MMR Jabs

[Qd]

An osteopath told me last week she had heard there was a homeopathic alternative to the MMR, but didn't have any info. Does anyone know anything about it?

Pupuce, the World Health Organisation is now FIRMLY behind the MMR programme - whatever they may have said more than 30 years ago (when presumably the vaccine itself was different in any case). It is hardly surprising that 25% of measles occur in babies under 1 given what a rare disease it is now. Percentages are in any event irrelevant. What would be interesting is how many babies in absolute numbers are contracting the disease now compared with say 30 years ago. You surely cannot deny that measles has gone from being an illness that affected the majority of children to a rarity now.

What annoys me about the whole MMR issue is that even if you were willing to believe Andrew Wakefield, the risk of complications from measles is substantialluy higher than the statistical risk of autism/ bowel disease from the vaccine. Thus those parents who choose not to vaccinate are taking the view that they can avoid both - the first through the goodwill of their fellow citizens and the second through not having the jab.

And for those who think the problem is only with MMR, there is a large number of scientists who also believe that general vaccination is not a guaranteed way of preventing disease... This is on the DPT vaccine.

"The DPT vaccine is given at 2, 3 and 4 months of age and is usually combined with HiB vaccine. Polio is given orally at the same time and now meningitis C is also injected seperately too.

Vaccine effectiveness for diphtheria is unknown. When vaccination was compulsory there was a 17% increase in diphtheria. (1)

Efficacy of the vaccine was monitored by the Public Health laboratory service and in 1969 they reported that the vaccine was ?not very effective?, due to the fact that fully vaccinated children had contracted whooping cough and there were still whooping cough epidemics, even though at that time, 80% of all children were vaccinated.

According to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report (MMWR, 5/7/1985) a pertussis outbreak occurred in Washington, USA in 1984 involving 162 people. 69 of these cases occurred in children between 3 months and 6 years old, with known immunisation status. 34 of these (49%) were appropriately immunised for their ages with DPT vaccine.?

Side effects
The side effects from the DPT vaccine are: pain at the injection site, fever, restlessness, headache, spasms, fits, high-pitched screaming, vomiting, anorexia, anaphylactic shock, Guillain Barre syndrome, encephalitis (swelling of the brain), brain damage and death. (2)
The pertussis element of the vaccine has been linked with a rise in childhood asthma. Dr?s Ellis and Douglas wrote in the Journal of American Medical Association, 1994, that:

?In a study of 446 children, 243 had been vaccinated and, of those, 26 had asthma (10.6%). Of the 203 children who had not had the pertussis vaccination, only 4 had asthma (1.97%). There were 3 cases of asthma among the 112 who had had no pertussis vaccination but had received the other vaccines, and of the 91 children who had had no vaccines at all, only 1 child had asthma.? (3)
A Food and Drug Administration study in America revealed the following reactions after DPT vaccination:

1 in 20: prolonged crying.
1 in 66: high fever.
1 in 180: high-pitched screaming.
1 in 350: convulsions.
1 in 350: shock, collapse.
1 in 22,000: acute brain disorder.
1 in 62,000: permanent brain damage.
1 in 71,600: death

Serious reactions to the vaccine occur in every 1,750 doses. As a child is given three doses, the risk increases even more. (4)

The DPT vaccination has also been linked to cot death. Connaught (vaccine manufacturers) have stated in their inserts (of 1986) that:

?SIDS has occurred in infants following administration of DPT.?

A study in America in 1983 investigated 145 SIDS victims. 53 had been given the vaccine. 27 died within 4 weeks of the shot, 17 within 1 week and 6 within 24 hours.
Cot deaths are often due to stressed breathing, which in turn is caused by an insult to the body, either an illness or the toxic chemicals in a vaccine. Dr. Viera Scheibner (a research scientist) and her late husband developed a breathing monitor for babies called ?Cotwatch?. It revealed that following DPT vaccination, the babies in the study showed signs of stressed breathing. 41 babies died. (5)"

Personal note from Pupuce :
My husband has personnally met Viera Scheibner - listening to her evidence was fascinating. She did not start her work to find out about vaccination effectiveness, she was developping a monitoring system for cot death... and that work led her to notice the link between the 2.

1. The Immunization Decision ? Randall Naustaedter.
2. Vaccination:theory vs reality ? Neil Miller.
3. JAMA ? 8th January 1994.
4. Vaccination: assault on the species. ? Pat Rattigan.
5. Vaccination: 100 years of orthodox medical research shows that vaccines represent a medical assault to the immune system ? Dr.Viera Scheibner

With regards to SIDS & DPT, I would be unsurprised to see this happening after the vaccinations as the most risky age for SIDS is under 4/6 months by which time they have had 3 vaccinations, statiscally it must be likely to happen within 4 weeks of one of those 3. And unless the take up of vaccinations was very low in that sample it seems to me the majority had not been vaccinated, whereas surely now most babies are, wouldn't this make the risk higher in unvaccinated children ? See the CDC site as mentioned before as I think this also contains information on this.

Vaccine effectiveness for diptheria is unknown? Wasn't diptheria a relatively common serious disease? Just did a very quick Google search - during the 1920's 150,000 in USA contracted diptheria, of whom 15,000 died. In 1976 there were only 128 cases of diptheria.

Emmie - I suspect some of the babies had not yet been vaccinated. Viera Scheibner said that what struck her was the immediate changes in the babies' breathing (patterns) after they had been given the shots. This is how she started studying the subject which as I have said was not at all her original interest/piece of work.

I had never heard of a baby suffering any damage from the dtp jab.
Anorexia?? From a jab? What's all this about.
Thank goodness dd has already had her dtp jabs because if I was a mother with a young baby about to take her for her jabs I would be seriously worried.
I think if you look hard enough on the net you can find serious side effects for just about everything.

Pupuce I think you have made your stance on jabs v clear. And I respect your desicion.
However I do think this latest posting is a bit too far. I don't think it helps to frighten people into changing their minds with these scare stories.
Iam not saying don't give your opinion but please respect others opinions. After all it's not as if anyone has listed all the terrible deformities or deaths that could befall a child who isn't jabbed.
That would be bad taste but i doubt it would sway you as you have firm beliefs that your choice is right.
However lots of people here , myself included , are not so sure what to believe and reading posts like your last one might just give them a few sleepless nights. Which Iam sure we could all do without.LOL.
Please don't feel Iam getting at you. I think you have made a lot of sense on other posts and I value your opinion.

Callie - I am not upset but I wish I had stayed true to my earlier promise to myself : do not post here as this is an emotional debate -
I am only trying to show that there is data out there from other medical sources which question vaccination. This is not the only country (though some might make you think that) where vaccination is a hot debate.
I respect everyone's choice but as some posts have shown some mums have started vaccination and stopped (with their subsequent children) when they started getting more information. Let's face it your GP is not necessarily going to give you the other side of the debate !

If you are unsure, you owe it to yourself to explore this further and then make up your mind. If you want to vaccinate because it is the right thing to do - then by all means do ! I would never discourage/critize someone who had chosen vaccination if this is what they felt was the right thing to do.

I thought Mumsnet was about sharing experience, knowledge and views. If I am scaring you - very sorry... but I promise you that the data I gather is certainly not complete crap...

Pupuce - make your mind up! Either post, and take the consequences or stop! I find your posts really interesting, and informative but you must accept that if you post quite radical views there are going to be people that disagree with you. There are plenty of people on mumsnet that support what you are saying so you really shouldn't feel too hard done by.

And sorry, but the sentence about diptheria is complete c**p, where ever you saw it.

Pupuce said:
"The DPT vaccination has also been linked to cot death. Connaught (vaccine manufacturers) have stated in their inserts (of 1986) that:
?SIDS has occurred in infants following administration of DPT.?

but the insert does go on to say:
"It should be borne in mind that the three primary immunizing doses of these vaccines are usually administered to infants between the age of 2 and 6 months and that approximately 85% of SIDS cases occur in the period from 1 through 6 months of age with the peak incidence at age 2 to 4 months."

Just to add my voice and concerns here. I didn't want dd to have the meningitis jab as I didn't know enough about it, but they gave it to her as part of the polio and dip jab, which I would not have consented to if I had known. Yes, I probably was stupid in not realising, but I was tired, she was only 6 weeks old and I was still getting used to her. I thought I would have to make a separate appointment for the meningitis jab, no-one told me that they were all given together.

As for the MMR. The government's medical adviser is now saying that if we choose separate jabs we are playing russian roulette with our children's lives. Surely it is better than not getting them vaccinated at all? I was never vaccinated against measles or mumps. Both my sisters got mumps and they are fine. I was vaccinated against Rubella at 13. As far as I am aware, measles is the one they are most concerned about, so if measles is given first in a single vaccination, what is their problem?

Also, a doctor told me that in a clean and hygenic household, measles should be no more than a nuisance.

Lill, as I said in a previous posting, to vaccinate against Foot and Mouth would have been like looking for a needle in haystack as there are so many strains of the virus and not all strains in Britain were the same. I do not agree with the vaccination of animals against foot and Mouth , we do however vaacinate our sheep against, pnuemonia, and swayback which is a copper defficiency in sheep and the lambs can't get up, as there backs sway. BSE, never ever should have happened, as animals should not be fed back to their own kind, i.e. sheep being fed to cattle. But saying that Fishmeal in sheep feeding does give them excellent milking abilities and gives them a good vitamin boost.
Foot and Mouth was a horrendous disease and I hope that I never see it again, but it is true that to have vaccinated the entire stock in Britain would have been a complete disaster, would you eat or drink anything that had come from a F & M vaccinated animal? I think not.

My mother refused to have me vaccinated against rubella when I was 13 as I had already had it when younger. Turns out she was right as when the doctor tested me for it I'm naturally immune. Even way back then my mother was worried about too many vaccinations so things haven't really improved to reassure parents. There is too much research testing for too wide an area that its getting confusing. Half the time all this research doesn't really have any conclusive evidence such maybes and coulds. Its the same as the downs syndrome testing it doesn't really give you any conclusive evidence to any accuracy.

If these so called "experts" are so clever why do they all have different Medical and Ethical Views on it, we wouldn't stand in the middle of a road to get run down so why do we put our children at risk. My aunt had Polio when she was small and as a consequence is now completely deaf in her left ear, if a disease occurs that is potentialy harmful to us then vaccination is the correct thing to do, I would rather have a child with bowel problems to a child suffering the consequences of Measles, Mumps or Rubella.
I am not having a go at anyone here, but what is the major factor in NOT immunising children for MMR, where is the research to PROVE that MMR is harmful? This is something that I am really wanting to know, as now both of mine have had it done, and being honest here I never thought twice about them being immunised, they went and got their jabs.

Tigger2 I agree with you, Ive never thought twice about ds having his injections. I dont know, there is always something being tested to see what awful result will come from using it and they always have to show a bad result someway or another.
I want a test done on Weetabix as to why it goes mushy in milk and how ds can eat nearly two, the same as me.

Enid, it isn't only the sentence about diptheria which is cr*p!!

I keep dipping into this thread for a look at the commments. This is such a difficult one.

I am pro-vaccination, but strongly feel the government should give us a free choice about opting for triple or single MMR jabs on the NHS.

Like Tigger and Joe, when my oldest son had his MMR jabs, I just accepted it as the best thing available. Not a perfect solution. A pragmatic choice and one based on some ignorance on my part.

Although I disagree with the anti-vaccination stance here - I am still not convinced - I have to say that you have looked into the issue in far more depth than me, so - respect!

Jaspar - let's publish! Your grasp of scientific method is most impressive. Shall we invite Dr Wakefield to be a co-author? On second thoughts, we'd better not or we will have to publish it in a really obscure journal and our reputations will be forever tarnished.

On a serious note, I think it is irresponsible to bring up DPT and SIDS - this is another well worn old scare story with no medical data to back it up either. As others have said, it just happens at the same time. This is the same as the onset of autism and MMR, probably coincidental. Hence my comment about weetabix because it's easy to make connections like that when the putative causative factor is common. As most children will have had MMR it's easy to find some who have had problems, this is a long way from proving causality. I still can't understand why so many people are just not interested in the body of research that shows no link between MMR and autism.

There's lots to say about this - about how natural infection is more likely to casue problems than MMR, about how the latest Wakefield paper specifically doesn't address MMR and yet everyone seems to think it does, about how there is a culture of suspicion surrounding vaccination in general when it's generally very safe, about the assumption that the immune system can't cope with more than one thing at a time - what do you think happens when your child breathes in at nursery or eats something off the floor - millions of pathogens.................

Ok I'm going to shut up now, sorry for ranting.

Bravo,Smew!
You said exactly what I was thinking. Especially about it being irresponsible to bring up sids and dpt.

Maras, the original paper, which is pretty much the only evidence of a possible link, included children who had had natural measles infection and single vaccinations. It's very difficult to draw conclusions again about relative risks involved if you believe there is a link because there are no comtrols. Remember that there are probably more MMR children included in that paper because the majority of the population have had MMR and not measles or single vaccines. So it could just reflect population dynamics, like any random sample would. You probably won't do any harm by giving seperate jabs but there's no evidence to suggest it's safer, in fact it could be less safe, the single measles vaccination has a higher incidence of side effects and may be less effective.

I really am going now.

Just seen that Dr Andrew Wakefield is being interviewed on tonight's Channel 4 news at 19.00. Transcript will be put on their web site.

smew, just want to say, thanks for joining this thread. thank goodness for an authoritative and well informed voice of reason! thank you, thank you!

Does anyone know why they have to have a Rubella and Mumps booster? My dd had the MMR much to my anxiety and after about a week she did develop a bowel problem - you can imagine my anxiety! Diahoerra, loss of appetite, temperature and a nasty rash across her tummy. Now I have no compunction in giving her a measles booster, but I don't want to give her the other two as well. We never used to get boosters for Mumps and Rubella, so why is this necessary?

Also, can anyone explain why Weetabix tastes crap and always looks as if it has dead bugs floating in it?

Maybe its time to end this thread.

It was never my intention to dissuade people from having their children immunised nor scare them.

At the end of the day there is a risk involved in either option. - Yes some children will die or be damaged by many childhood illness but exactly how many, too what extent depends on who you talk to. At the moment I choose to risk this rather than introduce more chemicals and bugs into my children.
It is far easier to try and ridicule things that make us feel uncomfortable. But there is a body of research out there which throws doubt on the efficacy of routine immunisation programs for healthy children. Enough doubt in my mind to want to see open and thorough investigation. Doubt fed by crisis such as BSE Foot & Mouth & GM crops not to mention the Superbugs now taking hold because of the routine administration of antibiotics.

There is rarly a day goes by when I don't question my decision and the whole topic makes me feel nervous and frightened for my childrens well being. But that is all part of being a parent, and we have to get on with it.

And now more importantl may I simply say......
VOTE FOR WILL

Errr, who?