Toronto Public Health vs Jenny McCarthy

[Arete]

My niece is getting the shot next month before school starts and her doctor actually initiated the conversation and highly recommended the protection regardless of what my niece is or is not currently doing (currently it's "not").

[splork]

Sorry, only tangentially related, but I have Hana Williams on my mind today. She's the Ethiopian child acquired by international adoption and tortured to death using Michael Pearl's methods by a family in Western Washington. She had hepatitis B. Her family chose to banish her to a barn and made her use a PortAPotty rather than protect themselves by getting vaccinated.

[August]

I've been known to get pretty loud with people who won't do the varicella vaccine. I'm 37. I've had shingles 4 times. The pain is indescribable and because I got it on my face, I now have trigeminal neuralgia on the left side. Go ahead and look that one up. It involves a lot of screaming. You do not want your child to get shingles ever. My clarinet teacher in high school got shingles on her otic nerves and went deaf. She killed herself. Another woman I know is blind in one eye from shingles of the optic nerve.

Chicken pox is not harmless and it never, ever goes away.

The shot doesn't stop you getting shingles. When I was deciding they guessed that you'd probably get shingles from the vax strain so whether vaxed or not you'd have to get the shingles booster. And since most people hoping for wild CP will give the vax around age 10 anyway, it's a moot point. There may be more data now, though.

[Katiebug]

In the US, whooping cough has come back to such an extent because of this moron and her followers, (my area in particular is a pocketbof earthy crunchy non vax types) that my OB/Gyn told me the CDC now recommends women in their third trimester get a TDAP booster so that the new born has some possible immunity from the mother. There has been a spike in infant deaths in the past 10 years from whooping cough among those too young to vaccinate because people refuse to get TDAP for their older children and ruin the herd immunity.

I thought when my husband and I got the booster before before we conceived we did enough. Apparently not, I had to get it again so my impending kid can have a fighting chance against these idiots. :angry-banghead:

Sad, isn't it? I was offered the Tdap booster for free the day after our older daughter was born, and I was happy to get it. My husband didn't get his booster (and I was seriously pissed) but he did get it when I was around 32 weeks pregnant with our second. Because I got my Tdap in 2010 the day after our first baby was born, I was told by my postpartum nurse that I didn't need a booster again this time although I'm told that the CDC committee is working on guidance for postpartum women who were previously vaccinated.

My OB was not yet offering prenatal vaccination during my pregnancy but that will be changing for his practice in the near future. He said it's really scary how pertussis affects babies and that it can kill, even when the baby is in a PICU. Apparently the cough is just horrible to hear and it's even worse to watch a tiny baby struggling to breathe. :cry: He reminded me that my husband and other close contacts needed to be vaccinated; it's called "cocooning" - basically all those around a newborn need to be vaccinated to protect the baby until s/he can start being vaccinated.

Our older daughter was vaccinated on time according to the CDC immunization schedule. Her daycare requires full vaccination including an annual flu shot for children over 6 months of age. The only one we hesitated a bit on was chicken pox; being in our 30s, we and everyone we know our age had chicken pox in childhood and it was no big deal. Plus we had heard that the vaccine confers less immunity than getting the disease. Our pediatrician pointed out that with varicella vaccination or proof of immunity required to start kindergarten, the incidence of chicken pox in our area is less than 5% of what it was even a decade ago so it was also unlikely that the kiddo would actually catch it before she'd need to be vaccinated anyways. She also pointed out that, while rare, children did die of complications of chicken pox - just like complications of measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, etc. We elected to have her vaccinated.

We declined the Hep B birth dose for our 7 week old. As I had been tested during pregnancy and was known to be Hep B negative and the baby will not be starting daycare until she's 3 months old, the pediatricians at the hospital said she's at extremely low risk and that it was up to us if we wanted the birth dose or not. We elected to wait until her 2 month shots and our pediatrician had absolutely no issue with that.

Many pediatricians will not accept patients whose parents refuse all vaccines, ours included. They will humor parents on some alternate schedules and will arrange to break up combination vaccines into individual shots if the parents are willing to pay the copays for all of those extra office visits. However, they will not care for children who are completely unvaccinated by parental choice (as opposed to those who cannot be vaccinated for legit medical reasons; that's entirely different). As someone whose kids are exposed to sick children in the doctor's waiting room, this makes me very glad.

Jenny McCarthy and her ilk can pound sand. How would she explain her stupid, poorly-educated position to a mother who lost her newborn to pertussis?

[Stephanie66]

Our family practice doc (who advised against the shot for my son) said it's really not that easy for men to catch HPV, and, at the time, the shot was pretty new with boys. And if a condom is worn, it prevents HPV, and he should be doing that anyway. (Which was basically the point.)

I will probably discuss it with him again, but he is over 18 now so it is his decision.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

But....if its hard for a man to catch HPV, who is infecting all these women?

[miffy]

I hate the idea that autism can be cured also. There is no cure. Early intervention and therapies improve outcomes and that's what parents should focus on. Not spending their money and time on supposed cures that only offer false hope. A vegan diet is not going to rewire my sons brain and chelation is dangerous. A gf/cf diet can improve behaviors for any kid who may have an intolerance to those things but is not a cure for autism.

Jacqueline from the RHONJ also has an autistic child and has worried me some with her talking about "healing" him. She also bought him a hyperbaric chamber. She also appears to be getting him the appropriate therapies and so far doesn't seem as bad as Jenny McCarthy with hawking pseudoscience. I'm keeping an eye on it though. I do appreciate seeing the storyline on a mainstream show

I guess she is just desperate. As bad as the people on that show get, the Manzos & Lauritas do all see to care a lot about the child's progress & put effort into helping him.

[MsSaylor]

Yes and I appreciate that. I think they will start seeing improvements soon. My son is the same age as Nicholas so I watch with great interest. My son has made huge strides in the last 6 months.

[medievalist1980]

Our family practice doc (who advised against the shot for my son) said it's really not that easy for men to catch HPV, and, at the time, the shot was pretty new with boys. And if a condom is worn, it prevents HPV, and he should be doing that anyway. (Which was basically the point.)

I will probably discuss it with him again, but he is over 18 now so it is his decision.

A condom does not prevent against HPV. Your doctor has done you, your son, and all of his past, present, and future partners - even ones he doesn't engage in sex with - a great disservice. Here is the CDC on it:

"How do people get HPV?

HPV is passed on through genital contact, most often during vaginal and anal sex. HPV may also be passed on during oral sex and genital-to-genital contact. HPV can be passed on between straight and same-sex partners—even when the infected person has no signs or symptoms.

Most infected persons do not realize they are infected, or that they are passing HPV on to a sex partner. A person can still have HPV, even if years have passed since he or she has had sexual contact with an infected person. It is also possible to get more than one type of HPV.

In rare circumstances, a pregnant woman with genital HPV can pass the HPV on to her baby during delivery."

http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/stdfact-hpv.htm

[laura oz]

If you are against the HPV vaccine, I beg you to reconsider. HPV is RAMPANT now and you can get it from smthg as innocuous as kissing. I have comforted way too many friends through abnormal paps. It's no joke.

When I was 16 I thought I found true love and lost my virginity to who became my first husband at 24. I was diagnosed with chlamydia at 17 because I thought we were monogamous and he didn't - led to our divorce btw cause I was an idiot. Back then, they didn't have the vaccine and I WISH they had. Had several bad paps that turned into stage 4 dysplasia and a cold cone procedure was done to remove the cells. What they didn't explain to me at any time was that it would shorten my cervix making it technically incompetent and making it impossible for me to carry a pregnancy to term. I had several heart breaking miscarriages because, for some reason, that info was missing from my medical records since it had happened so long ago. I finally found a doctor and a maternal-fetal specialist that treated me, and now I have two kids after being I'd never be able to have children. Please reconsider the vax.

[DifferentGurl]

But....if its hard for a man to catch HPV, who is infecting all these women?

The Devil! *dun dun dun!* :twisted:

[Arete]

When I was 16 I thought I found true love and lost my virginity to who became my first husband at 24. I was diagnosed with chlamydia at 17 because I thought we were monogamous and he didn't - led to our divorce btw cause I was an idiot. Back then, they didn't have the vaccine and I WISH they had. Had several bad paps that turned into stage 4 dysplasia and a cold cone procedure was done to remove the cells. What they didn't explain to me at any time was that it would shorten my cervix making it technically incompetent and making it impossible for me to carry a pregnancy to term. I had several heart breaking miscarriages because, for some reason, that info was missing from my medical records since it had happened so long ago. I finally found a doctor and a maternal-fetal specialist that treated me, and now I have two kids after being I'd never be able to have children. Please reconsider the vax.

QFT. I know people like to believe that you need dozens of sex partners before STDs come into play, but my limited experience with my friends has the ones who caught STDs having done so with boyfriend #1. Condoms and vaccines are everybody's friends.