Lost of refusal to vaccinate here, two cases of measles this month......

but I'm still on the fence about vaccinations against diseases which are non-fatal to the majority. How's that for taking a position? :lol:

My kids are vaccinated against most stuff. I didn't want them to get the chicken pox shot, but it was included on the list of vaccinations required for their greencards, so... They do not get a flu shot, I do. They've never had flu, I haven't had flu for 10 years.... (what's the betting that this is our lucky year..... ;) )

(I'd be more inclined to get them a flu shot if I could see more evidence of it's effectiveness, but anecdotally it seems that many people who get the shot still get the flu, and I've heard from several friends in the biz that the model used for predicting the flu strains prevalent each year is off-kilter, so the vaccines are only against a few of the more long-lingering strains.)

I do subscribe to the idea that one should consider the impact on society as a whole when considering whether to vaccinate, but I'm always going to put my kids first, and I'm really wary of injecting all sorts of nasties into the body just in case they help.

People could do more good by staying at home when they're sick.

In terms of the MMR vaccines, I'd be inclined to give it a great deal of thought and do a lot of research prior to making a decision. I do believe that one has to take into account the bigger picture: given that my (fictitious) child would be vulnerable up to the point of completing vaccination, I would hope that other children they might come into contact with would be vaccinated and free of these infectious diseases. The reverse of that argument is that should I choose not to vaccinate my child against the disease, they may well develop a natural immunity, but in doing so they may be infectious themselves at some point when they come into contact with an unimmunised child.

The need for research, however, is necessary. When I was little I was given the first part of the vaccination, and my ordinary childhood excema exploded into one of the worst cases the specialist had ever seen, pretty much overnight. Mum is convinced, and some of the doctors suspected, that the vaccine was responsible. I didn't have the second vaccination, nor did I have the later vaccinations and boosters.

A few years ago I had the flu vaccine for the first time. That winter I got one of the worst doses of flu I ever had. That said, my brother and my partner had flu around the same time and both were far worse than me, and ended up with temperatures so high they were delirious. So...I don't know if the flu I caght would have been worse had my body not already been exposed to it...if indeed it was a strain covered by the vaccine. Or, the flu vaccine may have had no bearing whatsoever.

Another thing to consider when deciding whether or not to go with the flu vaccine, particulary with regard to children, is the presence of chicken albumen in the vaccine. Egg is one of the most common foods that children develop sensitivity to, so it's worth checking that out with the doctor before making a decision on flu vaccines.

School email just announced now up to 4 cases of measles in two schools, but all related.

Ultimately I let my kid get the chicken pox shot too, because I figured that if everyone else in his school was immunized, there'd be nowhere for him to catch it from and get natural immunity until he was older and it was more dangerous.

We've had measles here, too, and they are requiring all kids going into middle school to get them.

Since I live on the US/Mexico border, we have a lot of public health issues not found elswehere. Things like TB make appearances here more than other places.

Fair enough. Thank you.

I, too, question the homeopathic treatment of smallpx. I also question another post where you say that disease kills the weakest. How do you define "weakest"? Many, many healthy people have died from infectious disease. A prime example is the Native Americans who were here in North America at the time Eurpeans arrived, bearing all sorts of infectious pathogens that the Native Americans had never been exposed to. Some researchers estimate that as much as 80% of the original American Indian population was killed by infectious diseases from Europe (including small pox). Were Native Americans "less fit"? I don't think so.

No one gets innoculated against small pox anymore. The disease is considered to be eradicated BECAUSE of widespread innoculations, NOT homeopathic treatments. So, if you were exposed to a small pox outbreak at some unknown point in the future, chances are good that it would be the result of terrorists getting hold of one of the two sources of small pox left in the world: a culture maintained by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta or another culture which is maintained somewhere in the former Soviet Union.

Of course we don't. We are going to have to figure that any smallpox or other pox virus capable of infecting human beings is either a product of terrorist genetic tampering or a new form of pathogen which has naturally mutated to infect human beings with a high degree of virulence. Would I accept a vaccine against what amounts to a new disease if one could be found in time? Yes, I would.



"Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya..." ;)

Genetically speaking, yes they were. Being fit means having whatever it takes to survive in the environment you find yourself in. That environment may change, and the definition of who is fittest may change because of it. The Native Americans also gave Europeans quite a few nasty diseases they'd never encountered before either... but they weren't as deadly to the Europeans as the European diseases were to the Native Americans.

The herd is much larger than I thought. I really thought there would have been at least a couple of others prepared to support the case presented in the original post of this thread.

My faith in society is restored somewhat.

Seriously rk, can you name some names here?
I don't understand how you can receive all the vaccines on the schedule and not be exposed to formaldehyde, for example. All of the vaccines licensed for use in the US for Hep A and Hep B are inactivated with formalin (A 37% aqueous (water) solution of formaldehyde, a pungent gas, with the chemical formula HCHO)

So did you skip those, or use unlicensed ones, or what?


...

This site has some interesting graphs. Notice the decline even in diseases we don't vaccinate for...


The adverse events are the other side of the risk/benefit ratio. It's a low benefit (its not a big threat, other than thru terrorism), high risk vaccine at this point.

Such as?

Take the Chickenpox. Kids get it and it is most always self limiting. When are you contagious from the Chickenpox?

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/aci...nza1-fiore.pdf

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/news/new...006/200607.htm

But have that same asymptomatic child around a pregnant woman or an adult who has never had it and the consequences can be devestating.

How many people die from the flu every year?

As of June 2007, there have been pediatric deaths from 2006-2007.

19,000 people died each year from Influenza between 1976 and 1990. Since 1990 that number has increased to 36,000 deaths per year.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pin...nloads/flu.pdf

Merc, why do you say that everyone should be getting the flu? I had either a flu or food poisoning last week, and I didn't like it.

:D
:comfort:

Dad went for his flu vaccine this morning. I think since he was rushed into hospital earlier this year he figures he should take all the help he can get.

Mum says she was offered it every year until she retired (last year) but refused it each time. She saw too many people ill immediately afterwards. I didn't question why Dad was having it in that case, it would probably have started her off on how stubborn he is.

The point I was trying to make is that most of us view the Flu as nothing more than a bother for about a week or 10 days, when in fact many people die from the common flu each year.