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.

I remember some friends of mine having whooping cough in the 80s. It was horrible. They were really, really ill, the poor things.

There are very big questions for government, researchers and pharmaceutical companies to answer, but claiming that vaccination is some big conspiracy to harm children is just ridiculous. Polio, for instance, didn't just kill children or leave them disabled. Post-polio syndrome means people who are now in their 60s who survived the illness are now suffering again.

For almost all children, vaccination is a very good thing indeed. There just needs to be more thorough, independent and well-constructed research into the very small group of children who may be susceptible to problems with MMR, for one.

Hello I am still here and have not abandoned what I started but it is a busy day. There's so much I disagree with (well nearly all of it) but I haven't got time right now to answer each post individually, or for example to deal with things like edam saying "back it up" on the herd immunity. I will, I will, if you're still interested! I'll follow it all up as soon as I can, which hopefully will be later tonight when my dh is out and kids in bed. Just wanted to let you know I haven't scarpered.

the point is being missed here.
the point is not that vaccines don't work. it is at what price to the normal development of the immune system and to the general health of the child.

emandjules. The pertussis vaccine is contraindicated for children with seizures and brain damage. Couldn't have it for dd even if we wanted too.

I insisted on the pertussis jabs and they agreed after much debate but imported one in from Japan (I would have taken the normal one as I felt that strongly)

So it can be done

Agreed edam. It is one of the really sad things about the Wakefield research that because of the way it was publicised the wrong research was then undertaken. It would have been more valuable to conduct research into auto-imune diseases and utism, rather than this cul de sac of MMR safety.

i'm not sure if the pertussis vaccine is now contraindicated for children with seizures, etc. It is now acellular. But can imagine why you still wouldn't want it. You can get, if you push, a jab just for Diptheria, IPV and Tetanus, without pertussis.

I have to admit that I agree that some people have the luxury of not vaccinating because the majority do. And that doesn't seem fair. But i do think some children may be more susceptible to vaccine damage than others, and more research needs to be done to find that out [auto immune illness history, etc]
Most people here seem to agree that yurt1's ds2 and 3 should be unvaccinated. But that justification has come at the cost of her ds 1's health. It is a great shame that you have to suffer one child's vaccine damage before you are allowed to question vaccines. Vaccines are probably 'safe' for the majority, on balance anyway, compared to the risk of diseases. But there has to be less denial in medical circles and more research into possibly susceptible groups, just as there desperately needs to be more research into why some children, for example, get meningitis and most don't, when nearly all of us are exposed to the same bacteria.

Yes it is. Written by the manufacturers too. Check out the Centre for Disease Control (US). Given they are so conservative and like everyone to be jabbed they contra-indicate the pertussis jab for any child with seizures (not febrile convulsions)

ok sorry! I k now they do give it to children who have had seizures though, unwise as that may be...

Hi.. I started this as a pointer for those interested in the health and allergy status of an unvaccinated population. I think if you really are interested in the health of an unvaccinated population of over tens of thousands of children you could follow my first post and research Homefirst further. If you don?t want to do that you are not really interested and have already made up your mind. The comments the guy made on autism were dodgy, but I didn?t want to edit them out, as you do need the full picture. It?s a practice of many doctors, real doctors, traditionally trained, not quacks or wierdos or whatever (though there are two osteopaths if you think they are quacks). It promotes home birth and that kind of thing. Some people ask why this ?cohort? of unvaccinated children is not investigated further, as it could give some answers to things under the umbrella of an official independent study. I think it?s a good question. I don?t think it?s dangerous to raise these questions. I?m not sure I like it in active convos, as I think it?s better if interested people seek it out. I wouldn?t want to freak anybody out. But it?s an (extremely) rare parent who has no one else to talk to about this, including GPs, HV?s, and so on, so everyone can get a balanced picture.

Herd immunity stuff will follow.

Herd immunity covers what everyone has raised about "the greater good", "social responsibility", "public health". I've never really understood the idea of herd immunity in a vaccinated, as opposed to unvaccinated, population, and have tried to work this out for myself, it doesn't come from a scientific paper. Feel free to take shots.

The government says 95pc uptake is needed for herd immunity. It also says 5pc of that uptake will not be immune (ie the jab doesn't ""take"). So it accepts there could be just under 10pc of vulnerable children at any time. The vaccinated and unvaccinated non-immune are as likely as each other to catch and spread measles. The rest don't need to worry.

If more children are not vaccinated by choice, they will then outnumber the vaccinated non-immune. You are then asking a larger number of children to take a risk for the sake of a smaller number of children. But why is the health of the smaller number of children more important than the health of that larger number of children, when the health status of both groups is otherwise the same?

So we reach the argument of the unhealthy child who cannot be immunized. So all children should take the risk to protect them. Most of the measles deaths that have occurred in recent years have been of children who were ill before they caught measles.

This gives rise to the issue of the number of children made seriously ill or who have died due to vaccines, and to counting and comparing the numbers. But the numbers aren?t counted properly, and vaccine damage is simply denied, so it's impossible to draw up an analysis rather than go down the emotive route.

When I think about how many children have asthma, epipens, anaphylactic reactions, and so on, it really makes me question whether this generation of children is healthier despite the fact they don't get measles and mumps any more. I will change my mind if anyone can prove the cause(s) of the epidemics of allergy and brain disorders our children are suffering. It's not really enough to say -- we don't know what it is, but we know what it isn't.

That's it. I don't mind answering all those other points, well I do a bit, but I'm fully prepared to -- but I suspect that those whose points I'd be answering would only read it to disagree with it, and you've already put your thinking down, so that's ok.

what i don't understand about people who think we would all be well without vaccinations [even with good diet, good hygiene, etc] is that there are diseases that would undoubtedly resurface that would kill chikdren. Unless we found a way of treating all sewage that went into the sea polio would come back, IMO. At the moment we can let our children have 'healthy' bacteria, and not bother washing hands too much, but if there were somthing like a diptheria epidemic, it wouldn't matter how well fed your child was, they would be at risk. I hate this argument, 'well my grandparents were fine' Well lots of people weren't.
Believe me I am sceptical about vaccinations and feel caught between a rock and a hard place. Much more research needs to be done into safety and susceptibility. But I cannot believe that if everyone were unvaccinated some of these diseases would not come back, and that only children with poor nutrition would get them. Sorry.

for edam saw you mention whooping cough... I posted this earlier

My niece was vaccinated for whooping cough but got it anyway.

And she was very ill now has asthma, despite being vaccinated against whooping cough.

My neighbours kid has autism... she was exposed to mercury during pregnancy, she did not vaccinate cos he already has high levels of mercury and did not want further exposure damage to occur...

So basically you are saying because you don't understand the concept of herd immunity it must be rubbish? That's pretty poor reasoning. Immunisation campaigns are based on population statistics, and worked out using models about transmission, it's just about spread, without a pool of people who can catch the disease then you don't get outbreaks, because the amount of people who can catch the disease is much more limited. This protects the whole population because it reduces the likelihood that anyone will be exposed. If you get the protection high enough then you can wipe out the disease completely (like smallpox). This is the ultimate aim of immunisation programmes, but obviously difficult in the modern age because you need to do it around the world.

MMR doesn't actually contain thermisol (mercury) and never has. It was removed from DTP and other childhood vaccinations in 2004.

ruty: hang on there - I'm sure yurt will confirm when she gets to this thread, but her ds1 wasn't vaccine damaged, from memory. Wasn't it more to do with a medication prescribed by a doctor for infected eczema that wasn't suitable for children that triggered it?

(Sorry, suspect I'm being pedantic, but think it's unfair to make the argument on the basis you're claiming).

My FIL had TB in his youth and was in hospital for over a year, but was treated. He was lucky as penicillin had just started being used to treat TB - just a few months before, people in the same ward died of it because the treatment wasn't available. He still lost most of his left lung.

My MIL often talks about the fear she had every time one of the kids in the neighbourhood was sick - did they have any stiffness... was it something worse than just a mild bug? We are so so lucky now that many of these awful diseases are so rare - and this was long after there was proper hygiene and sanitation!

When my ds1 was small, there was a little girl in his nursery who caught measles at 13 mths old - she was due to have her MMR a month later. She got a measles spot in her right eye and last I knew the parents were on tender hooks before they found out whether she had lost any vision in that eye or not.

I totally agree that there are some vunerable people who shouldn't have the vaccinations and need to benefit from the rest of the population's herd immunity. And I strongly hope that there will be tests developed that will be able to identify those people.

However, I do think unnecessary and unscientific scaremongering is a very dangerous thing.

Ah no ... have just searched the archives. Yurt's ds1's autism was linked to thimerosal in the early jabs PLUS the eczema medication. I remember her clearly stating that it wasn't MMR linked - had forgotten the baby jabs connection.

My apologies. Will rely on archives first before memory in future.

i shouldn't really talk for yurt anyway. I think it is a very complex argument and there are no easy answers either way. I don't like over simplified arguments on either side TBH.

No, I agree. The studies are very complex, and I do think it's important to look at them overall and not just single out individual studies as well. At the same time, there are obvious areas where more research needs to be done.

Just wish that our knowledge could move on more quickly to reduce casualties on either side

blisteredbarnacles i think you make an awful lot of sense.

sophable you know I am sceptical about vaccines. But can I just ask, do you really think if all chidren were unvaccinated diseases wouldn't return? [eg diptheria, polio] and if they did, would only the children who did not have adequate nutrition would get them? Genuine question.

I think at the very least vaccine decisions should be based on individual case histories (family ones in teh case of babies obv).

i think it obscene that the vax schedule in this country has been brought forward to inject babies of a few months old simply because hv's 'have' the parents at the point.

i also believe there is a strong argument that vaccines have a negative impact on the health of the very young bodies they are administered to.

agree with all that certainly. Just not sure what would happen if no one vaccinated. Many things would have to change I think, eg public hygiene. Don't have the answer though.

barnacles, i am interested, but it is a moot point ,as both my DCs are vaccinated. I do not understand the complexities of it all... I made my decision to immunise on the basis that shoul d my children catch anything or become very ill from something i could have prevented, I would have felt so guilty. If immunisations are available for these illnesses, then surely they are dangerous enough to be immunised against? I think that single jabs should be easily and freely available for parents so they can choose without resorting to paying privately and that they should not neccesarily have to be given so young. Parents should have more choice than they currently have. but i do not beleive that no vaccination for children is preferable.

Dr Robert Mendelsohn received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Chicago in 1951. For 12 years he was an instructor at Northwest University Medical College, and an additional 12 years served as Associtae Professor of Pediatrics and Community Health and Preventive Medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He was also President of the National Health Federation, former National Director of Project Head Starts Medical Consultation Service, and Chairman of the Medical Licensing Comittee of the State of Illinois.

He says: "Most doctors insist that the decline is due to immunization with the DPT vaccine, but there is ample evidence that the incidence of diphtheria was already diminishing before a vaccine became available.....Today your child has about as much chance of contracting diphtheria as she does of being bitten by a cobra. Yet millions of children are immunized against it. This despite evidence over more than a dozen years from rare outbreaks of the disease that children who have been immunized fare no better than those who have not. .....In view of the rarity of the disease, the effective antibiotic treatment now available, the questionable effectiveness of the vaccine, the multimillion dollar annual cost of administering it, and the ever-present potential for harmful, long-term effects from this or any other vaccine, I consider continued mass immunization against diphtheria indefensible."

He died in 1988. If you look further there's lots more to find, if you think this is out of date or you want the opposing view. This is one viewpoint but he is not alone.