Starting fresh - a pediatrician's perspective - Page 4

[japonica]

Originally Posted by mgrella 

To address the "most important" issue, everyone will have a different answer.  In some ways it's apples to oranges, just like "what's more important, wearing your seat belt or or exercising regularly?"  Both can be lifesaving but hard to compared the "relative goodness".  This also depends hugely on your age and life situations (childed or childless, with elderly parents or not, teen or older parent, etc).  Those with older kids won't care as much about a vax that saves many newborn lives; those with only infants will not likely care as much about sexually transmitted infection prevention. 

My individual point of view is that lifesaving vaccines are most important, modified by one's chance of getting that disease and the chance of cure.  As another example: a vaccine for HIV if developed would be #1, because although prevalence (in the US) is low, death rate (for now) is 100%.  Hep A vaccine prevents a fairly common disease but almost no deaths and few hospitalizations, so I would rank that at bottom.  None of the vaccines in the routine US schedule are considered (by me) to be experimental or dangerous, so I will be avoiding any discussions regarding relative safety.

So against my better judgement, here goes: 

HiB (can be fatal or disabling and used to be a frequent cause of meningitis, blood infection, deafness and seizure disorder prior to vax)

Strep pneumoniae (aka PCV13 or Prevnar; similar to above)

MMR (because measles is wildly contagious and can be fatal; in some states we are approaching dangerously low levels of herd immunity)

DTaP/Tdap (in the US mostly for pertussis prevention, because pertussis can kill newborns)

Influenza (very contagious, 30,000 deaths per year in US, vaccine moderately effective)

Hep B (once acquired, no cure and can lead to liver cancer and/or cirrhosis)

Polio - still around and very disabling

Varicella (very common, very contagious, hospitalization rate ~1%, death rate ~1/10,000 in the US)

HPV - VERY common, can lead to cervical (and anal and throat) cancer

Menigococcal (MCV) - less common but very serious and sometimes fatal

Rotavirus (prevents a very common but rarely fatal (in the US) disease

Hep A (fairly common but rarely fatal or disabling)

How's that for a start?

I'm just wondering how I'm still alive. Nine of those vaccines mentioned were never on the schedule when I was a child. 

[Bokonon]

Originally Posted by japonica 

I'm just wondering how I'm still alive. Nine of those vaccines mentioned were never on the schedule when I was a child. 

You must be one of the lucky 75%. ;)

My mother had measles as a child, in 1946.  My grandmother had polio as an adult and lived to tell about it with zero complications.  My three other grandparents lived to their 80s and 90s with likely only the smallpox vaccine under their belts.  Anecdotes are funny that way, aren't they?

[Nicole Da Silva]

Originally Posted by mgrella 

To address the "most important" issue, everyone will have a different answer.  In some ways it's apples to oranges, just like "what's more important, wearing your seat belt or or exercising regularly?"  Both can be lifesaving but hard to compared the "relative goodness".  This also depends hugely on your age and life situations (childed or childless, with elderly parents or not, teen or older parent, etc).  Those with older kids won't care as much about a vax that saves many newborn lives; those with only infants will not likely care as much about sexually transmitted infection prevention. 

My individual point of view is that lifesaving vaccines are most important, modified by one's chance of getting that disease and the chance of cure.  As another example: a vaccine for HIV if developed would be #1, because although prevalence (in the US) is low, death rate (for now) is 100%.  Hep A vaccine prevents a fairly common disease but almost no deaths and few hospitalizations, so I would rank that at bottom.  None of the vaccines in the routine US schedule are considered (by me) to be experimental or dangerous, so I will be avoiding any discussions regarding relative safety.

So against my better judgement, here goes: 

HiB (can be fatal or disabling and used to be a frequent cause of meningitis, blood infection, deafness and seizure disorder prior to vax)

Strep pneumoniae (aka PCV13 or Prevnar; similar to above)

MMR (because measles is wildly contagious and can be fatal; in some states we are approaching dangerously low levels of herd immunity)

DTaP/Tdap (in the US mostly for pertussis prevention, because pertussis can kill newborns)

Influenza (very contagious, 30,000 deaths per year in US, vaccine moderately effective)

Hep B (once acquired, no cure and can lead to liver cancer and/or cirrhosis)

Polio - still around and very disabling

Varicella (very common, very contagious, hospitalization rate ~1%, death rate ~1/10,000 in the US)

HPV - VERY common, can lead to cervical (and anal and throat) cancer

Menigococcal (MCV) - less common but very serious and sometimes fatal

Rotavirus (prevents a very common but rarely fatal (in the US) disease

Hep A (fairly common but rarely fatal or disabling)

How's that for a start?

Varicella 1/10,000 deaths in the US. This is considered rare according to US and Canada definitions. Polio is asymptomatic in 95% of cases and the flu shot has recently been found to actually give people the flu. Most of the side effects you described from the disease are also listed on the vaccine inserts as well. Since every individual is different they will have their own risk/benefit ratio. Not mentioned is that when you get a disease and your body 'works through it'  you are also usually protected by other worse diseases. For instance, getting mumps can protect you from cervical cancer and varicella protects you from getting shingles later on. All things good and bad should be considered when choosing to vaccinate or not. Not vaccinating does not mean that you will definitely suffer from any of these diseases

[MountainMamaGC]

Not to mention the breastfeeding can protect against HiB well into childhood.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10195681

[emma1325]

Originally Posted by japonica 

I'm just wondering how I'm still alive. Nine of those vaccines mentioned were never on the schedule when I was a child. 

My mother in law had polio - paralytic.  She would have recovered 100% with no issues, but she was fitted with a leg brace to stunt the growth, since one leg seemed to be growing at a faster rate than the other.  The idea was to slow down the normally developing leg so that it would "match" the delayed one. The leg brace succeeded in slowing down the growth thus allowing the other leg to catch up.  But then the "slow" leg decided to do some catching up of its own naturally, and passed up the permanently stunted leg.  Without intervention, she would now have two legs of equal size.  Instead she walks with a limp and has a weak, damaged leg as a result of the unnecessary brace.  

[Alenushka]

Is she was vaccinated, she would have need interventions.
 

[Alenushka]

Flu is made with a dead virus. It can't give anyone flu. It just can't. Not a scientific possibility

[Alenushka]

Yes, I would rather my kid has anaphilactic shock that is early reversible in a matter of minutes at the doctor's office than life long sterile or brain damage from measles encephalitis, or nerve damage from tetnus or post polio syndrom.

When I had my shock episode it was fixed in the matter of minutes. 

Efforts of Gate's foundation reduces cases of measles worldwide by 74%. Vaccines wor

[pek64]

Originally Posted by mgrella 

Yes, it is.  Everyone progresses to AIDS over time.  There is currently 1 (that is ONE) long-term survivor with no onset of AIDS after many years.  Everyone else dies.  Period. 

Who is the one long-term survivor?

[WildKingdom]

Originally Posted by Nicole Da Silva 

Varicella 1/10,000 deaths in the US. This is considered rare according to US and Canada definitions. Polio is asymptomatic in 95% of cases and the flu shot has recently been found to actually give people the flu. Most of the side effects you described from the disease are also listed on the vaccine inserts as well. Since every individual is different they will have their own risk/benefit ratio. Not mentioned is that when you get a disease and your body 'works through it'  you are also usually protected by other worse diseases. For instance, getting mumps can protect you from cervical cancer and varicella protects you from getting shingles later on. All things good and bad should be considered when choosing to vaccinate or not. Not vaccinating does not mean that you will definitely suffer from any of these diseases

The flu shot can not give people the flu. That's impossible. It's not a live vaccine.

Mumps prevents cervical cancer? More info, please. I'm not familiar with this.

Varicella does not prevent shingles. Quite the opposite. It is the cause of shingles.

[fruitfulmomma]

Alenushka, seriously? Anaphylactic shock can be fatal within a couple of minutes and it also isn't always immediate after contact.

[fruitfulmomma]

FluMist while not a shot, is a live vax. 

We also have two threads going about a study showing that the flu vax increased the rates and severity of h1n1.

[prosciencemum]

Originally Posted by fruitfulmomma 

We also have two threads going about a study showing that the flu vax increased the rates and severity of h1n1.

In ferrets....

[ma2two]

mgrella, what would you do if a baby who was a patient of yours cried inconsolably for 5 hours following the standard 2 month vaccines?

Would you give the baby the standard vaccines at 4 months? Or would you do something different?

[Mirzam]

Originally Posted by WildKingdom 

Mumps prevents cervical cancer? More info, please. I'm not familiar with this.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951028/

 

Quote:

Background

Epidemiologic studies found childhood mumps might protect against ovarian cancer. To explain this association, we investigated whether mumps might engender immunity to ovarian cancer through antibodies against the cancer-associated antigen MUC1 abnormally expressed in the inflamed parotid gland.

 

 

Conclusion

Mumps parotitis may lead to expression and immune recognition of a tumor-associated form of MUC1 and create effective immune surveillance of ovarian cancer cells that express this form of MUC1.

 

#LearnSomtethingNewEveryday

[WildKingdom]

Originally Posted by Mirzam 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951028/

 

 

#LearnSomtethingNewEveryday

Ovarian cancer does not equal cervical cancer.

#AttentionToDetails

[Mirzam]

Originally Posted by WildKingdom 

Originally Posted by Mirzam 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951028/

 

 

 

 

 

#LearnSomtethingNewEveryday

Ovarian cancer does not equal cervical cancer.

#AttentionToDetails

#IThinkSheMeantOvarianCancer. 

But you are right, I didn't read her post correctly.

[Nicole Da Silva]

Actually it's not just a possibility, it has been recently researched to show it actually happens. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Vancouver+researcher+finds+shot+linked+H1N1+illness/7218719/story.html

[Nicole Da Silva]

Originally Posted by WildKingdom 


The flu shot can not give people the flu. That's impossible. It's not a live vaccine.
Mumps prevents cervical cancer? More info, please. I'm not familiar with this.
Varicella does not prevent shingles. Quite the opposite. It is the cause of shingles.

Recent research show that the flu shot can give you the flu http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Vancouver+researcher+finds+shot+linked+H1N1+illness/7218719/story.html
Mumps and ovarian cancer: modern interpretation of an historic association 

Cancer Causes Control. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 August 1.
Published in final edited form as:
Cancer Causes Control. 2010 August; 21(8): 1193–1201.
Published online 2010 June 18. doi:  10.1007/s10552-010-9546-1

Daniel W. Cramer, Allison F. Vitonis, Simone P. Pinheiro, John R. McKolanis, Raina N. Fichorova, Kevin E. Brown, Todd F. Hatchette, andOlivera J. Finn

Varicella is the same virus as shingles, if you vaccinate for varicella you are more likely to get shingles. If you get chickenpox at a young age it protects you against shingles later in life because you are already have immunity to the virus

[fruitfulmomma]

The study was done on ferrets, *after* the researcher believed she had been observing it happening in *humans*.

Researchers, led by Vancouver's Dr. Danuta Skowronski, an influenza expert at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, noticed in the early weeks of the pandemic that people who got a flu shot for the 2008-09 winter seemed to be more likely to get infected with the pandemic virus than people who hadn't received a flu shot.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Vancouver+researcher+finds+shot+linked+H1N1+illness/7217609/story.html#ixzz26wNsyUFw

The article also states that five other studies showed the same results. Were all five of those done on ferrets also?