Decided against vaccinations for dd...... thoughts please

[bogie]

We had full intentions of vaccinating dd (ds-3 had his baby vaccines but no mmr) but our helth visitor left we haven't had a health visitor since dd was 2 weeks old, our gp practice is rubbish and even though I registered dd after the birth they lost the slip and had no record of it.
So we didn't hear anything about her jabs and when they needed to see her, nor did I have a postnatal 10 week check.
I phoned a few weeks ago when they said they didn't know we had a new baby and that someone must of misplaced the forms dd is now 4 months(18 weeks) and they said we need to get her in asap for her jabs but they have no appointments untill the 16th of Jan, We fly to USA on the 16th so we can't do that day she said well thats al we hae so it will have to be when you get back in feburary.

So I decided to reserch the vaccines and came across lots of anti-vaccine sites including this one
www.vaclib.org/
articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/11/11/some-parents-are-home-schooling-their-kids-to -avoid-vaccinations.aspx and we have decided not to vaccinate her based on the many sites we have come across, also the fact that we have alot of autisum in our family including my younger brother who had the mmr whereas I didn't have the mmr.

So I am interested to hear other peoples poins of veiw

Sorry to hear that, Riven. Auto-immune diseases altogether are a pile of poo, and desperately need more research.

Also I think there should be a non-vaccinators 'private group' if MN starts them up. There's certainly plenty to talk about once you've decided not to vaccinate, and being flamed is the last thing you need.

Couple of points.

TB vaccination which used to be mandatory for school entry here in France has recently been withdrawn as studies have shown its lack of efficacity.

Ben Goldacre is not a reliable source as he has links with pharma lobbies. His book, website, forum and newspaper articles are all to be taken with a pinch of salt and a reminder of his connections with dubious organisations like the pharma funded Sense About Science lobby.

Silverfrog sorry to hear of your autistic child and thank you for bringing up Hannah Poling's case as it makes a change from me doing it.

Hannah Poling has won her case in Vaccine Court in the US linking her autism to vaccines she received. This case is HUGE as it has forced the authorities to change their stance from the oft repeated dogmatic "there is no link between vaccines and autism". There is a link between vaccines and autism, it has been conceded in court. What remains to be found out is how many people have been affected amongst all the thousands of families who have been told for years that their connecting autism to vaccinations was crazy.

Riven I have a friend who is a nurse and who developed MS after repeated Hep B vaccinations.

It has been unofficialy admitted by the hospital she is no longer fit enough to work at the the vaccinations are the likely culprit for her condition.

Kids at my son's school have mumps.

I've often wondered if frequent tropical travellers get more auto-immune diseases due to the vaccinations they have to have. I hadn't thought about nurses.

thanks, beachcomber. dd1 is doing very well at the moment.

what really worries me is the way parents' concerns are automatically dismissed. Even with our family history (autism and aspergers rife in my side of the family, my step daughter also has aspergers, and then dd2's suspected mitochondrial disorder) doctors still treat me as a loon if I dare to ask questions.

dd2 is 22 months and completely unvaccinated. At her last paed appointmetn, the paed told me i should vaccinate, as "she is clearly fine - look at her" (she is indeed happy and healthy, very possibly because she hasn't had any vaccines). I did resist the urge to point out that if she was that fine, why were we even in his office wasting his clearly valuable time

As regards chickenpox - most deaths are in the adult population. If there is any chance that giving the vax to v. young increases the incidence of CP in an adult I would avoid it. I would have however considered vax my children if they had got to their teens wothout contracting CP.

I have had it as a pg adult BTW and it was grim.

To the OP - as regards other jabs I think it is a wholly personal decision and I wouldn't judge you for not vaccinating as long as it is a well informed decision. Becoming well-informed isn't easy I think.....

God i find this so stressful as i know all parents do.

DS2 is 12 months - he's had all his jabs so far although i delayed them all as he was poorly at birth. I'll also delay his mmr until he's nearer 2.

I will vaccinate but with DS1 i found the day of his mmr i literally felt like i was jumping off a cliff with him and god knows what would happen. Luckily he's fine but i wish i could be as sure as others that there is no link between mmr and autism.

If i was the poster with a family history of autism i'd be very wary of having mmr and would definitely want to talk to some specialists.

Temerity I agree, would love a group or thread devoted to this but it wasn't accepted.

What are "pharma funded lobbies", with regard to Ben Goldacre?
Wiki entry He is certainly someone I would trust having read a lot of his articles in the Guardian.

And I found the article madlentileater linked to fascinating reading, thanks mle

So some people don't mind cursory opinions off the internet..

What is also of concern is that sometimes we will not know if our children are immunocompromised and so should not have the jabs until too late. My ds1 was immuno compromised ( but has grown out of his particular disorder). As a result he was seriously ill as a young baby. Had he had the jabs we would have been in a serious mess. His immunologist advised us to vacciante singly and late. He is now 9.5 and has only had the first shot of the DTP as he cut himself in the park on rusty metal and needed the shot. Even at this age and with a system supposedly now in good order he slept on and off for 2 days and got a mild fever.

None of my subsequesnt kisd are vaccinated. It is a hard decision and sometimes I feel worried but I can't , knowing what I know, stickk those needles into my kids.

"Ben Goldacre is a British medical doctor and journalist, and the author of the The Guardian newspaper's weekly Bad Science column.[1] He works full-time as a junior doctor for the National Health Service[2][3] and is a registered psychiatrist. His first book, also called Bad Science, was published by Fourth Estate in September 2008.[3] His father is Michael Goldacre, professor of public health at the University of Oxford, and his uncle is science journalist Robyn Williams.[4] He studied medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in his preclinical studies in 1995.[2] Before going on to clinical medicine at University College London, he was a visiting researcher in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Milan, working on fMRI brain scans of language and executive function. He received a masters degree in philosophy (funded by the British Academy) from King's College London.[2] He is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and is a research fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.[6]"

Not very cursory imo

There are plenty of very highly qualified people who disagree with him.

Parents have to be able to make a decision that is theirs and theirs alone.

Regarding Ben Goldacre and pharma funded lobbies.

The following book by investigative journalist Martin Walker is interesting.

www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?start=1780&end=1800&view=yes&id=2073#newspost

Ben Goldacre repeatedly misses the point wrt the MMR. He dismisses/ignore the concept of there being a small subgroup of those with autism who have been affected when that is the whole point.Yes, yes we all know MMR is safe for the majority. Not interested in that. Most kids can catch a viral infection without losing all their speech and becoming learning disabled too.

I would love to hear BC's response to Richard Horton's comments at the GMC (Richard Horton- editor of Lancet, no friend of Wakefields said the science in the original paper was good and still stands). AFAIK he's never commented.

Ben goldacre is a v good thing indeed.
He really does talk sense.

Vaccination is safer for the vast majority of children than catching a childhood disease.

And the guy that started the whole MMR autism scandal? Widely miscredited.

Read the WHO website for honest information

This link to Ben Goldacre's site would support that:here.

He defends Wakefield.

I mean support what you said jute. He defends Wakefield but still maintains his support for MMR.

I find the whole article extremely interesting, especially the bits about other countries having no problem with it. Apparently it's only us Brits.

Will check out your link now beachcomber, thanks.

Sorry meant to post the link to the pdf of the free ebook, not the review of it.

www.slingshotpublications.com/dwarfs01.pdf

BlueJelly I'm guessing that you are refering to Dr Wakefield.

Whilst he has been the victim of a media smear campaign and witchhunt by the GMC, his science has never been discredited.

There have been numerous flawed studies claiming to refute his findings but none of them actually address his work directly or properly attempt to replicate his research.

His 1998 Lancet paper stands scientifically unchallenged.

Have just taken the time to read Goldacre's article as linked to by Modernart.

Goldacre is so not 'defending' Dr Wakefield in that article. He is dismissing him and belittling his work.

The article is full of misinformation, inuendo and blatant mistruths.

Goldacre says for example that the MMR/autism link is a 'scare' that is nonexistant outside the UK. Well try telling that to the 5000 families currently engaged in the Autism Omnibus Proceedings at the Vaccine Court in the US.

He also misrepresents Wakefield's 1998 Lancet paper as being about MMR and autism. The paper is not about this, it is about the discovery of a new previously unseen bowel condition that occurs in some autistic children. I guess Goldacre is banking on the fact that most people won't have bothered to read the actual study itself so he gets away with this nonsense.

He 'defends' Dr Wakefield's right of freedom of speech to express his 'bad ideas' whilst failing to mention that Wakefield's science remains unchallenged. There are no 'bad ideas' in Wakefield's work, just unpopular ones. This article is just on the fine line of being libelous but is carefully and cunningly written in the 'alledged' style that Ben and all the other 'quackbuster' crowd use.

Whenever I read the work of the odious Goldacre I always come to the following conclusions;

Either the man is stupid and a bad journalist because he seems to get his facts so wrong so often (unlikely 'cos he seems pretty cunning to me).

Or he is very clever and has an agenda (my money's on this one especially considering his links with Simon Wessely, King's College, the IOP, Brian Deer and the lobby the Science Media Centre).

Still I'm guessing someone must like the man because he keeps winning all these HealthWatch and so on awards (which just happen to be funded by pharma groups like GSK or GM food boards).

And people swallow this manipulative, media spun crap, hook, line and sinker. So many people seem to think that Goldacre is just fab and quote him as some sort of authority. The man is a pharma shill alledgedly (don't want to get MN into trouble although I'm far from the first to say it) .

Seriously, anyone who reads the dangerous crap he writes should look into who this man actually is. I very much recommend Martin Walker's free ebook as linked to above.

Also worth a read are the articles on the oneclick website.

Oh I read that article.

He is wrong about it not being a concern elsewhere. Certainly in the States MMR is big news amongst those affected by autism (as vaccinations are in general- in fact far bigger news than here) - he's being a bit- dare I say it disingenuous there.

Most (all?) of the work that is being conducted into the immune system and/or vaccinations and autism is being done in the States (some in Canada thinking about it). Yielding interesting results, although early days as this work is pretty much parent funded (and costs millions).

Wakefield's work has not been miscredited. Read what was said about the paper at the GMC trial - it was said that it was an excellent example of a case series and it's findings still stand- this was from the prosecution - not from one of Wakefield's.

It wasn't about the safety of the MMR at a population level (yes yes -and again- of course we know that MMR is safe for the majority and probably safer than catching measles at least, but that is not the case for every child - Wakefield and others are interested in the times when that's not the case. Perhaps).

The immune system in many individuals with autism is odd. This is being investigated further. No escaping from that.

Doesn't help that 'autism' is many different things. In the UK 99% of the work on 'autism' is actually on Asperger's or vv high functioning autism. This is not necessarily the same thing as non-verbal, incontinent, lifetime of 24 hour care autism. Big generalisation because there are overlaps, but the two types seem to be inherited differently, and have different numbers of contributing genes.

My family history- no autism at all, but a long list of autoimmune disorders in close family relatives, severe vaccine reactions and a sibling who regressed dramatically following a reasonably common viral infection - and remains profoundly disabled. I'm not sure the 'vaccinations are safe for the majority' is that reassuring for ds2 and ds3 - at least not until we know more about the immune system and autism.