anybody else in 2 minds about swine flu jab?

[jlo1234]

i asked my doctor if he recommends me getting the swine flu jab, and he wasnt very convincing. he said its reccomended by the government but he doesnt know much about it himself so he would leave it up to the patient.

a friend said that she had had hers, shes a nurse who works in intensive care unit and said she thinks i should definatly have it because there has been a few pregnant women in there with swine flu and they are really ill with it.

the only thing that is holding me back is the fact that the vaccine is so new and hasnt been round for long enough for us to know if and what the long term side affects might be.

i feel like a guinnee pig and its putting me off, but then again i dont know what is the lesser of 2 evils, risk getting swine flu and putting both me and baby in danger or have the jab and risk side affects that havent been found yet.

i feel like im far enough along in my pregnancy for it to not cause much harm to the baby, (im nearly 33 weeks) but im just not sure what to do! it also confuses me that pregnant women cant have the seasonal flu vaccine but we can have the swine flu one?

has anybody actually had it, if so what made u decide u wanted it and did u regret it?
or has anybody else heard something to make them definatly not want it?

Correction from my last post-

Oh Im so sorry Mosschops, it was HannahsAunt I agree with about the celvapan and what she had to say about it.

I think the Thalidomide experience is irrelevant here too and unhelpful.....over 30+ years ago and given to women in early stages of pregnancy when baby is developing. The sf jab is given in the 2nd and 3rd trimester when baby is formed

As for mercury levels, DH says just avoid your tins of tuna that week which is ight cos the levels in the vaccine are so low.

My 2 dcs have had every availale jab since birth, and the only thing that concerns meknow is that this jab is new. I did read somewhere that there were proposals to offer all pg women the normalflu jab from next summer and the reason they haven't beofre was a cost issue. They've been doing it for years in the state.

My foetal med consultant and very close family friend GP both say I should have it.......I'm still unsure. Probably due to this sort of speculation. DH can;t understand why I'm unsure - there's a jab that can stop you getting seriously seriously ill, when your immune system is knackered. I got the flu last xmas and it knocked me out for the best part of 6 weeks. He doesn't believe for one minute anyone has anything to gain from injecting people with untested, potentially dangerous vaccines...

2 weeks today till i get mine (I'll be 20 weeks).....if i go

(Sorry for pants typing but keyboard playing up)

Thanks Beachcomber and mommymeggie for understanding what I was trying to say and bringing interesting, informed angles to the debate

I know a lot of women who have been offered or given the jab in the 1st trimester and again this is all down to inconsistency in the advice that pregnant women are being given by health professionals. I do think that this is the root cause for a lot of women's worries about getting the jab.

debating this very issues with another pg friend yest. her dh is medic in the army and sought advice from colleagues. i sought advice from a friend in the know re vaccines.
both parties advise to have the vaccine...without repeating everything they said, the main points to think about are:
firstly vaccine is not strictly 'new' just an exisiting vaccine which has a new 'antigen' added. apparantly this happens year on year to cope with seasonal variations in pandemic flu.
secondly in our 2nd & 3rd trimesters are more prone to getting swine flu.
both of the people i asked for advice know their beans, medically speaking.
i was convinced up until talking to them that i wouldnt have it as i am fit, healthy and have no underlying medical conditions but the very fact that you are pregnant is obviously compromising to your immune system.
clearly it's a personal choice, but I will definately be having it now.

meggie* are you aware of the amount of people who contract GBS from normal flu? Much more than those who got it from the vaccine in the 70's.

Again am concerned about people harping back to things that happened 30 years ago.

When doing medical/nursing research for my dissertation - I was not allowed to include research thats older than 10 years for a reason!!!!

Well good on you Moss!! Being nieve is the way ahead. I guess wherever you are studying doesn't seem bothered by the poor people of the world who have been highly affect by these very people who are teaching you that, yes everything is safe b/c we live in 2009! And I'm not surprised if the flu shot shows signs of GBS. But the hot topic of the world isn't the seasonal flu, its the swine flu. The thing about the flu shot is it has been properly tested and not being rushed as the swine flu jab. The 1976 pandemic of the swine flu vaccine was rushed into production and administered to 45 million Americans, at a cost of $135 million. After GBS emerged, government officials paid $90 million in damages to patients who were injured by the vaccine. And you don't find that important? So then what has changed? The rush of another vaccine? The department of health telling you it is safe without the proper testing? You tell me, I'm curious to know what your intelligence in your research tells you. You can live in your bubble. I will always go deeper into the source and at the end of the day those people with the greater knowledge will forever be the wiser.

Ahem, Vioxx was only withdrawn in 2004 which incidentally was the same year the FDA approved its use in children.

There are people around right now who are suffering from distressing and debilitating adverse effects from this particular piece of negligence as we speak.

Actually I am that you weren't allowed to draw on research from more than 10 years ago mosschops. OK if the stuff is actually out of date in terms of changes/technical improvemnets/etc and has been replaced with more relevant info.

There is much research where this just isn't the case though. How concerning.

*naive

wasnt expecting all these messages i normally only get 1 or 2 replys when i start a thread!

Pandemerix has not been withdrawn for pregnant women in Sweden. I live here, am 35 weeks pregnant and was offered it today! In fact, the swedish government extended it's vaccination programme today to inlcude all children from the age of six months and above (they were previously not giving it to the under three's). I'm not sure what 'deaths' in sweden a previous poster is referring to. As far as I am aware 4 people have died in sweden shortly (that is, within a few days) after being given the vaccination. It is not known if their deaths are related to the vaccination as autopsies are still being carried out and the results aren't likely to be known for another couple of weeks. What is known is that one was a 55 year old man who was seriously ill with heart problems, one was a 60 year old woman, also described as being seriously ill with a type of muscle sickness and one was a 90 year old woman (can't remember if she was also ill or not). Can't remember the details of the 4th person.

As far as I can see from the link about Switzerland 'withdrawing' Pandemerix for pregnant women - it doesn't indicate that this is because there is evidence to suggest that it is unsafe for pregnant women, but more that there is a lack of evidence on it's safety. This isn't anything new, and is the reason why lots of us are still hesitating over the jab - there is no emperical evidence available on the long term effects of this vaccine on a human foetus.

I think also to say that 'this vaccine is just the same as the seasonal flu vaccine given to pregnant women but with a different flu strain' is misleading. The seasonal flu vaccine isn't given routinely to women in the UK. It is given routinely to women in the US, but that vaccine does not contain thiomersal or squalene. Pandemerix does and it is these two ingredients which are causing some of us to hesitate, not the antigen itself.

Catski, the fact that the jab has not been withdrawn by sweden has already been confirmed within this thread obviously it's great to hear from people all over Europe as things do get misreported in the media

The original poster was just asking if there were people here who were having second thoughts on the jab and evidently a lot of people are.... jlo guess the thread got carried away without you....!

There is no proven evidence that thiomersal or squalene causes autism. If this fact was proven the governments of all these countries would not be deliberately creating hundreds of thousands of autistic children by administering this jab to pregnant women. What could it possibly have to gain by this? - it is hardly cost effective!!!! Some children who are born to women who have had the jab WILL be autistic as the condition is more common than the number of babies born to women having the vaccine, but this will be a coincidence.

I respect the fact that people have beliefs about the use of certain chemicals in vaccines, especially those who have been impacted by conditions such as autism, however it is unfair to post messages on this websites that state these connections as "proven facts" as this is simply not true. We are not medical experts and if you search hard enough on the internet you can find evidence to support anything.

Yes - all those that have the vaccine may find themselves at the heart of some horrible tragedy caused by the vaccine, but by the same token we are just as likely to find out something else we have all been doing (unwittingly) harms ourselves or our children....new things are discovered everyday!! Many of our mothers drank and smoked when they had us and it was seen to be ok at the time! This is a difficult enough decision to make without all this additional scaremongering and the fact is that we simply don't know how things are going to pan out and regardless of what we decide we are theoretically putting ourselves at risk

Mommymeggie I?m sorry to single out your posts but they are littered with repetitive factual errors! You made two completely unsubstantiated links between GBS and Vaccines, and Thimerosol and Autism

The GBS/Vaccine connection was NEVER conclusively proven after the 1976 outbreak of swine flu. As mosschops mentioned, GBS can (in rare cases) develop in reaction to the regular flu. I quote the following from an article I just came across in the Telegraph (August 16, 2009), ??.because Guillain-Barre can be caused by infections like flu, the new programme may in fact establish that vaccinations actually protect against the syndrome?. Now that is an interesting development.

The Autism/Thimerosol connection has been soundly rejected by some of the world?s largest scientific bodies. These include, The Institute of Medicine, the WHO, the CDC and the FDA -- all of which looked at large-scale epidemiologic studies conducted in countries like the US, Sweden, Denmark, and the UK. And in the US, after removing thimerosal from vaccines, there has actually been an increase in autism diagnoses.

I'm sorry Mommymeggie but you sound like the naive one living in a bubble -- not Mosschops.

Lumpasmelly I do agree with you on the use of medical research as facts your argument is very logical, however I think that the there is also "scaremongering" about the risks of swine flu I have heard a lot of women talking about not wanting to leave their children without a mother, I know that this is a genuine concern on their part.

Obviously someone somewhere is benefitting from the huge sales of this vaccine and to think that there is no alterior motive on the part of the pharmaceutical companies would be naive.

The Vioxx issue is an interesting one just in highlighting that the medical profession can get things seriously wrong

FWIW I chose to have the vaccine last week (Pandemrix) and I am nearly 30 weeks pregnant. I was very much against it at first but the more people I spoke to (GP, GP, pharmacist, Public Health Consultant friends etc etc ) and the more I read, the more convinced I became that I should have it.
It was a very difficult decision to make and if I didn't have a young DC already it might have been a bit more clear cut.
Like most people in our situation (PG) , I thought about being in the 3rd trimester, entering the peak flu season and I got worried that there was nothing special about me that would mean that I would be protected from serious illness or death and that was a risk that wasn't worth taking.
At the end of the day its a personal choice. I just hope I don't live to regret the decision I have made for me, my baby and my family.

We are living in a very sad world if we start to believe that the governments are colluding with the pharmaceutical companies and putting the lives of thousands of unborn children at risk in order to profit for it. If I was in charge of a large drug company I don't think that I would want a scandal like this on my doorstep! I may not be a medical expert but I do understand a lot about the way that risk management works in large corporations.

In terms of scaremongering about the impact of swine flu, no-one knows how swine flu is going to develop over the winter, or indeed how it will mutate - the government and the NHS have been very transparent about this. We also do not know what other new mutations are round the corner....the government and the health authorities are simply trying to do their best to pre-empt a worst case scenario, and while there is every chance we may get to the end of the winter with a nice low death toll (here's hoping!!!) there is every chance that we won't, or that another dangerous mutation is round the corner. We need to know that we can adapt and handle these situations.

Yes - the medical profession CAN get things wrong, but the allegations made by some of the posters on this thread are that they are doing so deliberately and I simply do not believe this to be the case.

Call me naiive, but I want to believe we live in a better world than that, and that myself or my family can go into hospital and receive treatment without second guessing the intentions of those treating me.

lumpasmelly ah yes we are naively putting our faith in the medical profession with its hundreds of years of experience, research and training.

The conspiracy theorists are always going to go deeper into the source (...) and at the end of the day those (other) people with the greater knowledge will forever be the wiser.

Er. Yah.

I don't see accusations of deliberate harm from the medical profession on this thread. I see people being cautious for many good reasons.

One of the reasons is that the official line too often seems to be 'coincidence' or 'no clear link' when things do go wrong. I think most people are grown up enough and realistic enough to be able to acknowledge that vaccines do have adverse effects on some individuals.

Example, current case of teenager developing Guillian Barre within hours of swine flu vaccination.

What worries me is that we, the public, and they, the establishment, actively encourage downplaying or dismissing this sort of incident. I think that is irresponsible.

Ah, I see they have come up with another term to use instead of the now rather tired and obvious 'coincidence'.

I quote;

"There are events that follow vaccination. That?s what they are, they happened to follow vaccination"

In my book an event 'which happens' to follow vaccination and which is a known and documented adverse reaction to vaccination is in all likeliehood a vaccine reaction.

What is wrong with these people FGS?

Ok it is hopefully a rare reaction but they would have so much more credibility if they could just tell the damn truth a bit more often.

Midnight sun - perhaps my post reads wrong, but I'm actually saying that I DO trust the medical community and I think its a sad state of affairs that people are suggesting that we need to be suspicous!

Beachcomber -- I agree that such incidences shouldn't be downplayed. However, I also don't think that this one case should be blown out of proportion until we know more.

This is how the Mayo Clinic describes GBS:

"The exact cause of Guillain-Barre syndrome is unknown. In about 60 percent of cases, an infection affecting either the lungs or the digestive tract precedes the disorder. But scientists don't know why such an infection can lead to Guillain-Barre syndrome for some people and not for others. Many cases appear to occur without any triggers."

GBS occurs naturally in populations and we simply don't know if this boy had any unknown underlying health conditions or if he would have developed GBS on his own from exposure to the H1N1 virus. Moreover, this sort of reaction is so unbelievably rare.

I think the CDC should be cautious before issuing statements that are going to confuse and scare people unnecessarily.

Sure babyboom.

It's always 'underlying conditions' or 'pre existing condition' or 'coincidence' or 'probably the same would have happened had the person caught the disease they were being vaccinated for'.

It's never the vaccine. But we all know that that just can't be true every time.

Autism is a coincidence, GBS is a coincidence, MS is a coincidence, lupus is a coincidence, asthma is a coincidence, seizures are a coincidence and on and on and on. Even death is written off as a coincidence FGS.

Well their sure seems to be a whole bunch of coincidences and not a lot of honest delving science going on.

I'm sick of being told that medicene doesn't know how all these folk got sick but they somehow know for sure how they most definitely didn't get sick.

[sick and tired of reading the word coincidence from official sources emoticon]

Aargh 'there'.

Time for bed I think. Night all.

Here are two websites that concur with my last posts. The first one are lawsuits by families that children were exposed to Thimerosal which resulted in autism. The other is a well known doctor in the states that wrote about how the CDC and FDA covered up mercury in vaccines causing autism.

www.thimerosal-news.com/html/report_5_03.html

articles.mercola.com/sites /articles/archive/2004/03/31/mercury-vaccines-part-five.aspx

Now here is the link I found GBS
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206807/Swine-flu-jab-link-killer-nerve-disease-Leaked- letter-reveals-concern-neurologists-25-deaths-America.html

Smelly, I may not have a PhD but here are the "facts" substantiated by the experts. I read your post on the other thread so no need to write this twice.

Babyboom and Moss....you both can retire back to that bubble.

And as a last post, I don't need to be called a scaremonger or a conspiracy theorists as midnightsun put it just b/c I have concerns about why the government is pushing this vaccine AGAIN on the whole population and can't explain to us, or better yet PROVE to us that this is safe. To those of you that are so confrontational with the ones just trying to debate our reasons, go and get the Pandemrix. Its your body, not mine! If your happy with it, then woo hoo for you! Glad you can make a decision so quickly on little known facts. I sure can't! Good luck everyone, I will be getting my Celvapan next week and even though I'm not too happy about having to get any swine flu shot, that shot will at least let me sleep at night with less worry.