Joined: 26 Apr 2004 Posts: 17196 Location: In a no-ship
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 3:49 pm Post subject:
As more and more parents listen to people like Jenny McCarthy and internet "experts" instead of medical doctors, more kids will die to whooping cough, measles and be stricken by polio, diseases that were previously unheard of in this country in the last half century. More and more we're seeing cases of children dying to these preventable diseases, especially in "new age"-type communities that still believe vaccines cause autism. Look up the videos, they're not pretty. The herd immunity breaks down when un-vaccinated kids are thrown into the mix.
So, don't listen to me, or anyone else on the internet. Go talk to your doctor and make the right decision for your kids.
First thing my wife's doctor told her when we got pregnant with our first child was "stay the hell away from the internet. All you will find is reasons to be afraid and make bad decisions about your pregnancy and child's future health."
When we had questions, we asked him and he gave us straight answers with pros and cons.
We have two fabulously healthy children - and yes we went with the vaccines. The risks of not doing so way out weighed the overblown risks of having them. _________________ You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show
goes up in flames
In 24 frames
Joined: 06 Aug 2009 Posts: 6534 Location: The Internets
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 4:06 pm Post subject:
There is a lot of misinformation on the internet about this kind of stuff. The best thing to do is talk it over with your doctor. They've been trained for this, and they will give you the best information to make an informed decision.
I'm going to go dig up and post some information on this, because this is a really serious topic and there's an antivaccine cabal causing serious damage. "Serious" meaning there is now a body count. The antivaccine people are 100% full of crap.
I'll come back to this, but some blogs (written by some docs who know what the f___ they're talking about, which includes not putting ideology ahead of facts) where you can do some reading are as follows:
Do a topic search for vaccines on any of those sites, and you should come up with a lot of good info -- including a lot of good info on exactly why the antivaccine arguments are total crap.
One more word on the topic -- why it's important to the rest of us that you get your kids vaccinated. Vaccines essentially work in two ways: 1) Direct immunity -- the vaccine stimulates an immuno response in your system which gives you an immunity to the disease. This isn't 100%, but it's a pretty high percentage. 2) Herd immunity -- if enough people are vaccinated, then there's not enough people to infect so the disease gets a toehold.
Herd immunity prevents outbreaks, and also protects those for whom the vaccine is contra-indicated. Depending on the disease, the threshold for herd immunity is around 85% - 95%. So for a disease with a herd immunity threshold of 90%, then if 90% of the population is vaccinated, the disease can't spread because it won't find enough bodies to infect.
There are pockets of antivaccine hysteria, and in those areas, we are already seeing outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases, because the percentage of the population that is vaccinated has dropped below the herd immunity threshold. There is a mortality rate to these diseases. People are dying from it. Kids are dying from this stupid-assed hysteria.
I'll say it again -- kids are dying. Today. In the 21st Century. From vaccine preventable diseases. All because of a stupid-assed hysteria.
I would most definitely ask your doctor, but I'd go with vaccination, not only to prevent your daughter from catching it, but to prevent the spread of it. The risk of feeling the side effects are very slim and your doctor would make the right decision because they're more educated than the internet lurkers.
Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 29999 Location: Likely nowhere near you
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 5:11 pm Post subject:
Most, if not all, conspiracies are nothing more than some fool starting a rumor based on nothing and people running with it.
That is what you are basing your children's health and lives with. _________________ Courage doesn't always roar.
Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying...'I will try again tomorrow.'
What about the swine flu vaccine? I'm on the fence on this one. Who to believe? It's very risky not to vaccinate your children, but could there be some truth to the anti-vaccinaters claims?
Here's a court ruling stating that the vaccines don't have any connection to Autism...
A growing number of scientists and researchers believe that a relationship between the increase in neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and speech or language delay, and the increased use of thimerosal in vaccines is plausible and deserves more scrutiny. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine determined that such a relationship is biologically plausible, but that not enough evidence exists to support or reject this hypothesis. Recent studies have confirmed the association between the use of thimerosal and autism has moved from "biologically plausible" to a "biological certainty" (Boyd Haley). Recent work by Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and Experimental Biology and Medicine have shown strong epidemiological evidence for a causal relationship between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders in children.
The FDA acted too slowly to remove ethylmercury from over-the-counter products like topical ointments and skin creams. Although an advisory committee determined that ethylmercury was unsafe in these products in 1980, a rule requiring its removal was not finalized until 1998.
The FDA and the CDC failed in their duty to be vigilant as new vaccines containing thimerosal were approved and added to the immunization schedule. When the Hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenzae Type b vaccines were added to the recommended schedule of childhood immunizations, the cumulative amount of ethylmercury to which children were exposed nearly tripled.
This is a very serious topic. Please keep it serious with the responses. I hope there is no harm in the vaccines because not taking them creates a higher risk of illnesses, as Larry & DaMules pointed out. I would like a peace of mind to know that there is absolutely no danger in taking them.
Now, that might seem like a tautology. But it’s not, not really. It’s actually relevant because the antivax movement must change its story (what we skeptics call "moving the goalposts") every time they are conclusively proven wrong. That happens a lot. When it’s pointed out that mercury doesn’t cause autism (removing it from vaccines did not lower the autism diagnosis incidence rate), they say vaccines contain squalene, or fetal tissue, or ghosts, or the Loch Ness monster.
Of course, when it’s shown that autism rates have nothing to do with vaccination, they ignore it, or spin it, or lie about it.
Read some of the links Larry posted. This is a serious issue and people like Jenny McCarthy literally have blood on their hands. They're looking for any reason at all to explain autism. The real reason we've seen a rise in autism cases is better diagnosis, the same as ADHD.
Joined: 24 Dec 2007 Posts: 35750 Location: Santa Clarita, CA (Hell) ->>>>>Ithaca, NY -≥≥≥≥≥Berkeley, CA
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 6:16 pm Post subject:
There was some kid on this website who kept trying to convince me that vaccines and fluorinated water would make you dumb and were a conspiracy from the government.
I've seen lots of compelling arguments for frivolous stuff on the internet. My advice is to just stay away from anything that seems patently absurd. They can't give vaccines if they're poisonous. _________________ Damian Lillard shatters Dwight Coward's championship dreams:
Thanks for the all the feedback. I will probably vaccinate since I think the measles vaccine is mandatory before they can get into preschool. But I'm just nervous about only cause it's a live vaccine and some kids have seizures a couple weeks of getting it. But hopefully my kids won't experience any side effects.
Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 29999 Location: Likely nowhere near you
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 7:33 pm Post subject:
Soybeans make you gay... _________________ Courage doesn't always roar.
Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying...'I will try again tomorrow.'
Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 52624 Location: Making a safety stop at 15 feet.
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 8:11 pm Post subject:
GoldenChild wrote:
Thanks for the all the feedback. I will probably vaccinate since I think the measles vaccine is mandatory before they can get into preschool. But I'm just nervous about only cause it's a live vaccine and some kids have seizures a couple weeks of getting it. But hopefully my kids won't experience any side effects.
The side effects are nowhere near as numerous as people would like you to believe. _________________ You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show
goes up in flames
In 24 frames
Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 52624 Location: Making a safety stop at 15 feet.
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 8:13 pm Post subject:
encina1 wrote:
Soybeans make you gay...
I wonder how many soy beans went into the making of West Hollywood. _________________ You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show
goes up in flames
In 24 frames
I'm going to go dig up and post some information on this, because this is a really serious topic and there's an antivaccine cabal causing serious damage. "Serious" meaning there is now a body count. The antivaccine people are 100% full of crap.
I'll come back to this, but some blogs (written by some docs who know what the f___ they're talking about, which includes not putting ideology ahead of facts) where you can do some reading are as follows:
Do a topic search for vaccines on any of those sites, and you should come up with a lot of good info -- including a lot of good info on exactly why the antivaccine arguments are total crap.
One more word on the topic -- why it's important to the rest of us that you get your kids vaccinated. Vaccines essentially work in two ways: 1) Direct immunity -- the vaccine stimulates an immuno response in your system which gives you an immunity to the disease. This isn't 100%, but it's a pretty high percentage. 2) Herd immunity -- if enough people are vaccinated, then there's not enough people to infect so the disease gets a toehold.
Herd immunity prevents outbreaks, and also protects those for whom the vaccine is contra-indicated. Depending on the disease, the threshold for herd immunity is around 85% - 95%. So for a disease with a herd immunity threshold of 90%, then if 90% of the population is vaccinated, the disease can't spread because it won't find enough bodies to infect.
There are pockets of antivaccine hysteria, and in those areas, we are already seeing outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases, because the percentage of the population that is vaccinated has dropped below the herd immunity threshold. There is a mortality rate to these diseases. People are dying from it. Kids are dying from this stupid-assed hysteria.
I'll say it again -- kids are dying. Today. In the 21st Century. From vaccine preventable diseases. All because of a stupid-assed hysteria.
To summarize: DO IT MITCH! (vaccinations that is) _________________ Lakers Gonna Lake
PMP, I provided some references to sites where you could have looked most of this up, but I'll also give some specific ones here.
Perfect Makes Practice wrote:
What about the swine flu vaccine? I'm on the fence on this one. Who to believe? It's very risky not to vaccinate your children, but could there be some truth to the anti-vaccinaters claims?
Here's a good article on the swine flu vaccine and Guillain-Barré Syndrome:
A growing number of scientists and researchers believe that a relationship between the increase in neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and speech or language delay, and the increased use of thimerosal in vaccines is plausible and deserves more scrutiny. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine determined that such a relationship is biologically plausible, but that not enough evidence exists to support or reject this hypothesis. Recent studies have confirmed the association between the use of thimerosal and autism has moved from "biologically plausible" to a "biological certainty" (Boyd Haley). Recent work by Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and Experimental Biology and Medicine have shown strong epidemiological evidence for a causal relationship between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders in children.
This is wrong on so many levels. First, here's something on the Geiers:
Second, the thimerosal issue has been studied repeatedly, and it has been repeatedly demonstrated that there is no link between thimerosal and autism. Is mercury a neurotoxin? Yes -- but toxicity is all about dosage, and the mercury in vaccines is far, far, far below toxic levels. Again, it was looked at, thoroughly and repeatedly, and a link isn't there. Here's a good article discussing the issue of mercury toxicity:
Third, thimerosal hasn't even been in the vaccines for about six years. Steve Novella (the author of many of the blog posts to which I link) once interviewed David Kirby (the author of Evidence of Harm) and asked him what it would take to convince him he was wrong. He said it would take thimerosal being removed from the vaccines and then autism rates NOT going down. Well guess what -- that's exactly what happened. Thimerosal was removed, and it had no effect on autism rates. This was expected -- other countries, such as Japan, never did use thimerosal, and have similar autism rates.
So the article you quoted is either woefully out of date or woefully uninformed.
Quote:
The FDA acted too slowly to remove ethylmercury from over-the-counter products like topical ointments and skin creams. Although an advisory committee determined that ethylmercury was unsafe in these products in 1980, a rule requiring its removal was not finalized until 1998.
Again, we can't talk about toxicity without dosage. Hell, even oxygen is toxic at certain levels. What dosage were people getting in these topical ointments and skin creams?
(If you want to object by talking about the cumulative effect of ethylmercury over time, go back to the article I linked to above on mercury toxicity.)
Quote:
The FDA and the CDC failed in their duty to be vigilant as new vaccines containing thimerosal were approved and added to the immunization schedule. When the Hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenzae Type b vaccines were added to the recommended schedule of childhood immunizations, the cumulative amount of ethylmercury to which children were exposed nearly tripled.
This just repeats the same stuff. Unfortunately, there's just no basis for these claims.
Quote:
This is a very serious topic. Please keep it serious with the responses. I hope there is no harm in the vaccines because not taking them creates a higher risk of illnesses, as Larry & DaMules pointed out. I would like a peace of mind to know that there is absolutely no danger in taking them.
Sorry, but you're not going to get it. You can't say there's absolutely no danger in taking them. There IS a danger. There is a danger with ANYTHING in medicine.
But again, you can't discuss just one side of the coin in a vacuum. Medicine is all about risk vs. reward. To assess the benefit of a treatment, you have to weigh both. Let's take surgery -- there's always a risk of death in surgery, from the anesthesia and from the procedure itself. So should we not do surgery? Of course not -- when you weigh the risk vs. reward, the reward far outweighs the risks and the equation comes out on the side of having the surgery.
Similarly, there are many low-risk treatments that are pretty solidly in the realm of pseudoscience, where there therefore isn't a potential for reward. So little risk, but even less chance for reward, so the treatment isn't justified.
In the case of vaccines, the risk vs. reward is incredibly high. Phenomenally high. Are vaccines absolutely, 100%, air-tight solid, safe for everyone? No. There are some for whom the vaccine is contra-indicated, and on the order of one in a million are harmed from them due to fluke circumstances. But the one in a million risk is far outweighed by the benefits they provide.
And what's definitely NOT helping matters is when anti-vaccine hysteria blows the risk out of proportion by making claims that simply aren't true.
I'm going to go dig up and post some information on this, because this is a really serious topic and there's an antivaccine cabal causing serious damage. "Serious" meaning there is now a body count. The antivaccine people are 100% full of crap.
I deal with the same thing, people not wanting to vaccinate their dogs.
There's a reason the few documented cases of human with rabies in CA are all from people coming in with it from other countries, they don't mandate vaccinations, we do. _________________ Forget carbon, reduce your government footprint
Joined: 03 Feb 2003 Posts: 4260 Location: Western Conference
Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 8:17 am Post subject:
lakersfreak wrote:
LarryCoon wrote:
I'm going to go dig up and post some information on this, because this is a really serious topic and there's an antivaccine cabal causing serious damage. "Serious" meaning there is now a body count. The antivaccine people are 100% full of crap.
I deal with the same thing, people not wanting to vaccinate their dogs.
There's a reason the few documented cases of human with rabies in CA are all from people coming in with it from other countries, they don't mandate vaccinations, we do.
\
The thing that gets me are the people that don't spay and neuter their dogs.
But on the vaccination question I agree with most that has been posted here ,except, I think that the fact that all these pathogens are put into one vaccine is ridiculous.
This vaccine is usually given at 1 year old. Injecting that much virus at a time into a small child at one time doesn't make sense. If there is a reaction how do you know which pathogen caused it.
PMP, I provided some references to sites where you could have looked most of this up, but I'll also give some specific ones here.
Perfect Makes Practice wrote:
What about the swine flu vaccine? I'm on the fence on this one. Who to believe? It's very risky not to vaccinate your children, but could there be some truth to the anti-vaccinaters claims?
Here's a good article on the swine flu vaccine and Guillain-Barré Syndrome:
A growing number of scientists and researchers believe that a relationship between the increase in neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and speech or language delay, and the increased use of thimerosal in vaccines is plausible and deserves more scrutiny. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine determined that such a relationship is biologically plausible, but that not enough evidence exists to support or reject this hypothesis. Recent studies have confirmed the association between the use of thimerosal and autism has moved from "biologically plausible" to a "biological certainty" (Boyd Haley). Recent work by Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and Experimental Biology and Medicine have shown strong epidemiological evidence for a causal relationship between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders in children.
This is wrong on so many levels. First, here's something on the Geiers:
Second, the thimerosal issue has been studied repeatedly, and it has been repeatedly demonstrated that there is no link between thimerosal and autism. Is mercury a neurotoxin? Yes -- but toxicity is all about dosage, and the mercury in vaccines is far, far, far below toxic levels. Again, it was looked at, thoroughly and repeatedly, and a link isn't there. Here's a good article discussing the issue of mercury toxicity:
Third, thimerosal hasn't even been in the vaccines for about six years. Steve Novella (the author of many of the blog posts to which I link) once interviewed David Kirby (the author of Evidence of Harm) and asked him what it would take to convince him he was wrong. He said it would take thimerosal being removed from the vaccines and then autism rates NOT going down. Well guess what -- that's exactly what happened. Thimerosal was removed, and it had no effect on autism rates. This was expected -- other countries, such as Japan, never did use thimerosal, and have similar autism rates.
So the article you quoted is either woefully out of date or woefully uninformed.
Quote:
The FDA acted too slowly to remove ethylmercury from over-the-counter products like topical ointments and skin creams. Although an advisory committee determined that ethylmercury was unsafe in these products in 1980, a rule requiring its removal was not finalized until 1998.
Again, we can't talk about toxicity without dosage. Hell, even oxygen is toxic at certain levels. What dosage were people getting in these topical ointments and skin creams?
(If you want to object by talking about the cumulative effect of ethylmercury over time, go back to the article I linked to above on mercury toxicity.)
Quote:
The FDA and the CDC failed in their duty to be vigilant as new vaccines containing thimerosal were approved and added to the immunization schedule. When the Hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenzae Type b vaccines were added to the recommended schedule of childhood immunizations, the cumulative amount of ethylmercury to which children were exposed nearly tripled.
This just repeats the same stuff. Unfortunately, there's just no basis for these claims.
Quote:
This is a very serious topic. Please keep it serious with the responses. I hope there is no harm in the vaccines because not taking them creates a higher risk of illnesses, as Larry & DaMules pointed out. I would like a peace of mind to know that there is absolutely no danger in taking them.
Sorry, but you're not going to get it. You can't say there's absolutely no danger in taking them. There IS a danger. There is a danger with ANYTHING in medicine.
But again, you can't discuss just one side of the coin in a vacuum. Medicine is all about risk vs. reward. To assess the benefit of a treatment, you have to weigh both. Let's take surgery -- there's always a risk of death in surgery, from the anesthesia and from the procedure itself. So should we not do surgery? Of course not -- when you weigh the risk vs. reward, the reward far outweighs the risks and the equation comes out on the side of having the surgery.
Similarly, there are many low-risk treatments that are pretty solidly in the realm of pseudoscience, where there therefore isn't a potential for reward. So little risk, but even less chance for reward, so the treatment isn't justified.
In the case of vaccines, the risk vs. reward is incredibly high. Phenomenally high. Are vaccines absolutely, 100%, air-tight solid, safe for everyone? No. There are some for whom the vaccine is contra-indicated, and on the order of one in a million are harmed from them due to fluke circumstances. But the one in a million risk is far outweighed by the benefits they provide.
And what's definitely NOT helping matters is when anti-vaccine hysteria blows the risk out of proportion by making claims that simply aren't true.
Thanks for the info.
Hopefully I'll have some free time tonight and check out all the links you posted.
And yes, I would be interested in the hearings if you want to provide some more information.
But on the vaccination question I agree with most that has been posted here ,except, I think that the fact that all these pathogens are put into one vaccine is ridiculous.
This vaccine is usually given at 1 year old. Injecting that much virus at a time into a small child at one time doesn't make sense. If there is a reaction how do you know which pathogen caused it.
In terms of viral load, it's literally a drop in the bucket. Some of the antivaxers' arguments have goalpost-shifted to a vague "too much, too soon," but when you actually look at the load in comparison to what everyone is exposed to every day, it's nothing.
The counterpoint to your one-year-old point is to ask: how long do you want to wait, and what will the toll of doing so be in terms of vaccine preventable illness and death?
I don't know the specific answer to your lsat question, but I'm pretty sure they're able to isolate that.
And yes, I would be interested in the hearings if you want to provide some more information.
The basic idea is that as we discussed above, vaccines are not 100% effective (there is still a small possibility of contracting the disease even after being vaccinated, but the ancillary benefit of herd immunity makes even that small likelihood much smaller), and there's a small percentage of individuals who have adverse reactions (one example is that there are people with undiagnosed mitochondrial disorders who shouldn't take the vaccine, but the adverse reaction to the vaccine is often the first sign that something was wrong).
This goes back to the risk vs. reward thing in medicine. It's like seat belts -- they've saved countless lives, yet there are few cases where a seat belt prevented escaping from a car and the person died as a result. But looking at both sides of the coin, you have to conclude that seat belts are enormously effective overall. Likewise vaccines have been phenomenally effective in saving lives, which justifies the one in a million (whatever the precise number) for whom the opposite is true.
Of course, that does little to console the families of those one in a million. Since vaccines are pretty much mandated from a public benefit standpoint, the government also set up a fund to compensate those whom vaccines have injured. The typical course of events is that a kid gets a vaccine and has a serious adverse reaction, his family applies for compensation from the fund, and a hearing or review is convened to substantiate that the vaccine was likely the cause, after which the family is awarded compensation.
This process was tested when some 5,000 families applied for compensation, saying their child's autism was caused by vaccines. In order to avoid 5,000 individual hearings (which would all be substantially similar), they split them into three groups -- I believe they were those claiming that: 1) Thimerosal caused the autism; 2) The vaccine caused the autism; 3) It was a combination of thimerosal and vaccine. They then found what were considered the "best" case in each group, to serve as a test case for the remaining claimants in that group.
One claim (a child by the name of Hannah Poling) was an outlier -- she didn't actually have autism, but a mitochondrial disorder that resulted in some of the same symptoms. Hers was more of a clear-cut case, and her case was settled (with her family receiving compensation) before the three test hearings.
Note that some of the antivaxers (including Poling's father) tried to use this to claim victory -- saying that by settling, the government was admitting that vaccines cause autism, even though it meant nothing of the sort. For an excellent read on the topic, here is Steve Novella's response to David Kirby and Poling's father, with further links to background info:
Anyway, the remaining cases were split into the three groups, the best cases were chosen, and three independent hearings were conducted. After weighing all the evidence (note that these hearings are set up to err on the side of the claimants), all three independently came to the conclusion that the science does not support any link between vaccines and autism, whether with thimerosal or without. As usual, Steve Novella summarizes it very well:
Anyway....final comment: The reason I wrote "not exactly" in response to what you wrote is because it sounded to me like you were saying that a court determined that vaccines don't cause autism (this may not be what you actually meant, in which case you can safely ignore this comment). My issue was in the distinction between what science does and what the courts do. Science does the leg work and arrives at a consensus. The courts didn't determine anything, but merely ruled that the claims are not backed up by the science. It's that distinction between the roles of science and the courts that didn't come across in what you wrote.
Joined: 23 Jul 2004 Posts: 12898 Location: Los Angeles
Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:30 am Post subject:
This is an unintended consequence to erradicating epidemics and common childhood diseases - people forget. My mother's a baby boomer. My father was born during the Depression. They REMEMBER things like Polio and Measles and all kinds of other diseases that when contracted, would actually KILL children or leave them permenantly disabled.
Are there inherent risks?? Absolutely. But these vaccines save lives.
Now Autism is frightening. 1 in 150 is an epidemic. And while people think they know what's causing it, the truth is, no one has any idea.
But we know what happens if children aren't vaccinated. _________________ So glad we gave you your flowers while you were here, Kobe.
All times are GMT - 8 Hours Goto page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7Next
Page 1 of 7
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum