Another decliner of MMR here. As has been said before, at the time of Wakefield,(my eldest is 15 and we were exactly in the frame, normal MMR in our town at the time was 15months) there was enough credibility put through the media to raise the doubt in our minds. This was following other significant public health problems like CJD. We went with separate vaccines done privately at a travel vaccinations clinic as no NHS facility had stock or would offer them. In fact only measles and mumps as Rubella isn't a massive risk to a child, and protection has often worn off by the time you want to have kids, so rubella vacc. as a teenager is a much better bet. I still don't fully understand the reluctance to offer separate jabs(perhaps even paying) through the NHS.
The argument to say it will mean lower uptake falls immensely flat when you have a parent in the room saying "No, not MMR, but if you have separates, go right ahead." and that has happened a LOT in the last fifteen years. Most of those parents won't have gone for private jabs, but done without. Cost of ours privately was about £80 per child.
Also, without the relative risks being either outlined or understood to and by the majority of parents, if it was a straight choice between measles and autism, most would choose measles every day. It might be clear as day that Wakefield is junk now, but it certainly wasn't for several years from 1998, maybe even a decade. That's a long time for things to rumble along in the back of the minds of people who later become parents and are then faced with a choice.
I still don't fully understand the reluctance to offer separate jabs(perhaps even paying) through the NHS.
a) it's less effective
b) (I'm guessing) it's more expensive
c) it undermines faith in the combination vaccine; to wit, "why would you offer separate ones, is there something wrong with the MMR jab?"
The argument to say it will mean lower uptake falls immensely flat when you have a parent in the room saying "No, not MMR, but if you have separates, go right ahead."
The solution there (now, not ten years ago) isn't to pander to their ignorance, it's to re-educate the populace. It's a shame the Daily Mail et all haven't run a huge "the MMR scare was a load of shit" campaign; can't think why.
I didn't have the MMR - my parents, at the time (and this was the 1980s) had worries about the vaccine, so I didn't have it, and when I was born it was pretty new, so uptake was low. My younger brother and sister have both had it. My brother (the youngest) has autism. My Dad to this day feels guilty that he gave in to his wife and let the youngest two have the triple vaccine - he's convinced there's a link, despite my sister being fine, and me not having had the vaccine, but having Crohns disease!
What my dad thinks isn't rational at all, it was most likely nothing to do with the vaccine that my brother became autistic, he was probably born that way, and it's not always evident until the toddler stage. But all the science in the world won't stop him wondering "what if". Science cannot necessarily dispel all fear and emotion, and that's what we're dealing with.
Unfortunately it's had such terribly bad press and the scaremongering was so great that all the reassurance in the world won't cut it for some parents, and you're not necessarily dealing with "rational heads" when it comes to parents and children's health. There are strong views both for and against, but it has to come down to parent choice, and as a parent, what you can live with. And I do think parents should take into account the health of others when making that decision about whether to have their kids vaccinated, as well as their own kids.
No consolation to your dad now of course...but
http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/4/456.full#sec-4
ConclusionsTwenty epidemiologic studies have shown that neither thimerosal nor MMR vaccine causes autism. These studies have been performed in several countries by many different investigators who have employed a multitude of epidemiologic and statistical methods. The large size of the studied populations has afforded a level of statistical power sufficient to detect even rare associations. These studies, in concert with the biological implausibility that vaccines overwhelm a child's immune system, have effectively dismissed the notion that vaccines cause autism. Further studies on the cause or causes of autism should focus on more-promising leads.
Ben Goldacres bit n the grauniad from a few years back is circulating again. Another good read
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
Saturday August 30 2008
Dr Andrew Wakefield is in front of the General Medical Council on charges of serious professional misconduct, his paper on 12 children with autism and bowel problems is described as “debunked” – although it never supported the conclusions ascribed to it – and journalists have convinced themselves that his £435,643 fee from legal aid proves that his research was flawed.
I will now defend the heretic Dr Andrew Wakefield.The media are fingering the wrong man, and they know who should really take the blame: in MMR, journalists and editors have constructed their greatest hoax to date, and finally demonstrated that they can pose a serious risk to public health. But there are also many unexpected twists to learn from: the health journalists themselves were not at fault, the scale of the bias in the coverage was greater than anybody realised at the time, Leo Blair was a bigger player than Wakefield, and it all happened much later than you think.
Before we begin, it’s worth taking a moment to look at vaccine scares around the world, because I’m always struck by how circumscribed these panics are. The MMR and autism scare, for example, is practically non-existent outside Britain. But throughout the 1990s France was in the grip of a scare that hepatitis B vaccine caused multiple sclerosis.
In the US, the major vaccine fear has been around the use of a preservative called thiomersal, although somehow this hasn’t caught on here, even though that same preservative was used in Britain. In the 1970s there was a widespread concern in the UK, driven again by a single doctor, that whooping-cough vaccine was causing neurological damage.
What the diversity of these anti-vaccination panics helps to illustrate is the way in which they reflect local political and social concerns more than a genuine appraisal of the risk data, because if the vaccine for hepatitis B, or MMR, is dangerous in one country, it should be equally dangerous everywhere; and if those concerns were genuinely grounded in the evidence, especially in an age of the rapid propagation of information, you would expect the concerns to be expressed by journalists everywhere. They’re not.
In 1998 Wakefield published his paper in the Lancet. It’s surprising to see, if you go back to the original clippings, that the study and the press conference were actually covered in a fairly metered fashion, and also quite sparsely. The Guardian and the Independent reported the story on their front pages, but the Sun ignored it entirely, and the Daily Mail – home of the health scare, and now well known as vigorous campaigners against vaccination – buried their first MMR piece unobtrusively in the middle of the paper. There were only 122 articles mentioning the subject at all, in all publications, that whole year.
This was not unreasonable. The study itself was fairly trivial, a “case series report” of 12 people – essentially a collection of 12 clinical anecdotes – and such a study would only really be interesting and informative if it described a rare possible cause of a rare outcome. If everyone who went into space came back with an extra finger, say, then that would be worth noting. For things as common as MMR and autism, finding 12 people with both is entirely unspectacular.
But things were going to get much worse, and for some very interesting reasons. In 2001 and 2002 the scare began to gain momentum. Wakefield published a review paper in an obscure journal, questioning the safety of the immunisation programme, although with no new evidence. He published two papers on laboratory work using PCR (a technique used in genetic fingerprinting) which claimed to show measles virus in tissue samples from children with bowel problems and autism. These received blanket media coverage.
The coverage rapidly began to deteriorate, in ways which now feel familiar and predictable. Emotive anecdotes from distressed parents were pitted against old men in corduroy with no media training. The Royal College of General Practitioners press office not only failed to speak clearly on the evidence, it also managed to dig up anti-MMR GPs for journalists who rang in asking for quotes. Newspapers and celebrities began to use the vaccine as an opportunity to attack the government and the health service, and of course it was the perfect story, with a charismatic maverick fighting against the system, a Galileo-like figure. There were elements of risk, of awful personal tragedy, and of course, the question of blame: whose fault was autism?
But the biggest public health disaster of all – which everyone misses – was a sweet little baby called Leo. In December 2001 the Blairs were asked if their infant son had been given the MMR vaccine, and refused to answer, on the grounds that this would invade their child’s right to privacy. This stance was not entirely unreasonable, but its validity was somewhat undermined by Cherie Blair when she chose to reveal Leo’s vaccination history, in the process of promoting her autobiography, and also described the specific act of sexual intercourse which conceived him.
And while most other politicians were happy to clarify whether their children had had the vaccine, you could see how people might believe the Blairs were the kind of family not to have their children immunised: essentially, they had surrounded themselves with health cranks. There was Cherie Blair’s closest friend and aide, Carole Caplin, a new age guru and “life coach”. Cherie was reported to visit Carole’s mum, Sylvia Caplin, a spiritual guru who was viciously anti-MMR (“for a tiny child, the MMR is a ridiculous thing to do. It has definitely caused autism,” she told the Mail). They were also prominently associated with a new age healer called Jack Temple, who offered crystal dowsing, homeopathy, neolithic-circle healing in his suburban back garden, and some special breastfeeding technique which he reckoned made vaccines unnecessary.
Whatever you believe about the Blairs’ relationships, this is what the nation was thinking about when they refused to clarify whether they had given their child the MMR vaccine.
The MMR scare has created a small cottage industry of media analysis. In 2003 the Economic and Social Research Council published a paper on the media’s role in the public understanding of science, which sampled all the major science media stories from January to September 2002, the peak of the scare. It found 32% of all the stories written in that period about MMR mentioned Leo Blair, and Wakefield was only mentioned in 25%: Leo Blair was a bigger figure in this story than Wakefield.
And this was not a passing trivial moment in a 10-year-long story. 2002 was in fact the peak of the media coverage, by a very long margin. In 1998 there were only 122 articles on MMR. In 2002 there were 1,257 (from here). MMR was the biggest science story that year, the most likely science topic to be written about in opinion or editorial pieces, it produced the longest stories of any science subject, and was also by far the most likely to generate letters to the press, so people were clearly engaging with the issue. MMR was the biggest and most heavily covered science story for years.
It was also covered extremely badly, and largely by amateurs. Less than a third of broadsheet reports in 2002 referred to the overwhelming evidence that MMR is safe, and only 11% mentioned that it is regarded as safe in the 90 other countries in which it is used.
While stories on GM food, or cloning, stood a good chance of being written by specialist science reporters, with stories on MMR their knowledge was deliberately sidelined, and 80% of the coverage was by generalist reporters. Suddenly we were getting comment and advice on complex matters of immunology and epidemiology from Nigella Lawson, Libby Purves, Suzanne Moore and Carol Vorderman, to name only a few. The anti-MMR lobby, meanwhile, developed a reputation for targeting generalist journalists, feeding them stories, and actively avoiding health or science correspondents.
Journalists are used to listening with a critical ear to briefings from press officers, politicians, PR executives, salespeople, lobbyists, celebrities and gossip-mongers, and they generally display a healthy natural scepticism: but in the case of science, generalists don’t have the skills to critically appraise a piece of scientific evidence on its merits. At best, the evidence of these “experts” will only be examined in terms of who they are as people, or perhaps who they have worked for. In the case of MMR, this meant researchers were simply subjected to elaborate smear campaigns.
The actual scientific content of stories was brushed over and replaced with didactic statements from authority figures on either side of the debate, which contributed to a pervasive sense that scientific advice is somehow arbitrary, and predicated upon a social role – the “expert” – rather than on empirical evidence.
Any member of the public would have had very good reason to believe that MMR caused autism, because the media distorted the scientific evidence, reporting selectively on the evidence suggesting that MMR was risky, and repeatedly ignoring the evidence to the contrary. In the case of the PCR data, the genetic fingerprinting information on whether vaccine-strain measles virus could be found in tissue samples of children with autism and bowel problems, this bias was, until a few months ago, quite simply absolute. You will remember from earlier that Wakefield co-authored two scientific papers – known as the “Kawashima paper” and the “O’Leary paper” – claiming to have found such evidence, and received blanket media coverage for them. But you may never even have heard of the papers showing these to be probable false positives.
In the Journal of Medical Virology May March 2006 there was a paper by Afzal et al, looking for measles RNA in children with regressive autism after MMR vaccination, using tools so powerful they could detect measles RNA down to single-figure copy numbers. It found no evidence of the vaccine-strain measles RNA to implicate MMR. Nobody wrote about this study, anywhere, in the British media (except for me in my column).
This was not an isolated case. Another major paper was published in the leading academic journal Pediatrics a few months later, replicating the earlier experiments very closely, and in some respects more carefully, also tracing out the possible routes by which a false positive could have occurred. For this paper by D’Souza et al, like the Afzal paper before it, the media were united in their silence. It was covered, by my count, in only two places: my column, and a Reuters news agency report. Nowhere else (although there was a post on the lead researcher’s boyfriend’s blog where he talked about how proud he was of his girlfriend). [EDITED to disambiguate]
Journalists like to call for “more research”: here it was, and it was ignored. Did the media neglect to cover these stories because they were bored of the story? Clearly not. Because in 2006, at exactly the same time as they were unanimously refusing even to mention these studies, they were covering an identical claim, using identical experimental methodology: “US scientists back autism link to MMR” said the Telegraph. “Scientists fear MMR link to autism” squealed the Mail.
What was this frightening new data? These scare stories were based on a poster presentation, at a conference yet to occur, on research not yet completed, by a man with a well-documented track record of announcing research that never subsequently appears in an academic journal. This time Dr Arthur Krigsman was claiming he had found genetic material from vaccine-strain measles virus in some gut samples from children with autism and bowel problems. If true, this would have bolstered Wakefield’s theory, which by 2006 was lying in tatters. We might also mention that Wakefield and Krigsman are doctors together at Thoughtful House, a private autism clinic in the US.
Two years after making these claims, the study remains unpublished.
Nobody can read what Krigsman did in his experiment, what he measured, or replicate it. Should anyone be surprised by this? No. Krigsman was claiming in 2002 that he had performed colonoscopy studies on children with autism and found evidence of harm from MMR, to universal jubilation in the media, and this work remains entirely unpublished as well. Until we can see exactly what he did, we can’t see whether there may be flaws in his methods, as there are in all scientific papers, to a greater or lesser extent: maybe he didn’t select the subjects properly, maybe he measured the wrong things. If he doesn’t write it up formally, we can never know, because that is what scientists do: write papers, and pull them apart to see if their findings are robust.
Through reporting as shamelessly biased as this, British journalists have done their job extremely well. People make health decisions based on what they read in the newspapers, and MMR uptake has plummeted from 92% to 73%: there can be no doubt that the appalling state of health reporting is now a serious public health issue. We have already seen a mumps epidemic in 2005, and measles cases are at their highest levels for a decade. But these are not the most chilling consequences of their hoax, because the media are now queueing up to blame one man, Wakefield, for their own crimes.
It is madness to imagine that one single man can create a 10-year scare story. It is also dangerous to imply – even in passing – that academics should be policed not to speak their minds, no matter how poorly evidenced their claims. Individuals like Wakefield must be free to have bad ideas. The media created the MMR hoax, and they maintained it diligently for 10 years. Their failure to recognise that fact demonstrates that they have learned nothing, and until they do, journalists and editors will continue to perpetrate the very same crimes, repeatedly, with increasingly grave consequences.
http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/
(i) If the Medical Establishment rails against any proposed cut in their budget, it reinforces the premise that expensive is good. They should not then be surprised when the public distrusts a remedy which is sold to them as both more effective and cheaper.
(ii) In the modern world where deference has largely disappeared, the most effective expert is often the one who is able to communicate his expertise to the non-expert - not the most qualified one.
(iii) I am somewhat surprised no one has complained about the use of the word "cretin" as a term of abuse.
Mefty, when you capitalise Medical Establishment, what's that supposed to mean? Are you talking about doctors, or about the NHS, or about pharma companies, or about something else?
Cougar - to the credit of Private Eye, which supported Wakefield for a very long time, it did publish a Mea Culpa and apology. The only media organisation to do so, from what I can see.
cough Thalidomide
As a point of information, thalidomide passed all available toxicity screens prior to being launched. It was only after subsequent reproductive toxicity studies were introduced, that its effects were observed in preclinical experiments. For many other serious diseases (including leprosy and cancer), it's proving to be an effective therapy.
My wife suffered adult chickenpox when the kids caught it, as there is no catch-up vaccination available in the UK, despite a vaccine. Whilst benign in children, it can be serious in adults. About 30 people a year die from preventable chickenpox. Measles deaths are just as preventable.
Thalidomide is not a relevant comparison. That happened before there were decent standards for conducting clinical studies, and was an important contributor to a complete change in clinical testing.
I thought that the reason single vaccinations were discouraged wasn't only cost but because evidence showed that people didn't turn up for the other vaccinations.
Death is not the only side effect of measles. I am short sighted due to catching it in the 60's from my sister. She didn't get spots behind her eyes, I did. Shame the vaccines weren't that effective fron that era and people want to go back to offering it as an alternative. Then having lived in S. Wales in Cardiff the locals regarded the Swansea dwellers as a little "special".
I wonder if there's a typical type of person who refuses MMR. Do some people not really understand the potential dangers of having measles?
Hippies and Daily Mail Readers. Opposite ends of the spectrum political spectrum but they all have one thing in common, they're stupid air heads. These people are a ****ing disgrace to human intellect.
The really hilarious thing is that there is a statistically insignificant relationship between having the MMR vaccine and having a lower chance of developing autism.
I wasn't vaccinated against anything except polio and diptheria as a small child. My Mother said that here was quite a lot of speculation in the seventies about the safety of the vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and whooping cough, so my parents decided against it.
Mind you, what would my Mum know about it, she's just your average namby pamby middle class parent... who holds a medical degree.
And yet turned out she was wrong.
An interesting read:
[url= http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XNHAp4aJL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU02_.jp g" target="_blank">
i had a vaccination as a child and promptly had a massive seizure and spent the rest of my childhood heavily medicated for epilepsy which has caused me no end of health problems so with all due respect get of the bloody high horse angry man.
Apologies I've not read the whole thread, so don't know if this is redundant, but for those who don't get herd immunity:
[img] 
[/img]
(hotlinked from FB 😉 )
...and here's what a friend of mine who's a nurse in Tassie wrote (I'm sure she won't mind me copying):
This is why we vaccinate. Its got little to do with us! It's about doing our bit to protect those that can't be vaccinated. If you love others particularly tiny babies, vaccinate yourself and your children! Its called Herd immunity, we need you to protect the most vulnerable in the herd! Wake up Tasmania, 2.5 times more whooping cough than the rest of Australia as a direct result of non immunisers! It's not acceptable....
http://www.mamamia.com.au/health-wellbeing/malakais-story-whooping-cough-symptoms-in-babies/
To be fair, the MMR scare has to be put in the context of its time
Its was only a few years after the whole vCJD fiasco, when public trust of government scientists was at pretty much an all time low!
For what its worth - our eldest daughter got separate injections, and has confirmed diagnosis of ASD, and our youngest got MMR, and they are assessing her at the moment...
i had a vaccination as a child and promptly had a massive seizure
I'm sorry about your illness but, respectfully, that doesn't imply a causal link in and of itself. Chances are it would have happened regardless of the vaccine.
IMHO from everything I've read, anyway. You may know different of course, but anecdotes like that just fuel the MMR myth.
and responses like that fuel the resolve of people who think they are being lied to.
go to your doctors pick up a leaflet on vaccinations turn to the back pages and you will find a page that gives advice on what to do if a child has a seizure after the jab .
its the mercury that does it apparently 😕
anyways the whole autism thing is not the only issue in peoples minds is i think what i am getting at.
Its was only a few years after the whole vCJD fiasco
Ah, yes, that well known mass killer. Are you just trying to provide examples of other scare stories?
Geetee ,it is a parents informed choice whether or not to vaccinate their children, who are you to call people cretins
Even if 'Herd Immunity' did work the way its claimed to, you simply cannot acheive the vaccination rates required to completly wipe out a disease. I'll say it again, the biggest group of unvaccinated children are the ones that are too young, followed by the ones that cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. These groups will always exist and will always be potential carriers and spreaders of the disease. These groups will always be the primary ones that compromise 'Herd Immunity'.
The demonization of the few parents who choose not to vaccinate, is simply a convenient scapegoat, to blind the populace from the fact that actually Human medical science is not capable of completly wiping out diseases (althought to get it as low as 0.003% is pretty good going). How many parents who have vaccinated have actually bothered to read for themselves the packaging insert that came with the vaccine? How many, like nonk has said, have actually bothered to read the leaflet about vaccines from their doctor? Are you content with the levels of mecury in the vaccines? Are you content that they contain material from aborted foetuses?
geetee1972 - If a child does die in Wales, and I sincerly hope one doesn't, it doesn't help either side of this debate at all. Did that child have both MMR jabs, or just one? Did it not have the jab for medical reasons? Was it too young for the jab? Did its parents decide against the jab? Did it have a genetic weakness that made it particularly vulnerable to measles? Too many questions.
This is not as black and white as people are trying to make out. To call non-vaccinating parents 'cretins' and 'a **** disgrace to human intellect' is in itself disgracefully cretinous, because these parents have probably done a lot more reading and research around the subject than those that just blindly accept what the government and NHS tells them. *And breath*
and responses like that fuel the resolve of people who think they are being lied to.
I meant no offence, just that "x happened then y happened" doesn't automatically mean "x caused y."
I'll look into your comments before responding, if that's ok.
Geetee ,it is a parents informed choice whether or not to vaccinate their children, who are you to call people cretins
It's their choice, certainly. Whether it's "informed" or not appears to be a matter of debate.
gt, udder etc, lots of chicken pox going around down our way too, one of my daughter's friends and cases at her nursery so worth keeping an eye
gt healing vibes to your little lad
Its was only a few years after the whole vCJD fiascoAh, yes, that well known mass killer. Are you just trying to provide examples of other scare stories?
I rather think that the point was not the number of cases of vCJD, but the fact that the government of the day had stated, absolutely categorically, that there was no risk whatsoever to humans from eating meat from BSE infected animals, when it turned out that there was, in fact, a risk. I'm not sure that people can be blamed for bearing that case in mind when the government of the day stated that there was no risk from the MMR vaccine.
indeed!
[img] 
[/img]
you simply cannot acheive the vaccination rates required to completly wipe out a disease
How many polio cases do you hear of these days? Globally you may be right, but we can get bloody close, and we can wipe some out within a given community.
Are you content with the levels of mecury in the vaccines?
Yes. Read up on the "thiomersal controversy."
Are you content that they contain material from aborted foetuses?
Yes, because they don't. Vaccines are cultivated in human cells which were originally grown from foetal stem cells back in the 60s, but they don't "contain material from aborted foetuses" any more than homeopathic remedies contain an active ingredient. The human cells used in every single vaccine today, the world over, are reproduced from cultures derived from just two abortions.
You could argue whether it's morally just to save billions of lives by using cells from two unborn children forty years ago, but that's a whole other argument. Seems to me to be a pretty noble thing to do, plenty of organ donors in the world, and they typically only save one or two lives.
This won't be liked/agreed with.
I think that as a race humans need less vaccinations and more people who can naturally come through such epidemic problems.
Much rather lose a percentage of the population and carry forward with a naturally strong (without vaccines) race.
Less like running down an ever narrowing alley..
My twopence worth
Here. kja78, you'll like this, it was written by a "Christian scientist." It explains it far better than I just did.
http://www.drwile.com/lnkpages/render.asp?vac_abortion
Even if 'Herd Immunity' did work the way its claimed to, you simply cannot acheive the vaccination rates required to completly wipe out a disease.
There be weasel words here. Just because you appear not to understand how herd immunity works, doesn't mean it's not working. There's a nice picture I posted up there which might help you. Why don't you have a look at that and come back and explain to me why it's wrong?
I'll say it again, the biggest group of unvaccinated children are the ones that are too young, followed by the ones that cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. These groups will always exist and will always be potential carriers and spreaders of the disease. These groups will always be the primary ones that compromise 'Herd Immunity'.
It's quite bizarre. The reasons you propose for herd immunity being a waste of time are the very reasons why it's important. Though I'd question your numbers anyway - from the BBC report, 1 in 6 children in the Swansea area have never had the MMR vaccine, meaning that by far the largest group without resistance are those who's parents elected for them to be carriers. Even using the 1 in 10 figure for the whole of Wales, that's still more children who's parents have chosen not to have resistance than the number of children too young.
I rather think that the point was not the number of cases of vCJD, but the fact that the government of the day had stated, absolutely categorically, that there was no risk whatsoever to humans from eating meat from BSE infected animals, when it turned out that there was, in fact, a risk.
Indeed. Thousands of people die each year from diseases related to eating red meat. How ridiculous of the government to state that there is no risk to eating beef.
IMO Pharmaceutical companies will do anything for profit. Incentivising GPs to give jabs being one of them.
Do I trust my GP? Do I ****!
GPs are up there with bankers as upstanding members of society. Patients = £
you simply cannot achieve the vaccination rates required to completely wipe out a disease
Google [url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1940479 ]Hib and Finland[/url]. Not just disease, but carriage of the bacteria has been virtually eliminated from a country. And don't get me started on Smallpox...
IMO Pharmaceutical companies will do anything for profit. Incentivising GPs to give jabs being one of them.Do I trust my GP? Do I ****!
Whilst that may be true, it has zero bearing on the efficacy of vaccination.
You might want to have a look here, I think it'd be relevant to your interests. http://www.alltrials.net/ In fact, everyone should, and sign the petition, it's Important.
you simply cannot acheive the vaccination rates required to completly wipe out a disease
smallpox
you simply cannot acheive the vaccination rates required to completly wipe out a disease
smallpox
Better still, catch cowpox like I did in 1994, and no smallpox vaccine is required. 😆
OP, hope your baba gets better soon. It's very easy to feel frustrated and useless when you child is unwell. They are tough little creatures though.
Cougar - Moderator
The human cells used in every single vaccine today, the world over, are reproduced from cultures derived from just two abortions.
I hope that link isn't your proof for the above statement. The only apparent prevention is federal law (or good old fashion normal law), which only comes into play when i/you/they are caught.
I doubt that pharmaceutical companies make much out of vaccines, except new ones that are still on patent, like flu jabs?
someone I know tried to rubbish the herd immunity theory by giving tetanus as an example.....
just noticed on that Gummer pic - the burger's hanging so far out of the bottom of the bun that he probably didn't eat any actual burger at all
😐
[b]Chipsngravy[/b]
As a GP (and thanks for your kind words... 😉 )
I can tell you that from a financial point of view we would love to be able to walk away from Child immunisations tomorrow. We only even get the money (paid retrospectively) to pay our staff to give them if we hit targets which are getting tighter, and are impossible in many areas of the country. Two new imms are going to be aded to the regime soon, the reimbursement isn't going up at all.
The kids jabs are centrally supplied, we never meet people from the companies involved, we don't purchase them or get any incentivisation from the manufacturers.
But don't let facts get in the way... 😆
I meant no offence, just that "x happened then y happened" doesn't automatically mean "x caused y."
non taken cougar.
@stoatsbrother "targets" "reimbursement", to me these words suggest that one way or another GPs have a financial arrangement of sorts with drug companies. Whilst this arrangement is in place I'm afraid I cannot trust the motives of GPs. Their sole concern should be patient welfare. Not "targets".
As a GP please understand this is about trust. Detach yourself from a financial arrangement with the drug companies and that is a step in the right direction. Maybe then I'll develop some trust.
Personally my wife and I have chosen not to give our kids any jabs. I'm grateful that we have the freedom to opt out. Making this decision has not come without difficulties, particularly from our GP. I was stonewalled when I "dared" to ask questions about immunisation and my concerns about it. I realise that my wife and I are now viewed as nutters by our GP and his colleagues. All because I wanted (dared) to ask some questions.
As for the suggestion of forcing people to be immunised. An infringement of civil liberties. Very wrong.
@Cougar, thanks for the link. Signed.
I hope that link isn't your proof for the above statement.
No, it was just the first thing I found to try and back up what I thought I knew anyway.
@Cougar, thanks for the link. Signed.
Excellent, thank you.
Start of with the fact that all our children are immunised and Wakefield and his media supporters have a lot to answer for. However...
- Implicit trust in the medical profession or pharmaceutical companies is not my thing. Both have abused the trust placed in them. Thalidomide and the ongoing misuse of the Liverpool Care Pathway are reasonable examples
- I don't believe that any parent should be forced into any medical intervention for their child unless there is an immediate threat to the life of the child
Just my point of view though...
Implicit trust in the medical profession or pharmaceutical companies is not my thing. Both have abused the trust placed in them. Thalidomide and the ongoing misuse of the Liverpool Care Pathway are reasonable examples
So would you rather trust journalists? Unfortunately for you, it's such a specialised area that you have no choice.
And thalidomide is not a vald example really, I wish people would stop banging on about it. It was a mistake, not an abuse of trust. It's like saying air travel is dangerous and citing Comet as an example.
I don't believe that any parent should be forced into any medical intervention for their child unless there is an immediate threat to the life of the child
Well this measles scare is a good example of why they should. The wasn't an immediate threat to health from measles, now there is. Statisticaly, several kids are likely to die from this outbreak, which is caused by people not immunising and exercising their poorly informed choice. If you immunise, diseases can be controlled or even eradicated. This is a good thing.
Personally my wife and I have chosen not to give our kids any jabs.
Are you therefore happy to be part of this problem rather than its solution?
Incidentally, from where do you get your information to make these decisions about immunisation? The internet? Books? Newspapers?
Just because someone is paid for doing something doesn't make it wrong. Teachers are paid to teach, police are paid to look after us etc. If the govt is paying doctors per jab, then that's not the doctors' fault. Plus it's not that outrageous to be paid per job anyway. Although I would prefer it in principle if doctors were employed by the govt directly on a yearly salary, I think.
Anyone care to fill me in on why they're not? Or are they?
Implicit trust in the medical profession or pharmaceutical companies is not my thing. Both have abused the trust placed in them. Thalidomide and the ongoing misuse of the Liverpool Care Pathway are reasonable examples
As molgrips says, what choice do you have? Unless you have access to, and the understanding of, the published research etc... then you aren't going to be able to make an informed decision, you have to rely on what someone else is telling you.
I agree with molgrips on the second point too. A parents' choice on whether to immunize their kids doesn't only have an impact on their kids but others also.
Personally my wife and I have chosen not to give our kids any jabs.
Are you therefore happy to be part of this problem rather than its solution?
And to be held responsible if your child is the direct cause of another dying when you could have done something to try prevent it ever happening?
a bit less confused on all this:
argument goes - some parents choose not to vaccinate and reason is probably that they wish to protect their children - their fears may be irrational and data is a little confusing (label as cretins)
argument goes - you wish to protect your child but only way to do it is to compel others to act in a way they don't want to - their fears may be irrational and the data is a little confusing (label as good socialists)
And thalidomide is not a vald example really, I wish people would stop banging on about it. It was a mistake, not an abuse of trust. It's like saying air travel is dangerous and citing Comet as an example.
As I said earlier a better example would be gulf war syndrome which involved "safe" vaccines taken together that resulted in multiple health issues the existence of which were then denied by the powers that be .
I'm not sure that people can be blamed for bearing that case in mind when the government of the day stated that there was no risk from the MMR vaccine.
All that proved was that governments are stupid and not scientists. They had no right to make the claim about beef.
However it's not only the government that's saying this about immunisation. It's a long studied topic, and this scare has been going on for years, not just some sudden health crisis like BSE was.
Easy to condemn parents now, but my daughter was a baby when all the MMR vaccine scare came out and certainly made th decision harder. decision
When I was a kid the vast majority had measles and mumps along with chickenpox, just seen as one of those things that you caught and got over
@stoatsbrother "targets" "reimbursement", to me these words suggest that one way or another GPs have a financial arrangement of sorts with drug companies. Whilst this arrangement is in place I'm afraid I cannot trust the motives of GPs. Their sole concern should be patient welfare. Not "targets"
No they don't. The government wants as many people as possible to be vaccinated, in order to avoid children dying which is generally seen as a bad thing (morally and politically), it is the government who pays GPs to vaccinate, not the drug companies. The purpose of vaccination targets is to increase patient welfare plain and simple.
If your conspiracy theory was true, if drug companies wanted to encourage more use of their vaccines, then surely they'd be encouraging use of the more expensive single vaccines? Whilst drug companies are obviously evil in tons of ways for which there is really good evidence, they certainly aren't stupid, so the chances are that in this case they aren't being evil (not to mention that they don't pay doctors to give vaccines, did I mention that already).
As a GP please understand this is about trust. Detach yourself from a financial arrangement with the drug companies and that is a step in the right direction. Maybe then I'll develop some trust.
They don't get paid by drug companies to administer vaccines, so do you trust them yet? Seriously though - if you think that you've found out lots of information, and considered vaccination carefully, yet you don't even know who is paying these supposed 'bribes' to the doctor and aren't able to understand what the purpose of vaccination targets is for, and still believe things that are obviously untrue, I wonder what even more crazy stuff people who haven't considered vaccination carefully might believe.
The relationship between the NHS and drug companies is a complex one though and isn't just the complete conspiracy theory thing of being in the pocket of drug companies - there is obviously some stuff where drug companies do well out of the NHS, but on other things they do quite badly, like the NHS price bargaining for drugs means that a lot of drugs are much cheaper here than in Europe (and massively cheaper than in the USA, but drugs are all ludicrously expensive over there).
All that proved was that governments are stupid and not scientists. They had no right to make the claim about beef.
And you wonder why parents refused to believe the categoric reassurances that were given to them about MMR?
I find it amusing that people who have been taken in by obvious charlatans start going on about the mainstream medical profession's profit motive....
Last post from me here.
Aracer - I'm sorry but the picture you posted up of 'how herd immunity works' is laughable. It's not even a scientific theory, it's just an idea. If you can link to any hard and fast scientific proof that that is how it works then fine, I'll review my opinion. The fact remains that if 'Herd Immunity' does work the way it's spun to us, then [i]any[/i] child who has not had an MMR jab remains a risk to the community. That's typically [i]all[/i] children under a year old. The same applies to all children who have not had a second MMR jab, typically given between 3 & 5 years. Furthermore if the vaccine is 90% effective then 10% of those who have recieved both jabs are a risk also. So to lay the blame for the outbreak in Wales solely with those who choose not to vaccinate is somewhat unfair. It probably originated from someone who came back from the European Championships in Ukraine, which has the highest rate of Measles in Europe.
Cougar - My rhetorical questions didn't particularly highlight issues I have concerns about, rather my point was that those who are aggresively pro-vaccine need to ensure they have engaged properly with those issues and other ones, before they condemn those who have not vaccinated.
Are people asserting that vaccination was solely responsible for the eradication of smallpox? If so that's a pretty wobbly stance to take. What about all the other factors that been influential in a similar timeframe to vaccination; hygeine, nutrition, the strengthening of the gene pool through migration to list a few. What about Bubonic Plague and Scarlett Fever? Both historically rampant in this country, neither vaccinated against and neither exist today.
Globally you may be right, but we can get bloody close, and we can wipe some out within a given community.
Last year 0.003% of the UK population got measles, 1 person out of over 60 million died. Surely that's 'bloody close'?
Are you content with the levels of mecury in the vaccines?
Well as far as mmr is concerned that number is zero. But when you say mercury do you mean elemental mercury? If you do then you will be reassured that there isn't any of that in any vaccine. Ethyl mercury (something very different) is used In some vaccines but has never been shown to cause any health problems. Ignorant questions like that do nothing more than risk people's lives. By all means ask questions but try to have the decency to find the answers for yourself first. It's all available on reputable sites on the Internet if only you'd take the time to look
gonefishin, I point you to my post above.
So would you rather trust journalists? Unfortunately for you, it's such a specialised area that you have no choice.
Nope don't trust journalists either - and fortunately for me epidemiology, pharmaceutical and other medical research is not that hard to understand. I'm quite capable of reading, understanding and making decisions based on scientific articles.
. I love people basing arguments on the 'greater good'. Often a last resort in a debate...Well this measles scare is a good example of why they should.
I usually agree with a lot you say Molgrips - but not this time.
So to lay the blame for the outbreak in Wales solely with those who choose not to vaccinate is somewhat unfair
They're not responsible for the initial outbreak, but they are responsible for the subsequent spread throughout the rest of the community.
Are people asserting that vaccination was solely responsible for the eradication of smallpox? If so that's a pretty wobbly stance to take. What about all the other factors that been influential in a similar timeframe to vaccination; hygeine, nutrition, the strengthening of the gene pool through migration to list a few.
Whilst it is undeniable that those things (with the exception of strengthening the gene pool!) will have helped the reduce the incidence of the disease they are not responsible for its eradication. Only the vaccine can ultimately do this.
What about Bubonic Plague and Scarlett Fever?
Those are both bacterial infections, you can't vaccinate against that. You can on the other hand use antibiotics which don't work agains viruses.
As for the Ukraine thing (ignore the implied racism), you do know that the reason given for the high incidence of measles is the low vaccination rate!
Now that I've responded to your post would you care to answer my question about precisely what you mean by "mercury in the vaccine"?
kja78 - Member
Last post from me here.
It's good to see that prediction was just as accurate as the rest of your post
kja78 - Member
gonefishin, I point you to my post above.
I love people basing arguments on the 'greater good'. Often a last resort in a debate
That's gonna need some explaining. This whole debate is about the greater good. It's not some mystery socialist bogeyman thing, it's a real and important concept. Much as right-wingers would love to believe they are islands unto themselves, they're not.
I'm not quite sure of your point here. You've got evidence that vaccinations are worse than the diseases? Can you share some?
So to lay the blame for the outbreak in Wales solely with those who choose not to vaccinate is somewhat unfair
Surely it's a chain reaction? Based on probability of exposure and transmission. If you only have a 10% chance of getting the disease and passing it on, then only 10% of the people with whom you come into contact will contract the disease and therefore become vectors themselves. Since this is a low percentage, each person is statistically unlikely to pass it on. Hence outbreaks fizzle out.
Are you saying that this is not the case?
Molgrips. I'm suggesting that forcing the usage of medical approaches on people based on the greater good doesn't have the best reputation. Let's leave the socialist bit out for a minute as I am of that persuasion anyway. Leaving that to one side, there are some fairly drastic negative examples (Not vaccination-based.) -
- Forced sterilisation and/or termination to reduce birth rates
- Sterilisation of the mentally ill or those deemed at the time 'subnormal'... Without considering reproductive rights or capacity to make informed decisions
- Incarceration of individuals in psychiatric units based on the potential of transmission of moral laxity (Having children outside of marriage etc...)
The above approaches were used with the idea they were for the greater good...
I prefer the approach that solid education and provision of information works best to encourage vaccination, but this can take time... Obviously this has worked with great success in the case of smallpox and polio. We are in a situation where Wakefield and his medua supporters have a lot to answer for and this will take time to overcome.
Finally, we receive treatment in the UK not based on the 'greater good' but on our right to use capacity to make informed decisions. Do you honestly want to lose that...?
Aracer - Nice, see what you did there, but I just can't help myself.
gonefishin - as I responded to Cougar, my questions were not aimed specifically at MMR, but at vaccines in general. Have those who are so pro-vaccine fully engaged with all the issues surrounding vaccines before makein their decisions?
My comments about Bubonic Plague and Scarlet Fever refer to the fact that these diseases died out without any medical intervention from humans. There is evidence to suggest that smallpox was already declining significantly before the vaccine was introduced.
My comment on the Ukraine comes directly from an HPA recommendation that all visitors to there have MMR before they go, so if there is any racism blame the HPA, not me.
Whilst it is undeniable that those things (with the exception of strengthening the gene pool!) will have helped the reduce the incidence of the disease they are not responsible for its eradication. [b]Only the vaccine can ultimately do this.[/b]
Can you back that assertion up with hard and fast evidence? I believe the answer is no. There is no possible way to tell whether vaccines or other factors are the primary reason for the decline in disease.
Molgrips - to reiterate what I've tried to articulate already. The first MMR jab is generally given at 12-13 months. The second is given at 3-5 years. MMR is not claimed to be fully effective until the second jab has been given. Therefore, every single child under 3, and a significant proportion of under 5s, is at risk of contracting and transmitting the disease. Not just the ones who's parents choose not to vaccinate, but every single child who has not had two MMR jabs, for whatever reason.
You've got evidence that vaccinations are worse than the diseases? Can you share some?
I know that wasn't aimed at me, and my googlefu is weak at this time of night, however a study conducted in Denmark suggests that for every 1000 MMR jabs, 2 children will suffer from febrile seizures. Just off the top of my head, with regards to the HPV vaccine, there are some pretty unpleasant side effects, and there have been a few well documented occurences of breathing difficulties leading to death.
I may be missing the point here kja, but are you suggesting that large scale outbreaks of measles are not in some way linked to the reduction in vaccine uptake? Perhaps you might like to have a look at the incidence of measles pre & post MMR.
Therefore, every single child under 3, and a significant proportion of under 5s, is at risk of contracting and transmitting the disease. Not just the ones who's parents choose not to vaccinate, but every single child who has not had two MMR jabs, for whatever reason.
You're seriously suggesting this as a reason why it doesn't matter that some kids who could have the jab don't? So because some young kids aren't immune and need protecting from coming into contact with the disease, it's OK for some older kids to also not be immune and so help spread the disease? 😯
Why don't you go and do your own research on herd immunity since you appear to so completely misunderstand the concept.
Kja, you know that the second jab is given to guard against the [i]2-5%[/i] failure rate for the first jab. So how do you work out that a 'significant proportion' of under 5's are at risk?
Heard immunity a fun illustration. Say a given individual will meet two people liable to catch the disease during it's contagious period , they will meet two more each. Place a penny on a corner of a chess board for the first person two pennys for the two people they meet on the next square four for thier contacts on the next and so on . See the pille of pennys increase as the disease spreads.
How introduce a vaccine that has a 5/6 success rate place your penny on the first square roll two dice only place a penny on the next square if one dice comes up six two for a double six . See how hard it is for the disease to spread .
A refusal to immunise is a considered decision to gamble with you child's health and the health of those around you.
Those who were drawn in by the media hype cannot really be blamed they were victims to what was in effect a profit driven band wagon Wakefield had set himself up to profit from sales of the single shot vaccines . The press sell papers off the back of such stories and have no interest in debunking them with any firm of analysis.
However we do now need to move on from the natural method of control used to defeat the bubonic plague . Seeking to physically limit the spread of a disease by condoning off the population center then waiting till the disease has infected all susceptible hosts and run it's course is so yesterday.
Re the effectiveness of vaccination. The recent whooping cough outbreak http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20080472
[i]"Health experts do not know why the outbreak is so large this year, especially as vaccination for whooping cough is at record levels.
One theory is that the bacterium which causes the infection, Bordetella pertussis, has mutated.
Another idea is that tight control of whooping cough is part of the problem. Repeated infections of whooping cough used to naturally boost people's immune systems.
However, after years of low levels of whooping cough the whole population may be more vulnerable to the infection."[/i]
As a kid I was vaccinated for whooping cough, yet I contracted it last Spring. From a personal viewpoint It raised more questions about vaccines and medical drugs. Bacteria and viruses mutate, are we chasing our tails trying to wipe out disease? Where will this lead? As the virus mutates, the vaccine is updated and we keep pumping them into ourselves? If so what effect will this have on our health? Can the medical world win this race? Is this just evolution?
Sharing some personal experience about medial treatments: 10 years ago my Father starting taking warfarin. 5 years ago he got bladder cancer. Did the warfarin cause the bladder cancer? Looking online the is plenty of content to suggest it's possible.
Questions, questions, questions
An old woman walked past our horse in the field. 4 days later the horse was dead.
Burn the witch !!!
It is just evolution - in the medium and long term, bacteria and viruses will continue to mutate in response to changes in their environment, their environment being the human population. Doesn't mean we should stop responding ourselves.
The price of allowing our bodies to acquire immunity in the natural way would be a substantial increase in mortality, particularly from childhood infections. Whooping cough vaccination is estimated to have saved approximately 500,000 lives worldwide in 2002. Of course any diminution of vaccine effectiveness is a concern, but I think as a society we are losing our memory of just how much of a threat some of these illnesses can be.
Access to the internet also gives various persuasive but unevidenced or plain wrong statements undue prominence. Looking for medical evidence on the first page of Google is like trusting the Jehovahs because they happened to be the first to knock on your door.
On your other point, a lot of elderly men take warfarin. A lot of elderly men develop bladder cancer. It's possible there is an association, but this could well be coincidence rather than causation. I've seen a couple of studies which point tentatively towards warfarin having a protective effect against prostate cancer, and no obvious detrimental effect in terms of other urogenital cancers. And of course you mustn't forget that he was given warfarin for a reason, and it's quite possible it prevented a dangerous or even deadly clotting event during the period he was on it.
Whooping cough used to kill 300 a year now it kills 0 and you think this calls into question the merits of vaccination ? It may well be that whooping cough is evolving and the vaccination is less effective now , perhaps if we had had universal vaccination whooping cough would not have had the time and human boasts in which to evolve .
My comments about Bubonic Plague and Scarlet Fever refer to the fact that these diseases died out without any medical intervention from humans.
They haven't been eradicated. They haven't died out. People still catch both these diseases.
There is evidence to suggest that smallpox was already declining significantly before the vaccine was introduced.
There probably is and like I have said, all those things will have helped reduce the incidence. Additionally no one is saying that vaccination will allow us to eradicate all viral infections, there are some that we vaccinate against that we will never eradicate (e.g. Tetanus) however it does not follow from that that we can't eradicate any viral infections using vaccination.
What would be nice would be if we could add Polio to the list of eradicated diseases, however similar anti intellectual arguments are being used to stop that too and as a result children are suffering from this disease.
however a study conducted in Denmark suggests that for every 1000 MMR jabs, 2 children will suffer from febrile seizures. Just off the top of my head, with regards to the HPV vaccine, there are some pretty unpleasant side effects, and there have been a few well documented occurences of breathing difficulties leading to death.
All medical treatments run the risk of side effects the point is that these side effects are less severe than the thing they are meant to treat. Febrile seizures, whilst no doubt distressing for the parents, are for the most part not dangerous for the child. The same cannot be said for measles.
Now how about you stop avoiding my point about Mercury and answer my question' what do mean about Mercury in the vaccine. Any vaccine by the way since it isn't in the MMR one.
You don't hear about Polio any more. Is that a vaccination success story? Tetanus might be, too.
And, long time ago, the thought of Mercury used in injections bothered me. It seemed then that the Ministry of Health took a nanny-knows-best attitude and wasn't saying much. Some open and frank discussion might have helped. As I said, it was a long time ago. But I suspect things didn't change, until perhaps recently.
Kja 78
After your beautifully nuanced postings on the long God thread, I'm disappointed. Epidemiology a well evidenced, well understood area of study. The reason there is an epidemic in South Wales is precisely because of the lack of enough herd immunity, which means susceptible individuals are more likely to be in contact with each other. Think of the infection as frogs able to jump between Lilly pads if you want... The more lily pads there are in a pond, the closer they are, the easier for the frog to move from place to place. The fact that the vaccine only kills 90% of the lily pads is irrelevant. Your understanding of the role of the 4 year MMR jab is incorrect.
The Guardian website today has a nice story about what Wakefield and colleagues are up to now.
You don't hear about Polio any more. Is that a vaccination success story? Tetanus might be, too.
As far as polio in the UK is concerned yes that is a vaccination success story. Sadly in parts of the developing world ill informed scare mongering (similar in nature the MMR stuff we had in the UK) is preventing it from being eradicated there where it still causes unnecessary suffering. Tetanus will never be eradicated as it lives in the general environment.
I would like to make one correction to a statement I made earlier that you can't vaccinate agains bacteria. Looking at some stuff on tetanus it appears that it is bacterial in nature and as there is a vaccine apparently you can vaccinate against at least some bacterial infections.
linky to save us the trouble, stoatsbrother?
I seem to remember being injected against tetanus, typhoid and cholera.