection. You (and others) seem to be looking for some reason to label this as 'anti-vax' even though it's not. Why is this?

See now to me, the coffin on the leaflet doesn't seem unreasonable. It is a simple, fairly pictorial leaflet, and the coffin is in the section marked possible side effects. Death is a possible side effect...

An extremely unlikely side effect in this country though. From the article linked earlier:

"The incidence of serious complications of measles is not high it may vary in different epidemics and be reduced by the use of antibiotics."

That was written a few years before the single measles vaccine was introduced. Seems a far cry from putting coffins in leaflets now - 50 years later.

But death is a side effect. As is deafness and blindness. The reason it's rare is that measles had nearly been eradicated in this country.

And I agree with others that you have just plucked random facts from articles about something else entirely.
The original article is about the facts behind deaths due to hunger in third world countries. It doesn't have anything to do with the uk vaccination programme. And the one about deaths due to FF was based in Manila! This is all totally random!

Unfortunately people then forget that they are really fortunate to have vaccines and that children died and had bad side effects- the well nourished and the undernourished- in the 'old days'.

You (and others) seem to be looking for some reason to label this as 'anti-vax' even though it's not. Why is this?

because that's how your title and OP read. You may not have intended that but they do.

Saggy - I think I've said most of what you just have before. The OP seems adamant that one symbol of death on an infographic leaflet is unduly scary.

Saggy, that quote about the incidence of complications not being very high was written when there were hundreds of thousands of cases every year. Antibiotics and availability of healthcare (plus improving nutrition and living conditions after the war - as some of walnut's quotes show). They were rare before the number of measles cases started to decrease after vaccination was introduced.

wrt 'random facts plucked from articles' I already explained that I was just struck by what the article said wrt to measles in developing countries and I was comparing it to the attitude we have to it here.

Re. ff link - someone asked for a study that showed that ff leads to increased deaths.

exotic, read my first paragraph in this post to saggy. Why are you so determined to attribute all the progress and change to the vaccine? and the MMR in particular? The largest fall in deaths happened pre-vaccine and by the time the MMR was brought in, the single measles vaccine had done most of the work in reducing the number of cases. The difference that the MMR made was actually fairly minimal in comparison.

Grimma, only because you want them to read that way. I don't mention anything about the vaccine- just the way it is being promoted.

I think the coffin is unnecessary and is being used with the sole purpose of scaring parents.

Death is a side effect of chicken pox and you don't see that linked to coffins saggy.

More die here of chicken pox than measles - obviously as we don't routinely vaccinated.

I wonder when the chicken pox vaccine is rolled out (as I'm sure it will be eventually) it will continue to be marketed as a mild childhood illness?

I wonder when the chicken pox vaccine is rolled out (as I'm sure it will be eventually) it will continue to be marketed as a mild childhood illness?

The cynic in me says probably not. Although having said that, I did get pneumonia as a complication of chicken pox, but am still alive many years later to tell the tale. Antibiotics sorted it out.

Good point JackNone.

The attitude to CP is already changing because the vaccine is available in other countries. Americans are quite scared of CP - if you look at the US forums. It's starting to filter over here and you see plenty of people on MN asking about where they can get the vaccine privately. My GP friend doesn't think it should/will be brought in but I reckon it will be here in the next few years and people will start being a lot more worried about CP than they are now. By the time our grandchildren come along it will be a very different story.

The info about deaths from CP is interesting too. When DS was born 7 years ago the HV mentioned that a CP vaccine may become available and I looked into deaths from CP-I actually have the figures that I downloaded saved somewhere - they were hard to find and there were very few of them. The fact that the risk of dying from CP is starting to be talked about just shows how it is starting to get built up before the vaccine is introduced imo. Generating fear is the best way to sell it apparently.

I've never seen a leaflet regarding chicken pox vaccination though Jack!
And it isn't a mild childhood illness. There have been theatre here about people who's children have been seriously ill because of it. and I'm not referring to SS
Sorry Grimma, I usually don't allow myself to get sucked into 400+ post threads for fear of repeating, this one caught me before I'd realised!
OP but you can't use stats for the Philippines and apply them to the UK. That's just another random!

Exactly what I mean saggy! There isn't even a vaccine available let alone a coffin related campaign to persuade people to have it. There is a lot of official literature about it being a mild illness. Even though more people die of it than measles.

But I suspect that will all change in a few years.

'label this as 'anti-vax' even though it's not. Why is this?'

Perhaps because in 1000's of posts neither you nor crum nor any of your hangers on have ever once said anything positive about vaccines.

Just a guess.

Saggy, the number of children who have been seriously ill is a tiny fraction of the number of cases that there actually are but of course those will be the ones that are focussed on when people are trying to encourage the idea of introducing the vaccine. that's how propaganda works! I'm sure we'll see coffins on CP leaflets soon enough if this is the approach they're taking.

RE. stats from phillippines - She wasn't asking about the UK at the time and I wasn't trying to apply those figures to the UK. IIRC she was saying that FF doesn't cause deaths - the link showed that it does. Few studies have been done in the UK but there were some US ones also showing an increased risk of hospitalisation etc wrt FF showing that it also makes a difference in developed countries.

Jo, you obviously aren't reading it very well then. How can someone say that the second vaccine is unnecessary for 90/95% of people without acknowledging that the first one must have worked for 90/95% of people? You're only seeing what you're looking for.