Unvaccinated children for those interested

[blisteringbarnacles]

Hi
I'm sorry everybody but doubletroublemaker was really me. I was just in an antsy mood at what I saw to be blind faith in government recommendations and changed my name to stir up debate, though apart from that I was posting in good faith. Do forgive me (or not --don't blame you) but I'm now about to post various bits of information that people expressed an interest in. I can't do a link due to mumsnet techno illiteracy but am copying and pasting some stuff which you may want to google or investigate further. Or not.

"In Chicago, Homefirst Medical Services treats thousands of never-vaccinated children whose parents received exemptions through Illinois' relatively permissive immunization policy. Homefirst's medical director, Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, told us he is not aware of any cases of autism in never-vaccinated children. The national rate is 1 in 175, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We have a fairly large practice," Eisenstein says. "We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines. "We do have enough of a sample," Eisenstein said. "The numbers are too large to not see it. We would absolutely know. We're all family doctors. If I have a child with autism come in, there's no communication. It's frightening. You can't touch them. It's not something that anyone would miss."

Just a starter, now I'm going to look for more, particularly on allergies.

hi flack, you're right about the amish, that's why I didn't post the study. They have different lives. This is "normal" children who just don't get jabbed.

I don't think our choice is better. I believe there should be more information around before people make the decision. I don't recommend anything except reading and researching as much as possible.

So yes, custardo et all, how could anyone flame you. You are mothers of children so you must be heard on this too.

Having said that, Custardo, I didn't understand quite a lot of your post about the price of eggs and three legged cats and so on. If you don't think that injecting mercury has catasrophically damaged thousands of babies that's up to you. Even the CDC may be changing its mind on that one.

I suppose my comment does mean that you yourself think you have bought into something useless, if you think your vaccinated child is not protected from my contagious child.

Don't forget that measles declined before jabs were introduced.

blisteringbarnacles I really don't understand where you are coming from. I studied and have worked in public health. Do you know what at no time did we learn or discuss "how to fool the public into participating in completely useless (and very expensive) campaigns". Why on earth do you think that so many governments spend so much money and effort on vaccinating if it is such a waste of time? This is public money we are talking about, and in the UK public money is also spent on the totality of the health and social care system, so what benefit would it bring to deliberately harm children when you have to pick up the costs? Of course pharmaceuticals make money from vaccines, but it's not a huge moeny spinner (many more productive lines, and vaccines have to be very cheap to make them a viable option). There are huge campaigns by the WHO and various charities to try and eradicate infectious diseases through vaccination. Are these also some sort of con - or are they run by stupid people perhaps?

Also why do you think that herd immunity is a sales trick? It is a mathmatical model for the spread of infectious disease that can be easily replicated with computers (or indeed large numbers of people) and pretty straightforward and uncontentious really. It's called "herd" immunity because it is used in a farming context. Think about chicken pox. My son caught this from someone at nursery. While he was infectious he passed it on to those around him. We thought this was only dd, because we kept him at home and only people who had already had chicken pox came into contact, however as with many diseases the most infectious time is just before you realise you have it, so he also gave it to his cousins. If he had only come into contact with people who were not suspetable then the chicken pox would not have spread, and that's the whole idea. It's like a fire break, if there is nothing to burn then the fire goes out.

Before vaccination the deaths and disabilities caused by these diseases was horrendous.I never quite understand the resistance to medical advance when it has made the average lifespan almoat double and child mortality very rare.The reason some can afford to not vaccinate these days is because so many do and so epidemics less rife.It is called progress.

I also had measles when i was very young and was very sick indeed..no question for me about vaccination my DD!

or even vaccinating her

"Homefirst's medical director, Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, told us he is not aware of any cases of autism in never-vaccinated children." From his own patient population who may be unusual or who may not have correctly reported vaccination levels - it happens.l

I'll take my advice from expert reviewers who are trained to examine thousands of peer-reviewed studies scientifically and independently, thanks very much, rather than one oddball doctor who is talking out of his arse.

Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (published at the time by the Consumers' Association, now part of the British Medical Journal group) reviewed ALL the research on MMR and didn't find anything of the sort. The Cochrane Collaboration - again, completely independent and expert reviewers - ditto. Both DTB and the CC have been prepared to stand up and say unpopular things when it is justified by the evidence. They did say the safety studies on MMR were not sufficient, for instance.

FWIW I agree about thimerosal. But it is not logical to say that concerns about thimerosal make all vaccinations dodgy. You have to follow the evidence, not make huge, unjustified leaps based on your own prejudices.

And your claim about herd immunity is bollocks. It is a well-documented fact.

If you want us to believe it, back it up.

I can't see how this government conspiracy point of view about vaccinations differs in any way from people who think that 9/11 was a CIA plot.

What possible motivation would governments have for implementing an incredibly expensive public health programme other than to err ... improve public health?

minorityrules - that sounds horrendous. I don't know anyone who's had measles but two of my mother's cousins have been crippled by polio so no thanks, I'd rather my DS has the vaccinations thanks.

thanks for the postings , barnacles, but i am with custardo, minorityrules, edam and egypt , who have all posted far more eloqently about this

I agree we need more unbiased information, i struggled about giving DS the MMR, as it was around the time the controversy arose, my HV at the time said, 'if you don;t immunise, you are putting the whole community at risk, and are being selfish'.. how can you make a decision with advice like that??? in the end, after seeking opinions from a number of medical people i trusted, we immunised him. And he is fine. With DD , i did not have to think about it.

I had measles , rubella, whooping cough and mumps as a child, as caught them all before i was immunised. My uncle has very poor eyesight due to having measles as a child. These diseases can do horrific things, and can kill .

Unfortunately, the blanket statemnet in the OP about autism, from Dr Eisenstein does his work a terrible disservice... anyone that uninformed about autism, how could you trust their opinion about the whole vaccination debate?

I think that Custy's point about three legged cats and the price of eggs is very to the point. It is totally irrelevant to say that more children die from asthma than from measles. You can't use that as a bargaining point, it's just totally unrelated! It's like saying less children died of measles last year than there were deaths from incidents involving tea cosies. Or in fact, three legged cats

I worked with someone who's brother had become deaf as a result of measles, and I lost a brother/sister as a result of rubella. On a much more prosaic level I lost a cat to cat flu and bitterly regretted not knowing that cat vaccines need to be boosted every year. Oh, and many many people became disabled (some very severely) as a result of polio, a disease that has been virtuallly eradicated as a result of vaccination.

That's not to say that there aren't safety issues or that things can't be improved (and there are examples of this). Of course sanitation and general health are a big player in how people recover from childhood illness, otherwise the sorts of death rates that are experienced in the third world from measles in particular would be seen here when we have outbreaks. But just because it's not so bad here doesn't mean that these diseases are negligable.

I wonder why vaccinations cause such fierce divisions and venom on both 'sides'?

I'd describe myself as broadly pro-vax but critical. ds1 will not be having his MMR booster, for example, and ds2 will be having singles, but when the pneumococcal came out I was straight down to the doc's with ds1. I think there is justification for some children (yurt's ds2 and ds3 being a case in point) to be unvaccinated, and tend to assume that if a child is unvaccinated their parents have thought carefully about it and have a good reason. A problem with the current vaccination programme is IMO its sweepingness - a real reluctance to work with individual circumstances to offer those children the best protection for them - e.g. it's really bad that yurt's dses can't get a single tetanus.

excactly nooka, and people have forgotten how hideous these illnesses can be, and think , well, no-one gets it any more, why vaccinate? and then you get little pockets of measles and mumps coming up again...

but if your child has been affected by vaccinations in a negative way, then i can absolutely understand why you would want the whole world to know about it.

should be parental choice. My kids are all unvaccinated but ds1 has aspergers syndrome. At the brain injury group I go to there are 4 kids who's brain damaged was caused by their vaccinations (they have got or are in the process of compensation). Brain damage and death happen with vaccination. Both can happen without. You have to make your choices.
dd1 had whooping cough as a baby (confirmed by doc) and it wasn't too bad. 2 of them had measles (don't recall which 2).
Chickenpox was actually the worst and put ds1 in hospital.
But it should always remain parental choice, not the guvmints.

Agree with parental choice. I am vaccinating both dds (dd1 done and dusted, dd2 about to have mmr) but if I had different family history (or dh) I might not - impossible to tell without being in those shoes.

My sibings and I had measles, rubella, and mumps as a child - rubella for me was very mild, mumps was painful and measles very uncomfortable, though I don't have awful memories from any of them. BUT I was lucky, my siblings too, and I am aware of the potential dangers - not to mention the impact on vulnerable kids in 'the herd'.

But there already is parental choice. Or has anyone actually had their DC vaccinated at gunpoint/refused entry to school if they were unvaccinated?

Okay, there is strong pressure to vaccinate your children but that's for public health reasons which I think are eminently sensible. There's also quite a lot of pressure to send your children to school/use disposables/puree baby food etc that we as parents are all subject to and make up our own minds on. I fail to see how this is any different.

Yes, of course there is. Agreeing with the status quo, with regard to that. Controversial as that may be

@ elibean

I'm all in favour of more research into vaccines btw and am very critical of the people who quite wrongly demonised Andrew Wakefield. And if we had a family history of auto-immune disease I wouldn't have gone near MMR for ds (in fact I didn't, he had singles).

But the OP's claims are just beyond the bounds of credibility.

custardo
"fewer people die of measles than the 1400 people who die of asthma in the UK every year"

should be the tag line to a vaccination campaign me thinks

Err but this would NOT be the case if the majority of kids were not immunised against measles

I find these anti immunisation threads so dim - sorry but

PARP

I suspect Custardo meant fewer people die of measles because of immunisation. Scientists are working on vaccines for asthma but sadly nothing is available yet.

If they do create a vaccine for asthma, how many people willl go Ooh, no, I'd rather my child had breathing difficulties, thanks very much', I wonder?

Another vote for pro-vaccination.

Most of my associates unvac'd DCs are still harping on about Wakefield. DH & I researched MMR by looking at studies from Japan and particularly, Scandinavia, where you can't dispute that childcare is very high on the agenda. Scandinavia was using MMR combined jab.

Herd immunity is required to protect the small minority of children that really can't have vaccinations.

i can see why ppl don't have kids vaccinated with MMR but I think it is important children have the first jabs at 2,3 and 4 months. Have you have been to www.pertussis.com and looked at video of baby with whooping cough - very scary!!! And diptheria and tetanus are very nasty.

Agree with Duches, herd immunity helps protect the small minority of children who can't be immunised, and also adults with suppressed immune systems. My DB would not be able to fight off something like measles, he would die.