What are the biggest more impressive arguments for Pro vaxers? - Page 9

[nichole]

I'm not done reading this thread yet but I wanted to post this before I forget. If vaccines are not effective, how come it is so hard to find chicken pox for my son? I know they are not 100% and we need boosters b/c of waning immunity, but I find it hard to believe that they don't work at all.

Also I have found that to get the real answers you have to really dig deep. So when I first started researching vaccines, I was pro vaccines. Two years later I started researching more and now I'm delayed/selective. Another year later and I'm still learning.

So to answer the original poster, *some* pro vaxers *may* not have access to all the information b/c you have to go beyond the propaganda that appears informative at first.

The other thing is that no one has a crystal ball to see what would happen if we vaccinate or do not. I can't know how my child will react to a certain disease or vaccine until it happens.

Most pro vaxers are just not comfortable with their child getting a VPD whereas nonvaxers see childhood illnesses as part of life. Who knows how many cases of whooping cough and measles go unreported?

Ok i promise to go finish reading the whole thread now

[Scattershoot]

Sounds like there a was measles party. Perhaps there is a reason all those unvaccinated kids were exposed. I know that if measles were to show up in my state, especially among homeschoolers, there would definitely be gatherings. This study doesn't even mention the possibility that there were continued, purposeful exposures. Do you think epidemiologists really don't know about measles parties??

Exactly what I was thinking. Especially with the huge percentage of home-schooled children involved. If anyone caught chicken pox or measles around here, dozens of children would end up with the "diseases" in an "epidemic" because we'd all be hanging out having a good time. The mass media and pro-vaxers would have a field day talking about how the "measles outbreak was attacking the unvaccinated" but would somehow leave out the life-long immunity part and the maturation of the immune response.

The 100 grand spent on the older, hospital employee just shows how expensive the disease is when you don't get real immunity from getting the disease as a child. The 34 year old employee was one of the two vaccine failures. They try to make the point that not getting vaccinated ends up costing society loads of money, but their own flippin' study shows that vaccination ends up being much, much more expensive in the long run.

This study is SO RIDICULOUS its RIDICULOUS. The people were all members of the same church. What religious practice has such a high rate of unvaccinated children? It sounds like the gathering was fortuitous not disastrous.

This example of a study for pro-vaccination is why people who choose not to vaccinate have such little patience with the "research" of pro-vaxers.

[suprgrl]

Where did you find the detailed info re: the hospitalization cases for the measles outbreak?

[jessicaSAR]

Originally Posted by suprgrl

Where did you find the detailed info re: the hospitalization cases for the measles outbreak?

In the article posted by iamleabee in post 148

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/5/447

[suprgrl]

Thanks. I just went back and found it while you were posting.

Trying to keep up here :

Interesting discussion.

[aira]

MT... about the peds encountering mumps!

True it is sad, though. I saw similar stupidity when DS was in the hosp with RSV... machinistic handling and myopic thinking based solely on labwork.

They very quickly sent us home (after having told us we'd be there no less than a week) when I ranted to the team of young little yale peds about the risks they were introducing by not thinking things through first.

Works like a charm.

I'm super surprised they didn't push the vax issue. DS was 2 months, and I had just refused them in his ped's office a few days before. Hearing here how many mamas get harrassed about it when their kids are sick...

[Tracy]

Originally Posted by mamakay

Iamleabee, what do you make of this?
It's an FDA meeting on the issue of animal viruses accidentally making it into vaccines and infecting people.
They go over the ones you can find in pubmed like SV40 in the OPV, and BVDV in the MMR first, and then there's this:

http://www.fda.gov/cber/minutes/0910evolv.txt


(bolding mine)

very interesting but of course no shock to me.

[blessed]

I take care of older people in my practice and it's quite common to run across folks who suffered from polio as children.

I've only ever seen one case of tetenus, and that was in a nonvaxed child. But it was horrible. He almost died and was left neurologically damaged. However, nearly all of the few cases of tetenus in the US occur in elderly sick people, so that was a very unusual case.

I think that some vaxes can be justified in a risk/benefit ratio. However, many - flu vaccine in kids, hep b in infants - are not intended to protect the recipient of the vaccine but are given for community purposes. So, the indications for the vaccine are misrepresented to parents in the first place. Then, the safety and efficacy groundwork haven't been followed prior to widespread recommendations for use, so as consumers we are left to ourselves to figure things out.

What a screwed up mess.

[MichelleS]

Originally Posted by Momtezuma Tuatara

Most pro-vaccine parents I know, don't have the knowledge or the skills to nurse their children through infections that are more than a sniffle. They rely on the experts for answers, and certainly have absolutely no faith in the immune systems of their children. They are the ones who say "I couldn't live with myself if my child got really sick and died." So no matter how rare anything might be, those are the reasons they can't get past.

Often, many of them, knowing that its a fragile reason in terms of logic, then add on the altruism angle, by saying that they are protecting all the other kids so that they won't die either.

I've tried to show these people all the risks, facts and data, but ultimately it will come down to wanting to do the "right" thing according to the system: to be accepted by the system.

When they vaccinate their children they don't have to worry, and its the worry relief that is the most important thing for them, as I hear them talk about it.

I read all these posts with such great interest, and this one, especially, spoke to me. I am the type who couldn't live with anything happening to my children. When my son was born, I was young, inexperienced, and ignorant - I had him vaccinated because I thought "everyone" did. He now has severe asthma and allergies.
I had my now 22 month old partially vaccinated. She suffered a negative reaction; the repercussions of which lasted for months.
My 8 month old has not been vaccinated at all. Do I worry? Of course, I worry. I try to read and research, even as I'm innundated with vaccine advertisements. I have no friends who don't vaccinate, so all of my more mainstream friends think I'm overreacting, and ridiculous in my responses. So yes, I worry, and I am guilty on occasion of questioning whether I'm doing the right thing.
I suppose I question myself more often than others do because I don't have a support group of friends to talk with about this.

[wallacesmum]

(nak)

There are posters in this forum who seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of this issue. I am still learning, and am far from considering myself to have "done the research." There is pressure from the peds, pressure from family and friends, and pressure from the fact that there is supposedly a specific window when this stuff has to be done. Sometimes, we have to make decisions with incomplete information. In the vaccine debate, I feel that, no matter how much I know, the information will be incomplete, because WHERE ARE THE STUDIES THAT COMPARE COMPLETELY UNVAXED KIDS WITH VAXED ONES? My life has not allowed me to develop nearly the level of expertise that I would require to be an effective advocate; all I can do is direct people to the resources that have been helpful to me, and to explain the following:

All our actions are governed by our root, or a priori, assumptions. Sometimes new info modifies a position that is compatible with these assumptions, and sometimes it challenges them fundamentally. There are two major opposing fundamental assumptions in the vaccine debate, in my experience. One is the generally anti-vax position, which seems to be that the human body is a fairly effective machine, which is still mostly a mystery. Until scientists can create a human from scratch, how could I believe that they understand the animal? If we screw around with it, we are likely to experience consequences, that will require further remediation. So, the best approach is to minimize abuse of the system, and cultivate it in a manner consistent with its demands (what is asks for that seems to make it work better, rather than make is sick).

The more pro-vax, or pro-"medicine", position would seem to be that we understand the human body and can anticipate and pre-empt any consequences from previous pre-emptive strikes (take a healthy baby, inject it with toxins, then run interference). This position also requires the assumption that research institutions and scientists don't get stuck in ruts or develop agendas that would preclude the ability of a researcher from objectively observing something contrary to their own held assumptions. It would also require that these people act in the best interest of a stranger's child, at potential expense to their own career.

Those people do exist, I have no doubt. They are out there fighting the fight all the time, but the stresses can break a person. Peter Duesburg's wife says that no one will have them to dinner or play with their son. Those are little things, but they are a person's life. Wouldn't it be easier for Dr. Duesburg to follow the herd and continue to enjoy the praise of his peers that he used to experience? He doesn't, and there is a cost.

This is already too long a post, so I will stop, although there is a whole essay's worth of fleshing out to be done here. The relevance to the OP, in my mind, is that the most compelling arguments are often the ones that we have already had in a more general sense, that govern all of our decisions. We must be on constant guard that we are open to an argument that could fundamentally shift the parameters, but in the absence of that argument, we all start from somewhere.

Does that make sense? I can see how two people can look at the same data and draw different conclusions, but those two people cannot both start from the same place. If we watch the media, we see that debates are always framed in narrow terms that fit certain initial assumptions; step outside those and watch out! Try it with education, try it with government, try it with medicine, etc.

[mamakay]

Originally Posted by Tracy

very interesting but of course no shock to me.

What's even more interesting is that the guy who said the stuff about the studies that don't get released was Philip Minor, who was the head of the UK's FDA for decades.
Google his name and "OPV" and see what theory he's a proponent of.

[mamakay]

Originally Posted by blessed

I think that some vaxes can be justified in a risk/benefit ratio. However, many - flu vaccine in kids, hep b in infants - are not intended to protect the recipient of the vaccine but are given for community purposes. So, the indications for the vaccine are misrepresented to parents in the first place. Then, the safety and efficacy groundwork haven't been followed prior to widespread recommendations for use, so as consumers we are left to ourselves to figure things out.

What a screwed up mess.

Even the "community purposes" for HepB isn't exactly what you'd think. It's part of the universal schedule here in the US so the vaccine is affordable in China.
Seriously.
That's the way "bioethicists" are working things out now. Which I'm not totally opposed to, other than the way this stuff is basically being worked out in secret. It leaves me feeling cynical and suspicious.

And the vaccine debate is so emotionally charged now that any dissent whatsoever gets you pegged as a mental case.

It is a screwed up mess.

[blessed]

Originally Posted by mamakay

..And the vaccine debate is so emotionally charged now that any dissent whatsoever gets you pegged as a mental case..

When my colleagues find out that I'm not a wholesale supporter of all vaxes they usually look at me sideways and say 'you're not one of those, are you?'

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

And you reply with:

Not, but you're one of these no doubt

http://whqlibdoc.who.int/bulletin/19...4)_367-375.pdf ~ See page five second para on the left.

This is an article talking about vaccinating sick kids in hospital.

Since there are virtually no contraindications to measles vaccination, measles vaccine should be administered regardless of the patient's health status. Measles vaccination is particularly important for malnourished children and for those with chronic illnesses, as they are at increased risk of complication due to measles. An exception to this recommendation are children who on admission, are so ill that they are at serious risk of dying. Although administration of measles vaccine is not dangerous in such cases, parents may incorrectly attribute a death to the vaccination

Yours sincerely, the World Health Organisation, who know everything.

But to be blunt, what this says to me, is that they care more about the reputation of a vaccine than the health of a seriously sick person.

Or a well one, for that matter.

[LongIsland]

Thank you MT. This needs to be repeated and people need to read EVERY WORD again and THEN AGAIN:

Since there are virtually no contraindications to measles vaccination, measles vaccine should be administered regardless of the patient's health status.
Measles vaccination is particularly important for malnourished children and for those with chronic illnesses, as they are at increased risk of complication due to measles. An exception to this recommendation are children who on admission, are so ill that they are at serious risk of dying.

Although administration of measles vaccine is not dangerous in such cases, parents may incorrectly attribute a death to the vaccination




.

[aira]

[wallacesmum]

LI - are there no contraindications because there are no safety tests on sick kids? I haven't gotten through your wonderful testing thread yet!

[mykdsmomy]

Originally Posted by LongIsland

Thank you MT. This needs to be repeated and people need to read EVERY WORD again and THEN AGAIN:

Since there are virtually no contraindications to measles vaccination, measles vaccine should be administered regardless of the patient's health status.
Measles vaccination is particularly important for malnourished children and for those with chronic illnesses, as they are at increased risk of complication due to measles. An exception to this recommendation are children who on admission, are so ill that they are at serious risk of dying.

Although administration of measles vaccine is not dangerous in such cases, parents may incorrectly attribute a death to the vaccination
.

how the.....what the......

The thing that totally stinks about this is the most parents would probably read this and go "oh, ok ...if you say so, dr.....go ahead and give my very fragile, very ill, child a vaccine because hey, it might actually help them" oh i want to vomit

[mamakay]

Originally Posted by blessed

When my colleagues find out that I'm not a wholesale supporter of all vaxes they usually look at me sideways and say 'you're not one of those, are you?'

An if you want to get really freaked out, go look around the "Ethics of Vaccines" project at the University of Pennsylvania site.
These are bioethicists who are implementing plans to do nifty stuff like vaccinating middle school kids with the HPV vaccine at school for the sole purpose of "overcoming" the "parental consent" barrier to care.

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...d.php?t=557554

Not that I even have a huge problem with the HPV vaccine, but there actually are some questions about how it might not turn out so hunky dory.
There are some bases they haven't covered regarding it's safety.

Also, I live in a state with only a religious exemption. And I'm an atheist. So, we're not allowed to have *scientific issues* with any of the vaccines? What am I supposed to do?

Who's the voice of skepticism in the NIP? The very folks who make the schedule? No one else can say "Hey...what are you thinking? This isn't all that scientifically sound, really, as far as I can tell."

So messed up. So, so messed up. :

[mykdsmomy]

Originally Posted by mamakay

Also, I live in a state with only a religious exemption. And I'm an atheist. So, we're not allowed to have *scientific issues* with any of the vaccines? What am I supposed to do?

Can't it be against your personal religion (atheist) to give your child vaccines though? I mean does it have to be written in church doctrine somewhere?