Dare i raise the question....

[CharlotteACavatica]

who has let their kids have the MMR? how do you feel about it? Ihave a 6yo a 3.5yo and a 1yo and my 1yo dd is due to have hers next week, i havent let the other two have theirs and neither shall i be letting dd, but as so many people know its 'supposed' problems im still interogated and asked why why why? i have heard that the more patients your gp gets to have the MMR the more he/she gets paid, if they get 100% they get a shed load of money but if the percentage drops below 90 they start getting charged!!!????

absolutely, socci, immunisation isn't foolproof, hence the importance of herd immunity
I do agree with your points, jimjams. I think, and I have no doubt bored you with this already many times, that the single vaccine seems a bit of an easy answer, and I would be very interested to understand why it might be considered safer.
FWIW, of course help should be available to children/families damaged by vaccines and of course those damaged by disease.

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Socci, from what you say you obviously believe that there is a greater risk to your children from the vaccine than in remaining unvaccinated. I believe the opposite - I have weighed up the two risks and I feel it is riskier to leave them unvaccinated, as the chances of them being damaged by diseases is greater than being damaged by the vaccine.

Also when I talk about herd immunity, my children are also members of the herd - so if they are unvaccinated until 18months, they are only protected from mmr if a critical proportion of the population is. So it isn't just a matter of "little Johnny down the road" my children were also hopefully protected by this herd immunity while they were unvaccinated, and hopefully children whose parents have chosen for good reason not to have them vaccinated will be protected also.

Well the best research on that is the stuff that Aloha knows about. It did show that giving vaccinations in combination was not good for servicemen. Whatever the research showed, the guidelines were changed between GW1 and GW2 and by GW 2 servicemen were only allowed to receive multiple vaccinations if there was no alternative.

I was talking to someone recently who woorks in the field. His view was that we have become too cavalier about vaccination and they're too often given when children are ill (I strongly disagree with "it's ok to vaccinate if your child has a cold" for example- if only because lots of illnesses start with cold like symptoms.

I wouldn't be that happy if my child caught natural measles, mumps and rubella in the same week.

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INcidentally the sorts of model you could propose are something like susceptible child (with leaky membranes) recieves MMR- the mumps component makes the membraines even leakier and off trots mealses into the CNS.

I made that up, its a gross oversimolification, but I've seen those kids of hypothesis bandied about. The MMR work these days though tends to include the role of thimerosal in causing earlier damage. It may be that with thimerosal removed from the bay jabs the likelihood of damage from the MMR has decreased anyway. Except for highly susceptible children like ds3 who appear to have a damaged gut without any exposure to any potential cause (genetic perhaps).

Jimjams, I'm about as pro vaccination as you can get (as you know } and I don't think that you provisors are unaccceptable either. I don't think any rational person should think them out of order

yes I think herd immunity exists. It makes perfect sense to me.
ok let me put it this way:
if you think immunisation isn't effectiveand herd immunity is a myth
then why aren't there more cases of rubella?
why are there far fewer than there used to be?
and why are thre (thank god) so few cases of rubella damage among unborn infants?

but jimjams, catching a disease is not the same as being vaccinated. the effect on the system is not comparable. that's a fallacious argument.
the stuff about the GW syndrome is interesting, I have read some of it, bt I don't know how it cross relates to MMR etc

Of course it won't happen Socci- it's too expensive.

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mine have all had it - dh is a research doctor - medlined all the research he could find, read it all and said he was happy for them have it. Good enough for me.

Be glad you live in such a reasonable country as England where you have the choice - here in the usa no vaccines = no school!!

In personally think that vaccinations that use live attenuated viruses are fairly comparable to getting the disease itself- far more soo than say something like Hib.

Vaccinations come with their own risks. The American compensation system used to charge drugs companies more per shot foor some vaccines rather than others. DT was cheap (they paid about 5 cents per shot into the kitty. DTP was hugely more expensive than the DT alone (it was $2 or something. MMR was expensive as well. The amount paid in reflected the risk.

MB I used to be hugely pro vaccination myself as well. That's something that people don't realise on here.

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socci you may well be right, in terms of emphasis on wellness etc. but I don't really see how one can prevent rubella damage, tbh. Or what vulnerable people could do to avoid measles complications, because the serious consequences will occur in those cases where the person has the least resistance of course. people with auto immune disorders, heart conditions, etc. to talk about them protecting their health is pretty meaningless imo.

you can opt out but your child can't attend public school - which means unless you are wealthy you have no choice

From many of these kind of threads in the past it would seem that the vast majority of parents who choose not to use MMR, go for single jabs.

The fact that they have had the single jabs does not filter into the percentages of those protected against Measles, Mumps and Rublella.

The liklihood is, that in combination those protected against measles, is as high as it has ever been.

There are some who, quite rightly in my view, consider it unwise to vaccinate their children due to a riskier profile of reaction to MMR.

Those that are harping on about herd protection, in all liklihood have it.

The majority of parents do give a toss about things like this, and the hectoring tone of this thread is bugging me!

There will always be naturally occuring measles outbreaks - the vaccinations (single and MMR) are not 100% efective, and there are measles cases in children below the age where vaccinations are rooutinely given.

So in summary, herd protection, in all likelihood, still exists, so lets lay of the lectures and hectoring - please, pretty please

An Jimjams - what are YOU doing on one of these threads???

but we do know how many cases of rubella damage, and of measles.

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god knows soapbox, making myself feel shit.

I'm off - have work to do anyway. Agree with your post!

Podmog - "There are many with good reasons for not innoculating our kids- please don't give us a hard time." I don't think anyone is, on this thread at least.

Jimjams2 on Wednesday, 11 October, 2006 8:31:36 PM - very sensible, totally agree, including individual jabs. My DH recently had to have the whole MMR because he wanted a mumps jab (one of his friends recently had mumps and DH started panicking about his balls).

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"I might feel differently if a) vaccination was very very effective (nearly 100%)" After the booster they can get to near 100%.