Flu jab

[1234meg]

I just wanted to know if the flu jab was defo safe in the first trimester? I know it's recommended but it doesn't seem great putting that in your body when you're pregnant. I wanna do the best thing for the baby's well being.

So you have no knowledge. Don't post scary rubbish then.

Are you aware of the preservatives and chemicals accompanying the dead vaccine?

I know there is no research

What's your medical qualification?

Definitely get the jab OP, pregnant women are at much greater risk of complications, including death, from the 'flu.

@midsummabreak

You are talking absolute bollocks. There's been lots of research.

Here is a link to some of the research which has been conducted. Scroll down and you'll see a summary.

www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/qa_vacpregnant.htm#studies

@midsummabreak the link I've copied isn't even an exhaustive list!

Are you aware of the preservatives and chemicals accompanying the dead vaccine?

Yes, as a matter of fact I am. And in great detail which I am happy to bore on about because...I work in drug development. I also see the safety data for various drugs and vaccines as it comes in.

You’re aware thiomersal and the preservatives in vaccines are totally fine, right? You’re aware of the different bioavailability of various mercury compounds? And the relative doses given by foods and whatnot?

I’m so sick of people with chuff all scientific background and minimal critical thinking background coming in and announcing that they’ve done research. No you haven’t. The thousands of dedicated scientists and medics who work tirelessly to protect you from grim diseases have done their research. The ethics bodies and regulatory authorities have done their research (tirelessly, excruciatingly detailed, with more paperwork than you can possibly imagine.)

You haven’t done research. You’ve read some stuff on the web. Possibly a quack site like Mercola? Maybe even worse.

Please do not insult the countless thousands of people who work unsung to develop your vaccines and antibiotics and cancer drugs so that you dont die a premature and unpleasant death.

I know there is no research

My god I have hallucinated my entire career

Anatidae
Thanks.
It scares me when people with no medical knowledge or understanding try and scare others. We have a measles outbreak round here at the moment.

My god I have hallucinated my entire career

Well working in drug research, bound to cause some hallucinations if you take the research literally

Natural selection will pick off the anti-vaxxers eventually.

My sister died 10 days after she was born due to my mother believing medical professional's anecdotes about the safety of thalidimide for morning sickness.

This actually is one of the key events that formed the modern drug industry’s ethics framework. It’s a very interesting (and tragic) read - thalidomide itself is mainly harmful in one of the isomer forms. Remember that at the time no drugs were assessed for impacts on the foetus because the medical profession didn’t believe any drugs crossed the placental barrier they were also still reeling from the Nazis use of the statistical monitoring databases in their genocides / so there was actually a (well meaning but misguided) push against collecting safety data on congenital abnormalities
The drug was still pushed in Europe but the impact in the USA was much smaller mainly due to one woman (Frances Kelsey) who basically demanded the data (the same data I see every day) and then blocked the approval.

What happened after thalidomide and the nazi medical experiments was was that much stricter rules for testing drugs were implemented. The Helsinki protocols and then ICH GCP (incredibly, incredibly dull but something I have to know back to front and pass exams on ...)

I think there is still a big issue with pharma ethics when it comes to marketing. At the same time, the scientific side is held to incredibly strict controls. We have post safety data that continues to collect safety reports on drugs and vaccines long after they are released. Sometimes that picks up effects that were not visible in trials (vioxx for example) and the drug is pulled.

Thalidomide, by the way, is still used for leprosy and some cancers.

But anyway. I can assure you thetrthete is a vast amount of research done on all the flu vaccines, including the exciting possibility of a universal vaccine (ill believe it when I see it..) ;)

natsku

I did at one point have a catalogue I could order anything I wanted from, including pure heroin :)

(Of course I never did... controlled substances and all that...)

missed out on your chance for some research-based hallucinating there!

Thanks for your science Antidae everyone needs to make their own choice but decent research is what should be relied on, not scaremongering.

Also entirely hallucinated DH's career. DH says that during the last flu epidemic he saw several people die from the flu (he's a medic and a scientist working on a respiratory unit) and they were all sadly pregnant women.

www.globalresearch.ca/effectiveness-of-the-flu-vaccine-against-influenza/5376190

I stand corrected.
There is research, by the drug companies profiting from the sale of the vaccine

www.cbsnews.com/news/how-independent-are-vaccine-defenders/

‘Natural selection will pick off the anti-vaxxers eventually.’

But if they become a reservoir for disease transmission, then they take people like me with them. I’m newly diagnosed with leukaemia, and even though I’ve had the flu shot it’s far from clear whether it’ll take properly. So the less flu - indeed any infectious disease - going round the better.

There is absolutely no point in trying to reason with anti vaccinators! They are usually the most ignorant idiots you're ever likely to meet. They will reference poorly researched articles and conspiracy theories to make their argument. They do not understand science or the research process or different research methodologies. They will therefore make assumptions about research based on how it's funded etc. Unfortunately their ignorance and stupidity affects everyone. As a healthcare professional, it angers me so much to see the affects of illnesses which are totally preventable. Unfortunately, I see these awful illnesses in children. They are unwell because their ignorant parents have not got them vaccinated.

There is research, by the drug companies profiting from the sale of the vaccine

Drug companies don’t run drug trials. They pay for them, but they don’t run them.

Companies called CROs run drug trials. I work for one. We don’t care if the drug fails or not because we get paid anyway. We are not part of the drug company. We have no vested interest in success or failure because we are contracted to run a trial and collect data. That data is analysed by us and the clinical trial report is written by us.

I’ve worked on many, many drug and vaccine trials. Some have worked. Most have failed to produce evidence of superiority or equivalence. We get paid anyway. Countless thousands of people see every bit of the trial. Sometimes, we catch a site doing something dodgy (it’s happened twice in my entire career, by a site I mean one site out of maybe 100 a trial is run across.) it’s a HUGE deal, and can break a whole trial because our criteria for quality data are so high.

Midsumma your links are exactly what I mean when people come on here and say they’ve done research. you have not done research because if you had any medical or scientific knowledge at all you would see the misinterpretation, and downright lying, in those links.

Trials are run by thousands of people. Hundreds alone work on the data generated. Are you honestly saying that all those thousands of people are rubbing their moustaches and cackling wildly that they’re fleecing the public? (I can assure you they are mainly complaining about slow servers and doing complex things with datasets.)

Recent vaccine trials me and DH have worked on include one for dengue. These save lives.

There’s fuck all money in vaccines by the way - the big money is antidepressants, cardiovascular stuff, anticoagulants etc.

You clearly know nothing about medicine, science, epidemiology or how research works.

I despair of the gullibility/paranoia mix that feeds this attitude.
It happens because the world is a big scary complex place and people can’t cope with complexity. They want a single issue, a single bogeyman, to blame. They can’t accept that autism for example is caused by a complex mix of probably a couple of dozen genes, all interacting with each other and the environment. There has to be A Single Cause to campaign about.

Three hundred years ago it was witches. Crops failed? Witches. Child got a fever? Probably a witch BURN THE WITCH!!!!

But now we have the inter web so it’s vaccines. Sigh.

OP, I had my flu jab at 9 weeks and all fine. Now 18 weeks, all subsequent scans have shown a wriggly baby. I am very glad I did so as my DP has it at the moment and I wouldn't fancy coming down with it!

You can not reason with a pro vaxxer. They often use scaremongering and nasty death wishes upon those seeking vaccination safety for all
You have made so many assumptions here about those who seek to have safer vaccination
I have fully vaccinated my children.
I am just concerned about things such as the drug companies controlling what research they allow the public to read in order to sell their vaccinations. With your knowledge of research, you must surely be aware that drug companies produce a bias on the results.
I do respect the work doctors do, and have also seen first hand just how upsetting it is when children and adults die.
it is such a rewarding and yet exhausting profession.

I hope you can please consider both sides of the issue fairly, without the contempt. I truly hope you are right and all current flu vaccines are both effective and safe.

I am not an antivaxxer '

The problem is that the assumption that there are two equally valid sides to the argument are incorrect.

It’s like having a creationist on to ‘balance’ the ‘debate’ - there is no debate. On one side there is the vast base of evidence collected from thousands of dosing events. On the other side are some strong held opinions.

At no point have I wished anything unpleasant on you or indeed anyone else I’ve had this same (endless) argument with.

Drug safety is an ongoing process and I’m involved in it daily. If a vaccine or a drug has a side effect that gets reported and recorded (even if it’s not clinically related.) this reports are monitored over years. Sometimes you can have an effect that shows up maybe one in ten thousand patients. Now if there were 1000 patients in my trial I may not have seen it. In the late phase work, where the drug is being given to millions of people, those reports start to come in. At that point we start to ask questions like : is this related? Is it disproportional to he benefit of the drug? So for example chemotherapy drugs can cause serious side effects but in balance, they are beneficial. So severe nausea is an acceptable side effect for a chemo drug but it wouldn’t be, for say, an inuprofen gel to treat muscle aches.
If serious issues with a drug or vaccine occur, it gets picked up. Vioxx is a good example.

No drug, indeed very few biological product is free totally for side effects. People have allergic reactions to almost everything you can think of, people can die after penicillin for example, but on balance we keep it on market.

Big pharma has a wealth of issues - Ben Goldacres book ‘bad pharma’ is a great layman’s starter. Where there is money there’s bad behaviour, just as any businesss. It’s more the marketing side than R and D though
There are strict ethical protocols we follow and those are improving year on year.

Actually there is one huge profit maker for big pharma companies that’s free from all side effects (and indeed any effects because it’s just water) - homeopathic stuff. Most of which is made by large pharmaceutical companies :)

And yes, on balance all currently available flu vaccines are safe. I am happy with that