Balance info on vaccines

Mink

Just wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of some good balanced info on vaccines, both pro and against or neutral.

My son has not had any, yet, and my husband is very against them but is somewhat open to looking at more info on the subject. I am very unsure about the whole thing, if I get him vaccinated and he has a really really bad reaction I wouldn't forgive myself, nor would I if I don't vaccinate him and he ends up with one of the illnesses - risking his life and long term health.

My husband (and my sisters) is very sceptical of anything medical so it's hard to get my viewpoint across but I really want us to agree either way so we know what we are doing but also can fully stand by our decision. From the beginning I've been leaning toward getting them done.

So far I have the vaccination booklet you get from the PHN and I got leaflets from the gp of the ingredients/side effects for each vaccine (like the little leaflet you get in any medication).

A challenge for you is going to be the fact that there is a lot of misrepresentation and lies going around on this subject. “Studies” are pumped out at a rate that will totally bamboozle you and often these studies are not even applicable to what they claim to be, or the conclusions drawn off them are not valid, or worse.

Often too studies are cited by people with no reference to the fact that those studies have been debunked or withdrawn or reversed. I see many citations which when I follow them up it turns out they are void. But this will never stop people citing them blindly if they think it supports their position in an argument.

So rather than seeking a “fair and balanced” source of information which might be hard to find; a good suggestion for you is to take steps to equip yourself with the skills to evaluate these things yourself. Learn how to read the studies rather than needing people to interpret them for you. Learn how to spot methodological flaws in research. To understand the stats.

This is not as hard as you think. You do not need a Masters in epidemiology. I would recommend reading books like “Bad Science” by Ben Goldacre for example as a description to the lay man of where to start. In that book he cites many sources of where to go next if you want to continue building the skills he lays a foundation for in the book itself.

seamus

The leaflets you get from the HSE and your GP are actually the ones most likely to be honest and accurate because they leave themselves wide open to legal challenges if they provide information that's misleading or inaccurate.

By contrast any information you find online which is negative about vaccinations will have been produced by someone who is not qualified in that area and the information will not have been properly fact-checked and reviewed, because the people producing the information are not open to being legally challenged.

Your best start for unbiased information about the individual vaccinations is actually wikipedia. You get a fairly decent overview of what the vaccine is, how it is produced, side-effects, etc, but it will also contain links to further information which you can study.

At the simplest level, the thing to remember is that the vaccinations undergo rigorous clinical testing. They're not mixed up in a lab and then sent out the following week to be injected into kids. The vaccinations provided are against diseases which are both very infectious and very common but which also may have long-term health effects on the sufferer and those they come into contact with.
To a certain extent there's also a social perogative - if you choose to not get vaccinated and your child gets sick, they may pass it onto other children, leading to deaths and long-term illness for others, even if your child recovers fine.

I agree with taxAHcruel. One of the most powerful things you can do is equip yourself with the ability to look at things impassionately and put your own feelings to one side while you evaluate the evidence. If you believe that vaccination is wrong, then all you will read is sites that back up your opinion. Likewise if you believe it's right then you'll ignore those sites and stick with the ones that recommend it.

Mossess

I suggest you look at this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield


It kind of sums it all up.

Byzantium4

I would really listen to your GP or PHN if I were you, a lot of people don't seem to realise but your GP is probably the most balanced opinion and the most accurate source of information you're going to get on these things. I know doctors get painted in a bad light by the media about these sorts of things sometimes but at the end of the day they train for a very, very long time learning how these things work and understanding the science behind it. After that they spend years dealing with patients, patients who get vaccinated, patients who don't get vaccinated and those who had a reaction to the vaccination. If after all of that they're still recommending it as the best course of action- in my view then that's the way to go! Of course I'd definitely do your own research, you always should in these things. Just be very careful, because a lot of the anti-vaccine stuff out there has no proof behind it.

staticdoor71

I'm not telling you your business, but just letting you know that the nurse in my gp's office did all my daughter's vaccines. Each time before vaccine given I had to sign a consent form. And each time she had some other injection in the tray along with the vaccine in case my daughter had a reaction to the vaccine. This put my mind at ease greatly as it was my first question asked

Hope you and your partner can come to an agreement

Mink

That's very helpful guys, thanks.
And thanks to the boardsie who PM'd me some extra stuff to look over.

I'm seeing my GP on Sat & will discuss further with her, also with the PHN, both have been very helpful so far but also very respectful of our quandary.

It's so hard to know what is true, biased, hidden motive, genuinely misled etc. Definitely need to know how to study these things properly.