A Story of Tetanus in an unvaccinated child - Page 2

[Turquesa]

Originally Posted by prosciencemum 

Actually I agree (as I said up thread) that measured informed decision is better than letting emotions rule. I just don't think that's how most people work...

 I agree tetanus is very rare - so rare that people don't know how to treat it without the vaccination. I am thankful for that, and that most children not vaccinated against tetanus will never have a problem from it. 

I am curious why you think it's not OK to scare people in to vaccinating, when scaring them out of it seems to be the main tactic used by NVIC and others.... Just to be clear - do you think it's not OK to scare people with the rare bad reaction stories either? After all 99.999% (I think that's the right number of 9s after the decimal) will never have a vaccine reaction which causes any problem.....

Yes, I think that using scary stories to dissuade people from vaccinating is unacceptable, including when NVIC does it.

[Turquesa]

Originally Posted by prosciencemum 

Actually I agree (as I said up thread) that measured informed decision is better than letting emotions rule. I just don't think that's how most people work...

 I agree tetanus is very rare - so rare that people don't know how to treat it without the vaccination. I am thankful for that, and that most children not vaccinated against tetanus will never have a problem from it. 

I am curious why you think it's not OK to scare people in to vaccinating, when scaring them out of it seems to be the main tactic used by NVIC and others.... Just to be clear - do you think it's not OK to scare people with the rare bad reaction stories either? After all 99.999% (I think that's the right number of 9s after the decimal) will never have a vaccine reaction which causes any problem.....

Yes, I think that using scary stories to dissuade people from vaccinating is unacceptable, including when NVIC does it.

[Taximom5]

Turquesa, where do you draw the line between hoping to prevent someone else's child from dying the way yours did, and using a scary story to dissuade people from vaccinating?

I'm thinking of Michael Belkin here.  Is it unacceptable that he shares the details of his daughter's death from vaccines, and says, "please don't make the mistake I made, of letting someone vaccinate your child without knowing what the real risks are?"  Is it unacceptable that the mothers of the "Gardasil Girls" share the stories of their daughters' death or paralysis or complete physical breakdown from Gardasil, saying, "don't make the mistake we made of believing that Gardasil is safe, because it's not?"

I do understand your point about fear-mongering, and applying the demand for transparency to both sides, but where do you draw the line?

[Turquesa]

Taxi, I'll honestly have to give some thought to that one. I don't have a problem with people owning up to their choices, including the risks entailed.

But while I don't know precisely where the line lies between informing parents and scaring them, I can say unequivocally that PSM's link crosses it. I mean, did you read that article? It reads like a tabloid piece. It's trying to get everyone all freaked out about getting tetanus from a freakin' rose thorn. Since the overwhelming majority of adults aren't current on their vaxes, you'd think there would be entire hospital wards crammed with little old ladies who caught tetanus while tending to their prize-winning roses.

On the other hand, my friend showed me a recent NVIC mailing showing a kid with a horrific vaccine reaction. I found it in really poor taste.

I'm getting Sick. To. Death. of various stakeholders in this issue blowing one set of risks out of proportion and sweeping the other set under the carpet. I feel for Belkin's loss and for what this poor kid with tetanus went through. I really do. But there has to be a realistic AND non-hysterical way of conveying risks and benefits.

[Turquesa]

"I agree tetanus is very rare - so rare that people don't know how to treat it without the vaccination. I am thankful for that, and that most children not vaccinated against tetanus will never have a problem from it."

Both VADs and severe, acute vaccine reactions are rare. But we still should know the evidence-based protocol to deal with both. To say otherwise is akin to claiming that my teenagers will never have sex, so I don't need to tell them about contraception. Although the obvious hole in that analogy is that teen sex isn't rare . . .

[prosciencemum]

Yeah I think that read wrong. I'm not glad most people don't know what to do. I'm glad that it's very rare.

[Taximom5]

Turquesa, I know what you mean.

I find Mercola's sales pitches to be doubly disgusting, because he uses the exact same fear-mongering techniques as the pharmaceutical companies he constantly criticizes.  Even worse, he does it for the exact same reason they do--to increase sales.  I think it's inexcusable on both sides.

However, I am willing to give far more leeway to someone illustrating damage suffered by someone given a mandated injection than someone illustrating damage done by a "vaccine-preventable disease," particularly when we are talking about organizations started by parents of vaccine-injured children.  Remember, these parents have been ignored, blown off, lied to, and vilified for...telling the truth.

Vaccine damage is preventable, too.

[Krissyann]

That's the point of researching for yourself each and every vaccine. But not only the vaccines, but the diseases associated with the vaccines, the treatments of those diseases and the prognosis of each. That's why it's important to read both sides of the debate. There are absolutely going to be terrible stories about babies getting diseases they could have been vaccinated for, and there are absolutely going to be stories about babies having terrible reactions to vaccines for diseases they are very unlikely to ever even come into contact with. We are parents, it is our job to read all of the information, not just the information that already agrees with what we want to believe. Then we take that information and decide how we want to treat our own children. I feel like a forum like this should be used for back and forth discussion and information, not attacks. I want your research, not just your horror stories. This story was not helpful.

[prosciencemum]

Good news - the little boy in the original story hs been released from hospital.

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10860122

[rachelsmama]

Yay for the little boy!

Shame on the Public Health clinic for taking advantage of a little boy's ordeal with tetanus (which is a horrible disease, but isn't passed person to person) into an attempt to shame parents into vaccinating their kids for the sake of others!  
 

[prosciencemum]

It doesn't seem to be the Public Heath organizations so much as the parents wanting to share their story. There's another interview with them here

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/8199964/We-were-hippies-about-it

where they talk about what it was like to watch their child suffer through a vaccine preventable disease, and the misinformation they feel they read online about vaccine reaction rates they claim led to their decision not to vaccinate.

[rachelsmama]

Originally Posted by prosciencemum 

It doesn't seem to be the Public Heath organizations so much as the parents wanting to share their story. There's another interview with them here

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/8199964/We-were-hippies-about-it

where they talk about what it was like to watch their child suffer through a vaccine preventable disease, and the misinformation they feel they read online about vaccine reaction rates they claim led to their decision not to vaccinate.

I know the parents have been speaking a lot, and I think that's a fairly natural reaction to the shock of their son's illness, but in the article you linked to in post #29:

Auckland Regional Public Health clinical director Dr Julia Peters said parents who did not immunise their children were making choices with potentially far-reaching implications for society.

They should think about whether they might infect someone without the same level of defence as them, for example, someone with cancer or a baby who was not yet immunised.

"So I think when people (think) 'it's just about me and my individual choice', actually that's not true."

And it just seems sort of tasteless to be using a tetanus case to try to sell parents on the whole "herd immunity" reason for vaccinations.