It’s ironic, isn’t it, that people including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have donated so much money to helping children in countries too poor to extend childhood vaccination programmes to all their children whilst here in the UK there are air-headed people who put their own and other children at risk by denying them access to a vaccination program that is made available FREE TO ALL in the UK by our NHS. It really makes my blood boil, actually.
These people say that they prefer their children to build up their immunity and disease-resistance naturally. But surely vaccinating your child is designed to give immunity straightaway, thus taking the guesswork out of it. Your child doesn’t have to go through the disease. What’s not to like? Idiotic people like this often tell us that Measles is not serious. But Measles isn’t silly or trivial. It is nasty and can cause deaths. Here is a table showing the number or deaths from measles and if you look at the link here you can see that measles in pregnancy can cause miscarriage, premature labour or a baby with low birthweight. Why on earth would you want you child to suffer this nasty disease and possibly its serious complications if you could avoid it with just a jab and a booster a couple of years later?
This is the only country in the world where there has been a link, subsequently proven to be spurious, between the MMR and Autism. Does that not strike people as odd? When my Boywonder was due to have his first MMR jab at the beginning of the Autism/MMR scares, I was, naturally, anxious. But I always looked on it in this way: if my child had a mild case of Rubella, perhaps a slight temperature and a little rash, and came into contact with a woman in the early stages of pregnancy who had not yet announced it to the world, and her unborn child was deformed or even miscarried through normal, everyday contact with my highly contagious child, then that would be MY fault and MY responsibility. And I couldn’t bear that thought. For, to a certain extent, when we become parents we become parents of all children. For more information on Rubella and Congenital Rubella Syndrome click here. Not vaccinating your children is so irresponsible towards society as a whole and it relies on everyone else to make sure their children are vaccinated. How selfish is that?
Darling Daughter, who is about to enter Year 8 at school, will shortly be offered a vaccination against the HPV to protect her against cervical cancer. I know of people who have objected to their daughters receiving this vaccination presumably because they don’t like the thought of their precious little girl having sex. How stupid and irresponsible! What an abdication of parental responsibility to deny your daughter protection against a disease that still kills 1,000 women in the UK every year. Ugh.
Now, in France children can be vaccinated against Chicken Pox. It’s not a a serious disease of children but people vaccinate simply because they just don’t want their children to have to go through all that unpleasantness. And who can blame them? My Boywonder had Chicken Pox, at exactly the wrong time of course, when he was nine years old. He had it really badly and still has visible scarring from it seven years later.
If people want to believe in homeopathic or other hokum for their own treatment, well, that’s their right I suppose, as long as it doesn’t harm other people. But not vaccinating their children because of their own half-witted neuroses risks both their own children and everybody else’s and calls into question their judgement on other important matters too.
I find this blog post lacking and very uninformed. I also find it VERY insulting. How could I not, with words like” half-witted neuroses” – oh my God!
I have much I could say, but little time, so for now I point you in the direction of this:
http://www.cease-therapy.com/
and this:
http://alexautismoysurecuperacion.wordpress.com/
I also hate things. I hate the way the struck off Doc and the MMR link is the ONLY thing people say when discussing vaccinations. There are many many many other issues at stake. Much you could read.
Oh and if you REALLY want to talk about MMR, and the Doc, maybe you should read up on the fact that he actually won his case:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/9128147/MMR-doctor-wins-battle-against-being-struck-off.html
Bye for now,
Liska
I’m approving this comment on my blog for balance but I don’t agree.
You predictably fail to address the main part of this post, which is about public responsibility. I take it that you are also going to rely on everyone else to vaccinate their own children to keep yours safe. Do us all a favour: if your child comes down with a childhood infectious disease like Rubella or Measles, please keep it away from expectant mothers or women who could be pregnant.
Oh, and by the way, if you actually bothered to read the Telegraph article to which you have linked, you would see that Dr Wakefield’s striking off was not actually challenged in this case.
Similarly, if you bothered (to use your disrespectful word) to read my comment you will see that I never said “Dr Wakefield” and in fact neither did you. I just tackled your use of the word “spurious” by pointing you to the Telegraph article that shows what can be achieved, when the rulings are challenged and when the other Doctor had OVERWHELMING support from parents he worked with, who felt as passionate about the subject as he did.
Actually, because you have made me cross now, @Liska, if you actually bothered to read my blog post, to which you are so strongly objecting, you will see that MMR and autism are anything but the only issues with which it deals. Just to spell it out for you once again: it is rather more about the effect of some people’s arrogant, anti-rational behaviour on people in wider society.
Also your links before the Telegraph one that totally negates the point you have made, both link to a homeopathy practising organisation and are not objective unlike my official statistics. I suggest you read Ben Goldacre’s articles about homeopathy in his book Bad Science to see how wholly laughable the science behind it actually is. As far as I can see, and I do not claim to be any more of a scientist than you, any effectiveness of homeopathic medicine relies totally on the placebo effect which might well be very strong in some individuals. If this is the case, then fine, it is your choice to use it for yourself but I would say that it is totally unethical to subject another dependent human being or pet to it.
I trust that if, heaven forbid, you or one of your children ever needed say, a kidney transplant or treatment for an asthma attack, you would go to a conventional hospital. I know I would.
I know this is old (being from 2005)
http://www.naturalnews.com/011764_thimerosal_mercury.html
but it shows that the UK is far from alone in its thinking, despite your “This is the only country in the world” comment.
It also shows that people’s opinion is always ahead of the rectification that happens afterwards, i.e. as a result of harmful effects, “thimerosal” is now banned in many countries, and mercury free versions of vaccines are now available. Sad that the damage to young ones has to happen before changes are made – does that make you stop and think? Also read this, from the link above:
“Dr. Hilleman told executives that six-month-old children receiving regular immunizations frequently received mercury doses 87 times higher than guidelines for the maximum consumption of mercury. Given today’s more prudent mercury standards, those thimerosal doses would be 400 times that of safe levels. Dr. Hilleman recommended in the memo that thimerosal be discontinued”.
The last 70 years has been an ongoing experiment, with changes and adaptions being made each time the public jumps up and down about ill effects….
If you have time to read every word on the above attached link, it may make you realise there is a bit more to all of this?
Pay particular attention to the 3 year cap on legal claims, which meant people who experienced ill effects after 6 years didn’t have a leg to stand on, and also read the fact that America basically protected the manufacturers from legal claims, which means less occur, which means there is less precedent or knowledge in the public arena
Right just in order to address these further comments:
1) I didn’t notice, from your linked Telegraph article which I did bother to read in full, parents rushing to provide support to Dr Wakefield who produced the MMR report. This article concerned another doctor.
2) It is you who has extracted the MMR part from my post and run with it. This was only a small part of the original blog post. As you well know the comment about the UK being the only country in the world relates to the MMR and Autism and is irrelevant to your comment about mercury.
3) The links you provided in your first reply, from an organisation providing homeopathy training cannot be compared with objective official figures. They are advertising their course to you.
4) I have stopped and thought a lot about damage to children which is why I wrote my original post and replied to your comments. I wonder why you are choosing to ignore this.You have still failed to address the points in my blog post or subsequent reply to you. Did you not understand them?
I feel now that I have given you more than enough space on my blog in which to express your views irrelevant to the thoughts expressed in my post. I shall not, therefore, be approving any more or your responses. Let us draw a line under it here.
Wow. In your this blog post you make completely rational points, all of which I agree with. The post is extremely informative and a few parts of it remind me of Agatha Christie’s novel, The Mirror Crack’d.