Let's start with this one: This is a myth. The human immune system is bombarded by antigens (essentially any foreign protein is an antigen) every minute of the day. If exposure to a vaccine antigen weakened or taxed the immune system, we wouldn't likely make it through the first year of life. Consider the principles in this CDC discussion of giving multiple childhood vaccines in combined doses: But an illness can make one vulnerable to a secondary infection, why is that different? Two reasons. In an active infection, the pathogen is actively multiplying. There can be billions of organisms your immune system is dealing with at a furious pace. In addition, the pathogens have multiple antigens. The immune system doesn't select one to address, it attacks all of them. And then there are toxins that some pathogens produce, also causing havoc in your body. Current vaccines, including flu vaccines, are extremely pure, containing single antigens in a small fixed quantity. One piece of evidence supporting the safe administration of multiple vaccines in single doses is the fact older tetanus vaccinations contained multiple different antigens. One dose of the older tetanus vaccination contained many more antigens than a current child would get with the whole series of vaccines they'd get on a single day now. And the second reason is local damage leaving the body open to invasion via the damaged cells. Influenza, for example, damages and incapacitates the cilia in the trachea, allowing invading organisms to collect in the lungs, in large enough numbers to cause infection. A vaccination, while occasionally causing local inflammation in the muscle, doesn't do so at the likely portal of entry of another pathogen.
I thought for sure you were going with the vaccines-cause-autism or some other mental impairment idea that's wreaking havoc with public health by letting nearly-conquered diseases to make a comeback. It makes me crazy.
Me too. I left the thread open to discuss other myths. I know the whole Andrew Wakefield fraud in great detail if anyone has not yet heard the autism vaccine link has been thoroughly studied and a connection ruled out. Jazz's claim came up in another thread where it was off topic. I used flu vaccine myths to illustrate a point about rational and irrational thinking and it caused a separate stir so I thought it was worthwhile starting a new thread.
No vaccine is 100% safe or 100% effective. It's important that any health care professional thoroughly explain the risks and benefits of being vaccinated.
What's your point, JJ? It's standard practice to address risks and benefits of vaccines when you give them. In the US we are required to give a VIS, Vaccine Information Statement, to the patient at the time the vaccine is given. Any vaccine decision is about weighing risk vs benefit. It's why, for example, we've reverted back to the killed polio vaccine in the US. Once there were more cases of vaccine virus disease than wild virus disease, the additional benefits of the live vaccine over the killed were outweighed by the risk.
Fair enough. So the problem with, "No vaccine is 100% safe or 100% effective" comes when people fail to consider the risk of disease the vaccine is preventing.
So you think that fact is a 'problem' because people can't make sound decisions. Well, what are the options, lie to them? Force them to take it?
Why would any provider do that? And what makes you think starting a thread about vaccine myths and misconceptions means I think people can't make sound decisions?
I don't know, maybe when you said that there is a 'problem' with people failing to consider. Would you qualify 'failing to consider' an error in judgement? Perhaps you should un-obfuscate yourself then.
That one has been exposed as sloppy research. The doctor who published the study retracted his conclusions in the face of the counter-evidence.
You left out, charged with fraud. Yep, stripped of his credentials in the UK whereupon he moved to the US and continues to bilk the anti-vaxxer community.
You seem to have missed the qualifier, "when". If a person was not considering the risk of infection when evaluating the risk of vaccine, then that would result in a judgement error.
My sister in law is considering not vaccinating her latest child. "They vaccinate against things they don't even need," she explained to me, "like polio. When is she going to get polio?" "She isn't going to get exposed to polio," I replied, "because people are vaccinated against polio. When you stop vaccinating against polio people get polio again."
Polio and measles vaccines are great success stories that are only a foreign visitor away from reversal of the success that grows with the numbers of unvaccinated people. With polio it is the unvaccinated persons that are the ones at risk of the vaccine virus. The child you give live vaccine to doesn't have the problem. But the vaccine virus can change as it passes through the host. The virus is secreted in the stool and an unvaccinated person subsequently infected can develop disease. So an unvaccinated child is at risk of both the wild and the vaccine strains if naturally exposed rather than vaccinated.
The alleged link with autism was particularly distressing because, in my experience, families of children with autism are vulnerable to claims of quick fixes and root causes that absolve the parents of any "blame". The latter probably stems from another myth about autism being caused by "cold mother syndrome" (yes, medical professionals once claimed such a thing). One of the most egregious "quick fixes" arose when my daughter was still in school, so-called facilitative communication. Pure snake oil, but it got its "60 Minutes" segment.
Sad, definitely sad, especially when mothers were blamed. I can add a couple things. When thimerosal was removed from most childhood vaccines in the US, the rates of autism went up, not down. Not all vaccine autism research has been funded by drug companies, the findings of no connection is consistent despite research funding sources. And, the misguided focus on vaccines has wasted a lot autism research dollars. It was important to rule the connection out, sadly based on fraudulent data but nonetheless worthwhile ruling out. But now that the connection hasn't been found, it's time to put those research dollars to better use.
Ginger, as a doctor, I shudder at nurses like yourself, who think they know something they don't, and at the expense of patient's health and well-being push their agendas amidst quoting a few research papers. There's no such thing as 'nursing science' there's only medicine which is a combination of art and science, as any medical doctor will know. This is why papers deal with controlled environment and robust data which we as doctors only use to help us reach conclusions. When we say, for example, that vaccines don't cause autism, we don't mean to say that there's no way in hell they can cause it, because every doctor knows there are no absolutes (this is where I can easily see that your comprehension is poor, because you seem to be taking papers as gospel, and that betrays your lack of understanding of the complexity of all these issues) and whatwe know now, might be sadly obsolete or even totally wrong in the future. We look at evidence from many different sources (not just papers) and reach conclusions with many issues in mind, such as public health, probabilities and individual risk. We are also the ones who are responsible for all this. This is why papers in themselves aren't our conclusions, and we are taught to critically appraise them, to really understand the value of the information they offer. That's be the 'art' part. Feel free to carry on with your passive aggressive outbursts and ego affirmation if you must, just please don't bother me with private messages. I am only deeply saddened that I can't put you on ignore now. I guess you can call that your victory.
Though it's quite handy to be spreading the word on why vaccines are important, Gin, I don't think that writing a new thread to denounce someone else's post improves your reputation.
Yeah, I'm very familiar with the whole Wakefield saga. It was way more than just sloppy research. Here's an easy-to-read, comic-book style explanation of the whole sordid affair: http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html
I personally think that bombarding a baby with vaccines is not only very unwise, but a form of child abuse, a kind of medical rape. Do I trust big pharma? No. Do I trust the medical establishment to vaccinate my children? No. Why should I let some centralised authority have access to my child's body? It's like inviting Jimmy Savile round to babysit.
You can think what you want, but I personally find exposing them to potentially fatal diseases when there is an easy prevention is more akin to child abuse than is not protecting them. Sure, humans and these diseases have been around for many thousands of years, but people also used to have over a dozen kids because so many of them did not survive to adulthood. I've only got two, and I really want them to stick around.
I personally think you oversimplify the human problem. There are many factors involved. And it depends on the cultural context. Not all of the historic problems were down to 'non-vaccination'. Poor understanding of hygiene was one major factor. Lack of nutrition another. I say: a lot of the illnesses of the past were down to ignorance. And not all cultures of the past were ignorant. I feel that too much interference with natural homeostasis is a big mistake. Another mistake is putting too much faith in authoritative establishment. History shows that central authorities get things wrong (and don't like to admit that they got it wrong, and would rather silence dissension than be exposed), or have vested interests. Letting them have direct access to your children's body is a risk in itself. Fair enough, if you believe it's a good thing, that's your prerogative. Would you force me to comply? I hope not. I'm glad we can agree to disagree. I will always use my eloquence and persuasive skills to convince people to abandon the idea of state enforced vaccinations.
Well, there isn't any state or central-authority-based enforced vaccinations, at least not in the present-day United States. Where there are required vaccines, there are first always some exceptions, including those based on parental philosophy or religion. But, there are some private entities that do require vaccines, and those are based on a public health consideration -- they don't want a person with the disease in their milieu. This will spread the disease to others, who are, for example, too young to receive the vaccine, or could not for some other legitimate medical reason. So, they're not excluding the non-vaxed person based on some totalitarian philosophy of doing something for their own good -- rather, they are doing it for the good of others within that particular community. But again, these are private entities. No public schools do this.
