You know, the idiots behind the “Antibiotics for virus illnesses” have a special name. They are called Doctors.
Recent reports seem to indicate that many doctors still prescribe antibiotics inappropriately after twenty years of very well published peer reviewed information, and authoritative descriptions of how they should be used published by Physicians and Immunologists themselves.
Why? Probably because people hear on the news that Cipro is good for you, and ask the doctor to prescribe it. Some doctors do. Then they fly south, going “Quack, quack, quack.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t we prefer that these people not have their offspring vaccinated, thus increasing the chance that their children will, through death or disease-induced sterility, be unable to pass on the stupid genes to another generation?
Oddly enough when looking a child mortality statistics I found and article saying perhaps teh larger number of autistic children may be related to the greater number of children actually surviving through their first few years in life.
Sort of makes sense. If I recall correctly, detecting Autism in many cases doesn’t happen until the later years so many infants who may have had it and died early would never have been noted.
I was under the impression most of the anti-vax crowd would be pleased if their kids caught one of the illnesses? Most of the stuff we immunize against is unpleasant for kids, but highly manageable/treatable(measles probably being the most serious). Having the disease and fighting it off yourself is supposed to confer greater benefits in terms of a strong immune system and less likleyhood of recurrance as an adult(when most of the diseases would be more serious). If your un-vaxed little one comes down with something, treat them and keep them home during the course of the illness, just as people would have done in pre-vax days.
Alas, if only it were that simple. You see, there’s a small but significant chance that a vaccination simply won’t take. You can find out for sure by measuring your antibodies, but such a test is likely too expensive to be routine. In an ideal world, this really wouldn’t be a big deal, since most everyone else around you did get a good vaccination, so you’re unlikely to actually be exposed to the disease. However, once you add people who are intentionally unvaccinated to the mix, the herd immunity breaks down. People who don’t vaccinate their children are endangering not only their children, but everyone else’s as well.
As much as I’m against routine inductions, and horrified at our c-section rate, this sounds like just the kind of twaddle Mothering magazine and the attendant “traditional medicine is evil, we take our kids to a chiropractor/osteopath/homeopath/exorcist because it’s much better for them” ilk like to perpetuate, despite having no evidence. I have also heard ultrasounds implicated. I’m not saying that these interventions are automatically safe - if there’s any indications of a link, let’s do the research. I just doubt whether that research has actually been done yet.
ETA: on Menocchio’s point, I’m betting there are some children with health issues or allergy concerns that make vaccination a significant health risk for them. And they would also be victims of the scientifically illiterate not vaxing their kids. I read a couple years ago that pertussis is in fact making a comeback, due to spotty vaccinations.
Sadly, this is a Bingo. There are so many people who will go to the doctor and pitch a fit when the doctor says “it’s viral, an antibiotic won’t help” that many doctors have given up trying to do their job right. I see it all the time where I work. In my case, I am anti-antibiotics in the worst kind of way. If my (or my kids or husband) body takes more than 2 weeks to fight off whatever it is, then I will let the doctor prescribe antibiotics if (and only if) he thinks it is not viral.
I prayed that my son would pick up the chicken pox before school started, because I just did not like the numbers I saw in the studies I read about the vaccine, but alas and alack, he ended up getting the vaccine and is no worse the wear for it.
Several of those are for diseases which may cause severe damage or death to a child - particularly meningitis, tetanus, polio, and pneumonia. Even mumps can result in deafness or meningitis.
My brother was one who had a bad reaction to the vaccinations. He was born normal but had an alergic reaction to the whooping cough vaccine. It caused a chain reaction of other medical mistakes which killed him 6 years later. I wouldn’t wish what I watched my mother go through on anyone. Just to complicate things, one of the medical mistakes was that they put him in the hospital with a child who had measles, and he caught it.
The thing is, even then, a reaction of his kind was extreemely rare, and the vaccine has become safer. That said, my daughter’s pediatrician suggested that I have my daughter get the series without pertussis, but she got everything else. I hope I made the right choice. I get scared every time I hear that there is a whooping cough outbreak nearby.
Sure that works really good for pertussis (Whooping cough). :rolleyes:
Back in ’92 some talk show asshole (I think it was Geraldo) did a special about vaccines possibly being linked to everything from autism to dish-pan hands. As a result, lots of mental midgets didn’t get their little angels vaccinated.
My son caught pertussis when he was 7 weeks old, one fucking week before he was supposed to get the DPT shot. He was already weak because he had been born 8 weeks early and was jaundiced. Then he gets pertussis which makes him cough so hard he can’t catch his breath and he turns blue.
He was hospitalized for two weeks, hooked up to apnea monitors. He couldn’t keep anything down so he was on an IV. He lost 2 pounds which is a hell of a lot on a 9 pound baby. We had to keep him on the apnea monitor for a month afterwards and he had to sleep sitting up in his car seat. He developed asthma because of this and would have bouts of bronchitis during the winter.
Pertussis kills. Rubella kills. Measles kills. Even chicken pox kills if one of the pox becomes infected and the infection gets into the blood stream.
I almost lost my son because some asshole believed the tabloid crap. If you don’t think vaccinations are a good idea because of your religion, then keep your precious little snowflake away from my family. And when your daughter grows up you better prey that she doesn’t get chicken pox when she is pregnant. Or that your adult son doesn’t get mumps causing sterility.
Right now, I’m very amused by two things. The first is that mercury is leached from amalgam dental fillings into the bloodstream, where it enters fetal circulation and causes autism. The second is that pitocin is linked to autism. These are the current anti-vax theories du jour on the SDMB.
Given that I have a million fillings and was induced, my son should be autistic. But he’s not. So forgive me if I pee my pants laughing.
The thing I don’t get about the mercury theory is this: Isn’t it pretty darn easy to test for heavy metal levels? I live in high-risk neighborhood for lead, so my daughter was tested for it a couple of times, just as a precaution. It seemed like the simplest blood test in the world…results back the same day. So if mercury was really causing autism, wouldn’t it be a breeze to actually prove it, rather than leave it up to anecdotal evidence people post on the internet?
You’d think that, but it’s easier to believe random strangers on the Internet than it is to prove it. I guess once people glom onto something, no matter how outlandish, being proven wrong would be devastating.
The measles are what seem to be showing up yearly in outbreaks, and then you have the parents of kids in the affected schools having a panic attack. All of a sudden their worried, because it did show up. I had a couple Polio victim relatives, and I’ve seen measles and mumps on fellow school mates. I get so pissed when parents don’t feel a need to vaccinate their kids.
I had to get my measle, mump, and rubella shot before going to grad school. Exactly thirty years from the date of my original MMR shot back in 1976. I thought it was silly but you jump through the hoops they tell you to jump through.
