autism: incidence in vaxed vs no-vax kids? - Page 5

[salsero96]

Originally Posted by shmoo

Most importantly, I look beyond my own child's health when assessing vaccines. I have a healthy child with no known contraindications for vaccination. If too many children like mine are opted out, protections for children who cannot be vaccinated will diminish.

It's good to know that you are thinking of others, but this is crazy.

My wife and I made the decision to live a healthy lifestyle. We are doing everything possible so that our daughter will be as healthy as possible. (diet, nutrition, lifestyle, etc...) Most people do not. We aren't going to go to all the trouble of living a healthy lifestyle.. then risk our daughter's health for the benefit of others.

Vaccinations have become a replacement for good healthy living.

Originally Posted by shmoo

I have a healthy child with no known contraindications for vaccination.

If you don't mind me asking... what are the known contradictions?

Originally Posted by shmoo

But it does trouble me that so often discussions here bypass real science and research in favor of alarmist internet rumors and other types of quasi-quackery.

Real science? Like what?
Control groups...

The new vaccine vs. The old vaccine?
Vaccine1 and Vaccine2 vs Vaccine1 and Vaccine3
Vaccine vs. Aluminum based placebo?
Vaccinated vs. Vaccinated?

That isn't real science. How about..

Vaccinated vs. Partial Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated

Can you tell me why those tests have never been done?
That would be REAL science.

[Gitti]

I don't worry so much about healthy children not being protected by the herd -- but children who don't have a choice to vaccinate, I wish there was a way to protect them more effectively.

That is actually very sweet of you. Are your children often with kids who are for instance going through chemotherapy or are autoimmune suppressed?

As a matter of fact, if you are often with kids who are sickly your newly vaccinated kids are the greatest danger to them if they've had a live virus vaccine. Because the live virus vaccine sheds.

When a child is vaccinated, that child creates antibodies in its OWN body. How do those antibodies protect anyone else's child?

A vaccinated child is void of viruses and germs nor is it exempt from spreading them to anyone else.

Vaccines (theoretically) protect only the vaccinated.

But that is basically how it works.

If x % of a population is vaccinated (assuming that some significant subset of the vaccinated develop immunity) then any subsequent outbreak is more likely to be contained because the disease has fewer hosts to hop around in and spread.

How can there be an outbreak if the vaccine created immunity.
Those vaccinated are protected because they have immunity. But no one else. And the vaccinated still come in contact with the virus or germ and can still spread it, they just aren't supposed to get sick themselves.

This is often referred to as "herd immunity."

No vaccine can cause herd immunity. Just because kids are vaccinated, that leaves a very large group of people - teens and grownups- who are not vaccinated.
Also some of the kids don't make immunity to each vaccine.
Some kids can't be vaccinated.
See, it leaves a lot of people to host the germ/virus.
So, herd immunity is not a reality. The vaccine manufacturers know that but oh well, it sells vaccines...

If an outbreak can be contained due to herd immunity, those members of the herd who do not have immunity (either because their vax did not "take" or because they could not be vaxed) are less likely to fall sick.

Not so at all. There are far too many people who are not current on vaccines and never will be. Include most doctors in that category. Nurses are good Samaritans, but doctors - don't come near a doctor with a needle.

Anyway, everyone carries bacteria all their lives. There is no way around that. The only protection we really have is a healthy body.

We have to strive to keep ourselves healthy and then bacteria can not cause us any damage. As a matter of fact, we NEED bacteria. Bacteria are our friends.

But it is very nice of you to think about children who are unable to be well. Those kids need to be protected. But you vaccinating your children is of little value to them.

[shmoo]

It's good to know that you are thinking of others, but this is crazy.

My wife and I made the decision to live a healthy lifestyle. We are doing everything possible so that our daughter will be as healthy as possible. (diet, nutrition, lifestyle, etc...) Most people do not. We aren't going to go to all the trouble of living a healthy lifestyle.. then risk our daughter's health for the benefit of others.

Vaccinations have become a replacement for good healthy living.

I was not aware that one could -- through healthy living -- make themselves immune to measels, polio and the like. For example, when I read about the history of polio in this country, lifestyle offered very little protection. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to how your lifestyle choices protect against infectious disease?

[shmoo]

Wow Gitti -- that is a lot to digest. Where did you learn all of this because it just does not comport with what I have read.

[Gitti]

Originally Posted by shmoo

I was not aware that one could -- through healthy living -- make themselves immune to measels, polio and the like. For example, when I read about the history of polio in this country, lifestyle offered very little protection. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to how your lifestyle choices protect against infectious disease?

Make yourself immune through healthy living? And how. Did you know those who are healthy get immunity and never even get the symptoms to a disease?
Did you know that ca 95% of the people who had polio only knew it because they were immune to it, not because they got the disease.

OMG! Health is the only thing that protects.

Please stick around and learn. You are at a very good place. And you will learn that you do not need to offer your children up to try and protect others. It does not even make sense.

[Carma]

Quote:
I don't worry so much about healthy children not being protected by the herd -- but children who don't have a choice to vaccinate, I wish there was a way to protect them more effectively.

That is actually very sweet of you. Are your children often with kids who are for instance going through chemotherapy or are autoimmune suppressed?

Sorry about derailing further from autism and vaxing. But I also still don't understand why a lot on this board don't think there is something like herd immunity. Why then do unvaxed people need to organize for example measle parties to catch measles? If more people are immune to a desease the chance is smaller that you will catch the desease, or not. Seems logical to me. Please explain what am I thinking wrong here.

Also it is not just autoimmune suppressed childeren that cannot be vaxed but also childeren that are too young to be fully vaxed or pregnant women that did not get immunity somehow (there is always a chance) and cannot be vaxed during pregnancy that have a greater chance of catching a desease when less people are immune.

Carma

[FreeRangeMama]

Quote:
Originally Posted by annalily View Post
Yes, there are children who are not vaccinated who have autism.
Could you post a link to that? Please.

Um, I have a ds who was NOT vaxxed and has autism. In fact there are a few of us here that have unvaxxed autistic children. There are so many reasons NOT to vaccinate, but it is not a foolproof method for protecting kids from autism.

[Carma]

Originally Posted by Shodan

Depends on the vaccine. Heifers are generally vaccinated before calving.

The reason that they vaccinate at weaning is that when a calf is weaned, she is moved to a pen (usually) with other animals, and thus the chance of communicable disease goes up.


Regards,
Shodan

This is also a quote from your link

Young pre-weaned calves usually require little in the way of vaccines.

In for example this link they say

Vaccines are often ineffective when given to
young calves. Their immature immune systems
may not be able to respond to the vaccine or
antigen. Antibodies acquired from the dam
through colostrum that protect the calf from
many infectious diseases also may block and
destroy the antigens in the vaccine. This phenomena
is referred to as maternal antibody
interference and is a major reason for not
vaccinating very young calves against several
infectious diseases.

I think it is odd that it seems that they don't apply this knowledge to human nursing babies.

Carma

[annalily]

Originally Posted by FreeRangeMama

Um, I have a ds who was NOT vaxxed and has autism. In fact there are a few of us here that have unvaxxed autistic children. There are so many reasons NOT to vaccinate, but it is not a foolproof method for protecting kids from autism.

Thank you for posting your experience.

[shmoo]

Make yourself immune through healthy living? And how. Did you know those who are healthy get immunity and never even get the symptoms to a disease?
Did you know that ca 95% of the people who had polio only knew it because they were immune to it, not because they got the disease.

OMG! Health is the only thing that protects.

Please stick around and learn. You are at a very good place. And you will learn that you do not need to offer your children up to try and protect others. It does not even make sense.

Of course, I understand natural immunity, but until the advent of vaccinations natural immunity alone could not stop outbreaks that killed hundreds and thousands at a time.

And I don't offer up my child -- rather I appreciate the risks and decide that the benefits TO MY CHILD AND TO OTHERS outweighs thoses risks.

and even though we are continuing off the original topic (and I am learning that that is frowned upon here,

I think it is odd that it seems that they don't apply this knowledge to human nursing babies.

we really should start a new thread -- but humans are uniquie among mammals in how antibodies are transferred through nursing. Indeed, most mammals will die if not nursed. This is not true for humans. I suspect this most in some way relate to the fact that humans don't typically have litters and our living conditions are far different, but there are biological differences in how antiboides are transferred when comparing humans to other mammals.

[Deborah]

Schmoo wrote:

Of course, I understand natural immunity, but until the advent of vaccinations natural immunity alone could not stop outbreaks that killed hundreds and thousands at a time.

First, the great drop in diseases came before vaccinations (except smallpox), there isn't a very good match in time, frankly.

Diseases spread and killed because of:
crowded living conditions (especially in cities)
lack of sanitation
poor nutrition among both the poor (not enough to eat) and the rich (ate sugar and other trash)
ignorance about the way diseases spread

and many other factors, none of which had to do with a vaccination deficiency.

I was born in 1950. Measles, to choose one much feared disease, was still very common in the 1950s. I got it when I was 8 years old. I was miserable for a few days. My mother didn't even bother to take me to a doctor. She wasn't terrified that I would die or be permanently damaged. Millions of children had measles every year during the 1950s. I will admit that some of them died, but I bet you that every single child that died had some other factor than just measles: malnutrition, poor care, abuse, pre-existing illness, or lousy living conditions.

Read a good description of the living conditions in 19th century American cities (a biography of Jane Addams would hit the spot). Would the insertion of vaccines into those living conditions have fixed the problem and reduced the death rate significantly? As much as running water, sewers, more and better quality food did?

Deborah

[shmoo]

Would the insertion of vaccines into those living conditions have fixed the problem and reduced the death rate significantly? As much as running water, sewers, more and better quality food did?

Good question. I'd answer "yes." But is it a choice between these public health measures (running water, sewers, etc) and another -- vaccinations? iI'd like them all, Please! :-)

I suspect any history of public health over the past two centuries would credit improved living conditions AND vaccines with the decrease in life altering and ending diseases.

[Minoh]

Um, I have a ds who was NOT vaxxed and has autism. In fact there are a few of us here that have unvaxxed autistic children. There are so many reasons NOT to vaccinate, but it is not a foolproof method for protecting kids from autism.

Yes, thank you for sharing that, mama.

[DQMama]

Originally Posted by Shodan

Assuming that this tendency to develop autism as a reaction to thimerisol is distributed randomly in the population, then a reduction in vaccines using thimerisol, on average, should correlate to a reduction in autism. But it didn't.

Because it is not just (or necessarily) thimerisol that has the potential to trigger autism. It could be the viruses themselves, or any of the other ingredients on this list:
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/...nt-table-2.pdf
And the MMR is not the only vax I'm afraid of. Anything that contains any of those ingredients scares me.

[Deborah]

Originally Posted by shmoo

Good question. I'd answer "yes." But is it a choice between these public health measures (running water, sewers, etc) and another -- vaccinations? iI'd like them all, Please! :-)

I suspect any history of public health over the past two centuries would credit improved living conditions AND vaccines with the decrease in life altering and ending diseases.

Shmoo,
The problem is the dates. The only vaccine in common use 200 years ago was the smallpox vaccine. So death rates from every other disease went down, way down, prior to the introduction of the vaccine. [I'm not going to get into the smallpox controversy, it has been massively covered on other threads on this board.]

The vaccines came into common use in the developed world after death rates from these diseases had hit bottom. They did eliminate, to some extent, the circulation of the diseases, but did they lower the death rate? Overall?

Some of the problems with trying to eliminate childhood illnesses:

1)it seems to be normal for children to have illnesses involving fever and rash, so it may be a mistake to simply try to get rid of them, without trying to understand what role they play in childhood development. For example, allergies and asthma have shot way up over the last 40 years, and one possibility is that children are not getting enough experience of fever. Fever, properly managed, seems to help the development of the immune system.

2)most of these illnesses provide life-long immunity under two conditions--one is getting the illness in childhood, the other is that the illness keeps circulating (providing natural boosters). By blocking the circulation of the illness, we actually undermine lasting immunity, making it necessary to give booster shots over and over and over...

3)this life-long immunity also benefits babies, who are protected by their mother's immunity for the first year or two of their lives, especially if breastfed. This is a brilliant system, which, if not interfered with, will guarantee that babies will catch the appropriate childhood illnesses between the age of 2 and perhaps 10.

4)and, the natural immunity, acquired in childhood, and boosted by the normal circulation of disease, will prevent people from catching these illnesses inappropriately after puberty, when they are much more likely to cause serious illness.

But, we, in our overwhelming brilliance, have destroyed the whole system...alas...and set ourselves up for nasty outbreaks of childhood illnesses in adults and in babies.

Deborah

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Originally Posted by shmoo

Good question. I'd answer "yes." But is it a choice between these public health measures (running water, sewers, etc) and another -- vaccinations? iI'd like them all, Please! :-)

I suspect any history of public health over the past two centuries would credit improved living conditions AND vaccines with the decrease in life altering and ending diseases.

You are long on rhetoric and suspicion and short on fact.

Go and find some of the key works, by the major players and read up on actuality, then come back and discuss based on something other than opinion.

Given that the movers and shakers in the epidemiology world were actually in the UK, then you need to read extensively to put it all into context, which would include in this order, the works of Edwin Chadwick, William Farr, John Simon. Florence Nightingale and Francis Galton need to be read side by side, since they operated together, then move on to Charles Creighton, and Major Greenwood.

When you've done that, shift over and study the early writers in USA, ending with Drs Sonja and John McKinlay.

Then you will be in a position to discuss something, somewhere else, rather than hijack this thread further.

Which seems to be the way you and your cohort from Randi's empire work.

[Sherlock007]

Originally Posted by Shirelle

What would be interesting is if they would do a study on sibling pairs who have been vaxed and unvaxed. Especially since the risk of autism is higher if an older sibling has it.

Of course, I'm extremely biased, because I have two boys, one is vaxxed, one is not. One has autism, one does not.

Ditto.

Originally Posted by Shodan

The largest flaw in your argument is this, though - doctors have their own children vaccinated as well.

That is an assumption. There are pediatricians, doctors and nurses who don't vaccinate their own children.

There are also many people working with other people's children with special needs and disabilities, who don't. They work at the bottom of the cliff.

Originally Posted by Carma

Maybe there are research papers comparing the overall health of vaccinated cows and non-vaccinated cows for example. It is not the same as humans of course. And if you want to look at autism, that's probably not testable in animals.

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...&postcount=262

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...&postcount=267

Originally Posted by Shodan

It doesn't really work that way. Assuming that this tendency to develop autism as a reaction to thimerisol is distributed randomly in the population, then a reduction in vaccines using thimerisol, on average, should correlate to a reduction in autism. But it didn't.

MONTREAL, July 5 — As the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal was removed from vaccines, and as fewer children received the mumps-measles-rubella vaccine, the rates of autism and related disorders rose among Canadian schools.

In a study of nearly 28,000 children born between 1987 and 1998, the prevalence of pervasive developmental disorders was greater in those children vaccinated after the mercury-containing compound thimerosal was completely eliminated from vaccines in Canada.

Not all the children had Autism.

Full-syndrome autism has declined since the removal of thimerosal:

http://www.safeminds.org/pressroom/p...2001-18-05.pdf

Originally Posted by shmoo

Exactly. I am pro-vax not because I turn a blind eye towards the risks associated with vaccination but because I understand the benefits to outweigh those risks. Most importantly, I look beyond my own child's health when assessing vaccines. I have a healthy child with no known contraindications for vaccination. If too many children like mine are opted out, protections for children who cannot be vaccinated will diminish.

So if your first child was vaccine injured, or killed, would you continue to vaccinate him and subsequent children in order to protect immune-compromised children?

Of course there are unvaccinated children with the "Autism" label seeing as rubella infection or taking anti-convulsant medication during pregnancy (such as Valproic Acid ), and lack of oxygen at birth can cause the same symptoms.

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by Sherlock007

That is an assumption. There are pediatricians, doctors and nurses who don't vaccinate their own children.

True, there are some. There are crackpots in every field.

But most doctors are experienced in medical risk/benefit assessment, and are able to cut thru the BS of most anti-vax nonsense.

Originally Posted by Shodan

It doesn't really work that way. Assuming that this tendency to develop autism as a reaction to thimerisol is distributed randomly in the population, then a reduction in vaccines using thimerisol, on average, should correlate to a reduction in autism. But it didn't.

MONTREAL, July 5 — As the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal was removed from vaccines, and as fewer children received the mumps-measles-rubella vaccine, the rates of autism and related disorders rose among Canadian schools.

In a study of nearly 28,000 children born between 1987 and 1998, the prevalence of pervasive developmental disorders was greater in those children vaccinated after the mercury-containing compound thimerosal was completely eliminated from vaccines in Canada.

Not all the children had Autism.

Did you notice that your own cite shows that pervasive developmental disorders increased after thimerosal was removed?

So if your cite indicated anything, it was evidence that thimerosal was correlated with a lower rate of autism and pervasive developmental disorders!

Originally Posted by Deborah

So death rates from every other disease went down, way down, prior to the introduction of the vaccine.

Not true, I am afraid -
look at the graph for meales, for example.

Regards,
Shodan

[MamaPossum]

True, there are some. There are crackpots in every field.

But most doctors are experienced in medical risk/benefit assessment, and are able to cut thru the BS of most anti-vax nonsense.

I'm not sure about this. I was given a drug for medical condition that caused me to have a severe allergic rxn. None of the Drs. believed me b/c they didn't even bother to look up the drug and the possible side effects in the PDR. I had a rare rxn, but it IS listed as a rxn to this drug in the PDR. The PDR for Pete's sake. Every single Dr. should be familiar with the PDR. They could have looked in their little organizer even when they went out the room. I told them I was having a rxn and they didn't believe me. They instead gave an entirely different diagnosis and made me feel like the crazy person. Thankfully, my dh looked it up in the PDR and we knew what the problem was.

Some Drs. are good, but a good many of them are not. Just remember that even the person graduating last in the class is still called DOCTOR. Also, I was talking to a doctor outside of the box and he told me that the best Drs. go into dermatology b/c they have good hours. Drs. are people who went to school for a long time. I went to school for a long time too-- just as long in fact-- but a different type of school. I don't know everything there is to know in my field and Drs. are no different. The key is whether or not the Dr. is information literate.

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by BrklynMama

Shodan, I really, really want to have the same certainty when it comes to thimerosal safety! It would be so reassuring. But honestly, I think the jury's still out. First of all, autism is often diagnosed in older children, so I think we need to see studies that track children through to age ten, and not just for classic autism, but for a variety of neurodevelopmental delays. We are still in the fairly early post-mercury era.

I believe the studies took this into account - they examined diagnosed cases of autism, which you are quite correct can be diagnosed in older children. And other pervasive developmental disorders were also examined, IIRCT.

Second, the "tendency to develop autism as a reaction to thimerosal" couldn't be distributed randomly because autism is overwhelmingly more prevalent in boys. Which suggests that if autism is a combination of a genetic predisposition and an environmental "insult" to the system - which is a fairly mainstream theory, regardless of the nature of that environmental insult - then we need to look at the biochemical differences between boys and girls. There were some interesting toxicology studies done with testosterone in combination with thimerosal, for example.

That would suggest the the genetic predisposition occurs on the sex-linked genes, or at least on the sex-linked genes that are expressed.

So the mutation which produces this predisposition would still be randomly distributed, but only expressed in boys.

If autism were linked to higher levels of testosterone, I would expect autism to appear more at puberty, where testosterone levels in boys rise.

But you are again quite correct that once we get a better handle on the causes of autism, we will be better reassured of what to worry about. To date, thimerosal does not seem to be one of those things.

Regards,
Shodan