un-vaccinated children

[Lost-in-the-Day]

and id like to add the homeopathy should also be made illegal as people have actually died from refusing to go to a real doctor and instead only taking homeopathic treatment.

Again it is the choice of the individual though. If someone doesn't want to go to the doctor, regardless of whether they are using homeopathy or just refusing treatment full stop, then they have the right to do so.

[Lost-in-the-Day]

2)I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that everybody should be forced to do something'for the good of the herd'.
3)There certainly are large sums of money involved,and recent and past history show the pharmaceutical industry are themselves hardly paragons of virtue in this respect.
4)The govt\red top inspired vilification of parents who are audacious enough to question the percieved wisdom with terms such as 'stupidity' and' irresponsibility', smacks of Maoist China.

I agree with this, it gives me the uncomfortable feeling that our decisions are being made for us because we can't be expected to make the right choices on our own.

[demi]

2)I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that everybody should be forced to do something'for the good of the herd'.
3)There certainly are large sums of money involved,and recent and past history show the pharmaceutical industry are themselves hardly paragons of virtue in this respect.
4)The govt\red top inspired vilification of parents who are audacious enough to question the percieved wisdom with terms such as 'stupidity' and' irresponsibility', smacks of Maoist China.

I agree with this, it gives me the uncomfortable feeling that our decisions are being made for us because we can't be expected to make the right choices on our own.

evidently some people cant

[demi]

and id like to add the homeopathy should also be made illegal as people have actually died from refusing to go to a real doctor and instead only taking homeopathic treatment.

Again it is the choice of the individual though. If someone doesn't want to go to the doctor, regardless of whether they are using homeopathy or just refusing treatment full stop, then they have the right to do so.

your right, if some idiot doesnt want to go to a real doctor they deserve to die from their illness thus preventing passing on their idiotic genes to future generations.

[DwarfMatt]

If someone only harms themself then it is their problem, if they harm their child then society should care. Some people think it is still ok to beat their children as a form of discipline, but you're not allowed to make that decision for yourself anymore the government has made it for you in order to protect those who can't protect themselves. This is why we have driving tests and drink drive limits, because we don't all live on an island of one. We live in a society where if somebody doesn't 'govern' what is and is not allowed then more people will drive drunk and without licenses and kill innocent people who have no say in the matter.

[Lost-in-the-Day]

for a start, homeopathy is not an extention of a healthy diet and excersise. fruit and veg contain essential vitamins and mineralls needed by our bodies to be healthy. homeopathic pills contain nothing but a water droplet on a sugar pill, somthing that has no physical benifits whatsoever on your body. it only works as well as a placibo in that if you believe it will make you better then theres a small chance you might feel better for a while. usually though you would have just gotten better on your own anyway, but your brain is wrongly connecting getting better with taking the homeopathic remady.

'Post hoc ergo propter hoc' which is latin for ' after this therefor because of this' where you assume B happened because of A, purly because B came after A, when in fact they are unrealated.

My apologises, as you and my other half have pointed out I was confusing homeopathy with natural remedies.

[oldjerry]

If someone only harms themself then it is their problem, if they harm their child then society should care. Some people think it is still ok to beat their children as a form of discipline, but you're not allowed to make that decision for yourself anymore the government has made it for you in order to protect those who can't protect themselves. This is why we have driving tests and drink drive limits, because we don't all live on an island of one. We live in a society where if somebody doesn't 'govern' what is and is not allowed then more people will drive drunk and without licenses and kill innocent people who have no say in the matter.

So what would you say constitutes harming your children? Clearly your'e not an advocate of corporal punishment,what else would you have my children taken into care for? Not eating their 5 a day? Watching the X factor? or maybe..... .....
not watching the X factor?


But then here am I ,Stupid...Irresponsible(yet fairly literate) and on an island of one!..Oh and I deserve to die!.....

[DwarfMatt]

So what would you say constitutes harming your children? Clearly your'e not an advocate of corporal punishment,what else would you have my children taken into care for? Not eating their 5 a day? Watching the X factor? or maybe..... .....
not watching the X factor?


But then here am I ,Stupid...Irresponsible(yet fairly literate) and on an island of one!..Oh and I deserve to die!.....

What I think is right for your children or not is not relevant, I don't get to make the decision. Society decides as a whole through democratic process so that everyone gets an input. If the majority thought corporal punishment was of value then they would vote in a government who agreed and it would be allowed in home and in school. If the majority think that it is tantamount to abuse to not have your children vaccinated then again our process would see those who didn't punished and their children put into 'safety'. The tyranical rule of the majority is what you sign up for by choosing to live in a country with our style of democratic system.

[oldjerry]

Yeah,OK.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I think you will find that the parents who refuse vaccination have probably done more research and thought it through more than parents who would be ready to give whatever to their child if there was a minute risk.

I confess that this has not been my experience. Very often these parents have just been taken in by some psuedo-scientific faddish claptrap. They generally have no interest in listening to actual experts but will hang on the words of whatever Rasputin character happens to be flavour of the month. I'm not quite sure what that says about the human condition.

I've had first hand experince of the effects of a measles outbreak in a immune-supressed, malnourished community and I must say the results are not pretty. I'll admit that the idea of vaccinating against chicken pox does strike me as excessive (Dunc's experience notwithstanding), but for the most part, vaccinating against avoidable illness strikes me as a good idea. For a start, it's a sight cheaper than treating an epidemic, even when the profits of Big Pharma Inc are taken into account.

I accept that we all have to die of something; I don't see why the experience has to be avoidably unpleasant.

[Green Aura]

They generally have no interest in listening to actual experts

And therein lies the problem - which expert do you listen to? An "expert" regularly gets wheeled out for any argument and they can't possibly all be right. The general public don't have the scientific training or critical analysis skills to decide who is more believable.

Much scientific research is limited by time/politics/financial constraints or just plain who's paying for it.

My daughter had all her vaccines, despite developing asthma within days of her very first injection. Related? Who's to know - the medical and pharmaceutical industries will never tell us.

I'm not sure I would make the same decision again.

[oldjerry]

Surely there's more to this than just is a vaccine safe,not safe? I think without doubt that overwhelmingly they will be safe,cos in the end they couldn't afford the lawsuits.For me it comes down to this,when all the really serious stuff Smallpox etc has been dealt with Rhone Poulenc etc will be vaccinating you against stuff which is less and less serious,and it stands to reason they're not going to underplay the seriousness of the target disease.
Far more importantly why would anyone else care for my children more than I do? I dont wish any other child ill,but barring my own negligence, their welfare is not my overwhelming concern.If I thought the Herd mentality wasn't reinforced by so many vested interests maybe i'd be more willing to 'run with the pack',but the monstering received by anyone who dares to speak up against what in reality is just an extension of the Health and Safety idiocy suggests to me that those suggesting the counter arguement aren't that sure of themselves.

[julie_lanteri]

I totally agree with you oldjerry, at the top you have the important life threatening vaccination that have been going for a while and as you go down you get the lattest trends. It's not just vaccinations, do you really need medications for everything? A basic cold will go in a few days. tablets this and that? really? Give your body a chance.
To me, there's a massive difference between getting vaccinated against a life treatening disease and a benign disease that could, in some rare cases only, be fatal. Vaccines are not risk free or totally efficient for that matter.
rubella: very risky for pregnant women. Should it not be your responsibilty as a woman planning to conceive to get your immunity tested and then get vaccinated if needs be? I thought it was, so that's what I tried to do, knowing I hadn't been vaccinated as a child. I had to see 2 GP and fight for the blood test, although I work with primary school children! "In this country, we test when you are pregnant". Bloody fantastic when you know you can't get vaccinated while pregnant as it's too risky! To top it all off, I was offered the MMR vaccine (that's 2injections with chances of fever, rash ect). I was shocked to be told by a professional that it was the same as only the rubella vaccine, simply because the NHS doesn't have the separate injections anymore... A complete joke! I got a prescription in France for the rubella vaccine, 1 injection, no side effect: done! (btw, I had M&M as a child so I'm immune already and didn't need the MMR)
as for the others during pregnancy, some people say that chemicals in cleaning products can cause miscarriages... any infection potentially could or not harm the foetus. still not a reason to swallow every pills and get injected god knows what! sometimes Nature does what's best...
mumps: I went to stay with my grandparents for a few days, didn't even pass it on to my younger sisters and dad was safe too! same as rubella, if it's only a serious risk for males past puberty, they should be the ones getting vaccinated then (if needs be).

So many of us here swear by eating natural, homegrown, handcooked and all yet some are prepared to inject whatever the new thing is. We don't really know what goes in it, what we know is they will undergo several changes to refine them and limit side effects as developpers find out what these are... You think it's being irresponsible, I say I will not use my kids as guinea pigs for pharma companies. When they've had 10/15 years to refine the vaccine, then I'll reconsider. Until then, I'll stick to the compulsory vaccines that have been researched thoroughly and with long-ish term evidence...
to send back your question: How would you feel if your teenage daughter couldn't have children because of a 1st generation cervical cancer vaccine? I'd rather explain to my hypothetical daughter that cervical cancer is in almost all cases caused by a STI and that therefore protected sex would prevent her from catching HPV in the first place.

but hey, I can't believe I'm already an irresponsible parent, before even having children! Better keep my fingers crossed that I can BF otherwise I'll be doubly irresponsible and selfish!

[Susie]

OK, I've got the hat trick:

Not only was I not breastfed,
I also wasn't vaccinated - my mother was a refusenik,
And our family doctor (NHS) when I was a child was homeopathic. So my mumps, measles, chickenpox and whooping cough were treated with, if I remember correctly, belladonna.

I won't say, but I turned out great! Because that's obviously a bit subjective ;-).

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Surely there's more to this than just is a vaccine safe,not safe? I think without doubt that overwhelmingly they will be safe,cos in the end they couldn't afford the lawsuits.For me it comes down to this,when all the really serious stuff Smallpox etc has been dealt with Rhone Poulenc etc will be vaccinating you against stuff which is less and less serious,and it stands to reason they're not going to underplay the seriousness of the target disease.

Absolutely - I'd suggest that a vaccine also needs to be useful. Plenty of stuff that you don't see vaccines for these days, not in Europe anyways: chloera and typhoid for example. Not much demand for them at the moment. I wouldn't vaccinate my girls against chickenpox, even had they not had it, because I don't believe it to be useful. On the other hand, when they fall due for the HPV vaccine, they will be having it: the risk is negligible compared to the be potential benefits.