College kids have to get MMR boosters generally speaking - it’s one of those requirements.
A disease doesn’t have to be deadly to be unpleasant. Why wouldn’t you want to avoid an illness if you possibly could?
Cite?
Which vaccines do you think unnecessary and why?
Considering that many of the illnesses we vaccinate against are contagious let me say that I’m grateful you’re not a mom.
Either your pediatrician says you shouldn’t vaccinate for medical reasons so you don’t . . . or you vaccinate.
What “middle ground” is there?
Vaccine science goes back just about longer than any medical procedure out there. Time and time and time again vaccines have proven efficacious. Most of us have never known anyone sterile from mumps or deafened from HiB or made brain dead from measles. Most of us have never met a sufferer of congenital rubella or seen someone die incredibly painfully from tetanus.
Smallpox has been gone for decades and polio is nearly there. We don’t go to bed frightened at night that our children will be consigned to iron lungs from polio or our faces disfigured from the pox or that diphtheria could slowly strangle the people we love.
To pretend otherwise is fallacy. Worse dangerous contagious fallacy.
Cases varied, even back then. Your memories are rose-colored.
I was 5 when I had a moderate case, over Christmas vacation. I remember itching a lot, and getting icky pink lotion baths for several days. My little brother had such a mild case, my mother says that she might not have noticed his 6 or 7 pockmarks if my sister and I hadn’t been sick at the same time.
Oh yeah, my sister. She was miserable. She was covered head to toe, and had them inside her mouth and nose as well. She cried a lot and couldn’t eat much. To this day she has scars. I wouldn’t call her barely sick.
This was circa 1977. (Is 32 years close enough to 35?) Every winter the chicken pox would go around, and every year news would travel about the kid who was sick - really sick - sick enough to go to the hospital. We all knew the name of that one guy who was unfortunate enough to have gotten the chicken pox twice. Where we were, if you’d reached the age of 10 before getting it, it was unusual. There were 10 kids out of over 20 in my kindergarten class who came to school the day before Christmas vacation the year I got sick. The rest ALL had chicken pox. It was a fact of life, it was a rite of passage in a sense, but it was not simply something to brush off.
Hmm… I’m a bit confused by your points, please explain a bit. On one point you’re talking about annual boosters of the same vaccine type in animals (after their initial series is over), something which is being moved away from because it has been proven that many animals retain effective titers in all or most of the vaccine components even after a year (or more) has passed. My own dog has a 3- years rabies vaccine and is only getting annual combo boosters because she is a blood donor (and she skipped a year).
OTOH, I think this thread is talking more about first time vaccination series in kids. Which is why I looked up for the cite about first time vaccination in dogs, to, you know, make it comparable. And why I mentioned that in animals, they’re moving away not from using more vaccines, but from more boosters. Others have shown that humans do not necessarily get more boosters, but instead more vaccines as better newer ones are being developed. And again, the site you mentioned is not talking about first time vaccines, but instead of repeated boosters (something not happening in humans).
BTW, a recent article (Lack of association between repeated vaccination and thyroiditis in laboratory Beagles. Scott-Moncrieff JC, Glickman NW, Glickman LT, HogenEsch H. J Vet Intern Med. 2006 Jul-Aug;20(4):818-21.) refutes one of the claims in the site you… eh… cited. Please note it is written by the same authors as the one used in that site. Meaning they went back and investigated it again.
I responded to your original post regarding whether or not diarrhea could truly be life-threatening to children with my understanding that yes, diarrhea could indeed truly be life-threatening to children in a relatively small period of time due to the differences in body size between children and adults (more rapid dehydration, more rapid electrolyte imbalance, etc.).
I was unaware that this was going to be another one of your “I’ve never seen it happen, therefore it doesn’t exist and those concerns are invalid” posts.
Well, it wasn’t diarrhea, but I spent a slightly anxious afternoon at the hospital with my 5 month old two years ago. She had gotten some random tummy bug, and wasn’t keeping anything down. She was 100% breastfed at that point, so it wasn’t food-poisoning or anything. Babies that little dehydrate really quickly - when you puke up anything you take in…
Wow, it looks like I wasn’t far off on the number of vaccinations kids get before school age - if I read the chart right, it’s 37 before the age of 7.
A couple of years ago I had to make an emergency room visit for dehydration from a case of apocalyptic diarrhea - at 40 years old, with a good knowledge of not getting dehydrated, in good health and living in clean conditions. When the bugs hit you, sometimes they just HIT you - I can easily see a young child being hospitalized with the bug I had.
The CDC vaccination schedule is here.
According to this, at age 6, a child should have had
At birth: HepB
1 month: HepB
2 months: DTap, Hib, IPV (polio), PCV7 (pneumococcus), Rotavirus
4 months: DTap, Hib, IPV, PCV7, Rotavirus
6 months: DTap, Hib, PCV7, Rotavirus
6-18 months: HepB, IPV
12-15 months: Hib, PCV7, MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), Varicella (chicken pox)
12-23 months: HepA
15-18 months: DTap
18+ months: HepA
4-6 years: DTap, IPV, MMR, Varicella
In addition, two flu shots in the first flu season after age 6 months, and one each subsequent year.
Adding it up, I get a maximum of 36 shots by age 6. But I know that my son’s Rotavirus vaccine was oral, not an injection, and there may also be combo shots not accounted for in the list above.
When I read the chart for ages 0-6, I see 11 separate recommended vaccines. If you add up total doses at different visits over that time, you might get to 37 shots.
We’ve already talked about how scant an immune exposure that is, compared to all the bugs and antigens that bombard kids’ immune systems from the moment they’re born, and the potential severity of the actual diseases the shots protect children from.
So what’s your point? It just sounds like too much immunization to you? You’d encourage parents to pick and choose what shots their kids get, and to skip and/or delay protection because of some negative non-fact based impression you have, and the people who’ve devoted their lives to caring for children and fighting infectious disease should be ignored?
Thanks for doing the research.
You know, back in the 1800’s, before vaccines, there were very few deaths due to car accidents. Very few. You could look it up.
Now, we have literally thousands of people killed every year by car accidents. I think that you can see where I’m going here…
Plus, I knew a guy that had his son vaccinated, and on the way home from the Doctor’s office…
BAM!
Killed by an oncoming truck. Just like that. So sad.
And all caused by vaccines.
If you split up all of the shots above that are combo shots (DTap and MMR), you get to fifty immunizations, which is probably where the alarmist number of fifty comes from. But it’s far fewer actual antigens - I count thirteen plus the flu (which is more complicated because it changes each year).
Did she get it due to whateveritwas that the vaccine is for? Diarrhea is a symptom, not a disease, so I was kind of surprised to see a vaccine for something that the primary symptom was diarrhea.
Hmm. So maybe the idea is, since parents don’t tend to allow their children to get exposed to childhood diseases any more, everyone should be vaccinated so you don’t get them as an adult?
Huh. It would never occur to me that a child could die from chicken pox. Was it because they got something else at the same time? Previously poor immune system? Gotta go look this up…
37 antigens/substances children are exposed to between age 3 days and 7 years:
- dust
- animal dander
- plant pollen (this could be 37 things all by itself, but I’m counting it as 1)
- Escherichia coli
- Lactobacillus sp.
- Staphylococcus sp.
- Streptococcus sp.
- Candida albicans
- wool
- polyaromatic hydrocarbons
That’s just in the first 24 hours home from the hospital.
- gluten
- Arah-1, a peanut protein.
- casein
- dirt (as in soil from the ground, having many more that 37 items)
- lotions
- soaps
- rhinoviruses
- petting zoo animals
- pets (other than ones present when the newborn came home)
- fish
- synthetic fibers
- saw dust
- poison ivy
- plants and pollens from other geographic areas while on vacation (again, this could be more than 37 items).
- various pathogens that cause a fever of unknown origin (FUO).
- other people
- paint
- yeasts and fungi
Well, alright I can’t come up with 37 individual things, but I have listed several classes of things that bring the total well over 37. The point is that the immune system is constantly challenged by things that are non-self. The immune system is not able to distinguish between antigens from a vaccine vs. antigens from the environment. The immune system is going to react to a flood of antigens from a vaccine the same as it will react to the flood of antigens from a rhinovirus the first time the child has a cold. FUOs are also not uncommon in the first few months of life as the immune system comes across various environmental viruses and bacteria. The idea that vaccines somehow stress the immune system differently is a baseless argument presented by anti-vaccinators who have no idea how the immune system works.
Vlad/Igor
Yes, I think those things do help cause allergies (plus people who themselves have severe allergies having kids as the lady in the article). But I do think that if over vaccination is affecting immune systems, these kids would also be more likely to develop these allergies.
The food allergies are the ones that I personally wonder about. I have a few true food allergies as well as several foods I don’t tolerate well. I’m also allergic to just about anything airborne. When I was tested at 25 and 35 years of age, both times I was told that since severe reactions to food allergies are rather rare, no work on a treatment/cure had been done as has been done with inhalant allergies. Now 15 years later we have a bunch of kids dieing from eating a tiny bit of peanuts?
But then, raising kids in a bubble and giving score of vaccinations started at about the same time, so who is to say? Again, I really glad I’m not trying to raise a kid!
People with facts at their disposal?
Don’t forget HDTV, cellphones, CDs, the Ipod, digital cameras, widespread use of the Internet, global warming and a bazillion other lifestyle and commerce changes have occurred at about the same time as increased allergies.
But yes, we should definitely blame vaccines. Vaccines are BAD! :rolleyes:
If chicken pox gets into the lungs in can be very dangerous - as I recall, that is what happened to the guy I knew in high school - who was around seventeen when he caught chicken pox - and it tends to be more virulent when you are older… The scabs also are conduits for secondary infections.
About one child a week dies in the United States currently from chicken pox. Its a very rare thing to die from, but it does kill.
Because I’m leery of the effects that vaccinations have on the immune system. So those diseases that I’m not likely to get very sick from (might less die) I don’t get vaccinated for, such as the multiple sorts of flus. Never get the shot, never get the flu even tho I supposed to be one of the high risk sorts.
For which one? That food allergies (for example) are on the rise, or that more and more mothers are spending way too much energy on sterilizing their childrens’ environments?
For humans I have no idea because I haven’t really looked into exactly what is being given to kids these days or how likely it is that any child living with me would actually contract any of those diseases. After reading some of the articles on the chickenpox vaccine, I’d say I might have a problem with that one.
Yes, I’m well aware that theories that are different than mainstream are not really tolerated in here. :rolleyes:
Not doing them all, not doing them as frequently, not doing so many at once, using titers (if those exist in humans). Definitely not just following a pediatricians advice blindly.
And I’m sorry, I just ignored the rest of what you posted as it appeared to just be bordering on hysterical mom-ism.