I’m on the road and in the boondocks where I have to park in a lot to get wifi - this place doesn’t even have a McD’s. What you just said makes no sense to me in light of what I know I’ve said, so someplace it’s gone off the rails. Here is my position in a nutshell:
It has been proven that dogs given a bunch of vaccinations at once and/or boosted too frequently are at risk for ending up with a problem with their autoimmune system in later life.
I have noticed that those sorts of diseases seem to be going up in children, and a little looking showed that researchers say the same thing. They also state it isn’t genetic because the rate is climbing too quickly for that.
So, I wonder if it isn’t possible that children (mammals) are having the same issues that dogs (mammals) are, since they are getting far more vaccinations than 40 or so years ago.
That’s it. I truly believe that if some folks weren’t so paranoid, there wouldn’t be any kerfluffle over this.
Just spare me the task of searching through every post of this thread. Cite for the bolded passage above please?
And an answer to this please. If your suspicions above are correct, which exact diseases would you have us NOT vaccinate against? How many vaccinations are safe, in your mind? How sure are you that the effects of not vaccinating against your nominated diseases is less than the purported risks of “too many vaccinations”?
Except that, AFAICT from previous posters’ explanations, you seem to be wrong about children “getting far more vaccinations than 40 or so years ago” in any autoimmunilogically (so to speak) meaningful sense of the term “more vaccinations”.
That is, kids today may be getting jabbed with a vaccination needle more times than you and I did in our childhood, but they’re getting far less total antigenic stimulation from those jabs than you and I did. So the current vaccine schedule appears to be actually safer for kids’ autoimmune systems than it was back in our day.
In other words, AFAICT, worrying about today’s larger number of jabs in the routine immunization schedule for children is a bit like worrying that somebody’s getting shot with ten BB pellets instead of two cannonballs. Being concerned about the total number of the hits, while ignoring differences in the damage each hit can do, is kind of missing the point.
Instead of repeating that dogs are having “issues” with autoimmune diseases supposedly tied to vaccines, could we see any actual evidence that such disorders are increasing in dogs or other pets and that incidence has been tied to immunization?
Meantime, here’s a review article about human autoimmunity, autoimmune disorders and vaccination that should be helpful. It notes that incidence of the few autoimmune disorders linked to vaccination (i.e. thrombocytopenic purpura and Guillain-Barre syndrome) is extremely low, and that one has a far greater chance of developing autoimmune problems (or having an existing autoimmune condition worsened) when infected by the diseases that vaccines prevent.
We can’t evaluate your claim(s) - and thank you for finally making a claim that can be looked at! - without looking at the data. I’m a scientist. I’ll be happy to take a look at the actual data, if it can be located.
My grandfather had his first open heart surgery at around age 35ish due to childhood whooping cough, which scarred a large portion of his heart. He had several heart surgeries between 35 and 50, when he died of complications during another heart surgery.
Very well. Where is this Dr. Dodd’s data published? Curlcoat says this is all a result of research she has done, so it shouldn’t be hard for her to provide links.
Dr. Jean Dodds in veterinary medicine has as much power as Wakefield does in medicine (and perhaps less). It is breeders who seem more interested in hear and reading (and sometimes misinterpreting/misquoting) her information. Her early work seemed to have focused on endocrinology and thyroid diseases in dogs, and is apparently solid research. Her more current endeavors are questionable.
How typical. A person with a pre-existing opinion manages to find questionable research to support the opinion. Not to mention that vaccination issues with dogs may or may not have any relationship at all to vaccination with humans, especially given (as has been stated previously) that the total antigenic load of the current vaccination schedule is approximately 1/10 of the total antigenic load from a generation ago.
I want to be clear on a few things, many of which I’ve addressed before. I’ve addressed immunology before to curlcoat, and I’m tired of going through that again with her. But in the interest, in the veterinary side:
None of the vaccines she skimps on are core vaccines. They are all limited by age, region, climate, and even the dog’s lifestyle.
The veterinary schools have, for years, advocated less frequent boosters. That there are older practitioners that still do annuals, yes, but it is not because the forerunners (the schools) are telling them to do that. AAHA (the main veterinary hospital association) and AVMA both support the changes.
Dr. Jean Dodd is better known for her early studies, especially the coagulopathies in small animals and some of her work with thyroid studies. Her more recent endeavors in both thyroid diseae and immunology (vaccine) are not considered valid by veterinary medicine.
In cats, but not in dogs, and not in humans as far as I know, constant vaccination DID lead to fibrosarcomas. This part of the impetus on investigating the efficacy of vaccines and developing and testing better vaccines, and extending the time between vaccines. BTW, cats also have a lot of other diseases and conditions not found so far in other animals.
Which reminds me, dogs are not people. While it is nice when there are animal models for human diseases, the default shouldn’t be “this happen in species X, therefore it must happen in humans too”. No, the default should be “let’s study if what happens in species X can also occur (and by the same mechanism) in humans”.
Also, she asked why so many boosters? Because that is what the studies found to be the most effective. A complete series of puppy shots with less frequent boosters later in life led to better protection. Again, those are serious diseases, and skimping on the vaccines means compromising immunity at a time where the animal is most vulnerable.
Finally, the vaccine studies are done in cute little beagle puppies. No giant behemoths mastiffs. So the dosages are based off of what was found on those puppies.
It’s been so long that it’s taking a bit of time to Google up a cite. Here is a start.
I wonder how many times I’ll have to answer this stupid question. As I’ve said before, since I have no kids to vaccinate, I haven’t looked into it. However, when it came out that multiple disease shots weren’t a good idea in dogs, the answer was to space them out, as well as not boost so often.
I don’t know because I don’t know what creates the autoimmune problems down the road.
I don’t think such disorders are increasing any more since far fewer dogs are getting the number of vaccinations that they used to.
It also said “How can one demonstrate or exclude that a vaccine caused
an autoimmune disease?
Only epidemiological studies or clinical trials with an extremely
large sample size can allow for a consistent assessment of
the relative risk of vaccine-related increased incidence.
Studies with such large sample sizes are complex, difficult to
do, and costly, which limit their availability”
Most of it I didn’t understand, but the gist of it was that they realize that vaccinations could trigger problems in people susceptible to an autoimmune disease, but to study it would be as above.
You didn’t look at my previous cites on that subject?
Really? That’s extremely sad but not really surprising - after all, vets still tend to push Science Diet. OTOH, you say that many/most vets have backed off of boosting every year - what caused that if not the work of Dr Dodds?
No, I had no pre-existing opinion on the subject. I gave annual boosters to all of my animals for decades and when the first reports came out about the dangers, I definitely wasn’t one of the first to jump to the new protocols. It is interesting that you assume that simply because I believe in what Dr Dodds says must mean I had a pre-existing opinion tho. :dubious:
Quite right. All I did was mention it and the paranoid people went nuts.
How do these two go together? Dr Dodds says to quit vaccinating so much and the AAHA and AVMA say the same thing afterwards but it isn’t because of Dr Dodds?
And yet, when I suggest such a thing, I am accused of being anti-vax. I have never said that because it happens in dogs, it must happen in humans, I merely said “look this happened, do you think it has any bearing on humans?”
And, that’s it for now. Not only am I miles from any internet connection, the SDMB seems to be having issues today.
It is not her. She is not an immunologist or virologist. But she did not contribute to any of the published, peer-reviewed studies, nor participated in the vaccination task forces from AVMA, AAFP, AAHA, and others that set up the current vaccination guidelines. If anything, Dr. Schultz, who seems to have been doing immunology and vaccination research since the late 70s, was one of the pioneers. You’re overestimating Dodd and underestimating the rest of the profession, the veterinarians, and their organizations.
Dr. Dodds is not the co-author of any of the studies, Dr. Dodds is not the only veterinarian researching immunity in dogs (and cats!), and Dr. Dodds’s schedules/recommendations (or the interpretations of those by other people) are not even in complete agreement with the established guidelines and the research published.
I’ll also point out that testing for titers (which Dodds advocates) ignores a whole branch of the immune system. Titers only measure soluble antibodies, the humoral part of the adaptive immune system. They ignore the cell-mediated immunity pat of the adaptive immune system. Hint: For many diseases, cell-mediated immunity is more important than humoral immunity.
Because the slant it is given, at least on-line, appears to be an already biased position against the vaccines.