Parents withholding vaccination shots

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
With the outbreak of measles, vaccinations has become a hot topic again. Somebody very close to me believes vaccinations are dangerous for kids and that the pharmaceutical companies are behind the increase in shots the kids have to now have (example: hepatitis B).

There is a doctor in our state who doesn't force parents to vaccinate her little patients as she also believes they are dangerous and that it should be up to the parents.

How do you feel about this? When my kids were babies, they did not have as many shots as they now have, although I have to admit I didn't pay that much attention. To me, you vaccinated your kids and if the pediatrician recommended a vaccine, I agreed to have my children get it.

I don't believe vaccinations have anything to do with autism. I believe medicine has pretty much gone over that and found it a myth. I also don't think mercury is put in shots anymore, are there?

I had a cab driver recently who was talking to me about the flu shot and how she'd never have one. I think it's an interesting topic. If I'm right, this type of controversy goes on all across the globe, with many parents fearing vaccinations. I'm curious to hopefully hear from other posters on their feelings, especially those who live across the pond.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
My two cents: I have turned down SOME vaccinations for my kids - the ones that are fairly new, and really are not proven. MMR? hands down yes, along with a few others (polio, diphtheria, I don't remember the others).

But vaccinations are not 100% risk free. I believe some vaccinations are being pushed through the system too fast, due to political expediency. If a parent wants to turn down the HPV vaccination, I'm fine with it - there is no generalized public health risk, as there is with measles, rubella, polio.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
But the MMR is the so-called "dangerous" one.

I don't see the point of Hepatitis B. It is impossible to contract it unless you have intimate body fluid contact or if birthmom has it and passes it on. Why not test the moms and only vaccinate the child if bio. mom has it??

I'm not sure what the other new shots are. I agree that HPV shot should be up to the person.

I don't like the measles coming back though. Kind of scary. Whooping cough is making a comeback as well. But, true, that vaccinations are not without risk.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
About the Amish - we have quite a few Amish and Mennonites where I live. I'm not sure if they vaccinate their kids or not. I think that most of them do not, the ones here at least don't. But their children are not enrolled in the public schools either. They have their own schools within their communities and their kids aren't really out in the public that much. They're rather isolated in their rural communities and not out where they would be exposed to a lot of communicable diseases. I've never heard of any outbreaks in the local Amish and Mennonite communities.
 

Nikimoto

Pursuit of peace
I am not exactly across the pond, but willing to comment on my own experiences. I have 5 children, ranging in ages from 23 down to nearly 3, all fully vaccinated to the best of my knowledge, save my toddler who is unable to receive his final MMR. According to the CDC, not only is the MMR perfectly safe, contains zero Thimerisol, and causes zero autism, but it rather unsafe to prevent our children from taking it. I saw my youngest daughter develop a mild fever for one day after her first round of shots at 2 months old, can't remember off the top of my head which specifically, but then feel secure in the knowledge she should never catch those diseases due having developed antibodies for her protection.
One good way I have seen a medical professional describe vaccinations is to compare them to seatbelts; Consider whether you were offered all the latest information, statistics, and safety data on car seats and seatbelts, yet you were told to make your informed choice because it is such a personal decision. Left to hands of those who don't take the time to read all the research, or enough of it to grasp the gravity of the situation, it seems completely ludicrous to consider leaving such a horrendous deficit in life saving safety up to choice.
One terrible experience with my eldest son will always stick me, and I wish there were some way to go back in time and change it, but in the late 90's, the Varicella (chicken pox) vaccine was fairly new, I was a divorced mom with only Medicaid to support our family's health, there was no9t a lot of info and/or availability for this vaccine at the time, and though he was thought to have had a mild case of it, I was informed he could have the Vax if I thought it was not chicken pox, but I really did not understand enough and wish they would just have told me it was necessary. Because shortly before his 14th birthday he caught the chicken pox with vengeance. It was not the least bit mild or humorous, and watching my child suffer like that renders down all the quandaries I may have held up until that point. Anti-vaxxing seems sadistic after what I saw, and I have never been opposed, just lacked the availability and knowledge. Chicken pox can be moderate to sever, but I would not call it mild. And I was stunned when people began calling me up and asking if they could bring their kids over to catch it from him. I explained his symptoms in detail, and hope it shed some light on the reality of something many people seem to take so lightly even in the information age;

Mandatory 2 weeks barred from attending school
Full body pox, torso, limbs, head, inside ears and throat
Close call going to the E.R., there were a few times I was concerned he couldn't breather past the swelling, but he had just struggled to swallow, which is necessary in order not dehydrate and to take medication and eat something solid
Moderate to high fever, 102 ish most days, sometimes spiking up towards 104 if he was in a good sleep and his Motrin wore off.
Self-described bodily misery, muscle aches, bone pain, sore throat and ears
Inability to sleep well most of the time, for the first week

And this brings me to my final point, that chicken pox is considered to be somewhat milder and less dangerous than measles, which is probable, notwithstanding my son was older than most patients.

If there is some slight, tiny, minuscule risk associated with MMR, we owe it to ourselves as parents to authorize that risk in order to prevent heavy suffering, brain damage, and the risk of death associated measles and past measles infections.
Compare it again to the car seat and seatbelt usage if you will, there is a risk of suffering whiplash, seatbelt bruising, and some broken bones if in a near fatal car crash while properly buckled. But you increase your chance of getting out alive, and that of your innocent children.
 

SuZir

Well-Known Member
Vaccines are not harmless. Most are quite safe and negative side effects are minor and of course most of diseases they are against are much, much worse, but they are not harmless. And some may still have very unexpected side effects.

Around here we are still having an issue regard the swine flu vaccine and how to deal with the aftermath and how much should government pay compensation for those who got chronic, life altering side effects from that vaccine. One of the used vaccines was not a good match to our genetics. It didn't cause much same problems outside of Scandinavia, not at least that is reported (though I think they had a bit similar results in Ireland), but here it made juvenile narcolepsy to sky rocket. Now we have ten times the amount of narcoleptic kids than we had before. And with kids it is not simply about them having trouble staying awake, instead the disease changes the whole kid and especially behavioural effects are huge. Previously well behaved kids who did well at school and socially have turned into aggressive, violent kids with constant meltdowns and inability to manage school and social relationship (it is basically sleep deprivation that causes these issues in kids in case of narcolepsy.) Stories of these families are horrible and everywhere around the news. Many of the kids have needed to be placed to Residential Treatment Center (RTC) because parents can't manage anymore and so on.

Of course we can't know how many would had died because of the swine flu without vaccines nor we do know who of those kids would had gotten narcolepsy anyway, even without vaccine or if the getting the actual swine flu would had triggered onset of narcolepsy too, but we do know that we now have ten times the amount of kids with narcolepsy we did have before they were vaccinated against swine flu.

Then there are issues concerning our immune system and how it adapts to fever sickness to battle. There has been some talk about rise of the auto immune diseases and allergic issues may be caused by the lack of diseases for our immune systems to battle when we are young. This is one argument I know many use for the reason not give their kids vaccines against many of the milder diseases they nowadays have vaccines for. And it was also a reason I didn't get my kids the chicken box vaccine though it was available (though not part of our national vaccination program and so we would had needed to pay it ourselves.) We did choose to vaccinate our kids against few extra things aside the basics like MMR, Polio, Tetanus etc. but held off the most still experimental vaccines/vaccines to milder things nor do we usually take seasonal flu vaccines etc. Nowadays difficult child takes also a flu shot because his employer really wants him to do so and he doesn't want to fight that, but none of us others do. Things with that would of course be different if we were in the risk group for more than just feeling lousy for two weeks if we catch the flu.
 
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muttmeister

Well-Known Member
All vaccinations and medications can have side effects but the side effects from vaccinations are few and far between and science has proved again and again that those side effects do NOT include causing autism. Not getting the vaccinations allow people to get the diseases and the side effects from that are that some people die. I am old enough to have had measles and mumps and rubella and I lived through the time when kids were dying of polio and other diseases that are now preventable. I am lucky to have lived through that time. My mother was old enough that half of her siblings died before they were old enough to go to school. Have people totally forgotten what these diseases can do?

I have very little patience with parents who will not vaccinate their kids. If they want to put their own children at risk I suppose that's their (poor) choice but the problem is that they are putting others at risk as well. A few people can't be vaccinated because of immune problems and treatments for other diseases like cancer and babies can't be vaccinated until they are old enough and they are the most vulnerable if they do get exposed. How dare you run the risk of exposing my kids and grandkids to preventable diseases! When you agree to live in a civilized society you agree that sometimes you have to put aside a few of your ideas for the good of the whole group. If you don't want to vaccinate your child, go live on a deserted island someplace where you aren't running the risk of killing my children and grandchildren,.

I am tired of living in a country where Joe Blow off the street gets a stupid idea and then promotes it even though it is against all science and reason. I've heard people like Jenny McCarthy saying her child got vaccinated and then he got autism so the vaccination caused it. That's like saying I ate beans for supper and then I fell down the stairs so the beans caused my fall.

Vaccinate your kids to protect them and also to protect others.
 

nlj

Well-Known Member
My friend's younger sister suffered permanent brain damage following a vacination. That was in 1970. She now lives independently, with support, but her childhood was particularly hard. Her parents split and her mother in particular has never really got over the guilt of knowing that she indirectly caused her healthy daughter to be damaged in this way. Maybe there was some reason, some predisposition or risk that was not known in 1970. All my children have been vaccinated. I do respect those who may decide against it for specific medical reasons though.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
I know what you mean, Mutt. I've been doing a lot of family tree research on Ancestry and some of it is just heartbreaking. Just a few generations back, almost every family had lost a child to those diseases that are so easily preventable now. My own grandmother started out as the third of five children. But when she was five, her seven year old sister and year old brother died of diphtheria. Can you even imagine?? It was so common back then that few families escaped the loss of at least one of their children. This doesn't happen now because we have the way to immunize our children against these diseases. People who choose not to immunize their children are playing with fire, not just for their own children but society at large. It's not just measles that could make a comeback if people choose not to immunize their chilldren. Yes, we have antibiotics now, but do people really want to take that chance?
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
This is a very interesting thread to me and I am uber-interested in those across the pond simply because I know there is more resistance there (well, I don't KNOW, but I think...do correct me if I'm wrong).

I would vaccinate my kids if I were young and had babies. But I believe I did ask the pediatrician, with my youngest one, Jumper, to give her the MMR seperately, rather than three in one. I don't recall how it was done though...too long ago and it was no big deal.

When I worked at Head Start we had several whooping cough outbreaks. I had to get re-vaccinated for whooping cough to work there. I think it was just a tetanus shot.

I also was forced to get the flu shot. I had never had one before mostly because I didn't think about it...I haven't had the bonafide flu since I was in my 20's. But I've had it every year since then with no problems. Having said this, I do believe some people do have problems with shots.

This vaccination controversy is huge where I live because many people, especially those who are from other countries (not European countries, but mostly far East) have not vaccidnated.

Jenny McCarthy needs duct tape over her mouth. She doesn't know what she is talking about. It has been proven over and over again in the medical community that it is not vaccination shots that cause autism, but there is always somebody willing to listen to a celebrity, even though they are entertainers, not medical experts. Blows my mind, really. Yet Jenny McCarthy and the even scarier Tom Cruise (Scientologist) and Jon Travalta (who lost his son) will have an influence over many people, even though they have no medical credentials.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
I did ask the pediatrician, with my youngest one, Jumper, to give her the MMR seperately, rather than three in one.
This option is actively presented here as an option. Most parents choose the single shot, to avoid three shots, but there is nothing wrong with splitting it up.
 

pandora404

New Member
This is the view for Australia. Well my view.

Only parents in the developed world have the luxury of declining vaccinations. If those anti-vax parents suddenly had to relocate to some country where those diseases were prevalent, believe me they’d be the ones first in line clamouring for their kiddies to get injected.

In 2009 in Australia a four-week old baby, Dana McCaffery, died of whooping cough on the NSW north coast. This place is a sort of hippy area—these days quite a rich hippy area—where many enjoy an alternative lifestyle.

Following the completely unnecessary tragedy of this young baby’s death, her parents led a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of vaccination. Sadly the parents later complained they were “vilified” in their community “by anti-vaccination bullies”. Even sadder was that the mother claimed that the stress of being a target of so much hate caused her to miscarry multiple pregnancies.

Since 2013 we have had the so-called “no jab, no play” rule which only means childcare centres in this state can choose to exclude unvaccinated children. I’m pretty sure they can still attend public schools. Possibly counterintuitively, or not, it is the richest areas of our state that have the greatest numbers of unvaccinated children (or maybe they have the greatest number of selfish parents who don’t like “being told”).

What confuses me is that I saw a documentary on TV that showed how autism which developed in previously normally developing children appeared to have originated from the strong antibiotics taken by the children killing the good bacteria in the gut. (Everybody! Drink that Yakult now!) I got the impression that this connection between late-onset autism and gut bacteria was widely understood.
 

nlj

Well-Known Member
This is a very interesting thread to me and I am uber-interested in those across the pond simply because I know there is more resistance there (well, I don't KNOW, but I think...do correct me if I'm wrong).
I don't know where you got that information from. It's not the case in the UK.
I just think, because of your health insurance culture, maybe you're a lot more forced to have health checks etc and anything preventative, maybe there's a lot more medical interference, in general, in the USA than here. I also think you have more of a 'compensation culture' wih medical staff frightened of being sued for negligence, so maybe overtreating, although that's becoming more the case here now sadly.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Kids' vaccinations used to contain thimerosol. It has been taken out. Public outcry does have an effect.

Flu shots still contain mercury. And a form of formaldehyde. (See link below.)

We do not get flu shots. This year at best, they combat 23% of flu mutations. (2014/2015). This is the CDC's own claim. It is an assault on your immune system, especially if you already have a compromised immune system. The irony is, you don't want the flu, either, if you have a compromised immune system. You have to weigh the risk-benefit ratio every year, because the shot changes every year.

I refused E-mycin drops in my daughter's eyes at birth. My husband's eyes were swollen shut after he was given drops at birth, plus, I had not been exposed to any sort of VD. I paid an extra $100 to be tested for a VD, just so that the hospital lawyer's would be happy.

I spaced most of my kids' vaccines. It cost a lot of money. But bundling vaccines is dangerous. The CDC has little information on it, but you can do a Google search and find plenty of individual MDs around the world who do not advocate bundled vaccines. Veterinarians don't do it, either.

I waited a few weeks before having my kids vaccinated. IOW, I did not follow the recommended schedule, but it was only a few weeks. I wanted their immune systems to be as strong as possible first.

One of the worst shots is the HPV for cervical cancer. It only works for one type of cancer (there are many types of cervical cancer) and has many documented side effects. VA is the only state that mandates the shot. The delegate that fought to have the bill passed was given $50,000 by the pharma company that bought his vote. He is in jail now, but not for that. He tried to buy a teaching position at a local university in exchange for giving them state funds.

I do not think that we need a mandated chicken pox shot. It's not that bad of a disease, and our own immune systems offer lifelong immunity after exposure, whereas the shots only offer 5 years (according to the doctors I asked). As an adult, if you've had chicken pox, you can of course get shingles. And now there's a shot for that. Not sure how effective it is, but the older you get, the worse the outbreak.

Measles also isn't that bad, except that it causes birth defects. And it is highly contagious, far more contagious than chicken pox. I recommend that shot.

I highly recommend vaccines when traveling out of the country, especially Africa, Central America and South America.

http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/ucm187810.htm

***
Now, for the illogical perspective: My personal fave vaccine is whooping cough. Have you ever heard whooping cough? Have you ever lost sleep because of a child with whooping cough? It is obnoxious and would drive me over the edge of a cliff. Definitely gave my kids that shot. :)
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
Chicken pox is... a toss up.
If your kids can get chicken pox before they are about 8 years old, it's usually mild.
If they don't get it until they are teenaged, it can be severe, with complications.

Both of mine caught chicken pox before the end of grade 1.
If they hadn't caught it by grade 4, I'd have gone for the vaccine.

Mumps is similar - mild and not too serious if you are a kid, but from puberty onward, it can be scary especially for guys, as one of the possible side-effects is infertility.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
I agree, Insane. I even tried to expose my son to chicken pox but it didn't work. It's not *that* contagious. He had to get the shot when he was about 13. Oh well. He did fine. With all of his other issues, I kept an eye on it. The nurse wrote down the lot # for me. :)
 

SuZir

Well-Known Member
Both of mine caught chicken pox before the end of grade 1.
If they hadn't caught it by grade 4, I'd have gone for the vaccine.

We too decided that ours would either have chicken box before they turn ten or have a vaccine then. Both got it way before then and neither was too sick.
 
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