article about measles that focuses on HS not vaccinating...

[sweetbasil]

Could you please provide supporting documentation for your claim that "polio was not usually harmless." According to the CDC, up to 95% of poliomyelitis cases are asymptomatic. Another 4% to 8% result in self-limiting short-term infection without central nervous system invasion. Fewer than 1% of cases result in flaccid paralysis.

 

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/polio.pdf

 

Allegedly, it was all too common for recipients of the live virus vax to contract polio from the virus; the U.S. continued using live virus vax after WHO recommended use of killed virus vax. Vax-induced polio supposedly is much more likely to result in lasting paralysis than is wild polio.

 

Thanks for pointing this out. A little research pulls the veil away from the "miracle" vaccine for polio. For one, the first vaccine, being a live virus, CAUSED a large majority of cases. In the US we no longer offer the live virus. However, the killed virus vaccine is not very effective. If one were to live in an area where polio were common and actually wanted some protection, one would have to receive the live virus. Which carries the risk of infection itself.

 

Also, a look at Polio in other developed countries where there was no widespread vaccination program shows the same decrease in infection rates -- which leads one to the conclusion that it declined largely on its own. This should come as no surprise -- most diseases have lifecycles that surge and then decline.

 

Most people also aren't aware that the definition of Polio has changed. Many things were once labeled Polio that were most likely not, and many things today are given terms like Guillain Barre - which is the term for a specific manifestation of paralysis symptoms with an unknown cause. Guillain Barr can describe any unknown illness resulting in paralysis -- like polio!

 

What is Guillain-Barré Syndrome?

Guillain-Barré syndrome is a disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system. The first symptoms of this disorder include varying degrees of weakness or tingling sensations in the legs. In many instances, the weakness and abnormal sensations spread to the arms and upper body. These symptoms can increase in intensity until the muscles cannot be used at all and the patient is almost totally paralyzed. In these cases, the disorder is life-threatening and is considered a medical emergency. The patient is often put on a respirator to assist with breathing. Most patients, however, recover from even the most severe cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, although some continue to have some degree of weakness. Guillain-Barré syndrome is rare. Usually Guillain-Barré occurs a few days or weeks after the patient has had symptoms of a respiratory or gastrointestinal viral infection. Occasionally, surgery or vaccinations will trigger the syndrome. The disorder can develop over the course of hours or days, or it may take up to 3 to 4 weeks. No one yet knows why Guillain-Barré strikes some people and not others or what sets the disease in motion. What scientists do know is that the body's immune system begins to attack the body itself, causing what is known as an autoimmune disease.

(from /www.ninds.nih.gov)

[Amy in NY]

But the fact is, the vaccine doesn't work all of the time. I was fully vaccinated as a child, had a booster at 15, was vaccinated after *each* of my children was born and I still don't test as immune. I think *that fact* puts a lot of people in danger due to complacency.

 

I test negative to measles after 3 doses of the vaccine. I no longer consent to boosters due to an auto-immune illness and was told that my negative is considered false.

 

I guess my immunity will be tested if I am ever exposed but I thought you might like to know what I was told since it seems you have the same issue.

[Reya]

good grief, always nice to hear that outbreaks of disease are because homeschooled parents don't have laws making them vaccinate, I guess some bureaucrat is going to have fun formatting a bill to require it. If we were involved in a measles outbreak and babygirl got it, I am sure they would take the fact we homeschool into consideration, instead of the fact she had a severe reaction to her 2 month shots and it was the CDC nurse who told me not to vax her again.

 

I think you guys are misunderstanding. Homeschoolers get together as GROUPS. Herd protection is dramatically lessened. If your babygirl were in a public school where the VAST majority of other kids were vaccinated, then she'd have a very low chance of catching anything. If she spends a lot of time around homeschoolers who are against vaccinating--for example, if she's part of a church that campaigns against vaccinations with lots of homeschoolers--she's much more likely to get sick. And if you have any more kids in the home who are under the age of full vaccine protection, THEY'RE more likely to get sick.

 

Oh, and the church example? That really happened. Children died, mostly babies infected by children who were old enough to be vaccinated.

 

That is why I'm staying away from homeschool activities unless I can go alone after my baby's born and until she's got all her shots. My DS fell behind a bit in our move, and when I found another pediatrician here and got him caught up, the nurses were so thrilled that I was vaccinating even though I homeschool and it's not required here. I told them, "Just because I homeschool doesn't mean I'm stupid."

[Karen sn]

Read a similar article yesterday.

"Almost half the outbreaks were non-vaccinated" - well....so you're telling me that MORE THAN HALF of them WERE vaccinated.

So in all acuality - you have more vaccinated people coming down with it than non vaccinated folks!

 

And we're blaming this on the unvaccinated why?!

 

 

Vaccination is no guarantee of immunity. Period.

[Reya]

Which means OVER half DID vaccinate and it didn't do them a lick of good.

 

NO, it DOESN'T.

 

Of the population who will vaccinate, the majority who get sick--and the majority of ALL groups who die--are babies and toddlers with incomplete immunizations.

 

There is a very small percentage of people who are vaccinated who don't get full immunity. Their chances of dying are incredibly low, though, since most retain a *partial* immunity.

 

If it weren't for those who chose not to immunize, those who *could* not immunize because of medical reasons, those with immunodeficiency, and those unlucky few who just, by chance, didn't get enough of an immune reaction to be covered would almost never get sick. There wouldn't be enough of a population to carry the illness.

 

And they couldn't pass it on to babies, either.

 

Also, if you look at the infection rates among populations--the vaccinated, the unvaccinated, and the very young--you'll notice something. On exposure, the vaccinated have a very LOW chance of infection, while the unvaccinated have a very HIGH chance. The fact that 50% of cases comes from a 7% segment of the population should tell you something--especially since so many of the other cases will be babies, who canNOT yet be protected by vaccines.

[Perry]

No, it's not a guarantee, but no one ever claimed it was.

 

Half of those with measles had the vaccine, NOT half of those who received the vaccine got measles. Big difference. Tara Smith at Aetiology has a good explanation about this regarding the mumps outbreak in Iowa a couple years ago. The same argument applies to measles. Here’s an excerpt from her blog post:

"As has been mentioned, the given efficacy rate for the mumps vaccine is 95%. This is actually likely a bit high; previous outbreaks have suggested it's more like 85-90% effective, so that as many as 15% of the vaccinated population won't actually be immune. The key to telling whether the vaccine is helpful, then, is to look at the attack rate--the percent of the population that develops disease--in the vaccinated versus unvaccinated population. So, some more math to follow.

For the sake of simplicity, say you have a population of 100,000 people. Vaccination coverage in the population is 95%, meaning that 5,000 will be unvaccinated and lacking in immunity. Additionally, let's say the vaccine is only 90% effective. So, of your vaccinated population of 95,000 people, you'll have 9,500 people who remain susceptible--"vaccinated but not effectively so," let's call them.

Now let's assume, again for the sake of simplicity, that susceptible people are equally likely to become infected with mumps, whether they're in the "vaccinated but not effectively so" or "unvaccinated" group. (Real life is actually messier, leading to a skew in one group or the other, but we'll ignore that for now). Therefore, if you have an outbreak of 500 cases--roughly the size of Iowa's right now--in an ideal world they'd be divided randomly between the two groups. The "vaccinated but not effectively so" group is roughly twice as large as the "never vaccinated" group, so figure they get 333 of the 500 cases, and the remaining 167 cases are in the unvaccinated population.

Still following? Now it's time to calculate the attack rate. In the vaccinated population, we ended up with 333 cases of disease in a total population of 95,000. So, the attack rate = 333/95,000 = .35%

In the unvaccinated population, we ended up with 167 cases of disease in a total population of 5000. So, the attack rate = 167/5,000 = 3.34%: TEN TIMES the rate of the vaccinated population.

This is the key to the whole thing. Yes, there's disease in the vaccinated population. Of the cases in this little hypothetical, by the numbers alone, 66% were vaccinated--lower, but similar to our numbers here in Iowa. Yet as you can see, this doesn't mean that "the vaccine isn't working:" in our scenario, it means it's working at a 90% effectiveness rate, which is pretty good. The unvaccinated population acquired disease at 10 times the rate of the vaccinated population overall, so while being vaccinated was no guarantee of protection, it's a **** good gamble.

 

....

 

 

Soooo, next time you read stuff like this:

And isn't it at least somewhat doubt-inspiring that the health authorities continue to insist that the vaccine is working in the face of direct evidence that, at least in some cases, it is not?

...ask them if they know what the difference in the attack rate is between the two populations. If they don't know, educate them."

 

 

 

 

[Reya]

Exactly. I don't vaccinate for measles because the disease simply does not scare me. The only real danger is to a pregnant woman, and I will inform my dd of this as she gets older and allow her to make a choice for herself.

 

If shingles doesn't scare you....

 

Well, it SHOULD!

 

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/shingles/shingles.htm

 

I'm glad I won't have to face that crapshoot. And I'm glad my kids won't, either!

 

I don't care that much about chickenpox. Shingles, however, is a nightmare!

[mommaduck]

What is being overlooked is that those who are not vax'd are not automatically carrying the disease...those that are, have been or are carrying said disease. So the majority of "carriers" are the vax'd population. In fact, there are statistics out there that show that some of these diseases were on a downhill slide (ie., dying out as most diseases come, stay a time, then totally eradicate themselves) before the introduction of mass vaccination. After they started mass vaccinating in the early-mid part of the 20th century, those diseases started to spike upwards again...guess what is keeping them around...

 

 

Also, since the intro of the "chicken pox" vax, there has been dramatic increases in childhood shingles...amoung children that received that vax. Yes, shingles scares me, the whole reason I'm glad my children received their immunity the NATURAL way.

[Lolly]

If shingles doesn't scare you....

 

Well, it SHOULD!

 

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/shingles/shingles.htm

 

I'm glad I won't have to face that crapshoot. And I'm glad my kids won't, either!

 

I don't care that much about chickenpox. Shingles, however, is a nightmare!

 

Shingles. It occurs in children who received the vaccine. In fact, more children are getting shingles since the vaccine came out. Not only that, more adults are suffering from shingles since the cp vaccine was introduced. Adults used to keep their immunity to the virus up by being exposed to children who had cp. Now that the adults (and children) are not receiving those little natural boosters from their small contagious friends, shingles is becoming more of a problem. Thus, a shingles vaccine!!! Yes, let's toss in another vaccine in to cure one of the problems caused by the first one. $$$

[Reya]

There have been a few interesting studies looking at the rise in autoimmune diseases and the possible link to the lack of bacteria and viruses we are no longer exposed to due to hygiene and vaccs. Disease is a nature state for us, and since we are trying to eliminate many forms of both from our lives, our bodies are going a bit hay wire. I think this will continue to be an interesting area of study for some years to come.

 

So don't use bleach, keep big dogs, teach your kids to play in the mud, and avoid antibacterial soaps! That's what we do.

 

We also don't vaccinate for the flu--we're not in a population where it matters, in terms of public health--and we try not to treat colds.

 

Totally anecdotal, but...

 

Both my parents have life-threatening allergies. (My mother can literally DIE from aspirin or exposure to horses--seriously!--and my father has extreme, chronic allergies that reduce his lung capacity to 70% even on tons of drung, and never mind all the infections that he gets...)

 

Both of them had all the usual childhood illnesses of the 50s and 60s.

 

Both of them were also around smokers growing up.

 

My brother and I, fully vaccinated, are much better off.

 

Vaccines might seem scary, but there are a lot better explanations for these complicated public health issues. No studies have linked allergies and immunizations, for instance (not for lack of trying...), but they have linked lowered allergies/asthma/eczema/etc. with

 

-living on a farm

-having a large dog

-having a big brother

-not being exposed to cockroach feces

-not being exposed to cigarette smoke

 

and so on.

 

Look at real, proven risks before pointing fingers at things that have been shown, in study after study, as not having an effect.

[lwilliams1922]

 

Care for some irony about the "safety" of some vaccines? When I birthed my 2nd dc, a nurse came in as I was getting set up to leave to go to the recovery room after the birth. She sticks a needle in my leg (which I thought was a pitocin shot for uterine tightening) and as she does it says, "Your rubella count is too low to be considered immune. This is a booster. Make sure you are extra careful about taking your birth control because if you get pregnant within 6 months it can cause major permanent physical and mental birth defects." and out she goes without a care. I was SO BLOOMING TICKED I COULDN'T SEE STRAIGHT. HELLO!? I'M CATHOLIC AND DO NOT USE BIRTH CONTROL!

 

Oh yeah. She got an earful and some paperwork. Big time loads of it.:glare:

 

 

EEESH!

I would have been LIVID to put it mildly.

 

I think I will add that to the list of why we homebirthed the last baby.

 

Now days NO ONE touches my babies or me without answering questions.

[Reya]

Shingles. It occurs in children who received the vaccine. In fact, more children are getting shingles since the vaccine came out. Not only that, more adults are suffering from shingles since the cp vaccine was introduced. Adults used to keep their immunity to the virus up by being exposed to children who had cp. Now that the adults (and children) are not receiving those little natural boosters from their small contagious friends, shingles is becoming more of a problem. Thus, a shingles vaccine!!! Yes, let's toss in another vaccine in to cure one of the problems caused by the first one. $$$

 

 

Not, it doesn't. Someone told me that before, but it's baloney.

 

Shingles is on the rise among adults who have had chickenpox but who aren't getting a second "priming" of their immune system through repeated exposure to sick kids. The shingles vaccine--basically the same thing as the chickenpox vaccine--gives you the same kind of boost in a controlled manner--i.e., you know almost for sure that you got sufficient exposure for it to stick! The reason adults got shingles in the first place is that in the population as a whole, this "priming" is a haphazard affair, and you can't know when you get an additional exposure or if it's enough to kick your immune system back into gear. If it worked well before, no one would have ever gotten shingles. Now we have the shingles vaccine to make sure it works. I'd rather have to get another shot than to simply hope madly that I'm carrying enough immunity! Public health officials need to be noisier about the availability and the growing importance of the shot, however. The message isn't getting across, and people who need it don't know that they need it.

 

Kids who are vaccinated CAN'T just "get shingles." The vaccine is a DEAD VIRUS vaccine. It can't magically resurrect itself. The very worst that could happen is that the vaccine didn't take, and they get chickenpox anyway at a later age, which is more dangerous. THEN they could get shingles later, too, if they don't get the shingles booster.

 

That was a reason to wait ten years after the vaccine hits the market--to find out if it wears off too quickly. That could have been a BIG problem with chickenpox! But it hasn't shown itself to be, and a reasonable schedule of adult boosters is hardly a life sentence in return to near-certainty of avoiding shingles.

[Reya]

This article is slightly misleading in that it doesn't clarify that homeschooled students (and any students for that matter) are subject the the exact same vaccination laws in NC. It is *not* a public school law in NC, but rather a public *health* law.

 

It's the same in NM (shot records are required with HS form), but it's not the same in MD (only PS students are required to have shots). It varies from state to state.

 

Also, I *believe* that NM allowed for philosophical objections. MD only allows for religious objections.

[Lolly]

 

Of the population who will vaccinate, the majority who get sick--and the majority of ALL groups who die--are babies and toddlers with incomplete immunizations.

 

 

 

I wonder how many of those babies and toddlers are nursing and receiving a natural immunity through their mother's antibodies. Do you have any idea?

[Reya]

We all have our own level of comfort and our own level of risk that we're willing to undergo.

 

But you make choices for other people--for the baby in the church nursery and the elderly person who next uses your restaurant booth---when you make your own choice.

 

"All the healthy people got over it!" no small number of people assert. Yes, but is it right to choose to endanger those who don't have full immune systems, because of age or sickness? Is the corollary that they should just die, anyway, because they aren't "healthy"?

 

If we're comparing it to driving....

 

Some risks are like driving without a seatbelt. You risk yourself and probably the other passengers, but there's very little risk for outsiders.

 

Some choices, though, are like drunk driving. You raise your own risks (obviously), but you also raise the risks of anyone else you run into--quite literally, in this case. And they have no say about it. Maybe they're driving the safest car on the market and are staying off the highway, and their chances of dying are almost none. But maybe they're walking on the sidewalk and wearing dark clothes. Sure, you can say that they shouldn't have been there. But they weren't the ones to make the decision that put them at greatest risk.

[Reya]

And perhaps parents wouldn't be so fearful if the AAP would do a full study on the risks and benefits of vaccinations, especially the ones that are implicated in the rise of autism spectrum disorders.

 

There have been studies and studies--and meta-studies! NO ONE is sweeping this under the rug!

 

My brother is autistic. REALLY autistic, not the "slightly quirky" that's enough to get so many kids a label of their very own these days. So was my grandfather. I have, statistically speaking, something like a 10% risk that one of my sons will be autistic, too.

 

If there was one shred of CREDIBLE evidence that vaccination is linked to autism, you better believe I'd be against those vaccines. And you better believe that I have read every single study that's come out. This is a fear as bogus as power lines causing cancer. It is really disgusting to be that some doctors profit from putting people's children at risk by scaring them with nonsense like that. There is little that is more horrifying to me than that kind of predatory behavior.

[kokotg]

Shingles. It occurs in children who received the vaccine. In fact, more children are getting shingles since the vaccine came out.

 

According to the study I saw:

 

http://www.oah.state.mn.us/cases/health-immun/dr-chickenpox.html

 

rate of shingles among kids under 20 who have natural exposure to varicella: 68 per 100,000

 

rate of shingles among kids under 20 who've had the vaccine: 18 per 100,000

 

That's a big reduction in shingles for kids who have had the vaccine. The question is whether same kind of numbers will hold up in adult populations. Not many kids under 20 get shingles either way, of course, but that's all that can be studied so far since the vaccine is relatively new.

 

We vaccinate on a selective/delayed schedule, and shingles is one of the big reasons we're leaning toward doing the varicella vaccine at some point for our kids.

[Lolly]

Not, it doesn't. Someone told me that before, but it's baloney.

 

Shingles is on the rise among adults who have had chickenpox but who aren't getting a second "priming" of their immune system through repeated exposure to sick kids. The shingles vaccine--basically the same thing as the chickenpox vaccine--gives you the same kind of boost in a controlled manner--i.e., you know almost for sure that you got sufficient exposure for it to stick! The reason adults got shingles in the first place is that in the population as a whole, this "priming" is a haphazard affair, and you can't know when you get an additional exposure or if it's enough to kick your immune system back into gear. If it worked well before, no one would have ever gotten shingles. Now we have the shingles vaccine to make sure it works. I'd rather have to get another shot than to simply hope madly that I'm carrying enough immunity! Public health officials need to be noisier about the availability and the growing importance of the shot, however. The message isn't getting across, and people who need it don't know that they need it.

 

Kids who are vaccinated CAN'T just "get shingles." The vaccine is a DEAD VIRUS vaccine. It can't magically resurrect itself. The very worst that could happen is that the vaccine didn't take, and they get chickenpox anyway at a later age, which is more dangerous. THEN they could get shingles later, too, if they don't get the shingles booster.

 

That was a reason to wait ten years after the vaccine hits the market--to find out if it wears off too quickly. That could have been a BIG problem with chickenpox! But it hasn't shown itself to be, and a reasonable schedule of adult boosters is hardly a life sentence in return to near-certainty of avoiding shingles.

 

Sorry, Reya. First, the cp vaccine is a LIVE virus. It is WEAKENED not killed. That is why children who have been vaccinated can catch the chicken pox from the vaccine. As far as kids CAN'T get shingles from the vaccine, tell that to THREE of my immediate friends whose children HAVE HAD SHINGLES AFTER RECEIVING THE VACCINE. You can say it doesn't happen, but it does.

 

You are so right, if all the adults keep getting regularly scheduled boosters, their chances at keeping immunity up is increased. Of course, the risk of that immunity not being enough is still there. The possibility of shingles is still there, but reduced. Now, think about it again, exactly what percentage of the adult population is going to remember to go in and have that booster? How many of the adults in the general population are current on their tetanus boosters? (A much more serious disease.) I'll give you a hint, it is low.

[Lolly]

z

[Perry]

Not, it doesn't. Someone told me that before, but it's baloney.

 

 

Well, it's not completely clear yet, but I wouldn't call it baloney. It's too early to say. There have been a couple studies but the data is conflicting.

 

Kids who are vaccinated CAN'T just "get shingles." The vaccine is a DEAD VIRUS vaccine. It can't magically resurrect itself. The very worst that could happen is that the vaccine didn't take, and they get chickenpox anyway at a later age, which is more dangerous. THEN they could get shingles later, too, if they don't get the shingles booster.

 

Both the chickenpox vaccine and the shingles vaccine are live attenuated vaccines. I was a study coordinator for the phase III clinical trial for ProQuad (MMRV), so I am pretty familiar with the vaccine.

[lwilliams1922]

There have been studies and studies--and meta-studies! NO ONE is sweeping this under the rug!

 

My brother is autistic. REALLY autistic, not the "slightly quirky" that's enough to get so many kids a label of their very own these days. So was my grandfather. I have, statistically speaking, something like a 10% risk that one of my sons will be autistic, too.

 

If there was one shred of CREDIBLE evidence that vaccination is linked to autism, you better believe I'd be against those vaccines. And you better believe that I have read every single study that's come out. This is a fear as bogus as power lines causing cancer. It is really disgusting to be that some doctors profit from putting people's children at risk by scaring them with nonsense like that. There is little that is more horrifying to me than that kind of predatory behavior.

 

 

Has anyone found an Amish person with Autism?

i read they found THREE, (but those 3 received shots)

[Lolly]

According to the study I saw:

 

http://www.oah.state.mn.us/cases/health-immun/dr-chickenpox.html

 

rate of shingles among kids under 20 who have natural exposure to varicella: 68 per 100,000

 

rate of shingles among kids under 20 who've had the vaccine: 18 per 100,000

 

That's a big reduction in shingles for kids who have had the vaccine. The question is whether same kind of numbers will hold up in adult populations. Not many kids under 20 get shingles either way, of course, but that's all that can be studied so far since the vaccine is relatively new.

 

We vaccinate on a selective/delayed schedule, and shingles is one of the big reasons we're leaning toward doing the varicella vaccine at some point for our kids.

 

I jsut tried to retrieve the information I was going on and could not. It was in the Vaccine Journal from 2003 in an article by Goldman who was a statistician involved in researching cp. His information is no longer available because it is suppressed by the vaccine powers that be. (Sort of reminds me of the Chinese gymnasts...Govt. doesn't like the way the numbers line up. So, his numbers are made to disappear.) His studies found an increase in the numbers of children with shingles who received the vaccine. This is in line with what I have witnessed irl. I could find no numbers in my very short search tonight.

[kokotg]

Has anyone found an Amish person with Autism?

i read they found THREE, (but those 3 received shots)

 

But the Amish are a genetically isolated population. There are plenty of reasons besides a low vaccination rate that could explain that. Correlation does not equal causality. I have a friend with an autistic son who suspects it could be linked to so many plastics in our culture (and, you know, not so much in Amish culture). That, genetics, vaccination rates--those are just three out of countless possible reasons for the rarity of autism among the Amish.

[Perry]

Are you talking about this one? I haven't read it so won't comment, but it hasn't disappeared.

[Reya]

Sorry, Reya. First, the cp vaccine is a LIVE virus. It is WEAKENED not killed. That is why children who have been vaccinated can catch the chicken pox from the vaccine. As far as kids CAN'T get shingles from the vaccine, tell that to THREE of my immediate friends whose children HAVE HAD SHINGLES AFTER RECEIVING THE VACCINE. You can say it doesn't happen, but it does.

 

You are so right, if all the adults keep getting regularly scheduled boosters, their chances at keeping immunity up is increased. Of course, the risk of that immunity not being enough is still there. The possibility of shingles is still there, but reduced. Now, think about it again, exactly what percentage of the adult population is going to remember to go in and have that booster? How many of the adults in the general population are current on their tetanus boosters? (A much more serious disease.) I'll give you a hint, it is low.

 

Quick note: I didn't say they couldn't get shingles after getting the disease. You can still get chickpox, though rarely after getting vaccinated. There's a lot of exposure out there, and if the vaccine doesn't protect you fully, you're probably going to get it.

 

The booster was approved in 2006, and so far, only 2% of people eligible for it have gotten it. I can't say how many will in years; adults are noticeably cavalier about keeping their booster shots up. Only about 44% of adults have had their tetanus shot in the past 10 years--but since "everyone knows", as the saying goes that you get tetanus from rusty nails (anaerobic wounds, actually--I don't know why people get so caught up on *rust*), this may not be a good indicators as many adults figure "why bother?" unless they do get an injury. (In fact, when I worked at a papermill, I cut my finger on the way into work and stopped by the infirmary for a Band-Aid, and the nurse started waving a tetanus shot at me right away even though it was a tiny, shallow gash! I explained that my tetanus shot was only a year old, and I found out that apparently they use any little scrape as an opportunity to try to vaccinate the employees because most were so lax about their vaccinations that they ran a real risk of not coming in for the injury they NEEDED to come in for...)

 

A better comparison is probably the flu shot. 60-75% of the elderly get flu shots in a given year. I don't know how many have *ever* gotten an flu shot, and I also don't know how to find that out! But I think it's safe to say that with decent publicity, at *least* 75% of the elderly who should get a shingles vaccine will.

 

And you're right--it is a live vaccine! Sorry! Let's look at some numbers I found, though, and see that the real risks are.

 

About 90% of people who get chickenpox are under 14. Another page I found said that 80-90% of people get it while under 10. Another statistic was that 5% of people infected are adults.

 

(80% of those who die are adults. 100 deaths per 4,000,000 is the usual statistic, so the total risk is 1 in 40,000, but the risk of a child is 1 in 190,000 but the risk of an infected adult is 1 in 2,500. 1 in 2,500 is HIGH! So even if you are looking at the varicella vac with a jaded eye, REALLY, REALLY consider it if a kid reaches adulthood without having gotten the disease! Another stat claims that adults are 2% of the cases and 48% of the deaths. In that case, the risk is 1 in 1700. Ack!)

 

So I'm going to make a decent but imperfect estimate that 95% of unvaccinated people in an unvaccinated population get it before age 20.

 

Official stats are .3-3.8% of the vaccinated get breakthrough infections. I need total populations numbers for this, not individual incident numbers, but I'm struggling to find out exactly what the number means. I found some data on a per-year risk of infection. With those with the one dose, it appears to be .3% and those with the two dose .2% per year in that study, which seems to work pretty well with the number above. I'll use 3.8% as the total risk of getting chickenpox for kids under 20. It's not a great statistic (sorry), but it's the best I can do.

 

kokotg found another great statistic above:

 

rate of shingles among kids under 20 who have natural exposure to varicella: 68 per 100,000

 

rate of shingles among kids under 20 who've had the vaccine: 18 per 100,000

 

Okay. Now we're cooking with gas!

 

So 3800 per 100,000 vac. kids get the disease as if they hadn't been vaccinated at all. Their shingles rate will match that of regular kids, so 2.6 cases among th vaccinated are attributable to the vaccine just plain not taking. So that's 15.4 that are left per 100,000 that can be attributed to either a subclinical, asymptomatic infection (caused by incomplete immunity buy so mild as to produce no obvious breakthrough infection) OR the vaccination itself. We really don't know what part can be attributed to what, but your kid, if you vaccinated, has at the most a 15.4 in 100,000 chance of getting shingles from the chickenpox vaccine. (We CAN tell the difference, but the study saying that we can and this should be studied was only recently published! Argh! That study did determine that some cases of shingles can be attributed to "wild" c.p. in vac. kids, but there weren't any stats in the abstract, and there's no way I'm paying for the study at this point! I'm not curious enough! But I'm betting that, at most, 10 per 100k is the most caused be a weakened-virus vaccine.)

 

Assuming (probably erroneously) that the rate of shingles among the unvaccinated includes only those (in the 100k) who had chickenpox, then you have a chance of 64.6 in 100,000 that your unvac. child will develop shingles before the age of 20.

 

That's not a negligible difference.

 

(There are some problems with the analysis above in that I'm using what might be yearly rates--not sure from context--with total, 20-yr rates. But I'm still using the same methods with unvac. versus vac., so the final comparisons should be pretty darned solid.)

 

Among immuno-compromised patients, the same differences hold, BTW--about 1/3 to 1/5th the number of raw shingles infections among vac versus unvac. populations.

 

---

 

Now, the interesting thing might be if wild chickenpox became really, really rare. I could imagine a situation in which the vaccine continues to give a 10 in 100,000 chance of getting shingles (because it actually *infects* that many people) but that "wild" cp is so rare that only 8 of 100,000 people under 20 get shingles.

 

Now THAT would be an interesting moral dilemma, there! Do you vaccinate to keep the "wild" rate as low or lower, or do you make the "self-interested" decision to NOT vaccinate and lower your individual risk????

 

Hopefully, they'd develop a less risky, if less potent, alternative vac., instead, and the lower potency would be okay because the disease was already so rare. :-) (Here I am, taking the coward's way out....)

 

This is, though, exactly the decision taken with diseases like polio! The modern vaccine is much safer than the older one--with the risk of less effectiveness. But it's okay because polio is so rare here that widespread weak vac. prevents outbreaks, anyway. You always have to keep the risk/benefit ration in mind....

[Reya]

There are a LOT of people who are given some really, really BAD arguments about why vaccination is a "scam." The most common one is that if vaccinations work, the vaccinated don't have to worry about the unvaccinated, and if they do need to worry, then vaccinations are a hoax.

 

That noise you hear is me screaming and tearing my hair out. :-)

 

Risk/cost(yes, cost)/benefit is another reason why the number of boosters are set where they are. The goal is NOT, as many people think, to get 100% of the vac. population to have total immunity. This is impractical--impossible, in fact. There's a diminishing return with each round of shots--and an increased public resistance. The goal is to get the percentage high enough that an outbreak isn't sustainable.

 

Imagine, for a moment, that there is a disease called aWTM. :-) It causes 1 in 100,000 to die, 1 in 50,000 to have severe typo-itis, and 1 in 10,000 to forget all the Latin they've ever learned. This is bad, so we whip up a vaccine. The point of a vaccine is to get immunity from a disease without actually GIVING people the disease or the effects of the disease. If this was common and killed or maimed 1 in 250 people who got it, we'd accept complications that we won't accept for an aWTM vaccine!

 

Each round will cause 75% of people to develop a complete and lasting immunity. So if there are 1,000,000 people in our country and they all get the vaccine, then here is how many can still get the disease after each round:

 

round - number unprotected -effectiveness

1 - 250,000 - 75%

2 - 62,500 - 94%

3 - 15,625 - 98%

4 - 3,906 - 99.6%

5 - 977 - 99.9%

etc.

 

That's also a LOT of unnecessary shots, given that after the first shot 75% of people didn't need any more at all--and in the real world, you actually get higher returns with the first round and much diminished returns by round 3 compare to what I have, anyway. Some people's immune systems just aren't going to react strongly to a given vaccine no matter how many rounds they get. So fewer people IRL would be fully protected by round 3--but also more would be partially protected, which numbers like these don't show, so at least if they got the disease, the case would be a lot milder!

 

Even so, it's pretty practical to get above full 90% protection in 2-3 rounds of a vaccine. This will not prevent every *incident*, but it will prevent almost every *outbreak.* This has to do with a) the likelihood of a disease being passed from one unprotected person to another and b) the number of contacts an infected person will realistically make with unprotected people while infectious. In a fully vaccinated population, a) may be high, but b) will be low.

 

Now we have to include a group who won't and/or can't vaccinate. 10% of our population of 1,000,000 is now not going to vaccinate for some reason or another.

 

1 - 325,000 - 67.5%

2 - 156,250 - 84.3%

3 - 114,063 - 88.6%

4 - 103,516 - 89.6%

5 - 100,879 - 89.9%

etc.

 

There are so many more people, as a percentage, who are now not protected that an outbreak is all but inevitable even with three rounds of vaccine--and some of those will be fully vaccinated.

 

There will, of course, always be those who really can't vaccinate, for one of a host of reasons. But they can be protected by those who can--if they will. A fairly small percentage of people refusing vaccination for reasons that aren't medically valid, though, can raise the risks for many people who either would vaccinate but can't or who did vaccinate but didn't get a full immune reaction. It also destroys any attempt to fully eradicate the disease, which would render future vaccinations pointless--a process which is quite practical for a number of different diseases. Yes, we DO want to keep the colds--at least until we find another, more pleasant way of "training" our immune systems. :-) But rubella would be much better off in the history books!

[Reya]

I wonder how many of those babies and toddlers are nursing and receiving a natural immunity through their mother's antibodies. Do you have any idea?

 

Um. Argh. It's been a while...

 

Immunity from breastmilk is high but not 100%--just like vaccines. :-) It is more effective the younger the baby and decreases between 6 months and a year and even more dramatically between 1 and 2 years.

 

The effects of breastfeeding on immunity continue for at LEAST 3 years. I believe it was at least four? I don't remember.

 

The levels of immunity given are linked to length of breastfeeding up to a year. I'm not aware of any studies that show greater benefits for those nursed longer than a year versus those nursed a year, though. If these studies are made, I'd expect there to be some continuing effect, but not a very large one.

 

I haven't researched but can't see how one's body could make some sort of distinction between antibodies produced by vac. and antibodies produced by infection. With most diseases, the immune response is stronger & longer lasting, on average, to infection than vac.

 

(But there are problems with these statistics, even. For example, they don't take out the people who would have died had they been exposed to the real disease. :-) We only look at the survivors when we look at remaining immune responses from actual infection! So you can say, "If you get this and live, then your immune response will be better," but we can't say they a person with a weak response to the vaccine might not have been taken out, anyway, by one of the childhood illnesses....)

 

Anyhow, enough babbling-- if you have had the disease, because of the sheer number of antibodies you've developed, you will probably give your b-f infant *better* protection than a vac. mother. But a vac. mother would pass on protection.

 

Even an uninfected, unvac. mother does provide some protection to a baby through b-f, though it is quite diminished.

 

I wish someone would do a study or ten. These are HARD things to pin down, but they'd be fascinating to find out!

 

---

 

Speaking of vaccination, what I find really horrible is the unwillingness of insurance cos. to routinely cover RSV vaccine for at-risk infants. It's cheaper to treat the ones who get sick (and write off the ones who die!) every year than to prevent the disease completely. :-( B-fing helps with that risk, too....but STILL...

[Reya]

I jsut tried to retrieve the information I was going on and could not. It was in the Vaccine Journal from 2003 in an article by Goldman who was a statistician involved in researching cp. His information is no longer available because it is suppressed by the vaccine powers that be. (Sort of reminds me of the Chinese gymnasts...Govt. doesn't like the way the numbers line up. So, his numbers are made to disappear.) His studies found an increase in the numbers of children with shingles who received the vaccine. This is in line with what I have witnessed irl. I could find no numbers in my very short search tonight.

 

Oh, no, this is widely recognized and still available in a lot of places, but it was totally misconstrued by the media, that's all. :-)

 

The rise in shingles will come from people who had the "wild" virus and aren't getting their immune systems re-primed. That's why it's SO CRITICAL for those of us who got cp to get the shingles vaccine when we're old enough! If we don't we'll be at a much higher shingles risk.

 

This concern was part of the impetus behind the development of a shingles vaccine--thank goodness! :-) I'm all for my children's generation having a much, much smaller risk of shingles, but I don't want to get shingles because they didn't get chickenpox!

 

:tongue_smilie:

 

He did NOT find or predict any increase in shingles in children but made hypothetical predictions about shingles in people who are adults now. And I have no reason to doubt his data.

 

Here's fairly decent coverage of it (I'd closed the abstract RIGHT before I read your post, so even though I found the actual study, I can't find it again now! sorry!):

 

http://www.whale.to/vaccines/gold.html

 

"Dr. Goldman's findings have corroborated other independent researchers who estimate that if chickenpox were to be nearly eradicated by vaccination, the higher number of shingles cases could continue in the U.S. for up to 50 years; and that while death rates from chickenpox are already very low, any deaths prevented by vaccination will be offset by deaths from increasing shingles disease. ....

 

"Based on Dr. Goldman's earlier communications with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Goldman maintains that epidemiologists from the CDC are hoping "any possible shingles epidemic associated with the chickenpox vaccine can be offset by treating adults with a 'shingles' vaccine.""

 

He's cynical about the success rates. I'm not nearly so cynical. I think, based on how many seniors get the flu vaccine a year, it's quite practical to eventually get 85% of people vaccinated in the target age range. That's near the 90% compliance rate that most vaccines get.

[lighthouseacademy]

 

I don't care that much about chickenpox. Shingles, however, is a nightmare!

You are right, the chickenpox vaccine is touted as preventing shingles...

 

then you said

 

Kids who are vaccinated CAN'T just "get shingles." The vaccine is a DEAD VIRUS vaccine. It can't magically resurrect itself. The very worst that could happen is that the vaccine didn't take, and they get chickenpox anyway at a later age, which is more dangerous. THEN they could get shingles later, too, if they don't get the shingles booster.

I find your assertion interesting because I personally know a girl who was 7 and received the chickenpox vaccine and came down with SHINGLES! She NEVER contracted chickenpox. Before the chickenpox vaccine it was practically unheard of for a 7 yr old to get shingles.

 

Also, I want to caution you, several of your comments have been rather attacking towards people who choose not to vaccinate. While you choose to vaccinate and feel it is important and have done research for your family, there are those of us who have studied, and studied and studied some more, who have wrestled all arguments, who have seen the after effects of some of the diseases like polio, and who have prayed and studied some more and sought out the most unbiased information we could find to study both the diseases and the vaccines and risks and benefits of each and we have chosen not to vaccinate. That does not make us "stupid" as your comment about about "just because I homeschool doesn't mean I am stupid" implies.

 

Personally, I feel that the idea of vaccines is great- however there are several SERIOUS flaws in them. #1 with a vaccine you bypass ALL of the body's natural defenses against invasion by injecting the substance. #2 the contaminations of foreign proteins sets up the body with the prime condition to create an auto-immune disease if that protein is similar enough to your own proteins. #3 the whole host of heavy metals, chemicals, and preservatives which are TOXIC and should not be put into the blood stream.

[Reya]

I want to say, too (since I'm probably not going to have time to post until next Sat--sheesh, I'm busy right now), that just because I read a stack of reports didn't mean that I wasn't still scared of some of the vaccines. I knew, with every rational part of my brain, that vaccines do NOT raise the risk of autism. I was still shaking a little as I made that choice--which is part of the reason I'm so furious with those who manufactured the initial flawed, fear-mongering study in the first place. :-(

 

I did choose to forgo one vaccine last time--Hib. I had a first child, he was in no daycare situation, none of our friends had kids yet, and I was breastfeeding--so he had a pretty much close to nil chance of getting the disease. That was clearly a seatbelt situation, not a drunk-driving situation, in the worst case. :-)

 

I also thought long and hard and read long and hard about the varicella vaccine. When I had to make my choice, there was no shingles vaccine, so that was a HUGE factor in my decision--he chances of getting shingles would be much lower being vaccinated than not. I was really scared of waning immunity leaving him vulnerable to an adult case of CP, though. That isn't anything to joke about!

 

Now, I think with my next child that I AM going to vaccinate for Hib (LOTS more kids around here), but I'm still debating with myself about the best age for chicken pox vaccination. It really looks like the recommended age will be safest, and to keep up boosters after. I wish there were a perfect solution, one that would whisk away all my concerns. I can tell, very clearly, that it would have to be the best choice to have her vaccinated if she didn't come down with it by age 10, no matter what else.

 

But I DO wish the vaccine were better than it is, overall. I wish all vaccines were perfect. :-) There is no magic pill, however.

 

I'm going to make sure, though, that I'm not so paranoid about shark attacks that I don't take basic water-safety precautions!

[Reya]

I find your assertion interesting because I personally know a girl who was 7 and received the chickenpox vaccine and came down with SHINGLES! Before the chickenpox vaccine it was unheard of for a 7 yr old to get shingles.

 

No, it wasn't. It was uncommon--and is now even less common in those who have the vaccine than those who don't! But people are so afraid of vaccines that they want to blame everything on them. Needles are scary. I hate them. :-) I distrust drugs and doctors on principle, at this point. But it just isn't true that shingles in the very young are something new or something caused at an increasing rate by the varicella vac.

[lighthouseacademy]

No, it wasn't. It was uncommon--and is now even less common in those who have the vaccine than those who don't! But people are so afraid of vaccines that they want to blame everything on them. Needles are scary. I hate them. :-) I distrust drugs and doctors on principle, at this point. But it just isn't true that shingles in the very young are something new or something caused at an increasing rate by the varicella vac.

So you would say that it was uncommon but possible that a 7 year old who had never contracted chickenpox would contract shingles?

 

The issue of whether to vaccinate or not is very personal. I edited my last post and would appreciate if you would read it.

 

BTW as for the autism study- after the repeal of the autism study, Robert Kennedy, under the Freedom of Information Act discovered that there was a secret meeting on the original study. The results were a reworking of the data to show that vaccines did not cause autism. Here are a couple of interesting articles regarding this meeting that you might be interested in reading because you seem to be interesting in reading all sides of the issue. These were posted on Think Twice- which is run by Neil Z. Miller who has researched vaccines and their safety for 23 years. Yes, he is antivaccine, but I have found in his presentation of information he strives to be as unbiased as possible and, although his website has areas which are emotional and inflammatory, his information sections tend not to be.

The first is here and the second one is here. I think there are lots of factors involved in autism. But, it is very interesting to note that in 1985 the rates of autism were 4-5 in 10,000 and today the rates are 1 in 150. There is definitely something amiss here- and it isn't that we have better diagnosing skills today than we did then. BTW I found my vaccine record- in 1985 my vaccine card was published (and filled in with the back data from vaccines I received prior to 1985). It showed spaces for 10 doses of vaccines (4 polio, 5 DTP, and 1 MMR (mine shows a handwritten second dose of MMR). Today children are given 36 doses of vaccines.

[Reya]

Has anyone found an Amish person with Autism?

i read they found THREE, (but those 3 received shots)

 

*sighs* And exactly what is the apparent low incidence of ADHD among the Amish? Is that caused by vaccines?

 

To begin with, more than half of Amish ARE immunized. They have no institutional religious objection to it.

 

Second...

 

How about childhood obesity? I was just in Lincoln County--you won't find a lower rate of childhood obesity anywhere in the country! Certainly, that's vaccines causing obesity.

 

Maple Syrup Urine Disease--prevented by vaccines!

 

Diabetes? Vaccines must cause it.

 

NLD? Vaccines cause it!

 

Cystic fibrosis? Prevented by vaccines!

 

APD? Vaccines again, then!

 

Down syndrome? Prevented by vaccines!

 

Oppositional defiant disorder. Caused by vaccines, definitely.

 

Closed head injuries in children--prevented by vaccines.

 

Cohen Syndrome. Prevented by vaccines.

 

Dwarfism -- also prevented by vaccines

 

STDs--caused by vaccines

 

Hemophilia--prevented by vaccines

 

There are a number of reasons that autism is diagnosed at much lower rates. Some are genetic and environmental contributions to autism, but some are purely social.

 

There are a number of reasons that autism diagnosis is increasing so much. These include:

 

-A better understanding of and awareness about the disease. High-functioning autistics and aspies are much likelier to be caught today than when my mother was told that my brother was "too smart" to be autistic.

 

-A higher likelihood of people with autistic tendencies to reproduces as they become more desirable mates. Engineers and "geeks" make good money and have high social standing, allowing people who might otherwise be barred by social awkwardness to marry and reproduce--and those who are a bit autistic-leaning are far more likely to have kids with full-blown autism than those who aren't.

 

-The fact that it is the diagnosis of the moment. I've met a LOT of kids who are as autistic as my dog but who still have an autism label. They are all quirky. A few are just plain badly behaved, to be completely honest, and slightly odd. Most have other problems--SPD, NLD, APD, or something similar that looks just enough like Asperger's to a fairly ignorant eye that someone diagnosing from a manual with no real-world, intimate experience with the disorder will slap that label-of-the-moment on it. Someone who knows autism can tell in a two-minute conversation with a person if they're really on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes, it's obvious just from walking by and overhearing an autistic spectrum person speak! But most psychiatrists and pediatricians don't have this kind of background, and so they make mistakes very often when it's not something you can run a lab test about.

 

The third factor is really the largest cause. It's good for PS kids to get a label that schools think they understand, but it hurts research into a condition when tons of people get lumped in with the genuine article. It also makes people skeptical that the disease really exists at all! Just look at people's reactions to ADHD. Many people now treat it like a joke because SO many were over-diagnosed. The same thing's happening to Asperger's, and it's a really dangerous thing.

[tibbyl]

Needles are scary. I hate them. :-)

 

I cannot think of one parent who considered needles in their vax decision-making criteria. I was dumbfounded to learn that an intelligent grandmother I knew truly thought that parents who refused vaxes or vaxed selectively did so to save their children from the temporary sting of a needle.

[Karen sn]

That is why I'm staying away from homeschool activities unless I can go alone after my baby's born and until she's got all her shots. My DS fell behind a bit in our move, and when I found another pediatrician here and got him caught up, the nurses were so thrilled that I was vaccinating even though I homeschool and it's not required here. I told them, "Just because I homeschool doesn't mean I'm stupid."

 

Ummmm....so you think everyone who homeschools and does not vaccinate is stupid?

 

I prefer to think of myself as very well educated thank you very much.

I homeschool, I do not vaccinate, AND I am a registered nurse.

[Karen sn]

NO, it DOESN'T.

 

Of the population who will vaccinate, the majority who get sick--and the majority of ALL groups who die--are babies and toddlers with incomplete immunizations.

 

There is a very small percentage of people who are vaccinated who don't get full immunity. Their chances of dying are incredibly low, though, since most retain a *partial* immunity.

 

If it weren't for those who chose not to immunize, those who *could* not immunize because of medical reasons, those with immunodeficiency, and those unlucky few who just, by chance, didn't get enough of an immune reaction to be covered would almost never get sick. There wouldn't be enough of a population to carry the illness.

 

And they couldn't pass it on to babies, either.

 

Also, if you look at the infection rates among populations--the vaccinated, the unvaccinated, and the very young--you'll notice something. On exposure, the vaccinated have a very LOW chance of infection, while the unvaccinated have a very HIGH chance. The fact that 50% of cases comes from a 7% segment of the population should tell you something--especially since so many of the other cases will be babies, who canNOT yet be protected by vaccines.

 

 

I have to disagree.

I have read MANY reports on outbreaks. In one - 80% of those who contracted measles WERE FULLY VACCINATED.

 

And what's up with all the kids who get the chicken pox vaccine and then catch the pox? How about all the people who get the flu vaccine and are sick as dogs for a week or more?

 

And there was the original vaccinator (I can not remember his name) but he recanted much of his theory before he died.

[newlifemom]

I appreciate your zeal and passion Reya, however, while I am in no way as well read as you or some of the other posters, I am not comfortable vaxing my dc at such a young age. Our society is growing in leaps and bounds in regard to medical technology and personally I like to take things slow. I agree with the poster who mentioned 36 vaxs out there and I think it is more. I also have a son who was progressing normally with a 3 mos speech delay @ 2yrs. Even had Early Intervention in and they wished they had more evals like him. Now, they don't know what he has, Aspergers, ADHD, PDD/NOS, SPD and honestly I wonder about why and how. My dc are being vaccinated on MY timetable. I will no longer allow anyone to vax them until I am comfortable. I think it is a personal decision and am a little vexed by the accusatory tone in your posts that these epidemics(if they can be called that) are the fault of an unvaccinated person in the same manner as a person who has drunk too much and got behind the wheel.:confused:

[Karen sn]

But the fact is, the vaccine doesn't work all of the time. I was fully vaccinated as a child, had a booster at 15, was vaccinated after *each* of my children was born and I still don't test as immune. I think *that fact* puts a lot of people in danger due to complacency.

 

Actually though, you could still have some immunity. You would need to be exposed, your body would recognize it and remember, and then the antibodies would kick in. Sometimes counts are jsut low because there has been no recent exposure. It does not mean you are NOT immune....although chances are the shots didn't work....

 

But serum levels for immunity are not always an indicator - that was my point.

[Reya]

Personally, I feel that the idea of vaccines is great- however there are several SERIOUS flaws in them. #1 with a vaccine you bypass ALL of the body's natural defenses against invasion by injecting the substance. #2 the contaminations of foreign proteins sets up the body with the prime condition to create an auto-immune disease if that protein is similar enough to your own proteins. #3 the whole host of heavy metals, chemicals, and preservatives which are TOXIC and should not be put into the blood stream.

 

PleasepleasePLEASE look up these objections in a forum that gives solid information.

 

For #3... You can entirely avoid ANY chemical you can reasonably find objectionable by looking up the contents of various vaccine formulations and making sure your pediatrician gives you formulas you approve of! If he can't, then just find someone else for some of the vaccines. You can get ALL the standard vaccines without any heavy metals.

 

I was poisoned by arsenic for 9.5 years. My kidneys are still less than fabulous because of it. I don't think heavy metals are a joke. But you DON'T need to avoid vac. because of fears of heavy metals!

 

As for #1.... That really is the entire point. :-) You bypass the skin and digestive system to make sure the body has something to react to. If you didn't, they you couldn't get an immunity. This method has been used to inoculate--not vaccinate--against smallpox for over a thousand years. It wasn't nearly as good as modern methods, but even that saved countless lives.

 

For #2, there's no evidence whatsoever that any autoimmune disease save, very rarely, Guillain-Barré syndrome is linked to vaccinations. And even surgery can set off Guillain-Barré! We know what happens when the body reacts badly to vaccinations. And we know how often that happens. A much, much, MUCH greater risk in our problems with autoimmune disorders--at least asthma, allergies, and associated conditions--are the fact that we are just too clean. Being a little filthy has been shown, again and again, to reduce these problems. (Dirty but not bug-ridden!) Avoiding vaccinations never has. Focus on what definitely contributes rather than chasing long shots!

[Reya]

I cannot think of one parent who considered needles in their vax decision-making criteria. I was dumbfounded to learn that an intelligent grandmother I knew truly thought that parents who refused vaxes or vaxed selectively did so to save their children from the temporary sting of a needle.

 

I have met people who have an inherent distrust of needles that has caused them to not vaccinate.

 

Needles are artificial. They are unnatural. They can't be right.

 

So many people start with that and then come up with reasons to justify these fears.

 

I've also met women--plural!--who said that they took their first child in for the first round of shots and were so horrified by their child's pain and the whole procedure that they revolted against it and refused any further ones. They describe themselves as scarred by the experience and feel that shots cannot help but cause permanent psychic scars on children.

 

(I don't think the very last is ENTIRELY wrong. I do fear that in this age of SO many vaccines that we'll have a generation of adults who cannot trust doctors and see the medical establishment as primarily causing pain, not relief. This worries me a lot, honestly. I think that this is a very important reason to reduce the number of shots, if not the number of illnesses protected against!)

 

In fact, something close to 25% of the people who have talked about their avoidance of vaccines have *started with* one of the above and then proceeded to bring out one of the usual litany of justification in support. But those were just the support for the initial, irrational, gut-deep rejection. For them, facts don't really matter. They're just a crutch to support what they feel.

[Karen sn]

As for #1.... That really is the entire point. :-) You bypass the skin and digestive system to make sure the body has something to react to. If you didn't, they you couldn't get an immunity. This method has been used to inoculate--not vaccinate--against smallpox for over a thousand years. It wasn't nearly as good as modern methods, but even that saved countless lives.

 

 

 

Ok, Reya. You really think that the only way to get immunity is to bypass the natural order of it's introduction into the system?

 

So....then how did people become immune to something BEFORE the almighty Dollars.....I mean Doctors..... and their shots? That argument makes no sense AT ALL.

 

And how many cases of polio are due to innoculations? Answer that one for me.

 

I have to say - with all the sugar and fake food in our Standard American Diet it's no wonder everyone is sick.

 

No vaccines here - decent diet - kid as healthy as a horse and exposed to a gazillion contagious viruses. The only thing she ever caught was bacterial (strep throat). And we cured that in about 5 days - no antibiotics.

[tibbyl]

I have met people who have an inherent distrust of needles that has caused them to not vaccinate.

 

For these people whom you claim refuse to vax out of fear of needle sting, it follows that they would vax if a topical anesthetic could be applied prior to injection to relieve the smarting.

[Reya]

I appreciate your zeal and passion Reya, however, while I am in no way as well read as you or some of the other posters, I am not comfortable vaxing my dc at such a young age. Our society is growing in leaps and bounds in regard to medical technology and personally I like to take things slow. I agree with the poster who mentioned 36 vaxs out there and I think it is more. I also have a son who was progressing normally with a 3 mos speech delay @ 2yrs. Even had Early Intervention in and they wished they had more evals like him. Now, they don't know what he has, Aspergers, ADHD, PDD/NOS, SPD and honestly I wonder about why and how. My dc are being vaccinated on MY timetable. I will no longer allow anyone to vax them until I am comfortable. I think it is a personal decision and am a little vexed by the accusatory tone in your posts that these epidemics(if they can be called that) are the fault of an unvaccinated person in the same manner as a person who has drunk too much and got behind the wheel.:confused:

 

Someone else was comparing the risk to driving, saying that you take a chance every time you drive a car (a higher one over a lifetime of driving than being unvaccinated, certainly!!!), and I was pointing out that there are some driving risks you take on yourself, only, and some that you impose on other people through your decisions. Hence the two types of "risks." Some vaccines are one type of risk--only to your family--and some are as much or more a risk others. It wasn't my comparison to begin with!

 

If you're going to make a decision that could affect the lives of your children so profoundly, and if you are going to go against the weight of all current medical advice, please, please do it for reasons other than not feeling comfortable. I'm not comfortable with vaccinations, either. If you don't like my analogy, that's entirely your prerogative. It wasn't there to tick you off or accuse you :-) but to try to make people really consider the reasons for their choices and all the possible outcomes.

 

Now, we all know that there is virtually no good reason for driving without a seatbelt OR drunk driving. But I wasn't dealing with the potential benefits of an action that might also be dangerous, just as the original poster wasn't. :-) I was only looking at the risk side of the equation. Of course, you want to take both into consideration before making any decision!

 

The fact remains that over half of people I know who don't vaccinate don't really have a well-considered reason for it. They don't feel good about it, and they hate taking a step that they feel so loath to undergo. They feel like, in some way, they are avoiding making a potentially bad choice and don't want to fully consider that their current choice of non-action is as definite a step in a definite direction toward a definite endpoint as any other.

 

I DON'T like the medical establishment. Not one bit! I don't like the fact that doctors write so many prescriptions--and then write prescriptions to cover the side-effects of their previous prescriptions. I really, really don't like the state of OB practice in the US. I've locked horns with my OB on more than one occasion with this pregnancy, and I might even be yelling at her in the delivery room. :-) I sincerely believe that the hospital took my grandmother's case of mild pneumonia and killed her by the over-prescription of drugs that are inappropriate for the elderly. So I'm not here to defend the medical establishment against all comers! Far, far from it.

 

But if I disagree with the medical establishment, I need a good reason. Not trusting them isn't enough. I browbeat my OB/GYN into giving me an fFN test my last visit because I'm high risk for premature birth, and if it were positive, I had every intention of browbeating her into a progesterone supplement. :-) That's because I've read piles of medical papers and the statistical outcomes and I know that she sees "live, not obviously brain-damaged baby" as a good enough outcome for anyone, while I find the risks of a baby delivered at even 34 weeks to be unacceptable for MY child and want to do everything in my power to stop it. I have very specific--and well-documented--reasons for each of my deviations from the most general and longest accepted practice, and I have researched the risks just as thoroughly and strive to combine the two into a best-practices scenario.

 

If she comes at me threatening a premature C-section, for instance, I might just take her out with the nearest IV. :-)

 

(My insurance doesn't cover nurse-midwives. Before anyone asks the obvious question!)

[Reya]

Ok, Reya. You really think that the only way to get immunity is to bypass the natural order of it's introduction into the system?

 

So....then how did people become immune to something BEFORE the almighty Dollars.....I mean Doctors..... and their shots? That argument makes no sense AT ALL.

 

And how many cases of polio are due to innoculations? Answer that one for me.

 

I have to say - with all the sugar and fake food in our Standard American Diet it's no wonder everyone is sick.

 

No vaccines here - decent diet - kid as healthy as a horse and exposed to a gazillion contagious viruses. The only thing she ever caught was bacterial (strep throat). And we cured that in about 5 days - no antibiotics.

 

No, not the ONLY way. It's how you make sure that someone gets a CONTROLLED dose of something. That's why, in the age of smallpox inoculation, it was preferred to use a needle--yes, a needle!--to inhaling it. It killed fewer people. The point to immunization--or inoculation--is to expose people in such a way that they get an immunity but DON'T get the disease, or at least not a full-fledged case of it. The alternative is to get the real thing--which is exactly what's trying tob e avoided here!

 

How many cases are caused by the polio vaccine? 5 to 10 in the entire US by the old regimen. The new one? 2-3. MAYBE.

 

And how many cases were there in modern-hygiene developed countries before the vaccine? How many are there still in most many of the world?

 

This is what happened in the West:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_in_epidemiology#The_mathematics_of_mass_vaccination

 

You can bash the SAD all you want, but we are sooooooooooo much safer than we used to be from disease AND better nourished that it would have been unimaginable just 150 years ago.

 

As an FYI, strep throat isn't something you want to NOT treat with antibiotics, either. It can lead to heart damage--rare cases, but enough to care about! An ear infection or a sinus infection is much better to play watch-and-see with. (I've never had that or an upper respiratory infection, either. My DS has gotten one mild ear infection, which we didn't treat with antibiotics but just monitored--he missed my strep throat last year, even!) Aggressiveness with strep is justified.

 

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/MEDLINEPLUS/ency/article/000639.htm

[Reya]

So you would say that it was uncommon but possible that a 7 year old who had never contracted chickenpox would contract shingles?

 

The issue of whether to vaccinate or not is very personal. I edited my last post and would appreciate if you would read it.

 

BTW as for the autism study- .... BTW I found my vaccine record- in 1985 my vaccine card was published (and filled in with the back data from vaccines I received prior to 1985). It showed spaces for 10 doses of vaccines (4 polio, 5 DTP, and 1 MMR (mine shows a handwritten second dose of MMR). ....

 

I would say that a 7-year-old A) would probably lave contracted chickenpox by that age, if unvaccinated, and B) if vaccinated, the likelihood that she got shingles not from the vaccine but from a subclinical infection of a "wild" strain is very real, one that vaccines reduce but can't eliminate.

 

It is much less likely for a 7-y-o to get shingles is vaccinated than if unvaccinated. You can stand it on your head however you like, but the fact remains the same!

 

Varicella vaccination really is one of the vaccinations that has pretty darned near negligible risk to *society* if you choose not to get it. So make it as personal as you want! :-) Just think about real risks of the vaccine and not ones that are made up to scare you.

 

I don't think the rate of shingles among vaccinated kids versus unvaccinated kids is a valid concern at this point, for example. We have too much data.

 

What is a REAL concern is the unknown risk of waning immunity possibly opening an person vaccinated as a kid to a breakthrough infection of chickenpox as an adult. This, we DO NOT know! How severe would the breakthrough incident be? How preventable? Is there any way to make sure, if our kid is GOING to get the virus because the vaccine isn't going to work for him, to make sure he gets it as a kid and not an adult?

 

These are the questions that keep me awake at night!

 

I DO have the natural, kneejerk reaction that everyone does--"WOW, that's a lot of shots. Are they really needed? It seems like too much." Even five seemed like a lot for those who had none. But we shouldn't make decisions on the basis that X is bad because it's more than Y without knowing what X and Y mean. I disagree with my mother here, who can't get past a gut reaction that we're starting to treat illnesses that are too minor to warrant treating when sickness does have some inherent immune-system-boosting abilities. (She had NEVER believed in the vaccine/autism link, however.) I think that yes, we may be close to the line for some things. But there's good, solid evidence that we haven't come close to crossing it yet.

 

I looked at your links, and they're more than a little dubious. I've seen those ominous claims before--and I've also seen the best, most tightly-constructed studies that show no link at all through various thoughtful analyses. Nonsense like "The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among 11 children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931" should not only raise flags but send horns blaring from the ramparts. They aren't unemotional, just-the-facts. They're cherry-picked figures and s-c-a-r-y phantoms without much substance.

 

Keep in mind....

 

In the late 1990s, it was supposed to be thimerosal that was causing autism. Now it's just "vaccines," in a vague sort of way. There isn't even an ATTEMPT anymore to make any sort of connection between the vaccines and some sort of real mechanism by which this could happen except some vague buttering about "immune system overload."

 

Shifting around like this is very, well, shifty.

 

In 1985, my mother was still searching for a diagnosis for my brother. He wasn't diagnosed until 1988. But I guess that means he wasn't autistic in 1985, right? He's a NEW CASE!

 

My grandfather was born in the 'teens. He floated somewhere between Asperger's and high functioning autism. Guess what they call him in the '30s and '40s? "Lazy" and "odd." He was never formally diagnosed. (Well, he WAS lazy, and he WAS odd. He was also a screaming Aspie if there ever was one.)

 

Through the 1980s, autism was believed to be EXTREMELY rare, so doctors resisted diagnosing it. Many still believe it was caused by "cold" mothers. (Speaking of another hoax...) Autistics were supposed to be nonverbal or barely verbal. They weren't supposed to tolerate being touched at all, and they were supposed to display extreme forms of self-stim. and repetitive behaviors. They weren't supposed to be functional adults.

 

Exactly how many of the 1 in 150-ish people diagnosed today would fit ANYWHERE within that description? All you have to do is look at the average kid who was diagnosed 20, 30 years ago and look at the average kid today and see that we're comparing apples and watermelons!

 

Plenty of *low-functioning* autistics were also just labeled as mentally deficient in the past and thrown into homes to hide the shame from the rest of the community, too. No need to examine them any closer--they're just another of the "idiots" and "imbeciles."

 

Even in 1991 or so, a LIFE class (lowest level of special ed, for the moderately to profoundly mentally retarded) teacher in my middle school had the suspicion that a virtually nonverbal boy in her class wasn't mentally retarded at all but was just autistic. She worked with him diligently for three years. After having spent the first 6 years of school learning NOTHING and having the same functional level as his MR classmates, the kid just blossomed and took off like a weed. He went on to community college and got a degree and a job. He was still autistic and strange--but in no way was he MR.

 

How likely would he have been to be misdiagnosed that badly and for that long in 2001 instead of 1991? And what chance would he have EVER had to succeed had it been 1971?

 

Additionally, kids were not diagnosed "...and autism," as they are now. Autism is a specific set of behaviors, and if you look for them, you can find them in many brain-damaged or MR children who are not autistic in any sort of classical sense but who, because of other problems, must interact with the world in a way the is reminiscent of true autism. So you get "Down syndrome and autism," "cerebral palsy and autism,"--and that poor little girl who had Guillain-Barre Syndrome so badly that it left her permanently brain-damaged. She's not autistic. She's brain-damaged. It isn't the same. But "autism" and "vaccines" gets the headlines so much better than the truth.

 

Asperger's was not added to the DSM until 1994. How on EARTH does it make a lick of sense to link the surge in Aspie diagnoses in with a "rise in autism," then?! Of COURSE kids weren't diagnosed with it in the80s! Want to know where they are all now, though? Mostly working as computer analysts, computer scientists, and engineers. Walk into any university engineering building, throw and eraser among a group of professors, and chances are even that you'll hit someone who'd get labeled as an Aspie of they were teens today.

 

Heck, I'm MARRIED to one. :-)

 

Also remember... There was WAY less pressure to get a diagnosis of square pegs 50 years ago. You saw the first wave of it with the sudden universality of ADHD in the 1980s. Before then, there were no high-stakes tests. Early elementary school was much, much less demanding, and way more kids--all the ones who didn't fit--just dropped OUT when high school rolled around. There was no such thing as "no child left behind," and kids who didn't fit...well, they were just labeled troublemakers, barring something really obviously abnormal with them, and it was left at that. Now getting a label offers a world of special services to you, thanks to national law. Don't get me wrong--this is a GOOD thing. But it drives the surge in diagnoses of all types: Get a label, and you can get an IEP that gets you the keys to educational success that couldn't otherwise be yours because you are different.

 

Some of these square pegs really are Aspie. Some are other things--APD, NLD, ADD, SPD, etc. Some are just either ill-behaved or, well, WEIRD! Sadly, there's no place for weird in many classrooms today. The one good thing, I guess, is that people at least aren't trying to drug kids with aspie labels into submission, the way that some schools try to get every squirmy boy on Ritalin or one of its cousins.

 

Some aspects of deciding whether or not to get immunization really are totally about a family's choice. Some are a matter of social interest. It depends on the vaccine and the pattern of vaccination. Pretending that vaccination has to be ONLY a personal choice or else vaccines are scams is what gets my goat, if you can't tell! Many of out choices affect those outside of us. This is one that often does.

[newlifemom]

I am not a medical doctor nor do I play one on TV. :D That being said, I am not necessarily opposed to vax in general. What I was trying to say, was that many of the people who have posted here have used, as you have, statistics to support their point of view. You can take a few conclusions from that. 1. There is data for everyone's POV 2. People can make almost any data fit their POV. I have read some studies, some books, obviously not as much as you or the others. Just like some on these boards do not want to be hit over the head about religion I think that your opinion which is valid and not without merit is just that,Whi your opinion and 1 or 2 of your posts came off a bit "I'm smarter than you" and "How dare you not vax and potentially set off a major epidemic". I still stand by my origional post. I am not comfortable vaxing my dc in the first few years of their life anymore. That has changed from going ahead with vax as regularly sched. While I can't cite the reports that I have read, the fact that I have read medical reports (not the internet) and my own reservations(intuition) is enough. Think about this in terms of homeschooling. How many friends/family have tried to cite evidence of the importance and supremacy of public schools over homeschooling? We, the homeschooling body have had to cite our own data to refute theirs. And yet we are told constantly, the govt surely knows better than we, the parents on how to educate our children, right? It is the same. I am not afraid of needles or the pain they may cause my children to prevent harmful, even devasting illnesses. I am trying very hard to limit any intervention medically while their brains are so rapidly developing. I also am trying to limit TV, red food dye, food with anitbiotics etc. I am not comfortable with those things either. It comes down to our gut and after researching what we the parents think the best thing is for our children.

 

BTW, did I mention that I do believe in vaccinations? I do. I just don't think 36 plus shots in the first 2 years of life is the best way to do it.

[74Heaven]

If you're going to make a decision that could affect the lives of your children so profoundly, and if you are going to go against the weight of all current medical advice, please, please do it for reasons other than not feeling comfortable. I'm not comfortable with vaccinations, either.!)

 

My main reason for not using the MMR vax and the varicella vax is the fact that the Merck vaccination insert (MMR) tells us that the vaccination is developed from aborted human fetal tissue.

 

I've now read several pages on this MMR vax topic (on this forum) and I am dismayed that no one has mentioned their objections to MMR (Rubella actually and the varicella vaccination) - based on the fact that they are taken from the tissues of aborted babies.

 

That is one of my problems with the main news article. I would doubt the reporter gave any thought to "Why" people don't vaccinate.

 

And implying that "homeschoolers" don't (usually) vaccinate is *highly erroneous*. Conclusive research of homeschoolers is so sparse that there is certainly no basis for the "most homeschoolers don't vaccinate" theory. In my mind, that makes the mention of "homeschoolers" as a large portion of the group with measles - kind of immaterial.

 

If you put a large generic group of homeschoolers together, I don't think you're going to find a "majority" of homeschoolers who are totally non-vax. It appears the writer was under the widely mistaken notion that state vaccination laws are different for public schoolers. That is flat out false in nearly every state as an e

 

Lisaj, who hopes this fact of the sad source of the origin of these vaccines is well-known to parents who are researching vaccinations

[Reya]

Ummmm....so you think everyone who homeschools and does not vaccinate is stupid?

 

I prefer to think of myself as very well educated thank you very much.

I homeschool, I do not vaccinate, AND I am a registered nurse.

 

Depends on the vaccination. Also depends on how many babies your kids are around and how many unvaccinated people you spend time with.

 

As a homeschooler in this area, I *would* be an idiot to let my child around other homeschoolers unless he was protected against the nastiest illnesses. As it is, we're staying far away from any interaction with large local HSing groups until my next baby's fully vaccinated. With the high rates of international travel in the area and the low rates of vaccination among homeschoolers, it's a tragedy just waiting to happen.

[Reya]

I have to disagree.

I have read MANY reports on outbreaks. In one - 80% of those who contracted measles WERE FULLY VACCINATED.

 

And what's up with all the kids who get the chicken pox vaccine and then catch the pox? How about all the people who get the flu vaccine and are sick as dogs for a week or more?

 

And there was the original vaccinator (I can not remember his name) but he recanted much of his theory before he died.

 

Okay. Again. Attack rate is what you want to look at, not percentage of people who were vaccinated versus those who were vaccinated who got sick. Your data is meaningless without attack rates.

 

As for chicken pox, once again, about 3.8% of those vaccinated according to the new schedule will get breakout infections. Did you read my post about how vaccines work in a population? Please do!

 

Flu vaccines are unique in the vaccination world--and they are a crapshoot! Basically, the companies make their best guess at what strain will become dominant in the US a number of months before it hits. Sometimes, they're right on. Then, the level of protection is high in most people. Sometimes, the flu mutates a little. (The flu is NOT like any of the child illnesses commonly vaccinated against. These do NOT mutate constantly or produce a prolific number of strains.) Then the flu vaccine mostly works for most people. Sometimes, they miss completely, choosing a strain that doesn't end up affecting people in the US hardly at all. Then the flu vaccine is worthless.

 

Do you mean Jenner? If he "recanted," which I've never heard, then that would be very sad, as his development of the smallpox vaccine led to the first eradication of any infectious disease by modern medicine.

[Reya]

My main reason for not using the MMR vax and the varicella vax is the fact that the Merck vaccination insert (MMR) tells us that the vaccination is developed from aborted human fetal tissue.

 

I've now read several pages on this MMR vax topic (on this forum) and I am dismayed that no one has mentioned their objections to MMR (Rubella actually and the varicella vaccination) - based on the fact that they are taken from the tissues of aborted babies.

 

That is one of my problems with the main news article. I would doubt the reporter gave any thought to "Why" people don't vaccinate.

 

And implying that "homeschoolers" don't (usually) vaccinate is *highly erroneous*. Conclusive research of homeschoolers is so sparse that there is certainly no basis for the "most homeschoolers don't vaccinate" theory. In my mind, that makes the mention of "homeschoolers" as a large portion of the group with measles - kind of immaterial.

 

There are some alternatives for most things!

 

http://www.dgwsoft.co.uk/homepages/vaccines/alternatives.htm

 

They aren't "taken from the tissue of aborted babies," as such:

 

http://www.mmrthefacts.nhs.uk/questions/question.php?id=83

 

I don't think the writer was confused. The appearance of *pockets* of anti-vax homeschoolers, with high levels of interaction with one another, is fairly new and has caused several outbreaks of several vac-preventable diseases. It isn't that HS-ers don't vac., period--it's that communities exist, allowed by HSing laws, that have much lower vac levels than the general population, allowing for outbreaks.