oh, mighty internet oracle

[the_siobhan]

Just out of curiosity, why would somebody be "anti vaccination".

Or is it short form for something?

Comments

[excess-and-oohs.livejournal.com]

not really up for being attacked right now, so i'll opt out. sorry :(

[pfrank.livejournal.com]

There's some (not sure if it's real conclusive or not) evidence linking vaccinations to autism. Something about mercury in the shots, and what not.

[shara.livejournal.com]

There's some word that vaccinations of some kind can lead to/cause other disorders. That's all I can tell of it so far, though.

[divine.livejournal.com]

You mean in terms of giving children their shots? Or pets?
(I might not have time to answer this before I go to work, but i'll surely reply later)

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

This is the only thing I can think of, yep.

[machineplay.livejournal.com]

in addition to the above, some people feel like vaccinations in general are all part of a scam by the pharmaceutical-industrial complex and that the drop in diseases addressed by vaccinations is actually due to natural trends in disease cycles and better health care. it's something that time will have to prove.

i opted not to get my daughter any newer vaccinations and had her vaccinated with the old school separate vaccines for infants because of a family history of debilitating reactions. she hasn't had any of the 'teenager' vaccines by her own choice. she'll get them when she's ready to; again the family history of severe reactions (on both sides) is an issue.

i'd be willing to take my chances on things like the developing rotavirus and influenza vaccines, though. no one in our family gets flu shots right now -- two don't need them and i can't have them, and they're just too shot-in-the-dark to make it worthwhile.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

They haven't put mercury in vaccines for years. Not in Canada, anyway.

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

The science has moved on, but the scare keeps on going.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/health/08autism.html?ref=us

Autism cases in California continued to climb even after a mercury-based vaccine preservative that some people blame for the neurological disorder was removed from routine childhood shots, a study has found...

The preservative, thimerosal, has not been used in childhood vaccines since 2001, except for some flu shots.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

From what I've read, what's happening is that autism is being diagnosed far more than it used to be, thanks to increased awareness and education.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

in addition to the above, some people feel like vaccinations in general are all part of a scam by the pharmaceutical-industrial complex and that the drop in diseases addressed by vaccinations is actually due to natural trends in disease cycles and better health care. it's something that time will have to prove.

I imagine if enough people opt out we'll see that trend reverse itself.

Actually when I think about it I'm sure that there have been outbreaks of things like polio in populations in the US that don't vaccinate for religious reasons.

i opted not to get my daughter any newer vaccinations and had her vaccinated with the old school separate vaccines for infants because of a family history of debilitating reactions.

That makes sense. Are the seperate vaccines still readily available?

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I kind of wonder if they really mean no vaccines ever, what do they use as a prophylactic instead? Do they just depend on the fact that the rest of the population is vaccinated?

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

It was referring to children.

I just thought it was an odd thing to be against, so I wondered what the logic behind it is.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

You can also do amazing things with numbers by changing the criteria for diagnosis. It's a great way to get more government funding for your particular public health organization.

(Not that I know for a fact that this has been done with autism, but it's happened in the case of so many other health issues that I am always skeptical when I see quotes about "rising rates of X".)

[shillolo.livejournal.com]

Assuming you mean childhood vac's and beyond the above mentioned, in particular order:

1. They haven't all been around for the duration of a lifecycle, eg. the chickpox vax and the new herpes vax, hence how it affects, say, reproductive organs not yet developed.

2. Some people have abnormal reactions to disease (again, myself - I contracted chickenpox 3 times, and whooping cough despite being vax'd)

That said I've been selective, and delayed, and currently undecided on some vax - not anti, and have one of the most pro-vax peds around - so can or worms and all - there is my stand.

Additionally some are just ridiculous, there is research being done a 'dirt' vax as children have such a limited exposure to it with all the over cleaning (hand sanitizer etc.) that immune systems fail at exposure to regular life.

[shara.livejournal.com]

They seem to feel that most virulent diseases can be prevented with proper nutrition and whathaveyou. The granola-and-hemp crowd seems to be quite anti-vax.

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-06-20.html#feature

I like to rely on the geniuses and Skeptic to clarify these sorts of scientific disputes for me. :)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Not only is it not conclusive, but it's been proven to be a fraud.

There is no link between vaccinations and autism. There is only a link between insufficient herd protection and plague.

[shillolo.livejournal.com]

* in NO particular order

[machineplay.livejournal.com]

re: efficacy of vaccines: i really do believe that they work when done right; i believe that polio and pertussis and smallpox vaccines do have an impact. i don't think i trust the way thing are going now. they have already shown issues with the chickenpox and HPV vaccines (i just catch bits in passing on ScienceBlog so i can't quote anything) and the scare-tactic marketing is insane. i am extremely wary. i'll revisit the issue of newer vaccines when they're not so new.

however, some vaccines (like the universal influenza-A in human trials) are ones that i would risk because it's not a matter of my health alone. i am basically housebound, so even with my health issues the annual flu shot isn't worth the risk of me keeling over dead just on the off-chance they got it right this year. it's not like i see people much. a universal vaccine that worked would be totally worth it, though.

re: old vaccines: you have to order them in but, yes, they are. i have a history of severe reactions including nearly dying from the smallpox(?) jab (the one that left a scar on your shoulder -- i had a fever of 107, swelled up, my lungs filled with fluid, i was hospitalized, all when i was an infant. i still have pain in that shoulder). i decided that i wanted to know what my child was reacting to if she did, so she wouldn't miss out on her other medications. if i hadn't needed to put her in daycare so i could continue school, i would have done like the Japanese and delayed all her vaccines until she was at least two, so her body would be stronger.

[divine.livejournal.com]

Neither of mine have had shots, i'll have to explain later as to why though. I'm getting ready for work at the moment :)

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

My non-PC take on it is that it's easy to be anti-vaccination when you live in a First World country. As M pointed out, if person A chooses not to vaccinate their child, it's unlikely that the child will catch anything because most of the people the child comes into contact with ARE vaccinated. Even that isn't a guarantee - my mother is an emergency room nurse and she caught TB about 10 years ago. She was quarantined when she was first diagnosed and remained off work for several weeks. Everyone in our immediate family had to get tested for it.

One of my cousins is a pediatric nurse and has worked in underdeveloped countries where she saw children dying from illnesses that are preventable by vaccines. She still talks about the morning when she had to comfort a woman whose baby had died in her arms. She came back appalled that anyone would choose not to vaccinate their children.

If I look at my own family, I can see clear evidence of how damaging a lack of vaccines can be. My second cousin had polio as a child and was disabled for the rest of his life. My grandmother had smallpox as a child. My sister had a very bad case of whooping cough when she was a baby. I still remember the day that she stopped breathing and my father running into the street yelling for someone to call a ambulance.

Should parents research vaccines and have a say in when their child gets certain vaccines? Of course. But to opt out entirely? I don't understand it.

*dons flame retardant suit*

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

In some cases, they deliberately expose their kids to the diseases when young, on the grounds that that way, they'll catch a mild dose and be naturally innoculated.

The so-called evidence of a link between vaccines and autism has been widely debunked; it was predicated on an original study which was extremely faulty, and the author of which was disciplined by the British Medical Counsel for Making Shit Up (there may bea more technical legal term for it); he had a tiny sample population, osme of them hadn't actually been vaccinated at all (he forgot to report that bit), and it didn't actually show a direct link; he showed a possible (but actually non-existant) link between autism and a bowel condition, and between the vaccine and a similar bowel condition, and drew the ocnclusion that vaccines cause autism. It was nonsense and should never have been published in the first place (as the Lancet, who published it, later admitted), but it got huge publicity, in a very abbreviated and misleading form, and caused panic.
And then the conspiracy theorists got in on it and decided that it's all a plot to control us, run by the illuminati and the lizard people (no, really...), although why they don't just let us all die of measles instead, I don't know.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Good point.

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

I just yesterday saw an article that they've conclusively disproven the link, as autism diagnosis rates in CA continued to increase even after the mercury was removed from the vaccines. The article posited (and I tend to agree) that a lot of the seeming increase in autism is actually just better awareness and wider definitions.

[mathochist.livejournal.com]

I'm against *requiring* vaccinations, since I think every parent should have the right to decide for themselves.
Every vaccine involves pain and risk to the child.
Vaccination is an interesting social experiment.
For example, the polio vaccine:
I believe they've completely stopped giving the live vaccine now, but when they were, for many years, polio had been all but eliminated from the population, and the *only* cases of polio were ones that occurred *as a result of the vaccine*.
As long as most children continued getting the vaccine, any individual child was at much higher risk if they got the vaccine than if they didn't.
If a few parents decided to exclude their children from that risk, there was no harm done to the population, and those children benefitted.
But if *too many* parents did that, then the whole population would be at risk.
So as a parent, given that *your* child is at higher risk if they get the vaccine, and at virtually zero risk if they don't... and given that most parents *do* vaccinate their children... do you subject your child to "their share" of the risk, on some kind of principal, or do you keep your child safe from that?

I had my kids vaccinated, but I delayed them a few months, as I don't think babies should need to be dealing with those stresses quite so young. And I delayed the chicken pox vaccine for my youngest (it wasn't around when my older kids were that age) until she was nearly school age and it was clear she wasn't going to catch chicken pox as a young child (when it would have been *probably* mild and given better immunity than the immunization). I'm still dubious about this one, as it still hasn't been in use long enough for us to know what the results are... it seems to give only partial immunity and only for a limited time, so we may just wind up with a population that gets a more nasty version of the disease because they get it later.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I hope they don't let their kids play together. One good virus would wipe them all out at once. :-p