Elbows, you are a twit. FTR, autism, is the new ADHD, used to explain any kid who acts weird occasionally no matter how minor.
Get your goddamn vaccinations.
Turn off the goddamn telly.
Make sure they get some Goddamn sleep, and unstructured play time.
Feed your goddamn kids real goddamn food. A Balanced Goddamn diet, with all the food groups.
Talk to, and discipline your goddamn kids, and attempt to dothat whole parenting thing.
THEN consider that the sprog MIGHT have an issue.
The problem with mumps as I understand it is that because the vaccine wears off, they would rather have a boy have it as a child and have lifelong immunity than risk him getting it as a forty year old man because the vaccine wore off, or he was between boosters.
This is why they used to do single vaccines for girls as children. I’d still rather see that allowed, because then there’s a better chance that some of the anti-measles vaccination crowd will protect their daughters and their daughters’ children against the disease.
Frankly, short of compulsory vaccinations, I’m in favour of most things that increase the chance of parents getting their kids protected. (I’m not fond of compulsory vaccinations since with a locked in, single supplier contract with the NHS, drug companies may cut corners to make profit - see the Whopping Cough issue.)
Jesus H. Christ! My little sister went to this school! My mother teaches in this district!
Shirley, this is purely anecdotal, but since the article discusses my hometown, I’m going to point out that most Ashlanders don’t fit the model of Bible-thumping anti-evolution red-staters*. If we’re generalizing, this is a town of crystal-rubbing herbal and alternative medicine enthusiasts who couldn’t live twenty minutes without their local organically grown Starbucks-alternative. That said, I’m not surprised to hear that Ashland has a high rate of unvaccinated children, just that it’s so high.
*True story- we’ve got a very popular guy representing us in the State Congress; he’s a Democrat, his entire district is Ashland, and as a local politician, he goes around to schools a lot to give talks. One time he gave a speech to the Campus Republicans at the local college, and they were so impressed with him (and represented so large a portion of primary-voting Republicans in town) that they voted him in as the Republican challenger for his own seat! In that election, he was not unopposed, but actually running against himself. He’s got both the Democratic and Republican nominations framed side by side on his wall.
Actually, chicken pox is not innocuous either–I was lucky that my older kids had mild cases prior to the vaccine being out. #2 son (third child) got the vaccine. Kids do die of chicken pox.
ALL of my kids have gotten the appropriate vaccines, including the meningitis one for my college bound daughter. She will get the Gardasil vac at student health, too.
Let’s see here: on the one hand, we have a well known and highly effective modality for protecting human life from some of the worst and deadliest acute illnesses known to man. On the other hand, we have a populace lulled into a false sense of security because their generation has not had to sit by helplessly and watch children die. Oh, and they might be against it for “religious” reasons. (the only people I know who have not had their kids vaccinated are home schooled kids. The only home schooled kids I know are fundamentalist Christians who are NOT leftist in the least).
Let’s weigh the 2: small risk with huge bennys to individual and mankind in general vs ignorance and intuition. And these folks can rationalize their choice to not? How do they sleep at night? Perhaps once their children start dropping like flies (and may they sleep the sleep of the righteous once that occurs), they will reconsider. I have no sympathy or patience with these people. I pity their children.
PS-one reason autism is “linked” to vaccines in some very moronic people’s minds is because of the timing of the vaccines. The MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vac is started at 18 months, IMS. Autism can be diagnosed as early as age 2–the developmental time when language should be exploding and social skills (eye contact, smiling, laughter etc) become obvious. This is known in intelligent circles as a coincidence, not causation.
First, I didn’t get the impression that elbows has an autistic child (maybe he/she’s just been watching too much bad daytime television). However, tread lightly with some of that shite in the quote box, my friend. Especially the “discipline your goddamn kids” part. None of those things will prevent, cure or mask symptoms of autism.
Autism is not caused by vaccinations. It is also not caused by shoddy parenting.
This.
Sorry, another vote for PLEASE get the shot now.
My cousin was 15, athletic, and about as healthy as a person can get. One night he was feeling headachy, so he took a couple of Tylenol and went to bed early. He never woke up again.
Please, get the shot. If not for yourself, then do it for the people who love you and would be devastated to lose you.
It could be partially related to the increased success in the survival of premature infants, as some research has found a link to low birth weight and prematurity as a potential cause. Just like with modern medicine we now live long enough to experience more cancer, more Alzheimer’s disease, etc., we might live early enough to experience other problems.
In the interests of fighting ignorance, let’s be perfectly clear what we’re talking about here. From this site:
I’ll give you a brief description of the disease caused by each of these organisms commonly vaccinated for (paraphrasings from site listed previously) - please take the time to read this long post. It is important to all of us that this particular ignorance is fought.
Diphtheria - Bacteria that releases a toxin that makes breathing and swallowing difficult; also attacks heart, kidneys, and nerves. Before vaccination, diphtheria was a common cause of death in children and adolescents, with 150,000 cases occurring each year.
Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) - Bacteria that causes meningitis, sepsis (blood infection), epiglottitis, athritis, osteomyelitis, and pneumonia. Symptoms include fever, stiff neck, drowsiness and can progress to coma and death. Bacteria can cause permanent paralysis, deafness, blindness, and mental retardation. Most people carry Hib in their nose and throats (most adults are immune to Hib).
Hepatitis A - Virus causes inflammation of the liver. Symptoms include fever, jaundice, nausea, and vomiting. Kills about 50 Americans each year. Transmitted in food and water as well as human contact. Prevalent everywhere in the world except for North America.
Hepatitis B - Virus causes inflammation of the liver, cirrhosis (severe liver disease), cancer of the liver. Many infected people carry the disease asymptomatically. 5,000 Americans die from Hepatitis B each year. Another 10,000 develop long-term hepatitis. Transmitted by casual contact and/or contact with body fluids of carriers.
Influenza - 40,000 Americans killed by influenza virus every year. 21 million people killed in worldwide influenza pandemic in 1918. Symptoms include high fever, chills, severe muscle aches and headache, runny nose and cough. Complications include severe and possibly fatal pneumonia. People with weakened immune systems may die from influenza.
Measles - Virus that causes high fever, red, raised rash, and “pink eye.” Can often develop into pneumonia which can cause death. Older children infected with measle virus can develop encephalitis (infection of the brain) which can cause permanent brain damage. 66 cases of measles reported in U.S. in 2005.
Meningococcal infection - Bacterial infection causing meningitis and sepsis. Meningitis from meningococcus has a 5% death rate for children. Sepsis from meningococcus has a 33% death rate for children (often within 12 hours of contracting the bacteria). Symptoms of meningitis include stiff neck, headache, fever, and drowsiness. Symptoms of sepsis include fever, shock, and coma. Every year 2,500 Americans infected with meningococcus; 300 die. Approximately 400 people who survive infection have permanent disabilties such as seizures, loss of limbs, kidney disease, deafness or mental retardation. Infection spread by intimate contact with infected person (kissing, sharing food and beverages, staying in same house or room for more than four hours a day).
Mumps - Virus that causes swelling in the parotid or salivary glands. Can cause meningitis and deafness. In men infected with mumps, can cause orchitis (infection of testicles) and sterility. Mumps in pregnant women can kill the fetus.
Pertussis (whooping cough) - Extremely contagious bacterial infection (infection caused by infectious droplets). Causes children to cough uncontrollably, often so bad they are unable to catch their breath. Pneumonia or seizures can develop. Children catch pertussis from adults - around 600,000 to 900,000 adults get pertussis each year, causing about 10 deaths in children even with the vaccine. Very serious for babies and young children.
Pneumococcus - Bacteria that causes serious infections of infants, toddlers, older people, and immunocompromised people. Causes meningitis, bloodstream infections, and pneumonia (as well as ear infections). Pneumonia includes high fever, cough, rapid, difficult breathing, and empyema that can compress and collapse a lung. Commonly found in the lining of nose and throat in 25% of humans. In the U.S. in 2000, pneumococcus caused 700 cases of meningitis, 17,000 cases of bloodstream infections, and 71,000 cases of pneumonia. Because of the overuse of antibiotics, many pneumococcus bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics.
Poliovirus - Highly contagious virus causes sore throat, fever, stomach pain/vomiting, stiff neck, and/or headache. Virus starts in intestines and travels through blood to brain and spinal cord. Paralysis is caused by virus attacking nervous system. 10% of people infected recovered fully - the rest confined to wheelchairs or iron lungs for the rest of their lives. Virus transmitted by fecal-oral route or oral-oral route, with a nearly 100% infection rate when children come in contact with poliovirus. Polio eradicated from the US, but still active in a dozen countries.
Rotavirus - Virus that causes infection of the intestines. Symptoms are high fever, persistent and severe vomiting, diarrhea. Extremely common infection - before the vaccine, 2.7 million children were infected, resulting in 55,000 - 70,000 hospitalizations and 20 to 60 deaths.
Rubella (German Measles) - Virus that causes mild rash, gland swelling, possible swelling of small joints and low-grade fever. Rubella in children is not a serious infection, but rubella virus can infect fetuses, causing blindness, deafness, heart defects or mental retardation. If infected in the first trimester of pregnancy, there is an 85% chance of permanent damage to the fetus. Female children in particular are vaccinated to protect their future fetuses. Rubella virtually eradicated in the U.S., but common in other countries.
Tetanus (lockjaw) - Bacteria found in the soil creates a toxin that causes muscle spasms that can interfere with breathing, causing suffocation, and also damage the heart. Tetanus bacteria are everywhere; every year 70 cases of tetanus causing 15 deaths are reported.
Varicella-zoster virus (chickenpox) - Extremely contagious virus that causes low-grade fever and blisters over entire body. Usually a mild infection, but can cause empyema (pus between lungs and chest wall), pneumonia, encephalitis, and Group A Streptococcus infection (“flesh-eating” bacteria) which enter through the skin during varicella infection. Before the vaccine, one child per week would die in the U.S. from chickenpox. Varicella virus lives in the human body for your entire life; it may re-activate later in life to cause extremely painful nerve blisters called Shingles.
No responsible parent would allow their children to develop any of these diseases if they don’t have to. These are not just childhood diseases, either. Some of them continue to affect adults, in some cases worse than children (mumps and chickenpox are two examples of this).
However, it should be noted that long-term effects of newer vaccines are not yet known; for example, I never got the chicken pox - I was immune as a child and vaccinated at age 15. Nobody seems to really know yet whether or not I can get shingles. My grandmother got shingles in her eye. My father broke out in them the day I graduated from college and missed most of it in the emergency room. Of course, that’s certainly no reason not to get the vaccine; chicken pox is very dangerous in adults.
I hate to be a jerk and interrupt a good old fashioned vaccination dog-pile, but I would like to argue again that for a lot of people (including college students that don’t live in the dorms, the risks/costs/benefits analysis for the N. meningiditis vaccine really isn’t very compelling. Here’s a longer, more technical document from the CDC that really breaks it down:
I’ll quote extensively because there isn’t a copyright:
Yes, meningitis sucks. But N. meningiditis isn’t even the leading cause of meningitis among adults, it’s Streptococcus pneumoniae [a pathogen for which a recently released vaccine, Pneumovax, is having a big and beneficial effect on](I know, the names get confusing) and college students that don’t live in the dorms aren’t even at an apparent extra risk compared to the general population. How much of an imposition would the cost of the vaccine be? How much do you value your own life? Does $22-48 M strike you as a big number?
As always, advice from the internet is worth what you pay for it, contact your healthcare professional to discuss your personal circumstances, etc.
Isn’t it shown that periodic low-level exposure to the real thing helps prolong the usefulness of a vaccine/natural immunity- at least with chicken pox? Could there be some small upside to this?
I used to work in a museum, and part of my job was giving tours to grade 3 classes. It was a hands on, interactive museum, and at many of the interpretive stops we would ask for volunteers from the class to poarticipate. This always resulted in a sea of hands and “oohh ohh! Me! Me!”'s from the class.
When we got to the part about medical care in the 1915 ers, I would stand in front of the group and say I need a few volunteers. Out of a class of (say 30) I would randomly pick 8-10 kids.
I would ask them to stand over a little ways and say “you two… diptheria, you, measles, you, you and you, flu epidemic, you dead of a gangrenous infection from a cut, you two tuberculousis, and the rest of you…pnuemonia.”
“You guys are all dead, by age 8!”
It would create a somber moment, and I would use it to explain that out a class of 30 kids in circa 1918, that many of them would have died before reaching their present age, and how pennicilian, sulfa drugs and other antibiotics, innoculation, and access to basic medical care changed those numbers completely.
Then we would make rope on an antique rope making machine…
Regards
FML
What, you didn’t have an iron lung or two to stuff a couple into for the rest of the tour?
Diphtheria My immunization was “natural.”
Hepatitis B Apparently I’m that way here, too. The upside is that I don’t get called to donate blood.
Influenza Get my shot every year because I’m in a high-risk group.
Measles Immune because I had rubella.
Mumps My immunization was “natural.”
Pertussis (whooping cough) My immunization was “natural.”
Pneumococcus Gotta be careful with that one because it could kill me in days.
Poliovirus Ate the sugar cubes (and had updates) and am immune quite unnaturally, pluss all of that white sugar coursing through my veins should kill anything they encounter, including me. :rolleyes:
Rotavirus Haven’t had that one but am long out of the danger group.
Rubella (German Measles) Been there, done that.
Tetanus (lockjaw) Got the shots. Got them again. And again.
Varicella-zoster virus (chickenpox) Had it and fear the onslaught of shingles that attacked my wife a few years back. Natural immunity sucks far more than getting a shock.
Absolutely true. Those people are murderous assholes, and who they may murder are their own children.
Is the autism rate going up in the US or not? I can’t find a good source. My niece is autistic but highly functional, although I doubt she will ever be able to hold down a full time job or have her own apartment.
My brother and I have discussed this about the vaccine issues before and he has talked to many medical experts and it always ends up the same…We are not sure. And that is ok for me. It is better to admit that you simply don’t know than blowing smoke up someones ass.
Another museum I worked in did have an iron lung… and it would have been very satisfying indeed to stuff some of the kids in that machine… but it would have had little interpretive value…
FML
Holy shit. :eek:
I skipped the vaccine (then promptly moved out of the dorms so I’m not sure how much risk that put me at). Now armed with the knowledge of the SDMB I wouldn’t have wasted a minute. 
Sometimes? Sometimes?
For me that’s about 90% of the time. It’s only that my mistrust of giving that kind of power to a bureaucracy has me reluctantly deciding that the evils that would follow from requiring licensing for spawning outweigh any potential benefits.
Well said Shirley. Vaccinations should be compulsory (and free) IME. It’s bad enough exposing your kids to potentially life-threatening illnesses without them having a say in the matter, but exposing other kids to this risk as well? Nope.
There was a great thread on the Guardian Comment is Free site (I say again…) about this six months or so back. Some middle class parent wrote a blog about how he and his wife had decided not to vaccinate little Tarquin and Jemima because of the supposed links with the MMR (measles mumps and rubella) jab and autism. The subsequent pile-on in the comments was hilarious.
One of my more common musings is what I would put in a law starting ‘You live in a SOCIETY, with all the resulting benefits and advantages. This means you HAVE TO… [fill in blank]’. Vaccinate your kids would be high up on that list.
It’s in the news here in Australia
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24227752-29277,00.html
Not one of the more common childhood vaccinations though.