Thank you anti-vac’rs
Posted
December 22, 2006 at
8:39 pm by
Jessica
Adding more fuel to my immunization argument, I would like to continue to thank the anti-vac’rs for spreading misery through ignorance:
All Headline News reports the outcome from a CDC investigation regarding 66 people that contracted the measles in the United States last year, some were from Indiana and the findings show the following:
Tags: health, immunizations, measles, MMR, Romania, vaccinationsThe hospital records show that 33 people from Indiana and one from Illinois became infected. Three people were hospitalized, but no one died.
Only two of the 34 had been vaccinated against measles.
According to the CDC report, “The outbreak occurred because measles was imported into a population of children whose parents had chosen not to vaccinate their children because of safety concerns, despite evidence that measles-containing vaccine is safe and effective.”
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10 Responses to “Thank you anti-vac’rs”
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1. Kristen said:
December 23, 2006 @ 9:12 am | Quote
Talk to all the parents who had perfectly healthy kids til they had the MMR and see if they think the CDC knows what the hell they are talking about.
I’ve seen way too many kids who were perfectly fine pre-vax to worry about a bunch of cases with measles.
2. Jessica Carlson said:
December 23, 2006 @ 11:07 am | Quote
What do you mean by perfectly fine? What happened to them after the vaccinations?
Also, why does the CDC not know what they’re talking about? What is their motivation to lie? (I can probably guess what the answer is going to be, but I don’t want to assume.)
3. Cristina said:
December 25, 2006 @ 2:59 pm | Quote
I would guess that most people agree that not vaccinating children poses a risk to those children and, to some degree, a risk to the larger community as well. That point is easy to make.
But I think the more important question of this immunization debate is this:
Knowing that vaccinating our children is an important preventative public health measure and knowing that we want our children protected from these deadly diseases, are we CONFIDENT that the current method of administering these vaccinations (including dosage amounts, vaccine combinations, age of vaccine administration, and additives) is safe?
If we have ANY doubt about this, then as parents, we should be demanding more research until we feel 100% confident that vaccinating our children is safe. And from what I’ve read, I am not 100% confident. I don’t think that the research that has been done to determine whether there are adverse side effects of immunizations has not been long-range enough to conclude that certain vaccines are safe.
On the topic, I would suggest that interested parents read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Doctor-About-Childrens-Vaccinations/dp/0446677078/sr=1-1/qid=1167075677/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-5017059-1126444?ie=UTF8&s=books
And again, I would hope that people (like myself) who favor vaccinations, but question the safety of current vaccines, not be villified for trying to hold the medical establishment and the government accountable for providing us enough research to ease our minds.
4. Jessica Carlson said:
December 25, 2006 @ 6:40 pm | Quote
Cristina, there is plenty of research and evidence out there that supports the safety and the effectiveness of vaccinations. If you choose not to believe it, then let that be your opinion, but not one that holds up to largely accepted by the scientific community.
Even the American Academy of Pediatrics is so concerned about the misinformation being spewed about the internet, he wrote a letter about it:
http://www.cispimmunize.org/fam/berkelhamerletter.htm
Even the World Health Organization touts their effectiveness and safety:
“Four to five million annual deaths could be prevented by 2015 through sustained and appropriate immunization efforts, backed by financial support. Vaccination is one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions. Well over 2 million deaths are currently averted through immunization each year.”
If it weren’t for the fact that unvaccinated kids can spread diseases to babies too young to be immunized and that really bad information is spread throughout the net, I wouldn’t even care. I think parents have the right to make decisions that don’t affect other people, but I’m afraid that this one can be a massive public health issue based on erroneous information.
I’m not saying that there has never been a reaction to vaccinations, but the benefits so far outweigh the minuscule risks that I don’t think it’s enough to support a child as a potential carrier of disease. The only reason you have luxury to question it is because most children around you are vaccinated at this time, but what if that stopped?
There are no guarantees in life. Having a baby in and of itself - there’s no guarantee, all we can do is take educated measures to keep them safe and per the evidence readily available, that is getting vaccinations as their due. The combo shots are just as safe as single doses, in fact the National Institute of Health has shown them to be even more safe than the single dose and the REAL reason they came about was to eliminate the amount of painful jabs a child gets and to hopefully encourage more compliance with less shots. That is the real reason.
5. Cristina said:
December 26, 2006 @ 2:39 am | Quote
Jessica,
Again, I am not saying that vaccines don’t save lives. They do. And I am not saying that vaccinations administered SAFELY should not be part of our public health system. I guess I’m just not as trusting as you are of the CDC and the other government agencies.
Why am I skeptical?
See here for coverage on how the CDC acted inethnically with regards to mercury in vaccines:
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/06/16/thimerosal/index_np.html
And here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/time-for-cdc-to-come-clea_b_16550.html
I’m sorry, but this government cover-up stuff scares the crap out of me. I guess it’s just a little harder for me to swallow the IOM finding that there is no link between autism and thermisol/mercury when I read this (quoted from the first article I linked to):
“In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and — in a startling position for a scientific body — recommended that no further research be conducted.”
Also, maybe I’m alone on this, but I don’t like the idea of CDC advisory officials and scientists holding finacial ties to pharma companies. That just seems, um, like a bit of conflict of interest.
And by the way, I was interested to read that single-dose vials don’t require preservatives (while multi-dose vials do). Again, it comes down to cost. THAT is the real reason, or at least a significant part of the reason. I don’t care what the NIH says.
We don’t want people so afraid of immunizations that it jeapordizes our immunization program. I understand that. I get it. But that doesn’t mean that we are getting the SAFEST immunizations that we should be getting. We are just getting the most cost-effective. And if you want to say that’s my opinion, you’re right. You have your opinion. I have mine.
6. Jessica said:
December 26, 2006 @ 7:36 pm | Quote
But Cristina, the link between thimerosal and autism goes unproven, even with the monumental amounts of research on it. Nobody can prove a negative.
Again, I refer to a long debate our site had over this very issue and both sides are represented:
http://www.imperfectparent.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2856&sid=a9ef0084338f10f51852d19ac992550a
One of my favorite, that someone on the board posted was this:
http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/immu/autism.html
Having said all that, I don’t think parents that question the safety of vaccinations are bad people. I agree with you that they’re doing their jobs, but I do think the evidence (or rather, lack there of) does speak for itself and I’m just not a big conspiracy theory person. I don’t think our government is that organized or smart to cover stuff like this up and have all these people colaborate with it. We can’t even do that within our defense system. I think it gives too much credit to our fairly incompetant government. I’m just not one of those people who believes that the government really has a cure for cancer or orchestrated 911 themselves or never sent a man to the moon (not that you do, I don’t know that, I’m just sayin’ that I’m not about all that conspiracy stuff.)
7. Cristina said:
December 27, 2006 @ 1:19 am | Quote
But did you read the first page of the first article that I linked to above? The article states that in 2000 a CDC epidemiologist analyzed the CDC’s massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children and found that thimerosal appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. A consultant to the AAP agreed that the results were statistically significant.
Yet, in what appears to be a cover-up, the data was not released to the public nor was the study ever published. In fact, the entire database of vaccine records was handed over to a PRIVATE company so that researchers cannot analyze the data. Why would government data be handed over to a private company and locked up?
With this kind of “handling” of the data, the link between autism and thermisol may “continue to go unproven” because no one is really trying to find a link. The IOM study that was supposed to put all our fears to rest doesn’t seem to have been very rigorous according to what I’ve read (see quote on the study in my previous comment).
What it seems to come down to is how much we trust the government to tell us the truth. With shinanigins like this, I start to worry. Can you blame me? And while I do think there are government officials who are capable, intelligent and ethical people, I also know there are those who aren’t ethical. I, myself, work for the government so I am not anti-government by any means. But I’m also fairly suspect about stuff like this - ESPECIALLY given the close ties between government and pharma companies.
That said, I also believe that there may be people with good intentions who would want to hide data showing a link for fear that letting people know that the government messed up with regards to thermisol would scare people off of vaccines for good.
Anyway, I hope that YOU are right and that there really is no link between autism and vaccines because I am choosing to immunize my son despite all of this - albeit on a slightly slower timetable. But it still worries me. Had there been no funny shinanigins around the IOM report, maybe that report would have allayed my fears, but in light of what I’ve read, I’m just left with more questions.
8. Jessica said:
December 27, 2006 @ 8:57 am | Quote
Cristina, my son has ASD on his medical records, he has never had a vaccination with thimerosal. This is a fact. Since thermisol has been taken out of vaccines, the rate of autism has actually increased some years, not decreased.
Even if there were a significant amount of children with autism that had the thimerosal vaccines, there needs to be more than that to prove causation. Proving causation is much more complicated then finding a common variable.
At any rate, we can simply make the causation true because we believe it to be true. Again, you cannot find prove a negative and that’s what people want the CDC to do. It’s impossible.
We will have to agree to disagee on this one, but I still think that I have science on my side on this.
If immunizing on a slower schedule makes you feel more secure, then I think you are proceding exactly how you should and I wish you and yours great health in the new year!
9. Cristina said:
December 27, 2006 @ 12:11 pm | Quote
OK, I will agree to disagree also. But I do want to clarify my comment: I agree with you that the mere fact that there are children who received vaccines with thermisol and who also have developed autism does not necessarily mean that the thermisol caused the autism. That would be an oversimplification for sure. I do realize that proving causation is more complicated than finding a common variable. I was not suggesting that the research methods are that simple.
I am also not saying that ALL autism is caused by thermisol in vaccines - I would be very shocked if that were true. There are many other environmental and genetic factors that I would think could come into play. (Plus, with regards to vaccines, thermisol is not the only additive to consider.)
My main point is simply that something about the way we are vaccinating MAY be the cause of some of the autism we are seeing, and while there are studies that show no link, there are other studies that do show a link, and according to at least two of our representatives, there are other studies and data that have been supressed. And therefore, I feel more study is needed before I personally will feel that the case is closed on this.
In any case, I do appreciate having the debate, and I appreciate your point of view on this! Good topic.
10. Tim M said:
October 23, 2007 @ 10:25 am | Quote
I recieved the hapatitis series in 4th grade, and later DEVELOPED aspergers. You can say I was born with it, and I agree, but I think the thermisol made it WORSE.