Correct Adam
In answer to those here who continue to villainize Dr Wakefield, hear it in his own words.
www.ageofautism.com/2009/06/poisoning-young-minds.html
mrshippy.
You know your daughter and your children. Your family will be the ones who continue to look after your child, whatever the result.
Many things alter a person's perception as to how dangerous something is.
Hospital doctors for instance, tell you how dangerous measles is, because the only people they see are the really serious ones who land up in hospital, not the thousands of cases over the last few years, who had nuisance only infections, never saw a doctor, and got immunity.
The parents of the kids with nuisance only infections tell you that it's nothing to worry about, because 99.9% of healthy children who get measles, usually have no serious complications. Earache, is not a serious complication, though listening to some doctors you'd think it was life-threatening.
Everyone's perspective inevitably reflects their personal bias on whatever the topic of illness is.
The easiest way to put measles deaths in the past in perspective in terms of any country in general, historically, is to look at the death decline data, and match that with incidence data. While incidence may remain high, usually death data plummets. Why? Remember that in the centre of London in the 1920's, 50% of children of wealthy parents had rickets.
We don't hear about that so much now. The fact that rickets was a problem tells a lot. If you read the texts at the time, there was a huge move in the early decades of the 20th century to teach mothers about proper nutrition.
That need exists today, and I think what Jamie Oliver did in schools was spot on.
Your grandmothers might be able to tell you about the various codliver oil, maltexo or other nutritional campaigns of the day to get children's bones normal.
Children's nutrition never really got decent attention, until after the second world war. And now, I think it's going backwards again, very fast. The one thing that most affects how a child gets through infection is their long term nutritional patterns, and there is a huge amount on that in the medical literature, even if doctors don't talk about it much.
To assess your family's likelihood of serious illnesses, family trees are very useful, because they can indicate the sort of genetic predisposition that epigenetics can affect Ask your mothers and fathers and grandparents if you haven't got a proper family tree. If you have, study it carefully.
Anecdotal stories about the lady three doors down whose daughter died of measles at the age of two, aren't of any use, if unknown to the listener, the child had an immunodeficiency or some chronic condition that made any illness potentially lifethreatening. That might not apply to your child. Or it might, but you can only know that if you know all the details, not the general outline in local gossip or media hype.
Ask your doctor to loan you his copy of "Infectious Disease Epidemiology" Kenrad E Nelson (2005) if he has one. It's surprisingly easy for ordinary mums to understand. If you read the front of that, you will see the charts with the different diseases, mortalities and years. One of them Table 2-10 on page 42, shows how mortality from various diseases dropped amazingly between 1900 and 1935, before there were antibiotics. In that table, measles mortality per one hundred thousand 100,000 was 13.3 in 1900, but 3.1 in 1935. By 1970, that had dropped to 0.0. And that drop in deaths wasn't due to the use of any vaccine. Antibiotics made only a minor impact on secondary pneumonia after 1950, account for less than 1% of the total decline in death rate from 1880 to 1970.
You need to put each disease (not just measles) into the context of your life today.
A malnourished child in poverty in the slums of Glasgow, has a much higher chance of dying from measles than a well nourished child in Glasgow.
Yes, because your child has certain medical conditions, and has had operations, your child could be at greater risk of any infection, not just measles. Even the common cold might affect your child far more seriously than other. That also applies to vaccines as well.
You have to work out what the chances are of your child coming into contact with measles, (or any infection) and what her likelihood of getting measles seriously is(or X disease). The same with regard to any vaccination. Only you can make a judgement call as to what is best for your child. Only you will live with the result. No-one here can (or should) tell you what actual decision you should make.