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If you decided to delay or to forgo MMR, how did health professionals react?

431 replies

usedtogotomars · 19/12/2017 16:41

Just wondering about this (and haven’t yet decided) - do they respond in a way that respects your view or do they try to persuade you to have the vaccinations given to your child?

OP posts:
cantkeepawayforever · 23/12/2017 12:23

OP is a little like a drunk driver, who when challenged on choosing to drive when drunk on a busy road filled with other cars says 'But I saw a car accident last week where the driver wasn't drunk. It wasn't reported to the police so wouldn't appear on the statistics. So I believe it is as risky, or more risky, to drive when sober as when drunk, and so I will drive when drunk'.

Christmascardqueen · 23/12/2017 12:35

On topic but off topic iykwim
My dd was an unusually busy new mom, moving homes, different countries, lots going on. Her little one had it’s early jabs then nothing till 18 months when she took her in and got all the immunization sorted and up to date in the UK. The nurse was non judgemental and thorough. All caught in in one visit.

usedtogotomars · 23/12/2017 14:12

Excuse me

OP is nothing like a drunk driver.

OP is just a concerned future parent.

Thanks.

OP posts:
shhhfastasleep · 23/12/2017 14:43

Op, have a bit of concern for the people you put at risk by not vaccinating your child. It's not a personal choice, it's a choice made for other people without consulting them.
The drunk driving analogy is very emotive. I get that. But putting people in danger of losing their life because of your decision making IS emotive.

confusedlittleone · 23/12/2017 15:03

We are delaying untill he's 2, however we have backing from his peads due to medical reasons.. It does seem to come down to who you see though as to how they take it

shhhfastasleep · 23/12/2017 16:07

If you have legitimate medical reasons for delaying or not doing it, then you, like me rely on herd immunity to keep you safe. As already explained, once again, my area no longer has herd immunity. Because idiots think it is a "personal choice " matter and nothing to do with immunocompromised people like me.

ForgivenessIsDivine · 23/12/2017 17:28

It is nothing like being a drunk driver. Driving while drunk is against the law, failing to consent to medical treatment is not. Choosing not to drive while drunk does not have any risks associated with it.

Choosing to vaccinate a child whose close relative has been vaccine damaged, does have risks associated with it, as does choosing not to vaccinate the same child. The OP is asking how and where can she get access to information and a safe space to talk about this openly without being pressurised into making a decision without due consideration.

Parents have an obligation to do the best they can for their children. If a close relative has been harmed by vaccines, they have a duty to that child to research the adverse effects associated with vaccines and how it might affect their child. There are enough people in the medical world asking these questions for parents to also ask these questions.

There are many examples in medicine where opinions are divided, opinions change over time, based on new research. Many studies conclude that more research is required. There have been volumes of research on gene mutations and their association with health risk factors.

The Cochrane report on the MMR states that 'The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate.' One of the frequent criticisms of vaccine safety and efficacy research is the use of other adjuvant containing substances as the comparison for new vaccines rather than comparing a vaccine to a completely inert substance. Another frequent criticism is the lack of long-term studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.

The Cochrane report also states that 'The evidence of adverse events following immunisation with the MMR vaccine cannot be separated from its role in preventing the target diseases.' and that 'Measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) are three very dangerous infectious diseases which cause severe morbidity, disability and death in low-income countries.'. So what about high-income countries, where clean water, adequate nutrition and access to appropriate medical treatment is assured... how do the adverse events compare where severe morbidity, disability and death are unlikely. The answer is, the evidence is inadequate. These are not the words of crackpot loonies, pedalling conspiracy theories and snake oil, these are the words of Cochrane who also state that 'As access to health evidence increases, so do the risks of misinterpreting complex content; meanwhile the likelihood of any one person getting a complete and balanced picture decreases.'

usedtogotomars, you are not wrong to want to question, research and assess the evidence and risks associated with medical treatment for your child. There is a lot of emotion around vaccinations and I wish you all the very best in finding the right people to have this discussion with.

JennyHolzersGhost · 23/12/2017 19:57

You have quite clearly taken your position and so it would be more honest if you just stuck with that rather than this wide-eyed disingenuous ‘please convince me’ stance.

usedtogotomars · 23/12/2017 22:00

It hasn’t been that at all jenny

I’m not sure. I’m still not sure. I do feel very hesitant over the safety of the vaccinations, and being verbally aggressive to me for voicing these concerns doesn’t alleviate them but makes it less likely I will voice them in the future, meaning chances are I’d just remain quiet and not have them done.

If you want people to agree with you, you give reasons, but if you just want to give people a hard time you argue, which is what you’ve done.

OP posts:
RogueBiscuit · 24/12/2017 01:13

I mentioned it earlier, but it's quite possible that your child does not even need to be vaccinated, you can find out via a simple titer test. Re immune compromised people, why aren't you vaccinated?

ShovingLeopard · 24/12/2017 01:24

Hear hear forgivenness. I have been dismayed at the nasty kicking the OP has had on this thread, by idiots who are seemingly too hard of intellect to read what she is actually writing and process it properly. The gratuitous insults some have hurled in her direction have left a nasty taste in my mouth.

Trying to get accurate information on the risk to an individual with a potentially higher risk for adverse effects, rather than broad-brush population-wide data, is a million miles away from an anti-vaxx stance. OP is to be applauded for taking this as seriously as she has, and seeking to make the right choice for her child, whatever that may be.

shhhfastasleep · 24/12/2017 06:54

Why are immunocompromised people like me not vaccinated? Because I am in my 50s and we didn't have the measles vaccine when I was a child. I have had mumps and I had the rubella vaccine as a teenager. I have never had measles. I asked my gp for the measles vaccine and he said that, because of my health condition, he'd actually advise against it. We are therefore relying on herd immunity. Of course my own dd has had the full vaccination programme. My dh has had measles already as a child.

mamasiz · 24/12/2017 07:11

Absolutely ridiculous. Get your child(ren) vaccinated. There should be no debate about this in 2017.

bruffin · 24/12/2017 07:14

But op doesnt trust anyone anyway and isnt open to advice.
If epilepsy is the problem, she needs to get referred a specialist in that field and/or genetics who may be interested in testing for that type of mutation.

Jemimapuddleduk · 24/12/2017 07:26

Re immune compromised people, why aren't you vaccinated?
Some types of cancer treatments (chemotherapy) not only wipe out all previous baby vaccinations but also knock your immune system thus making you very very prone to infection and death.

usedtogotomars · 24/12/2017 07:27

It’s no slur on individuals, bruffin

But parents who’s children have been damaged by vaccines are (understandably) hugely wary of them and as such, they are not a reliable source. I understand that.

On the other end of the scale, I know very genuine cases who were damaged by vaccines who either had to fight for years and years to get this recognised (as I alluded to earlier, Jackie Fletcher took eighteen years to get this recognised.) Many parents will have given up in this time, or not given up but not won. Or never started in the first place because the evidence just isn’t strong enough. And people keep putting it down to coincidences but when time again developmentally normal babies and toddlers present with similar symptoms after the vaccs I just do not personally believe it is coincidence.

So in other words, someone can say, well, look at these stats. They show one in every three billion are damaged (I’m not saying that is the real stat by the way!) so the chances are clearly minute but here are the chances of your child getting measles, so it’s a no brainer isn’t it?

What I’ve been trying to explain is that I just don’t think it is as cut and dry as that. There will be a lot of cases where children will have been damaged by vaccines - maybe not as severely as Robert was, maybe, just maybe it was a coincidence, maybe it wasn’t, maybe their parents thought it was the vaccine, maybe they didn’t. This is the thing, we just don’t know. So it’s not like being a drunk driver, it’s more like getting into a car blindfold and trusting that the soothing voice on the Sat Nav will keep you free from harm, even though you know someone who is permanently disabled as a result.

OP posts:
BertrandRussell · 24/12/2017 07:39

“What I’ve been trying to explain is that I just don’t think it is as cut and dry as that. There will be a lot of cases where children will have been damaged by vaccines”

Well then what you are asking to know is completely unknowable.

People can say to you “Here are the stats. They have been gathered by many studies world wide. They have been peer reviewed by experts in the field and are as accurate as it is possible to make them”

And you say “But I don’t believe them. I want different stats”

Impasse.

usedtogotomars · 24/12/2017 07:40

True, if I had been asking that, that would be true.

OP posts:
BertrandRussell · 24/12/2017 07:43

I don’t understand what you are asking then. If you had a panel of experts in front of you, what would you ask them?

usedtogotomars · 24/12/2017 07:44

The thread title is pretty clear, Bert and to be fair, you did ask me very nicely earlier in the thread if anyone could put my mind at rest and I said no, for the reasons outlined throughout the thread, so it’s not as if I’ve suddenly announced it.

OP posts:
bruffin · 24/12/2017 07:46

But was Robert ever tested for underlying factors. The neurologist on the appeal panal was quoted as saying it was going to happen any way.
Parents need something to blame and vaccines are easy to fixate on.
My son was the same age as Robert fletcher when he had his first febrile convulsion. But it was a few weeks after his MMR not just 10 days in Roberts case.
I had generations of this in my family back to before vaccination , yet it is very rare and only really given a name long after ds was born and had his first febrile convulsion at 14 months.
The type of febriles convulsions gefs+ my family have does not cause brain damage but it is genetically related to febrile convulsions that do go to be a severe epilepsy that causes brain damage after normal development. Vaccines may trigger this but so do any disease that causes fever.

BertrandRussell · 24/12/2017 07:55

“The thread title is pretty clear, Bert and to be fair, you did ask me very nicely earlier in the thread if anyone could put my mind at rest and I said no, for the reasons outlined throughout the thread, so it’s not as if I’ve suddenly announced it.”

So I was right when I said that what you want is something that does not exist? Either reassurance that vaccine damage never happens (which nobody can give you because it’s no true) or proof that vaccine damage is far more common than the stats suggest- which nobody can give you because there is no evidence at all that this is true.

Situp · 24/12/2017 08:03

OP have you looked at stats of damage and death from measles? Or miscarriage rates from Rubella? Or infertatility rates on men from mumps?

Just in France
More than 20,000 cases occurred during 2008–2011. Adolescents and young adults accounted for more than half of cases; median patient age increased from 12 to 16 years during the outbreak. The highest incidence rate was observed in children

ForgivenessIsDivine · 25/12/2017 20:09

6 out of 10 of those measles deaths had underlying immune issues, their underlying issues played a part in their deaths.

And between 2001 and 2004, 18 babies and toddlers died following childhood vaccinations in the UK. (Source Freedom of information request). Not all proven but the doctors reporting the links, believed vaccines to have played a part.

It is not clear cut...

bruffin · 25/12/2017 20:12

Thats 4 out if 10 that didnt have underlying issues, so what is your point?

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