| Do you think refusing to allow your children to be vaccinated is irresponsible? (Assuming no medical issue eg allergy) |
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Asked 1 year ago
by SpangeNW  United Kingdom |
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About
Muppet.
(Might I point out that Respectful Insolence is NOT my blog, I just like it).
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9 Points
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ABSOLUTELY.
Very much agreed.
When you are referring to the once common childhood killers like polio and the like I would say absolutely. It is child abuse in my opinion not to vaccinate your child against diseases like that. Vaccinations do carry an infinitely small risk on adverse reactions. That should be taken into account, but when it comes to serious diseases that easily outweighs such risks.
The situation is a bit different for non lethal diseases and for very new vaccins which have not been properly tested yet. In that case you could argue to wait until the child/person is old enough to make an informed decision him/herself. However it should also be taken into account that mass vaccination does not only protect the individual but also the group. Maybe I would not die from a disease but my neighbour who is elderly or HIV infected might die from what is a harmless thing for me.
I agree, if vaccines are going to be used they must be very rigorously tested and the overall benefits proven. Just vaccinating for any old disease probably isn't worthwhile.
Thanks to a flawed and unethical study (Wakefield et al, 1998) that was published in The Lancet and consequently widely reported in mainstream media, take up of the MMR vaccine has dropped to 85% in the UK. Measles has become endemic. At least one child has died. I was reading today about a large increase of cases in the US too.
I wonder how the proven efficacy of vaccination programs has been lost beneath a suffocating blanket of misinformation, religious rhetoric, pseudoscience, ridiculous leaps of "deduction", outright lies and a major premise that is yet to be proven by anyone, anywhere.
It puts your children in danger as well as others.
Vaccination is good. As child I was vaccinated much. As adult I am rarely sick. I know people who did not get frequent childhood vaccinations and many are sick very often with bad allergies and more. It is best to build up resistance young. Vaccinations help you build up resistance.
From a few months ago:
"The biggest U.S. outbreak of measles since 2001 is unfolding in 10 states, with at least 72 people ranging from infants to the elderly becoming ill -- most of them unvaccinated, U.S. health officials said on Thursday."
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0141448220080501
Not letting your children get vaccinated is pure stupidity and the people doing it should have charges brought up against them for doing harm to their children.
sometimes getting them vaccinated can be irresponsible - I think parents should read and study the issue.
Funny to me how the U.S. Government can tell parents what they can put in their children's bodies but they most certainly don't tell a woman what she can do with her body. It's also curious that you have to sign a release before your child can be given the vaccine simply because the physicans and pharamceutical companies don't want to accept any blame for any harm that could be done by the vaccine. Did you know that Jonas Salk refused to have his children vaccinated against polio?! Must be a reason why.
You have to sign a release before they can go on a school trip too, is that going to kill them or give them autism. In a litigious society that's just good practice. Incidentally:
**"The vaccine was first tested in monkeys, and then in patients at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children. After successful tests, in 1952, Salk tested his vaccine on volunteering parties, including himself, the laboratory staff, his wife, and his children."**
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
The problem here is THIMEROSAL, which contains MERCURY, and which has been shown by peer reviewed studies to cause huge increases in autism in vaccine recipients.
Even though it has been found to be highly dangerous, it is being used by some slightly less than honorable drug companies as a preservative, to increase vaccine shelf-life.
Another problem is crony drug companies getting no bid exclusive vaccine manufacturing deals so there's no choice.
many parents have decided that the mercury poisoning is more of a risk than something like measles.
I think with proper competition, and public domain vaccine research, the whole mercury poisoning thing would go away and more people could trust vaccines again. the only way to achieve that at least in the usa is for a regime change to democrats.
I agree that was the initial concern but it is not used in childhood vaccines anymore (see link below, it was removed from them in 2002). The focus of concern has been shifted to other supposedly dangerous compounds and more esoteric questions such as whether or not it's the right thing to do from the perspective of it not being natural to inject children. The goalposts are shifted to give credence to the argument but the fact is that nothing is proven about vaccines being dangerous to most children, but a lot is proven about the dangers of measles, polio, rubella etc.
Further to the issue of mercury being blamed is the increase of doctors prescribing the use of chelation (essentially leaching metals out of the body) as a "cure" for autism. This includes the use of chemicals which have not been shown to be safe in the long term, in fact there are cases of it causing heart failure even in short term use. Many doctors have grave concerns about it's efficacy and safety and whether or not it is actually ethical to use it.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal.htm
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=164
http://wweek.com/editorial/3329/9039/
Thank you for injecting rational and critical thinking into an argument which often has little of either. ;o)
My interest in the subject really only started when I met a few people with autistic children. I have wondered about the causes and possible therapies and of course this leads you to the question of vaccines. Although initially it seemed a plausible hypothesis, I haven't seen anything to support that argument despite the vitriolic diatribes of the credulous followers of people who are, in my opinion, doing nothing to help autistic children but only furthering their own agendas.
It seems that as well as putting populations at risk through their unfounded beliefs, they are diverting attention from efforts to find real causes of autism spectrum disorders and develop therapies and programs to help. I myself am not convinced there is a cure as such, but I know from my friends that through specialised teaching techniques and therapies there is no reason why sufferers cannot live full and productive lives.
There is a lot of emotion surrounding this issue, it's so understandable that if your child is terribly sick you want to know there is a reason, it's cathartic to have a focus for blame. That should not be allowed to obscure the scientific facts, that aside from a very tiny proportion of genuine reactions, the vaccines used today on children have been shown to be safe.
I find an interesting commentary on the subject is this blog, granted he is staunchly anti-antivaccination (forgive the double anti), but he is fair and provides links to everything he references and tends not to moderate dissenters in his comments.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/
Interestingly I recently saw a very unnerving documentary about what could have been the most deadly medical error in history if true. It deals with the theory that polio vaccination might be linked to the initial spread of HIV. In the late 50-ies polio vaccin was often a weakened strain of the virus. This virus was cultivated on monkey kidneys. The hypothesis now is that this could have provided the transmission route for HIV to travel from monkeys to humans. Arguments in favor are: from 1957-1960 between 325.000 and 500.000 people in Africa received live polio virus. The first blood which ever tested HIV positive was from that part of Africa and drawn in 1959. Other scientists calculated the evolution of different human HIV strains and concluded there was a common ancestor to these strains around 1960. Some people involved in the African polio vaccination campaign have denied using chimpanzee kidneys however there is ample evidence and also witnessess that say the contrary.
If you want to watch:
http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=123
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9507E4D7173BF932A1575AC0A962948260
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980411&slug=2744529
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/182152_hcenter15.html
Articles going back to the 1990s on whooping cough epidemics in the Seattle area. They have a lower-than-average rate of vaccination. The disease is often fatal for those under 5 years, and especially those under 12 months of age.
on diphtheria;
"* Diphtheria is a very contagious and potentially life-threatening bacterial disease.
* Diphtheria usually attacks the throat and nose. In more serious cases, it can attack the heart and nerves.
* Because of widespread immunization, diphtheria is very rare in the United States.
* Diphtheria is re-emerging in some areas of the world where immunization practices are lax. Routine vaccination of both children and adults is essential to prevent the re-emergence of diphtheria in the United States.
What is diphtheria?
Diphtheria is a very contagious and potentially life-threatening infection that usually attacks the throat and nose. In more serious cases, it can attack the nerves and heart. Because of widespread immunization, diphtheria is very rare in the United States. However, some people are not adequately vaccinated, and cases still occur."
It is running rampant in Latin America, and it would take only a small percentage of the population refusing to vaccinate to allow epidemics here again. It used to kill tens of thousands of children per year in the U.S.
from dphe.org.
Thanks for that. The near eradication of such diseases in countries such as the US and the UK has, I think, made them seem somewhat less unpleasant in people's minds. Today they are just words, not too many years ago they were terrifying scourges that took far too many children and left many more disabled physically and mentally.
Possibly for the first time ever I am hoping that the results of this poll are not representative of the opinions of the population as a whole.