Okay, now what's the *real* deal on vaccines?
So I didn't want to vaccinate my son, but didn't have much information about vaccines at that point. His dad DID want to vaccinate him, and we decided to just go ahead and do it. He's fine to this day. No neurological diseases or autism or anything! But now here we are with my new baby daughter and I'm faced with the same dilemma. I am not convinced that vax's lead to autism, but I'm not convinced they aren't. Her dad wants to do it, her doc called Dr. Sears a "quack", but I keep reading these vaccination horror stories.
I've already been directed to the links of information. Just as much good as bad. So what's REALLY the deal with them? Opinions anyone?
"Overcome the angry by non-anger; overcome the wicked by goodness; overcome the miser by generosity; overcome the liar by truth." -Buddha
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I think the "deal" is what you decide it to be. I mean, if you've already read the info on both sides, and I know you're an intelligent mama, then it's up to you to make that decision from there. Cause you're likely to hear the same here, both good, bad and in between.
I'm an in between person myself. I'm not convinced on an autism link, but not convinced there isn't one, either. Though more recently I think I might be leaning towards there not being one. Shit, I don't know, it's confusing! We vaccinated our son, there were lots of factors of why. One was that I was a working mom his first year and he was in daycare full time. From what I read it's not a good idea to have an unimmunized kid around a freshly immunized kid. There was no way for me to know what kids just had shots, and even if I did I wouldn't be able to keep him out of daycare every time. Whether that thinking was 100% right I don't know, but those were chances I personally did not want to take.
Doesn't Dr. Sears advocate for a different vax schedule, but is still in favor of them? If that's the case, then what's so "quack" about that? Eh, that would annoy me if my doc called another doc that just for putting the option of a different schedule out there.
You'll make a good decision either way.
Oh yeah, Dr. Sears is definitely in business mode, no doubt. Although, the one who wrote the book is his son, so different Dr, but still. That is one thing I hated about Dr. Sears' website (the dad), they REALLY push products. They have a ton of ads on their site for all kinds of gadgets and whatnot. Some of it their brand, some not. I get their newsletter email sometimes and it's just full of ads for stuff. I get they're in a business and just like all businesses they want to make money, but it feels a bit excessive. But anyways, I do like that the dad is an advocate for co-sleeping, you don't hear that from a medical professional often.
And I do believe that they really do love kids and have their best interest at heart, as much as I can without personally knowing them anyways. So I think his alternative schedule is something he probably really believes in.
Sorry, not sure how this turned into an essay about Dr. Sears! Onward with the vax discussion.... 
I need to read and ponder more before I really decide what i think.
My intuitive opinion is that they really do give a lot of vaccines really young on a really tight schedule, and I wonder if that doesn't confuse the immune system and help make childhood allergies more common (although i think pollution and chemical exposures play a big part in that too). But, in my opinion, it's clear to me that vaccinations have really helped to curb some really dangerous disease. I live in a place with a lot of immigration from poor african countries and I won't be able to be entirely sure that motorboy isn't exposed to some of these dangerous diseases.
So I think what we'll do is a limited and delayed vaccination schedule. The exact timing of the schedule I'm not sure of, that's where I need to educate myself more. Oh and hash it out with mr motor too, because he's way against vaccinations.
Tigerfish Mama
i vaccinated. but i did not do it on the schedule that was pushed upon me. got the shots i thought the kid would need, spaced out over her early childhood. never at the same office visit, which meant getting them at different places, so i wouldn't be forced to pay another $90 office visit fee just to get a shot. i was surprised at the amount of hostility i got from doctors and nurses about using my own timing. they really believe they are smarter than us, and know what's best for us, and really honestly get insulted when you don't accept their advice unquestioningly. i had one doctor tell me in no uncertain terms that my child would get chicken pox and die from it, if i didn't get her vaccinated on that day he wanted to give her the shot. anyway, so i would get one with her checkup, wait a few months, go to the health department and get another, etc. the series shots, i made sure i spaced correctly from one another, and did not get any additional shots in between, etc.
the problem with vaccines isn't that they're unsafe, but they are unsafe for certain people, and since the information about them is suppressed, we can't determine whether our child is one of those people, with any particular shot. so, parents are understandably skittish. the separate issue is mandates, and what is behind them. when a vaccine is in development, HUGE public relations campaigns are rolled out to "educate" people about the disease they're developing the vaccine for, and characterizing it as serious or fatal, which is what happened with the HPV vaccine. it's for one virus that can cause genital warts, which in a tiny minority of cases can lead to cervical cancer, but is completely treatable. ergo, when it was in development, the PR campaign told women how dangerous HPV is, and that it causes cancer, and lo and behold, a couple years later, we have "a cancer vaccine." we don't. we have a marginally effective HPV vaccine, which may or may not lead to cancer in a tiny minority of cases, if the woman doesn't get her warts burned off like any normal person would.
chicken pox too. mild childhood illness. not a threat. but now that every kid is getting vaccinated, people who get the virus, which by the way includes people who have gotten the vaccine because they were denied a public education if they didn't, are getting the serious form because they're now adults. and now they actually are peddling it as a vaccine against a serious illness that kills people. but it's killing people because of the vaccine.
so my feeling is, don't play me. don't compare genital warts to polio and expect to be taken seriously. i will make my decision, and i will not tolerate any shit about it.
by the way, i fired that doctor who told me my child would die if i didn't unquestioningly follow his advice. and i fired the next one who wanted to push the pneumovax on me because my kid had an ear infection. "i don't know why you want your child to suffer" is what that prick actually said to me, out loud.
Here, here.
My chickenpox vaccine? Put my kids in the bathtub with another kid who had chickenpox, while they were still in preschool. Get it over with.
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius"--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
when my daughter was born and i heard about that i was like "you're fucking KIDDING me, right?" so when the day came that we were at her pedi and they gave me the little form to sign that listed all the shots she was getting that day and i saw varicella on it i meekly said i didn't feel comfortable doing it and the bitch nurse gave me a lecture about how i needed to take my daughter's health seriously becasue chicken pox is DANGEROUS AND KILLS PEOPLE, BLAH BLAH BLAH, and she shamed me so much i ended up being like "oh, oh, i didn't know it was that bad. okay, do it." and i'm fucking pissed that i backed down like that! seriously, since then i've toughened up alot and am waaay more comfortable calling the shots in raising my daughter, but it's so shitty that they use scare tactics on new mothers to force them into compliance with this shit. like "oh, you want to do something other that what *I* say you should? so what, you WANT your baby to DIE?!" ugh.
for the record, i can't stand the nurse that bullied me like that and i won't deal with her during visits. she also told me once when my daughter had an ear infection that i'd have to stop BFing while she was sick and formula feed her until she was better, based on some idiotic idea she had that sucking my boobs would hurt her ears but sucking from a bottle wouldn't for some reason. assinine, right? why the fuck this woman is a licensed nurse working in a practice that has a great reputation is beyond me, but she's a fucking idiot. like, unfortunately, alot of the people out there who are feeding us information about our "health". it sucks.
/end ramble
if the doctors in charge didn't approve, she'd have been fired. she's doing what they instruct.
i know how you feel about backing down. your child's doctor's office is not a place where you're psychologically prepared to have to fight and defend your choices. so when they abuse their position like that, it takes us off guard. it's natural. and it totally sucks that you have to prepare for a fight in a place where you're paying them to take care of your kid, but that's the reality.
That's why it's called "practicing" medicine...
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!
I liked that.
We vaccinate but not everything and not on their schedule. Only I never had anyone give us a hard time about it. Our family doctor (who is awesome!) would like us to get more of the vaccines but she doesn't fight us at all about it. Some doctors are better than others about this, I think. Sounds like your doctor, Val, might be not so great (given the "quack" comment...Bob Sears's alternate schedule involves getting EVERY SINGLE VACCINATION available. So I don't know why lots of doctors gets their knickers in a twist over his schedule).
T. has had NO problems whatsoever. (She's only 13 months so too early to tell on the really long term effects, like increased inflammatory kinds of problems, like asthma and Irritable Bowel, Ulcerative Colitis, etc. - these are the things that I worry about more than autism, frankly, given that my family has a lot of history of these. Everyone always talks about autism and ignores these other things, annoys me!) Who is to say if it's because we get them spaced out and don't get them all? Or if she would have been fine even if she got every single vaccine on the conventional schedule. While she is this young, I'll continue getting them spaced out and skipping some altogether (yeah, varicella. Not getting that one unless she reaches teenage-hood and still hasn't contracted chicken pox).
Bottom line, I don't trust big pharma. I don't trust doctors if they pat me on the head and tell me everything is fine. I have a brain (not to mention a PhD in Biology, which, thank you very much, they don't give out for good looks), I know how to read and understand complicated stuff. Give me the real deal and then trust me to figure out what is best for MY family, my body. A doctor who is willing to meet me halfway, that's cool.
Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. -- Emily Dickinson
You want to do what you think is right and what matters to you, and if other people don't like it, as my father would have said, they can go fuck themselves. -- Amy Bloom
When my kids were in preschool, two of the other parents were doctors, and one of them tried to change the rules of the school so that every kid had to have shots in order to be in the school. (They were targeting my family because we were poor, but they couldn't kick us out for that.) I had to get a copy of the Cali. immunization laws, which provide for a "personal beliefs" waiver, as well as a medical waiver. The doctor dude didn't want to comply with the law. I could see his point of view, in a way, because he worked as an ER doc at Children's Hospital and saw the worst of the worst on a daily basis.
One of the other parents, bless her heart, chimed in at this meeting that she didn't do pertussis for either of her kids, because he older son had had a pretty bad reaction to the first round, and her doctor advised her not to give the shot to either kid thereafter. Doctor dude was okay with that, in essence, saying that it was okay for a kid not to have a shot if the DOCTOR made that decision, but it wasn't okay for the parents to make that decision. However, the other mom pointed out that, either way--her way or my way--the kid does not get a shot.
Doctor dude also said a few things that made me even more wary of shots:
1. He said that it's really more of a public health concern than an individual health concern. If everyone in a population gets a shot for a particular disease, then the chances of the disease going away are much higher than if only some people do the shots.
2. There's a large immigrant population in the SF Bay area, some of whom don't get shots (this was more of his white guy entitlement crap. He was talking about poor, illegal Mexican immigrants, not wealthy Indian computer Engineers), so, if "we" don't get shots, "we" could get a diseases from one of the people anywhere we might run into them (i.e. the supermarket--that was his example, no shit.)
And then I overheard a conversation between him and the other doctor parent (a mom) where they discussed how, when they both did their ER rotations as interns, they both had to have smallpox vaccines. And they both got titres (to make sure the shot worked) and they BOTH had to go back and get second and even THIRD shots before they could pass the titre test.
So, I thought, wait. THREE rounds of smallpox shots? Smallpox is, like, the golden ticket of vaccines, yes? It's the one that everyone points to as "eradicating" smallpox (only it didn't really), but maybe it doesn't actually WORK? And this guy wants to force my family to have shots that this other lady doesn't give to her kid, because her doctor said so, in the off chance that I might run into someone at a grocery store who might, what, jab a rusty nail in my kid's foot?
Really, though, follow the bouncing dollar. Shots are big business. Forcing people to get (and pay for) shots that may or may not "take" and may or may not even work...wow, that's pretty amazing. Think about it, how often lately do you hear about an outbreak of ANY "shots" disease? How could that even be possible, if a large %age of the population does get shots? Maybe it's all a SHAM.
In the end, I've done some shots, but pretty much signed waivers all the way through. If my kids or I ever travel overseas, then we will do the shots. And not drink the water, hello. This is a conservative approach. I am also fully prepared to deal with these diseases, should they come up. L-Dawg is almost 18, and they haven't come up, yet.
phrama gets the mandates pushed through with kickbacks. then to enforce the mandates, the states must provide a way for low(er) income people to be in compliance. this, while not lowering the costs of the shots. several hundred dollars in come cases. so what to they do? the state buys tens of thousands of doses, at the retail rate, and distributes them free or subsidized.
and yes, a lot of lawmakers do own stock in these companies.
the system is corrupt as all shit. whether it's ALL a sham, i don't know. but it definitely is corrupt. and when people start comparing chicken pox and HPV to polio, you know something is way wrong.
The thing is, not a lot of people talk about the effectiveness of the shots. What are the shot failure rates? We know condom failure rates, right? What if the shots are only 30% effective, and we, collectively, are not doing other things to ward off or treat diseases because we *think* we are protected by shots?
we can't argue with eradicating disease, but we don't know if the shots actually do that. and we know in a few cases at least, that it doesn't.
by terms that get used. There's efficacy and effectiveness. Efficacy refers to whether the vaccine produces a antibody reaction (the appropriate immune response) in test subjects ("does the vaccine work?"). Effectiveness refers to how much (or little) the vaccine protects a particular population against the disease ("does the vaccine help people?"). Subtle difference! The latter is what most of us want to know, as consumers. I mean, obviously we should be concerned if the vaccine has low efficacy too, but even if it seems to have high efficacy the vaccine can not be effective.
But I think the terms are easily confused and we can be lulled or frightened unnecessarily. But even if the the right antibodies, how do we know if it's effective? Keep in mind that the two kinds of studies are done in DIFFERENT populations! That might be why, for example, flu vaccine is not effective in protecting people in the elderly population- I guess there's some speculation that older folk's immune systems do not respond the same way that the original test subjects' immune systems did in the efficacy studies.
Something to keep in mind if you read about efficacy and/or effectiveness of a vaccine.
I hope I've gotten this right! Doctors/med students/nurses on the list-- correct me if I am wrong!!!
The herd immunity thing is really important - not for our healthy kids but for everyone else. If children can't get vaccinated because they have cancer, if old people's vaccines didn't take, if babies are too young to be vaccinated, and if people are too poor to be vaccinated then it really makes sense for the rest of us to vaccinate so that no one who could die if they got sick does.
It isn't just about me and my kid. Its about our whole community. That's why I vaccinate.
I decided not to vaccinate my daughter. I was treated with nothing but disrespect and disdain by the medical community for having a home birth and breast feeding. Let's not even mention co-sleeping! I didn't like all the fear around the whole hospital experience and I didn't enjoy being talked down to. Worst of all, I couldn't stand being told I had to do something because someone else thought it was best. No human can be truly objective. It's sometimes hard to remember doctors are still only human and shouldn't always be taken so seriously.
i was raised by a mother who was a leader in the women's movement in the 70s and 80s and a dad who taught Marxism- pretty liberal unconventional people. my mother was raised in the depression. she watched friends and classmates die of pertussis, get polio, she saw lives and families destroyed. she says that tears would come down her face when I got the vaccines, w/ gratitude- having watched friends w/ small pox marks disfigured etc etc. i think because we live in an era without these traumatic at least and fatal at worst diseases infesting schools and towns and families we are not realistic about the way vaccines have massively changed childhood, life expectancy, suffering, and what it was like to parent WITHOUT the absence of most devastating childhood illnesses. honestly i feel it is part our privilege as a society that even makes this a question. personally I am not happy about those people at my kids very liberal school not vaccinating. i DO feel like I'm protecting them by vaccinating. i work w/ scores of autistic children. some parents vaccinated, some did not. my pediatrician who is very into supplements and even homeopathy (i am not, but i do acupuncture) shared w/ me a major study out of britain- despite a HUGE drop in the rate of vaccination the rate of autism continues to climb just as steadily. i believe in speaking w/ a lot of my colleagues who are top in the field of neurology biology research etc at places like UCLA that we DO have some kind of environmental assaults on fetuses and mothers, but WHAT it is that is causing neuro issues is unclear, really unclear.
at any rate, it's really hard discussion. i'm scared to do swine flu vaccine even tho i'm told it's totally safe. there's a kid in icu from our town right now, totally healthy 12 year old w/ h1n1 complications. but the idea of one adverse reaction to a vaccine is very scary.
it's hard being a mama and making these decisions.
best to you
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His point was that he believed Dr. Sears came up with this different vax schedule, wrote a book about it, and made lots of money selling that book. I think that's why he thinks he's a quack. And he has his own perspective on vaccinations and feels they are completely harmless. I get his point, but was annoyed at the "quack" remark. I do like some of what Sears has to say.