Vaccinations

the glass woman

I was just wondering, are you parents still apprehensive about vaccinating your children, esp the mmr, or have you chosen to vaccinate since we're told there's really nothing to be concerned about?

tallaght01

If you ask anyone to show you any good (not just some random wesite making claims) evidence that vaccinations cause any of the problems that the media hammered on about recently, they won't be able to show it to you. I can tell you that in absoloute honesty. I don't know why peple think that paediatricians would advocate somehting so strongly that would harm kids.

If they can show you good eveidence, I'll accept that vaccination is unsafe.

Nevyn

Mine have everything but the mmr and are too told for the new meningitis one.
Have you talked to your GP and Baby nurse about this ?

delly

Did as much research as best I could about the MMR and found no conclusive proof it did any harm, and have recently had it administered to my daughter.

Funnily enough I was listening to Gerry Ryan go on a massive rant about this on the radio recently, as he was commenting about a newspaper report stating the high occurrences of mumps due to lower than needed numbers of kids taking it up. He said that his kid had mumps and that he blames the ill informed people going on about it as a bad thing, with the result that people like himself decide to hold back on it.

Nevyn

Growing up there was no such thing as the mmr and we all got and surived mealses and mumps and so did my cousins of which there is over a hundred.

the glass woman

Thats quite interesting..i did choose to give my son the mmr, just two weeks ago. He actually got rubella when he was 9months old so thats interesting what Gerry Ryan was saying..

delly

Thaedydal wrote: »

Growing up there was no such thing as the mmr and we all got and surived mealses and mumps and so did my cousins of which there is over a hundred.

That said, there is a small percentage chance of serious side-effects from measles and mumps, and even death. Just because it was ok back in the day, doesn't mean it has to be a problem with modern vaccinations, or am I missing the point your making?

r3nu4l

The problem with not vaccinating against mumps is that because so many children are vaccinated against it right now most kids, even those vaccinated against it are still protected from getting it because there is less of it going around (this is called herd immunity).

Now, you might think, why is that a problem?

Well, as less and less kids are catching mumps, they will grow into adults that are susceptible to mumps.

Got that much? Okay, let's continue.

As there are less people vaccinating against mumps due to unsubstantiated fear of the MMR vaccine, the pool of susceptible children and adults rises, meaning that mumps can once again take hold in the population.

That means that little kids become infected with mumps and are then highly infectious to adults that have not had mumps before. The result? Well mumps can cause sterility in adult males, rarely, but it does happen.

Another rare complication of mumps is meningitis. We all know what that can mean.

noby

Not apprehensive, and kids have got all vaccines.

silja

Did my own research, the twins got everything and will get the MMR, with the exception of the BCG, as we are emmigrating and where we are going (USA), it's not done and can cause confusion if you have it.

littlebug

Mine have both had all there vaccs. Nothing I read convinced me otherwise. I feel very stongly about the herd immunity idea. Though the risk of serious impairment or death to any one particular child from any of these illnesses is low the thought of me or my child being part of a chain of events that could lead to just one child's death fills me with horror

kelle

My two older children did not receive the MMR until they were 4 years old. I know of 3 children whose parents say they developed autism following their MMR vaccinations. Doctors say the theory is unsubstantiated. I believe the parents more than I believe the doctors, as the parents know their own child better than the doctors do!
I preferred to wait until my children had their full speech. My youngest is 22 months old and I will not vaccinate her against the MMR until she is at least 3 years old. All my children had their other vaccinations at the required age, and I will give the pneumococcal vaccination to my youngest child next week.

stovelid

kelle wrote: »

I know of 3 children whose parents say they developed autism following their MMR vaccinations.
.

You are saying that these parents conducted extensive research and came to this conclusion. Or that the vaccine and diagnosis of autism occurred around the same time.

kelle wrote: »

I believe the parents more than I believe the doctors, as the parents know their own child better than the doctors do!
.

This is a pretty drastic thing to say, surely?

Nevyn

I had the same thing happen in the family which is why my two have not had the mmr and iven that my son was recently diagnoised as being on the austic spectrum I am glad that I did as the guilt that it may have been vaccine related is something I dont have to concern myself with.

No idea if I can get them vaccinated at this stage.

Dfens

kelle wrote: »

My two older children did not receive the MMR until they were 4 years old. I know of 3 children whose parents say they developed autism following their MMR vaccinations. Doctors say the theory is unsubstantiated. I believe the parents more than I believe the doctors, as the parents know their own child better than the doctors do!
I preferred to wait until my children had their full speech. My youngest is 22 months old and I will not vaccinate her against the MMR until she is at least 3 years old. All my children had their other vaccinations at the required age, and I will give the pneumococcal vaccination to my youngest child next week.

Yes, we delayed giving our dd MMR until she was nearly 3 also. She had very bad ezcema on her hands for about 9 months (from about 18 m) which we eventually found out was due to an egg allergy (not much help from a number of GPs I might add & just down to me eliminating things one by one). In fact we had the whole thing under control by the time she got an appointment to see the Paed Dermatologist at our hospital. I wanted to be sure that she wouldn't have a bad adverse reaction to the vaccine but I do know that we were taking a risk in other ways.

kelle

stovelid wrote: »

You are saying that these parents conducted extensive research and came to this conclusion. Or that the vaccine and diagnosis of autism occurred around the same time

.
I'm saying nobody knows a child like the parents do. They are a lot more sensitive to changes in a child's developmental pattern. I'm satisfied these parents spotted the changes in their children almost immediately after their MMR vaccines. Doctors only see the child for 5 minutes every couple of months. Are you suggesting these parents are lying?

stovelid wrote: »

This is a pretty drastic thing to say, surely?

No. I believe the link between MMR and autism has not been proved..........yet!

tallaght01

kelle wrote: »

.
I'm saying nobody knows a child like the parents do. They are a lot more sensitive to changes in a child's developmental pattern. I'm satisfied these parents spotted the changes in their children almost immediately after their MMR vaccines. Doctors only see the child for 5 minutes every couple of months. Are you suggesting these parents are lying?




No. I believe the link between MMR and autism has not been proved..........yet!

Kelle, you have every right to believe what you would like to.
However, we need to be responsible, as vaccination doesn't just affect our children. It affects the population at large.

R3nu8l discussed herd immunity earlier on. That's why it's vitally important that as many people as possible get vaccinated. It's very easy for us not to get our children vaccinated, because they are unlikely to get ill, because most parents decide to vaccinate. So, we get the best of both worlds if we decide against vaccination.

However, it's important not to suggest to people that a link hasn't been found yet, as if it's something that scientists are on the brink of finding.

Paediatricians have been looking at this issue for many years. Certainly for longer than I've been involved in the world of paeds. Parents have often raised concerns about autism and vaccines, as they traditionally show up around the same time.

I currently have a patient who is autistic. Just before his symptoms started, he had to have a tube put down his nose to feed him. His parents now blame the tube. Simliarly, if we gave tube feeds instead of vaccines on the same scale, we would be told by many parents that tube feeds cause autism.

However, we have a duty to respond to public opinion. And we have. most people don't have the tools to dissect the papers available on this topic. So, unfortunately, they must rely on their friends and the media to inform them.

But scientists and paediatricians have examined this area extensively.

You won't be able to access to full reports in the following links. Also, they'll be of little use to you anyway, unless you're from a scientific background. But the summaries should at least assure you of the efforts made to investigate this potential association.

[url] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12860782?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=2&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed [/url]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14761240?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=3&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12913832?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=5&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17928818?ordinalpos=7&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17867721?ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

I could give you many many many more. These links are just a few paragraphs detailing the findings in some papers. You should ALWAYS treat summaries like this with extreme caution when debating the findings of studies. But that's not what I'm doing. I'm only posting them to show you that there have been lots of investigations into this issue. It's not been ignored, or put on the back burner.

Scientists have looked at hundreds of thousands of babies who've received their vaccines, and compared them to hundreds of thousand who haven't received MMR.

The rates of autism are no different in the 2 groups

I can't really say anything more than that. Your rights are your rights. But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that we're on the verge of finding this mystical link, or that science in any way backs up the non-vaccination of children.

Just bear in mind that while you know your children better than anyone, paediatricians know children as a group better than most. Most of us spend our lives trying to help children, and have nothing to gain by ignoring something that does them harm

Vaccination has had the biggest effect on the world's health, after clean water.

nesf

kelle wrote: »

I know of 3 children whose parents say they developed autism following their MMR vaccinations. Doctors say the theory is unsubstantiated. I believe the parents more than I believe the doctors, as the parents know their own child better than the doctors do!

Eh, no. Parents are in possibly the worst position imaginable to judge the matter because their judgement will be horribly biased by the fact that their kid developed autism. There is no good evidence of a link and the doctor will be aware of this.

The single biggest problem about vaccinations is that people who have no scientific understanding of them or the supposed links give opinions on them and other people for some God forsaken reason actually listen to them.

nesf

kelle wrote: »

. I'm saying nobody knows a child like the parents do. They are a lot more sensitive to changes in a child's developmental pattern. I'm satisfied these parents spotted the changes in their children almost immediately after their MMR vaccines. Doctors only see the child for 5 minutes every couple of months.

That argument only works up to a point. Take my brother for instance, a physio that's done work in paedriatic units with developmentally slow kids under the age of 5. From just looking at how the child is moving around doing stuff he can spot things that indicate muscular and other problems that you or me wouldn't notice if we spent days staring at the child intently. A parent simply isn't trained to look for these kinds of things, and no one would reasonably expect them to spot them but that's where you need to trust the medical professionals. They can, for some medical things, tell more about a child's condition in 5 minutes than a parent could tell from being around it every day.

kelle wrote: »

Are you suggesting these parents are lying?

They are not lying, I'm sure they truly believe what they thing, the problem is that they're falling foul of a very problematic aspect of human intelligence. We are, unless we specifically train to not do it, very suspect to the fallacy of induction. This fallacy is the following:

X happens. Then Y happens. Therefore X caused Y.

This is actually completely faulty logic. You can probably think of half a dozen examples off the top of your head. Child is sniffling because of their cold. Child watches an episode of Teletubbies. Child stops sniffling and appears to have gotten better. Therefore the Teletubbies cured the cold. Obviously this is untrue, but it is exactly the same logic that your friends used to decide that the MMR caused their child's autism. The thing is we cannot know whether X causes Y unless we repeat X loads and loads of times and watch to see if Y happens each time (it's actually more complicated than this but we can ignore that)*.

The only way you can be in anyway sure that X and Y are related is by repeating X loads of times and better yet also look at loads of cases where X didn't happen and check for Y. If Y happens as often when X is there as when it isn't there, we can be fairly sure that X doesn't cause Y and even then unless we look at loads of cases we really can't be sure, and by loads I mean in terms of the MMR-Autism question, thousands.

This was the key problem with the original scare study done by that doctor. He only looked at 20 odd kids. You cannot draw any kind of conclusion worth paying attention to from just 20 kids you need to look at thousands of them to have any kind of serious answer. And that's where the rub is. All the studies that looked at thousands of kids found no link! All of them. There isn't even conflicting evidence on this one, every time they've gone out and done a big study it's found nothing. You really cannot get anything more definitive than that.



*You also need to be sure you're not biasing your sample and that there isn't some other causal factor shared by the cases, for instance if you were looking at cancer rates in adults and whether it was caused by eating apples, and you didn't control for smokers and non-smokers you could actually creating a study that seems to link apples to lung cancer!