More anti-vaxers

[Esteleth]

The post about tetanus shots being used for population control by doubling as an "anti-hGC" vaccine sounds like it comes from her fevered dreams. I'd like to see a source for it that doesn't come from an anti-choice website.

My bold.

WHAT :shock: :shock: :shock:

That is so stupid I am utterly incredulous. Let me try to unpack it!

1) hGC (what is that, anyway?!) has jack shit to do with pregnancy. I think she means human chorionic gonatotropin (HCG), which is in fact required for the maintenance of pregnancy.

2) I googled "tetanus vaccine miscarriage" and "tetanus vaccine human chorionic gonadotropin" and go a bunch of quacky websites and a hit from PubMed. Apparently, there was a bad batch of a tetanus combination vaccine (DTaP, I think) several years ago in the Philippines. After getting the vaccine, some women miscarried.

3) She refers incredulously to something that Bill Gates said about world health and the status of women. Basically, Gates said that as the status of women rises and overall health of the population increases, the birth rate declines (women are able to more ably decide - and assert their decision - how many children they're going to have, and feel less pressure to have more kids to replace the ones that inevitably die), which means that the population stabilizes after awhile. To ZsuZsu, this means ... something ... apparently. Something BAD.

[GeoBQn]

Esteleth, I just realized that "anti-hGC" is a typo from me switching around letters. My bad!

[NurseNell]

I had H1N1 a few years ago. It knocked normally healthy me out. I was sick, sick, lay in bed and do nothing sick for a couple weeks, then I was worn out and not able to do much besides work for a few months afterwards. I don't think it was totally a big pharma panic. A couple of my students were hospitalized with H1N1.

Several of my special needs students died from it. And one boy, who had Downs and autism, was on a ventilator and in ICU for months. I was immunized and fortunately did not get it.

[Funky Chicken]

I have an immune deficiency, caught H1N1, developed no antibodies, was vaccinated and still have no antibodies (and have been told not to bother re-vaccinating). So I can catch it again, oh joy. So I am relying on everyone else's herd immunity. One of my co-workers was in ICU for 5 weeks, and a 37 year old friend of a friend died.

Influenza kills people, and it's often adult, healthy people. Pro-vax here (and I only wax on special occasions!).

[ilovetchotchkes]

Several of my special needs students died from it. And one boy, who had Downs and autism, was on a ventilator and in ICU for months. I was immunized and fortunately did not get it.

I got it even though I was vaccinated, HOWEVER, i only had it for 2 days. My son who was an infant at the time and also vaccinated? 12 hours. I shit you not. You better believe I rolled up my sleeve the minute they were available this year at my Dr's office.

[Mama Mia]

My toddler granddaughter had been vaccinated and still ended up in the hospital ICU for almost 2 weeks with H1N1

[polabear]

A high school girl in my community died of H1N1 - she had other medical issues, but nothing that would have normally killed her. The husband of one of my friends also died from H1N1 - and he was a completely healthy man.

I'm one of those people who do have bad reactions to vaccines - I had a horrible allergic reaction to the DTaP they had in the 70s (they reformulated it later), and a tetanus shot can still knock me on my ass for a day. And, when I got the Typhoid vaccine to go to India, I barely made it home, I was so sick and dizzy and weak. (Probably should have called the doc on that one.) But, if I had kids, they'd still get vaccinated - two days of feeling sick as a dog is better than catching Typhoid!

[Wolfie]

My toddler granddaughter had been vaccinated and still ended up in the hospital ICU for almost 2 weeks with H1N1

I know that when it came through here it was before H1N1 had been added to the annual flu vaccine. I usually get my flu shots since I work with so many children, and I had that year, but I still got H1N1 because it wasn't part of the annual vaccine yet.

Also, flu vaccines are tricky- they mutate a little each year so they have to guess which varieties might be the worst each year when making the vaccine. There also is the chance where somebody was exposed before the vaccine, and the rare people who don't produce antibodies to a vaccine. (which is one of a few reasons why some vaccines are repeated)

[anniebgood]

I got vaccinated this year for the flu, right before I started on an immunosupressant that basically rules out any vaccines while I'm on it. Hell I can't even take a statin with it, or an NSAID. But the med is doing what nothing else could do and I'm thankful that perhaps in 6 months or so we will have retrained my cells to be good little puppies.

My oldest almost died from pertussis when he was a kid and he just got a booster and didn't have a reaction .

I'm pro vax and anti wax for anything below my chin.

[chiccy]

One of the FakeJew blogs I read posted about how dangerous flew shots are. She claims the parents of autistic children are being financially compensated by the FDA. No, they are not. There is a court that grants compensation to families of people who suffer bad side effects of vaccines, but it has to be from an approved list of bad side effects and autism is not on that list. She also posts a video of the Redskins cheerleader who claims that she lost muscle control after getting a flu shot and was "cured" by one of the bogus autism cures.

Pro-vax here, and I FREAKING LOVE WAXING! I find it relaxing, actually (when somebody else is doing it to me).

The "autism!" anti-vax crowd particularly bothers me (ahem, Jenny McCarthy). When the autism claim was actually investigated, they found that kids who have been vaccinated have slightly LESS incidence of autism than those who haven't.

[boysmom]

Everyone has to make the choice for themselves and their children. Luckily we still have that legal right, at least in my state. I agree that there's no relationship with autism, at least not that's been proven. I think that Jenny McCarthy is pretty much wrong and her kid was mis-diagnosed. There are other known risks of things like seizures, high fevers, etc. The question is whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

I was vaccinated against mumps but am not immune. I've never caught it either, and heck, a close friend of mine had it when I was a kid.

[StarrieEyedKat]

I think that Jenny McCarthy is pretty much wrong and her kid was mis-diagnosed.

She also never effing "cured" him, as he still has sensory issues and self stimulates, by her own admission. :evil:

*wanders out of the thread, muttering in a rage about Jenny McCarthy*

[boysmom]

Starrie, I was wondering if he still had any autistic tendencies. So maybe he wasn't mis-diagnosed, she may have just helped him increase his level of functioning. I believe she worked with him intensively, that's the theory behind ABA, which does seem to help, although it isn't really evidence based either. It's really hard to do high quality studies on these types of treatments, which definitely clouds the issue.

[StarrieEyedKat]

Starrie, I was wondering if he still had any autistic tendencies. So maybe he wasn't mis-diagnosed, she may have just helped him increase his level of functioning. I believe she worked with him intensively, that's the theory behind ABA, which does seem to help, although it isn't really evidence based either. It's really hard to do high quality studies on these types of treatments, which definitely clouds the issue.

I'm an ABA therapist (when I'm not a SAHM) so the whole Jenny McCarthy movement REALLY got/gets under my skin. She screwed up a lot of families with her insistence about the vaccines and how she cured Evan and if everyone else does what she does, they can "cure" their children too. In at least one of her interviews (I think a People one) she said he still had a lot of issues with physical touch and affection and still engaged in stimming, so while she may have found ways to help him learn to function more appropriately, she did not "cure" him of autism. For a while she seemed to be everywhere in the media and my family got tired of hearing me rant - luckily my best friend/coworker felt the same way about her, so anytime we heard something new we'd bitch to one another about it. We damn near threw a party when the news broke that the vaccine/autism link had been debunked.

[boysmom]

Interested Starrie. I'm studying to be an SLP. I had to debate on the anti side of ABA. It was hard because even though there aren't good studies proving its effectiveness it seemed to me that it is the most effective treatment available and I'd try if if I had an autistic child. I didn't really follow the whole Jenny McCarthy thing when it broke, so I only know a bit about her. Her biggest problem is saying that what she did can can every child, that couldn't possibly be true. And WTH does she even know about the link with vaccines? We can't conclusively say that they don't cause autism but I do believe that the mercury link has been pretty much disproven. I believe that it is genetic and probably somehow influenced by environmental factors of some sort.

[Mrs Ms]

Oh man, this is my de-lurking post? Had hoped for a more dramatic topic....

If having a healthy diet and lifestyle is all that is needed to prevent all (childhood) diseases then I'd like an explanation for what happened to me.

I was completely unvaccinated and raised by my mother and grandmother on nothing but organic homemade food, wearing nothing but hand-dyed and handmade all natural-fiber clothing with no television, stereo or evil microwave in sight.

I got measles, german measles, chicken pox, whooping cough and shingles. Not sure if I had mumps. Must have been the lack of liver :roll:

And for the saner people on that site who realize that even if your child is super healthy that they can still get the diseases but insist that it will much less severe - even though I didn't have to be hospitalized,I was pretty sick. Those 3 weeks in bed aged 8 with whooping cough SUCKED!

My mother wasn't one of those ones that organized or sent me to chickenpox parties or the like and I got most of the illnesses during school holidays.

The one thing from the comments that I agree on is that people should make informed decisions about vaccinations and not just listen to scaremongers on either side of the argument...

[apple1]

Oh man, this is my de-lurking post? Had hoped for a more dramatic topic....

If having a healthy diet and lifestyle is all that is needed to prevent all (childhood) diseases then I'd like an explanation for what happened to me.

I was completely unvaccinated and raised by my mother and grandmother on nothing but organic homemade food, wearing nothing but hand-dyed and handmade all natural-fiber clothing with no television, stereo or evil microwave in sight.

I got measles, german measles, chicken pox, whooping cough and shingles. Not sure if I had mumps. Must have been the lack of liver :roll:

And for the saner people on that site who realize that even if your child is super healthy that they can still get the diseases but insist that it will much less severe - even though I didn't have to be hospitalized,I was pretty sick. Those 3 weeks in bed aged 8 with whooping cough SUCKED!

My mother wasn't one of those ones that organized or sent me to chickenpox parties or the like and I got most of the illnesses during school holidays.

The one thing from the comments that I agree on is that people should make informed decisions about vaccinations and not just listen to scaremongers on either side of the argument...

Just glad you didn't get polio (thanks, I'm sure to herd immunity...)

I am old enough - barely - but yes, old enough - to remember my parents' generation's worries about the summer polio epidemics, and I have a cousin who had polio and still has to use devices to walk. And I definitely remember my parents taking us (me and my siblings) to oral polio vaccine clinical trials before it was implemented as "standard" practice.

[MamaJunebug]

"video has been removed"!

Dang it! It sounded fascinating.

[Mrs Ms]

Just glad you didn't get polio (thanks, I'm sure to herd immunity...)

Same! My grandmother had it as a child and has had a few issues her entire life because of it. The most annoying though harmless problem being amazing looking but almost undecipherable handwriting.

[starfish]

I had an uncle who survived polio in the late 30's, but it came raging back at him later in life.

The last few years of his life were excruciating, and he could barely walk and function.

I recognize that me telling his story is nowhere nearly as sexy as former Playboy Bunny Jenny McCarthy prancing around on Oprah like a damned fool making all kinds of unsubstantiated, bold but bare assertions about vaccinations and science. My pets understand more about vaccinations than she does. But many, many people just followed her crazy conjecture like she had a Phd in molecular biology. And it hurt innocent people who are unable to tolerate vaccines and babies who are too little to get certain vaccines.

She's too busy looking for next sugar daddy/meal ticket to care that her irresponsible statements caused deaths.

Vaccinations are the greatest public health achievement of this last century, in my humble opinion.

[lizzy]

What are your opinons on delayed vaccination schedules?

[Austin]

What are your opinons on delayed vaccination schedules?

Unnecessary.

http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Choices-An ... 982&sr=1-4

I did it (followed a delayed schedule) b/c that seemed, given the info I could find at the time (my children were little before we had the internet), to make sense. But in reality, it betrays a lack of understandng about how vaccines and the human immune system work.

And before anybody jumps my shit about Dr. Offit being biased toward the incredible good that vaccines do, I will have you know that I have read a number of anti-vax books, cover to cover, and found the arguments less than compelling. But at least I was willing to give some effort towards understanding the other side, which is more than I can say for most anti-vaxers I've known (including my own sister).

[Sydney Fox]

Unnecessary.

http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Choices-An ... 982&sr=1-4

I did it (followed a delayed schedule) b/c that seemed, given the info I could find at the time (my children were little before we had the internet), to make sense. But in reality, it betrays a lack of understandng about how vaccines and the human immune system work.

And before anybody jumps my shit about Dr. Offit being biased toward the incredible good that vaccines do, I will have you know that I have read a number of anti-vax books, cover to cover, and found the arguments less than compelling. But at least I was willing to give some effort towards understanding the other side, which is more than I can say for most anti-vaxers I've known (including my own sister).

This book was extremely helpful to me. I have always been pro-vax, but started to question vaccinations after I had my youngest last year. He is our only boy, and I had read that autism is more common in boys, as well as in children of older parents (Mr. Fox and I were in our 40s when our son was born). This caused me to worry about all the risks for autism that he was facing, and I didn't want to add to the risks if it could be helped. Dr. Offit's book helped me realize that if my son develops autism, it won't be because of vaccinations. I went ahead and had him vaccinated.

I preface this by stating that most of my family is on the autism spectrum, but we tend to be fairly highly functioning. There is obviously a genetic component to our autism, since it can be traced from my grandfather, through my mother, to the rest of my family. My oldest daughter has Asperger's, and the younger daughter is undergoing psychological assessment currently. The jury is out on my little guy, who is 17 months, but based on his observations, our pediatrician feels that he will probably be non-neurotypical as well. I can only hope that he will be higher functioning like his sisters. If he develops full-blown autism, I know that it won't be because of the vaccinations he received.

[lilwriter85]

I'm an ABA therapist (when I'm not a SAHM) so the whole Jenny McCarthy movement REALLY got/gets under my skin. She screwed up a lot of families with her insistence about the vaccines and how she cured Evan and if everyone else does what she does, they can "cure" their children too. In at least one of her interviews (I think a People one) she said he still had a lot of issues with physical touch and affection and still engaged in stimming, so while she may have found ways to help him learn to function more appropriately, she did not "cure" him of autism. For a while she seemed to be everywhere in the media and my family got tired of hearing me rant - luckily my best friend/coworker felt the same way about her, so anytime we heard something new we'd bitch to one another about it. We damn near threw a party when the news broke that the vaccine/autism link had been debunked.

I agree with you on Jenny McCarthy. My boyfriend's mom is an occupational therapist who has worked with people with autism and she and her colleagues had to deal with people who believed McCarthy and others on vaccines and autism.

[Alecto]

As someone who can't have vaccines due to health issues that were caused by a reaction to vaccines, I have one thing to say -

THANK YOU FOR VACCINATING YOUR KIDS!

I recognize my medical issues are rare, and that vaccines are essentially safe. I am the rare bad reaction, but there are rare bad reactions to damn near everything.