Those with unvaccinated children at school/nursery - advice please.

[insnognito]

Ok, am regular here but want to keep my dcs' vaccine status relatively private as obviously sensitive subject. Ds had multiple health problems as a baby and so we delayed vaccinating him, always intended to vaccinate with some but have not done so yet. He is now at school. Dd has had some vaccines so far. I am just wondering, those of you with unvaccinated children in group settings, do you not worry for them? I am thinking particularly of Swine Flu at minute and how it penetrates the lungs more deeply, and whether ds should get a prevnar jab and a Hib jab. Does anyone else have the same worries?

I don't understand why someone who's never met, seen, examined, treated, say, Child A, whose parents say was damaged by vaccines, can say quite categorically that Child A wasn't damaged by vaccines.

I mean, I can't say the child was or wasn't, but so many reports of harm justify a lot more research. Until it's carried out, I simply won't buy any of the retrospective epidemiological crap that's wheeled out in the name of reassurance.

I know quite a lot of gps and consultants as it happens. not one of them is anti vaccination. there are however a tiny, very vocal minority with a book to sell who would try to persuade you otherwise.

and i'm not for telling people what to do at all, i find it very frustrating that things which have been proven to be nonsense years ago are still being spread around as fact. science doesn't work by telling you what to do, it just provides facts and they are free for all to see. the ones telling you what to do are those with an agenda who provide lies instead.

the risk of brain damage from childhood diseases is far, far lower than the risk of brain damage from vaccination. that's just true. you can go and look up the numbers yourself. persuade someone (with healthy children, obviously) not to vaccinate and you are increasing that childs risk of being damaged. simple as.

and i really don't care if i appear rude if it makes just a few people think that maybe the scaremongering which seems to be fairly prevalent on here might not be true and goes and looks up the relative risks for themselves instead. (from pubmed, not an actor and a porn star who think their child is psychic.)

You are telling people what to do, you're saying they "should be vaccinated".

"Things which have been proven to be nonsense years ago" -- so you're not talking about vaccine damage after all?

Vocal minority with a book to sell? Apart from Richard Halvorsen, who would you have in mind? What about Diane Harper? What about Andrew Wakefield, who sacrificed his career (and his family life for three years?) What about the anonymous health professionals in surveys who say they won't?

What lies, specifically?

What agenda? Can you describe it?

The risk benefit calculation you make is impossible because the statistics are not accurate and vaccine damage not researched. So no, it's not "just true".

Ironic that you talk about an unquantifiable risk of brain damage and then accuse others of scaremongering.

Many people who disagree with you use pubmed and link to it a lot.

But yes, I do see one point, you don't care about being rude.

re: diane harper:

www.badscience.net/2009/10/jabs-as-bad-as-the-cancer/

?I fully support the HPV vaccines,? she says. ?I believe that in general they are safe in most women. I told the Express all of this.?

written by someone who actually spoke to the woman

and as for wakefield, that would be the andrew wakefield with the huge conflict of interest who was told repeatedly that his results were false positives before he published them , by one of his students for christ's sake, and still went ahead with publication? the wakefield who was basically paid to come up with a case for parents who were suing for something which has been proven, repeatedly, to be false? don't give me that 'wakefield is a saint' crap. this is a man who carried out colon biopsies on children and paid them for blood, knowing (because he had been told) that the methods he was using were unreliable? these are not the actions of an ethical study. i've been through ethical clearance several times and believe me this would never get through.

and as for vaccine damage not being researched, maybe not by you but it has been researched for the last 150 years by people who actually understand the scientific method, which you clearly don't. where did i say the risks were unquantifiable? they are, and have been quantified, repeatedly. there are some 4400 results here:

www.tripdatabase.com/search?criteria=adverse+events+vaccine

the risk of adverse events for childhood dieseases have been calculated too. guess which comes out as more risky?

anyway, i have better things to do than argue with head in the sand anti vaxxers.

mso: you're not worth the time. But just in case anyone else is taken in by your nonsense, I'll pop back later to correct it.

Mso your post about Dr Wakefield is packed with nonsense you have swallowed from Ben 'agenda' Goldacre's site misinformation and probably constitutes libel.

I think you should read a bit more about the GMC hearing of Drs Wakefield, Murch and Walker Smith and a little less the Bad Science forum. Perhaps you should even go and read some of the doctors' published work.

People who spout unsubstanitated media rumours as truth and who use terms like 'anti vaxxer' (whatever that is supposed to mean) don't tend to get listened to much around here. Neither do people who think that vaccination is 'simple' and that accuse anyone who suggests the issue is a leetle more complex is a liar with an agenda.

Your link to BadScience is about an article and headline in the Express (an easy target), not about the following comments she has made about Gardasil:

"We don't know yet what's going to happen when millions of doses of the vaccine have been given and to put in place a process that says you must have this vaccine, it means you must be part of a big public experiment. So we can't do that until we have more data."

"If we vaccinate 11 year olds and the protection doesn't last... We've put them at harm from side effects, small but real, for no benefit... The benefit to public health is nothing, there is no reduction in cervical cancers..."

"It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11- to 12-year-old girls There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue. This vaccine has not been tested in little girls for efficacy. At 11, these girls don't get cervical cancer - they won't know for 25 years if they will get cervical cancer. ...To mandate now is simply to Merck's benefit, and only to Merck's benefit."

About Wakefield, well if it was as clear cut as you claim it would be easy enough for the GMC I think. But there are more delays in the decision about his future: now we need to wait until March next year. The parents of the children in the study stand by him: he was the only doctor who tried to find out what was wrong with their children. The risk of similar smearing and character destruction is now preventing other doctors investigating the problems of autistic children with gut issues. The journalist who reported him has conflict of interest issues of his own: indeed, anyone on "your" side of the debate who seeks to claim conflict of interest is on very, very, VERY thin ice indeed.

And of course echo Riven and Beachcomber on this.

The statistics. Well as honest research into vaccine damage has not only not been carried out, but is actively discouraged (ibid: Wakefield) there's not much point in crunching numbers which are inaccurate to begin with.

Mso, you are the one who came here with a stated agenda. You said you wanted a robust debate too, but you seem to have changed your mind.

Your views are so oldfashioned. Telling me to put my child at risk so that your child doesn't have to be at risk. Honestly.

If you ever come back, try to tell me how you can know that certain children were not damaged by vaccines. How you can know this strongly enough not to agree with Andrew Wakefield that more research is needed. How do you know this mso?

BTW Mso Dr Wakefield didn't perform any colonscopies on the children from the Royal Free because he was not contracted there as a clinician but as a researcher.

The procedures were performed by Professor Walker-Smith and his assisting pediatric gastroenterologist Dr Simon Murch. The procedures were performed under the ethical clearance awarded to Prof Walker Smith which he had transferred via the Ethical Practices Committee from his previous position at St Barts.

I'm of the opinion that it is always better to try to stick to the actual facts even if they are quite complicated because lots of people were involved.

I think the decisions parents have to make on vaccinations are probably the hardest they have to make for their children. It is so hard to know whether reports, either pro- or anti- vaccination are accurate or biased by financial, ideological or political conflicts of interest. Don't know what the solution to this problem is.

Personally, I chose to vaccinate DD. I have worked with SN kids and there were more with damage caused by diseases than by vaccines. I have asthma and I suspect DD might have. However I know it is not vaccine related, it is hereditary, because my mother has the same type of asthma, as do several others in her family.

I will be having the SF jab and so will DD. She spent 48hrs on oxygen last December due to bronchiolitis caused by a respiratory virus. So she has already shown that a virus affecting her lungs is not good news for her.

I do have a question for people who choose not to vaccinate. Do you think you need to avoid travelling to countries where diseases such as measles, polio, diptheria etc. are still more common? Also would you warn your children when they are older that they are not vaccinated and so they will have to consider these risks when choosing holiday destinations?

Hi mumtoem.

For my part the answer to your first question is no, and the answer to the second is they are fully aware of their status so can make up their own minds.

Sorry: no except for IPV. But if the only option was OPV we wouldn't have it.

mumtoem

as I have a vaccine dsamaged child it is not terribly practical to travel to very off the beaten track destinations but no - we go to places like Spain and the Craibbean without a second thought.
If we ever decided to tour remote parts of Africa then I would probably investigate how to proceed.

As for whether I will tell my children they are unvaccinated I am not sure I undestand the question. Are you suggesting I would somehow contrive to keep it secret? My eldest son is completely aware of his vaccination status as I have discussed any jabs offered to him with him since he was about 10. Now he is 16 I would weigh his choices very very seriously but as it is he still chooses not to.
DD is aware that she is unvaccinated - she is 7. Of course I would always discuss her basic medical information with her - why on earth wouldn't I?

Pagwatch, no I was not suggesting that vaccination status should be kept a secret. After all I don't think it is anything to be ashamed about - we all have to make what we think is the best decision for our particular circumstances.

I was just interested in what people would do in this situation because it came up in conversation with a friend. She has chosen not to vaccinate her DC and was thinking of a touring holiday in India. The thought that her DC might be at greater risk there had not occurred to her. To be honest I don't know how much greater the risks are if you are only visiting on holiday (good hotels, food etc).

Fair enough.
I just didn't get the bit about 'warning' the children when they are older that they are unvaccinated as they are obviously well aware and either understand the consequences perfectly well already ( ie my 16 year old) or will do by the time they reach the age when they will travel independently.
etc.

To the OP, my DS is unvaccinated and I've never worried about him in group settings and his vulnerability to circulating viruses. Until you mention it! (My worry hitherto has been about things like measles etc) It never occurred to me that he may be in any way more vulnerable from SF than a vaccinated child.

Any way, he does currently have swine flu, we are on day 7 and though he has been poorly he is now recovering. It is by far the nastiest virus he has had as far as duration and degree are concerned.

The poster who raises the issue of travelling to far flung places with an unvaccinated child, well it is something I have wondered myself. DH and I used to live in a remote and rural part of East Africa and would love to go back one day with the DCs.

Interestingly, we were both vaccinated with everything possible when we were posted there(via DH's employer = the government). I was never ill at all when we were there, not even D + V. On the other hand, my DH caught malaria, nearly died and spent 6 months in hospital. So I'd probably be more concerned about malaria.

Meant to say as well. If we were to travel to a third world country then I'd make sure that we had the best medical insurance possible that would cover us for air ambulance medevac.

There are few places in the world that we would visit with the children that would be more than a few hours from first world medical care. So I'd make sure that I knew where we would have to go in case of emergency.

Most people who don't vaccinate would vaccinate their child if they thought the vaccinations were safe. The fact that they are full of nasty ingredients is what prevents me putting that stuff into my child's body.

Rubella apparently has the stemcells of parent stem cells from an aborted fetus donated by one of the woman involved in developing the vaccine. Just google it you will find loads of info. Now why the - do they need to put stuff like that in a vaccine.
Don't forget what vaccines are all about. It is about money for the big pharmeceuticals. They will tell you anything to get money for their vacs.

I've no doubt in some cases they can be effective. No one wants to see their child suffer these horrid illnesses but neither should we be lied to and scare mongered to uptake the vaccines.

There is evidence that a child's immunity system is not properly developed until around 5 - 7 years. If we pup them full of vaccines we are not letting their own natural immunity develop. My homeopath informed me that now that my child is older the vaccines are unlikely to have an adverse affect, so if you want to vaccinate but are scared you could always try delaying it for a couple of years. Further more bf is a fantastic way of increasing your childs immunity naturally and comforting them when they do catch a virus or something. So for those of you who can , I would choose to bf over formula any time.

here is also evidence to suggest that children who are vaccinated grow up and become more susceptible to catch everything later in life nad have a compromised immune system. That is true in my case, it is not as good as it can be, because it was never allowed to develop naturally.

As for SF vaccination, read up on the scams about it first esp in america. I did not and will never vaccinate with this hyped up vac.

At present my child still unvaccinated but thinking about having some in the future.
I agree it is a headache to get your head around. Every time my child gets ill, I think right I will vaccinate then she is well and I research vaccines again and I am put off again. Anyone else feel the same?
Best luck to all adn continued excellent health for your children.

Medical intervention often plays havoc with the immune system. There are so many cases of unpleasant side affects and long term damage that I don't see any positive reasons to vaccinate. It is very likely a corporate trick in the guise of health!
One has to ask who gains financially from the prescribing of these untested vaccines? The ingredients in most vaccinations are not part of my diet, or indeed any normal human diet!
See what they are here:

www.informedchoice.info/cocktail.html

insnognito The chances of getting wild measles and swine flu at the same time would be a few million to one, you'd have to be so unlucky.

I hadn't heard of the link between Type 1 Diabetes and the Hib vac.
I stupidly (I feel) Vaccinated my DS with Prenvar at 1.5 yrs and 2.5 yrs and my DD at 4 months. (long winded reasons why)
I deeply regret it as I feel with healthy breast fed children who eat well, there's nothing that will beat the natural immune system.

Im more worried about the effect these vacs may have had on their health and immune system than fear of swine flu.

I was really confused by your comment mso "the ones telling you what to do are those with an agenda who provide lies instead." Are you referring to parents who passionately care about their childrens' health? My only "agenda" in not vaccinating is in protecting my children against dangerous heavy metals and chemicals, genetically modified human cells, etc. It is a personal and heavily researched choice. Pharmaceutical companies who develop and produce vaccines, however, virtually print their own money anymore because they have the government telling the public that everyone needs their product. In the US it can be extremely difficult to get your child enrolled in school if they have not received their full vaccination schedule, so many parents are forced to not give any vaccinations so that they can state "religious reasons" for not vaxing. Thankfully it is not like that in the UK, but even still you are looked at as "irresponsible" and "selfish" for not vaccinating.

The one with the agenda here is clearly the pharmaceutical companies producing the vaccines. Why do you think they offer vaccines to things like Chicken Pox? To make more money! Imagine if you had a product that the government had convinced over 90% of the country to consume (and paid for with taxpayers money too!). You would be rich beyond your dreams. It disgusts me to be considered irresponsible when I am the one breastfeeding each of my children until 2.5years to ensure the best possible nutritional and immunological start for them, feeding them healthily, and homeschooling them at my own cost. I claim no benefits, I have never asked for Calpol on prescription, never given them antibiotics unless absolutely strictly necessary (once) and in every way possible try to live as a responsible citizen. To say that those who choose not to vax have "an agenda" to "spread lies" to others is outrageous and extremely unfounded.

I see many are still believes in vaccines,its all simple stuff to me. Since vaccines simply does not work; I am talking about the fallacy of the "antibody theory",since antibodies do not equal protection of any type, it is only a simple scientific fact that most ignore. Someone please look up the "antibody theory".