TimesOnline has just published an article on the NEW swine flu vaccine - and recommends that pregnant women ask for this in addition to last year's if they had it.

[JosephineClaire]

Has anyone else heard this?

I had a swine flu vaccine at about 10 weeks - I'm now wondering if I need another at 34 weeks...

Appletrees, possible adverse reactions to all other medications are recorded (I know this because my hair fell out while I was taking antidepressants a few years ago, and no I don't believe they caused it) and some meds have been withdrawn as a result, so why do you think vaccines would be treated differently?

Even the health protection agency says "usually there is under reporting" of adverse events.

With the Yellow Card system, there are limits to the alarm being raised. Any reaction would have to set against an average background rate, or there would have to be a cluster of eg 90 pc of events within 7-14 days.

Comparing to backgroud rates looks on the face of it very sensible. For example: over a dozen babies died in a pharmaceutical trial in South America. The company panicked until it found it was as near as dammit to the background death rate. What that means is that there was no investigation into the individual deaths, and whether the trialled medication had had any role.

The system will not pick up on unusual adverse events, by it's very nature: because they're unusual, they will not set off alarm bells.

But don't you see that's how it should be? If the reaction is so unusual that it's not investigated, why are you convinced it must be linked to the vaccine or drug?

If nobody else taking the drug had had the reaction, or the rate of any particular reaction is the same as the background rate, why can't you accept the logical conclusion, which is that it is not linked to the drug? Why are you so desperate for medication to be damaging?

Appletrees,

"epidemiological studies are no indicator of whether any individual has been affected adversely"

I see what that means but you clearly don't!
Even if a risk is one in a million, it does not prove that an individual is not affected. Epidemiological studies are all about relative risks. THey will not tell you about risks to a particular individual.

That in no way discredits them.

No: one is not talking about isolated reactions, just unusual. This is exactly why (you prove my point) epidemiological studies fail to identify damage to a sub group or disprove damage in any individual.

I'm afraid if you look at the history of the 1800 children whose parents had good evidence of damage, it does make you despair that any adverse event reports could be taken seriously. Even the specific details of the twelve in AW's original case study make you think: My God, how could they not look into this?

I heard some radio package, and read on here, about parents with ASD children and gut problems keeping quiet about the ASD diagnosis when being referred to and investigated by gastroenterologist departments. Parents are afraid to be seen to make any kind of connection because consultants won't touch it with a bargepole after what happened to AW.

"That in no way discredits them."

I think many of the details of the specific epidem. studies do discredit them, as you will have read.

However it's not true to say well conducted epidem studies have no value: how could anyone say that?

It DOES discredit the claim to "prove" eg there is no link between MMR and autism. "Studies show there is no link.." is not true. They do not show there is no link and they cannot show there is no link.

You have to be careful what you are claiming.

Appletrees,

As I have consistently said, all studies can do is assert something with a particular statistical confidence. They can v rarely (if ever) prove something 100%.

However, what you are continuoulsy doing is missing out the hard stats and then inferring incorrect conclusions. For example, if a study said that it showed with 99% confidence that there was no link between MMR and autism, you would say "aah but it did not prove it, there is a 1% chance it is wrong". Well that is true, but people have to make their own decisions based on hard evidence and the studies out there are the best we have.

Either people bone up on real statistics including t tests, distributions, Beyes theorem etc or they trust that the people who have conducted the epidemiological studies know these things and have been peer reviewed.

Well actually you didn't know in the first place, you brought it up.

What's your problem with epidemiological studies, you said. So I told you. I can't be bothered to go back to see what you wrote but you didn't seem to be acknowledging then that there was an issue.

"they trust that the people who have conducted the epidemiological studies know these things and have been peer reviewed."

Well this is it, this is the issue of trust. Now I've shown you that three epidem studies were conducted in a way that undermined their "findings", once you looked at them closely. People see the government spending money on "reassuring" advertsising campaigns rather than research. People who previously wouldn't have had accessed to the actual papers, as opposed to the press release, now do, via pubmed and so on. All of these affect trust.

The issue of trust is HUGE. Well done for acknowledging it.

How about:

Studies fail to find a link between MMR and Autism.

or
Mercury in vaccines as a cause of autism and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs): A failed hypothesis

But basically you are arguing semantics.

What you fail to do is provide any evidence that there is a link between MMR and Autism.

To quote from the above linked article:

Regarding the question of vaccines and autism, for ethical reasons we cannot do a double-blind, randomized, control trial of vaccines with and without thimerosal. However, we can do the next best thing, and, indeed, we now have several good studies since 1999 that do just that. Some of these studies are epidemiological; some are ecological. What allows us to use them to reject the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines is an etiological agent that is either associated with or causes autism is a very simple but powerful prediction that the hypothesis makes. Quite simply, if the hypothesis is true and thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) cause autism (or are even merely a significant contributing factor), we would expect that the removal of thimerosal from vaccines would lead to a rapid decrease in autism incidence and prevalence within 2-5 years.

There have now been several studies that examined this very hypothesis in countries that removed thimerosal from their vaccines before the U.S. did. For example Hviid et al3 reported that autism prevalence in Denmark increased from 1991 to 1996 despite the removal of thimerosal from vaccines, while Madsen et al4 looked at the time period from 1971 to 2000 and concluded that autism diagnoses continued to increase after thimerosal was removed from vaccines. Neither study supported a causal link between TCVs and autism, and they were a prominent part of the dataset that was used by the Institute of Medicine to conclude in 2004 that there was no good evidence to support a link between TCVs and autism.

Daemon, there is a huge amount of evidence. There are the medical reports of eighteen hundred children and all the evidence that went with their legal case, just for starters. There's a lot of temporal and circumstantial evidence. Great swathes of evidence. The very timing rise in autism itself combined with these individual cases is a great bloc of evidence.

Now I'm not saying it's proof. AW didn't go anywhere near saying any such thing. But to claim there's no evidence? Where have you been?

Re : the possibility of thiomeral studies.

It would certainly be possible to conduct a epidemiological study of children who have been exposed to thiomersal and children who haven't. Either prospective or retrospective. More likely, for obvious reasons, retrospective now. What is NOT possible is a double blind study. But certainly it's possible to recruit parents for a study who have chosen the vaccination/non vaccination route NOT for the purposes of the study.

Appletrees,

"Now I've shown you that three epidem studies were conducted in a way that undermined their "findings", once you looked at them closely"

All you have shown me is that they were conducted in a certain way, which the statisticians will have taken into account. These are not flaws.

"which the statisticians will have taken into account"

excuse me?

explain that wrt to Japan study.. in what way will those flaws have been taken into account?

you have GOT to be joking

The very timing rise in autism itself combined with these individual cases is a great bloc of evidence.

Read the quote and article I posted...
If the link is as you state, then when thimerosal was removed you would expect a drop-off in the same order of magnitude as the reported increase.

No such drop-off was found. In fact cases continued to increase despite the removal.

So much for that block of evidence.

It would certainly be possible to conduct a epidemiological study of children who have been exposed to thiomersal and children who haven't. Either prospective or retrospective. More likely, for obvious reasons, retrospective now.

Correct.. And it has been done. See the article I posted earlier...

I've been reading this thread with interest. Can I just add: Personal choice, personal choice, personal choice! But more importantly, it's got to be informed personal choice.

I'm 22 weeks pregnant and have been offered the swine flu jab and DH and I have decided it is best for me/baby to get it. DH and I both work in London and commute into work very crowded trains and tubes, I am midly asthmatic. It is the right thing for us, but this morning I was overheard telling my boss (open plan office) that I was leaving early to go to the GP for the jab and a whole heap of rudeness and opinion has just rained down on my head from colleagues, including ill informed conspiracy theories

I weighed up the pros and cons carefully (I have a science degree). It's not an easy decision. My sister is an experienced GP specialising in women?s health and she also worked in the medical A&E team in the west of Scotland last year (most most swine flu-infected part of Britain), who saw the effects on pregnant women first hand, so I?d respect her experience and views even if she wasn?t my sister. She recommends me getting the flu jab. My oldest friend is a pharmacist who has been pregnant twice and I spoke to her too and she recommended me getting it. We talked through all the pros and cons. Another close friend has a PhD in and is a university lecturer in virology and I asked her advice too. Together we weighed up the evidence.

What I've said to my colleagues is that I?m getting highly qualified, experienced, non-hysterical advice from three knowledgable professionals who have a genuine interest in my/my baby?s health. And I'm going with their general advice that,on balance, the flu jab is a good thing for me and my baby. However, that's MY decision based on the information I have, which I believe to be far better than google. I'm still in shock at comments and the level of censure I've had.

Daemon: the study you talk about was flawed because it didn't take account of the 1994 MMR "catch up" campaign.

Larry: I'm genuinely interested and now believe in your absolute faith in epidemiological studies.

Now no more from me, at least for a while. This has put me off real life for too long.

Better things to do than talk to a bunch of mums and dads, eh Appletrees?

it didn't take account of the 1994 MMR "catch up" campaign.

Why should it? The study was in Denmark, the "catch up" campaign was England and Wales.

Any other reasons why we should ignore 1 of many studies all showing the same thing?

Oh no, nothing like that. You can see how much I've posted. Am not afraid to defend myself at all. Just pleased I haven't sunk to the level of some people! Just for now, I said (obviously that meant more than two minutes but my admin is at the computer!)

Hey ho.

Jinty,

Good luck! :)
Hope all is well.

haven't sunk to the level of some people

Yes have to agree with you there... You've certainly failed to show anything that vaguely equates with evidence.

I'm 20 weeks and I was at the doctors today, with flu posters EVERYWHERE and my doc didn't even mention it.

I don't particularly want it, and won't at present. Even though I had pneumonia last year and worry about that.

I will review the situation as the pregnancy progresses and if I feel differently, I will have to decide then.

Each to their own, a personal decision and a personal choice.

Best of luck with whatever you pregnant ladies decide.

Well I had it earlier today. Like JintyMcGinty I made what I think is the best choice for me.

I do feel more woozy than when I usually get the flu shot but feel relatively at piece with my decision. Best of luck to all the pregnant ladies out there making this decision

I see Appletrees ran away without answering my question at 10.38.

Which I repeat here.

'While you're at it, Appletrees, can you also substantiate this claim you made wrt the proposed vaccination of pregnant women with the 2010 seasonal flu vaccine? You said:

' There's a reason it's happening now, and it's a business reason, not a health-driven reason '

I'd be particularly interested to know why you think GPs, hospitals, practice nurses and health care trusts either do not know or do not care that this is the case.'

Deafening silence on that subject, I see.
Can't say I am surprised. At all.