# MMR vaccine



## snacker (Jun 26, 2008)

Wondering how many of you chose to postpone or skip having your kids vaccinated with the MMR vaccine.


----------



## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

none of the studies were conclusive on it. and no vaccine no school. there is a stronger relationship to the use of folic acid and the incidence of ADD/ADHD and Autism and Turrets Syndrome (all three are related) and it is very well known that folic acid does cause brain cell growth.

Folic acid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think in time it will come to light that too much folic acid (1mg is a lot more than the required .4mg in our western diet that contains a lot of this compound to begin with) also causes birth defects and we see them as the ugly sisters three mentioned above.


----------



## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

I'd like to know what it is first before voting on it. Never heard of it. The again my kids are not in school anymore


----------



## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Measles Mumps Rubella

It is a semi-controversial formulation of the vaccination. A few years ago a very exhaustive US study showed there to be no difference between the combined vaccine over the three given individually (which it had been and in some cases still is given) with the occurrence of Autism. However, there are still groups that want a reason why their kid has to wear a helmet and ride the short bus. I will say I feel there is a reason, but the studies on MMR are not proof enough against its use nor an explanation to the skyrocketed rates of the ugly sisters (ADD/ADHT+Autism+Turrets).


----------



## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

MMR vaccine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wiki is your friend on this:



> In 2010, Wakefield's research was found by the General Medical Council to have been "dishonest",[32] and _The Lancet_ fully retracted the original paper.[33] The research was declared fraudulent in 2011 by the British Medical Journal.[34]


----------



## bw66 (Dec 17, 2009)

We had both of our kids vaccinated on schedule and would do it again. We give absolutely no creedence to the notion that vaccines cause Autism and though there is a miniscule risk of a catastrophic reaction to vaccines, we are pretty sure that the benefits of the MMR vaccine far outweigh the risks.


----------



## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

Some vaccines are important to get and others are a judgement call. MMR seems like one of those everyone should get. I had it, and my kids all had it as well.

The flu vaccine?

No thanks.


----------



## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

Get your kids vaccinated! The outcomes of no vaccination are far worse than ADD/ADHD. This is coming from a parent who's child died of SSPE, caused by the Rubella virus crossing the blood/brain barrier.


----------



## Starbuck (Jun 15, 2007)

Eventually they have to have it anyway? Once they register for school there is no choice. The studies are flawed and there has been no link established to autism or add/ADHD. I think the later was invented by drug companies anyway. Read the checklist for ADHD, pretty much fits every kid I have ever seen.


----------



## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

There are dangers to vaccines and every person and parent should be aware of what the benefits and risks are associated with each vaccine and what is in each one. We have a friend who now requires 24 hour care because of an allergic reaction to a vaccine. Her particular reaction is very rare but there are a few around the earth with the same condition.


----------



## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

Starbuck said:


> Eventually they have to have it anyway? Once they register for school there is no choice.


While schools and the medical establishment would like it if that was true, thankfully we still have the right to refuse medical treatment. 

Exemptions - Vaccination Risk Awareness Network


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

There are two reasons for vaccination. One is the health of the child themselves, and the other is the health of the broader community. Measles, mumps, rubella are _communicable_ diseases (Do yourself a favour and look up the wikis on each of these. It won't take many pictures to get you thinking "I don't want my kid getting THAT."). So if your child contracts one of them, they may very well come through it intact, but maybe not the kid who they passed it onto. And quite frankly, do you want YOUR child to attend a preschool or daycare or simply play with other children not vaccinated who haven't learned yet to keep their snot to themselves?

They call these things *public* health programs for a reason; they are for the health of the public, not just your child. It takes all the kids in the daycare to keep the daycare healthy.

Should your child be the sacrificial lamb offered up on the altar of the greater public good? Nobody expects that. Which is why every time you go for any sort of vaccination, at any age, the public health nurse or doctor asks a series of questions regarding reactions to this that and the other. If something suggests one is at known risk for known side-effects (and you would think that, after the hundreds of millions of vaccinations that have been doled out over the past century, those risk factors and side-effects are pretty well known at this point), then common sense and medical ethics says you don't get the vaccination (but hope that everybody you normally come into contact with has).

And for those who harbour suspicions of the ethics of pharmaceutical companies, consider that they make FAR more off your apprehension about not having a boner, or about not being physically appealing enough to get to use your boner, or have someone else use theirs on you, or being sad and depressed about not having a boner, or nobody being interested enough in you, than they have *ever* made off vaccinations. I'm sure they would be only too happy to leave vaccinations behind, like Sony and Hitachi dumped VCRs, and just focus on the world of boners, which is far more lucrative. Remember, you get your vaccination once or twice in your life, but demand for, and use of, boner medicine just keeps increasing.


----------



## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

I wasn't going to get into this, but what the hell.

I'm a person who doesn't trust the medical establishment to inform us of risks and I don't believe they are doing all they can to prevent risk. They don't report because they want to maintain the trust of the general public, in the interest of public health. I was reading a report or 2 last night, and I foolishly forgot to bookmark the link, but I am described as a "middle ground" person and am specifically the person they are trying to convince to immunize their kids. FYI IMPACT and CAEFISS are the voluntary reporting bodies in this country. Good luck actually finding any reports that inform you of the frequency and severity though. 

I did find a stat that 95% of reactions go unreported and 19000 cases were reported last year. That translates to 380000 actual cases (if my math is right).

At this point, I look at vaccination as a crap shoot in terms of preventing disease (i.e., I know there are many cases where immunized people contract diseases they are not supposed to) and an odds game. You play the odds between the risk of contracting a disease vs the risk of a vaccine reaction. Right now I think the risk of vaccine reaction is greater than the risk of contracting any of MMR. Plus MMR are all treatable diseases. Aside from that, I have personally seen developmental delays in several children that occur immediately following immunization - I'd rather avoid that for my kids. My wife had a severe vaccine reaction as a teen that led to 2 years of Chronic fatigue Syndrome. These types of things are never reported as vaccine reactions.

I don't buy the "public good" argument, you can get your own kids vaccinated to "protect" them if you wish to. If the immunization works, then there is no way my kid can infect yours, but I benefit to because the chances of the disease breaking out is slim due to the immunization of most. The real disease prevention method is good sanitation.

matt


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

In listening to the piece they did this morning on CBC, interviewing the reporter who broke the Andrew Wakefield fraud story, my wife commented to me that a lot of the resistance about vaccination from parents comes from a generation that has simply never faced things like the polio epidemic. They turn to the phew-missed-it-by-that-much H1N1 and avian flu quasi-pandemics (depending on where you lived) as evidence that their fears ought to be directed to the side-effects of the vaccinations, rather than the things the vaccinations were intended to prevent. My generation (I'm approaching 60) just missed the polio epidemic, but it was fresh enough in the minds of our parents that we "kept the spirit alive". Those parents in their 20's and 30's, however, don't have the same visceral response to the threat of pediatric epidemic. (That, and the cold weather, is probably part of what made my canvassing for the March of Dimes so ineffective this past month. The MoD started as a consequence of the polio epidemic.)

Very much like the public attitudes towards H.I.V/A.I.D.S. that swing back and forth, the better and less catastrophic the news gets, the more people figure they don't really need to do anything about "those problems". Of course, that "those problems" temporarily disappear from public view (be they HIV, TB, smallpox, malaria, rubella, influenza, et al.), is separate from whether or not they require constant public vigilance in order BE and REMAIN off the radar. In the case of the temporary antipathy to MMR vaccinations in the UK when people got sucked into the Wakefield thing, those childhood diseases made a comeback, so clearly they do require vigilance.

I may have made this point before, but it bears repeating. Human migration and the mobility that air travel provides, is greater than it has ever been. It's not just immigration, but also tourism. What that means is that people expose themselves to pathogens that their human subgroup (be it geographic or "racial"....whatever that is) has rarely faced, and the likelihood of pandemics - at least for now, until we all turn brown, as Russell Peters has prophesied - is higher.

I took a look at the VRAN website, and I have to say they sure have an unusual notion of what constitutes proof of causation. One could make similar assertions about the causal role of a great many things tracked over the course of changes in the diagnosability of a wide array of disorders. In 1988, what we called "autism" was basically confined to the worst-case examples, whereas now the boundaries between autism spectrum disorders and plain old "peculiarity" have become quite vague. So, co-incident changes in diagnosed cases per 10,000 and changes to vaccination policy changes, may be interesting, but are evidence of nothing more than coincidence. Similarly, what was called "consumption" for many generations turned into cancer, once we knew what cancer was, and cancer rates started to rise as we started to say "Oh, there's one. There's another one.". They may well have been coincident with technological changes, but that doesn't mean the technological changes caused them.


----------



## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

mhammer said:


> ...


Indeed and Exactly!


----------



## bluesmostly (Feb 10, 2006)

Vaccines again! It is a big issue with alot of debate indeed. I am with matt as usual on this health issue... IMO the only 'safe' option is to study the issue from _both _sides of the debate and make up your own mind rather than simply believing a reporter or health official who is merely parroting what they have been told. 

My wife and I have never got vaccines and never will. We don't have kids and so we don't have to deal with that issue. good luck to all who do. 

I haven't read them all but there are alot of these out there - VACCINE BOOKS:

-Ethel Douglas Hume, Pasteur Exposed: The False Foundations of Modern Medicine 

-Jamie Murphy, What Every Parent Should Know about Childhood Immunization 

-Neil Z. Miller, Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? 

-Robert Mendelsohn, How to Raise A Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor. 

-Walene James, Immunization: The Reality Behind the Myth 

-Leon Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization: Dangers, Delusions and Alternatives 

-Viera Scheibner, Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System


----------



## bw66 (Dec 17, 2009)

bluesmostly said:


> Vaccines again! It is a big issue with alot of debate indeed. I am with matt as usual on this health issue... IMO the only 'safe' option is to study the issue from _both _sides of the debate and make up your own mind rather than simply believing a reporter or health official who is merely parroting what they have been told.
> 
> My wife and I have never got vaccines and never will. We don't have kids and so we don't have to deal with that issue. good luck to all who do.
> 
> ...


If you want us to study the issue from BOTH sides of the debate, we'll need a more balanced reading list...


----------



## bluesmostly (Feb 10, 2006)

bw66 said:


> If you want us to study the issue from BOTH sides of the debate, we'll need a more balanced reading list...


agreed, but since the prevailing consensus focuses on the 'Vacccines are good' side, esp in the mainstream medical and media forums, and since it is clear which side of the debate I subscribe to, I will let someone else put that list together...


----------



## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

...the wives of two of my bosses at work both got a flu this winter. a really bad flu.

both of them had flu shots.

i haven't had a flu in years (knock on wood) and have never had a flu shot.

it may become neccessary when i'm in my 70s or 80s.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

david henman said:


> ...the wives of two of my bosses at work both got a flu this winter. a really bad flu.
> both of them had flu shots.
> i haven't had a flu in years (knock on wood) and have never had a flu shot.
> it may become neccessary when i'm in my 70s or 80s.


It's anecdotes like yours that often form the fundamental obstacle to effective public health programs. And while I do not wish to sound condescending, from a purely logical perspective, such testimony is right up there with folks who are absolutely certain that their alcohol intake is completely unrelated to their driving, given how often they have driven home intoxicated and arrived safely, all those folks who make a point of "going bareback" and have yet to be claimed by a sexually transmitted disease (to the best of their knowledge) despite their recently-defrocked friend who misused a condom their first time out and came out with genital warts, and all those folks who point to their uncles and aunts and grandparents in their 80's, noting that so-and-so smoked every day since they were 17 and it hasn't killed them yet.

EVERYBODY has a first-hand, 2nd-hand or 3rd-hand anecdote of a similar structure/type. Public health policy is founded on tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of cases, and the identification of overall risk. Yes, there are bound to be hard-to-explain exceptions for ANY phenomena, but the overall risk is still there, and if a person cannot validly separate themselves from the overall risk group on the basis of known factors ("I have a gene that leads me to fully metabolize alcohol within 10 minutes of ingestion"), then that risk still applies to them. When people base their decisions on isolated examples (all too often selected under the unconscious, but all too pervasive, influence of what they would rather not do), it is childs play to say "well the so-called experts must be wrong, because that's not what I've seen". This is further entrenched by the misunderstanding that "risk" is equivalent to individual certainty. It's not. It's probability, and if 65% of people do NOT encounter some serious health challenge, that also means an unidentified 35% will.

Do you have any measure of the relative risk of contracting influenza that you and these women placed themselves under, so as to be able to validly assess whether their outcomes and yours are in stark contrast to the actual risk each person put themselves under? Did the 3 of you expose yourselves to the influenza virus equivalently?

That's not intended to be a harsh criticism of yourself. Rather, such is the typical nature of informal public reasoning about such matters; you join a *VERY* long lineup of folks that think the same way, my friend. And like I say, it is the bane of epidemiologists' and public health officials' existence. 

Sometimes they grapple with that challenge effectively, and sometimes not. Generally, appealing to fear tends to make arguments more persuasive. So, when the anticipated H1N1 outbreak arose, one of the strategies to get people go for their shot was attempting to elicit fear. A nice orderly relaxed lineup of the most at-risk individuals would have likely sufficied, but folks don't like the inconvenience of going for shots, so public officials tried to make a more persuasive case for getting a shot by playing up the fear. Unfortunately, while it resulted in more people getting shots, the non-event that the H1N1 pandemic turned out to be (and how much that was case _because_ of how many people were vaccinated, we'll never know) has had an impact on the long-range responsiveness of the public to such dire warnings.


----------



## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

The flu shot is, in my opinion, completely unnecessary and far too expensive to administer for the results it generates. 1st of all, unless you are in a high risk group (the elderly, preexisting respiratory condition, lowered immune function) the usual outcome from a bout of influenza is a day or two of feeling like crap. Most people don't even take a day off when they get it, they usually just think it's a cold. 2nd, the medical establishment makes an educated guess at the strains of flu that the shot will contain (they pick 3) and they are often wrong. 3rd, the symptoms from taking the flu shot are often exactly the same as getting the flu. The only reason we have the full roll out is fear mongering and propaganda.

That said, I agree with mhammer that anecdotal evidence is not usually a very good indicator of success or failure of immunization programs (or good evidence for much of anything, despite what post modernist "action researchers" might say). Maybe David's bosses' wives got a different strain of flu, or were already infected when they got their shots, who can say?. Unfortunately, as a member of the public, anecdotal evidence is all we get to see. We're supposd to blindly accept the dictates of the medical establishment and do as we're told without access to evidence. So that begs the question, why is the evidence kept locked from public eyes? Any number of conspiracy theories is possible, but I think it's to prevent lawsuits.

I don't trust drug companies or the doctors and politicians they keep in their employ. Too many deaths from drugs that were not vetted properly makes me think that way. I can't imagine that vaccines, even if they represent less of a revenue stream than "boner pills", are made with the profit motive in second place to safety.


----------



## bluesmostly (Feb 10, 2006)

mrmatt1972 said:


> The flu shot is, in my opinion, completely unnecessary and far too expensive to administer for the results it generates. 1st of all, unless you are in a high risk group (the elderly, preexisting respiratory condition, lowered immune function) the usual outcome from a bout of influenza is a day or two of feeling like crap. Most people don't even take a day off when they get it, they usually just think it's a cold. 2nd, the medical establishment makes an educated guess at the strains of flu that the shot will contain (they pick 3) and they are often wrong. 3rd, the symptoms from taking the flu shot are often exactly the same as getting the flu. The only reason we have the full roll out is fear mongering and propaganda.
> 
> That said, I agree with mhammer that anecdotal evidence is not usually a very good indicator of success or failure of immunization programs (or good evidence for much of anything, despite what post modernist "action researchers" might say). Maybe David's bosses' wives got a different strain of flu, or were already infected when they got their shots, who can say?. Unfortunately, as a member of the public, anecdotal evidence is all we get to see. We're supposd to blindly accept the dictates of the medical establishment and do as we're told without access to evidence. So that begs the question, why is the evidence kept locked from public eyes? Any number of conspiracy theories is possible, but I think it's to prevent lawsuits.
> 
> I don't trust drug companies or the doctors and politicians they keep in their employ. Too many deaths from drugs that were not vetted properly makes me think that way. I can't imagine that vaccines, even if they represent less of a revenue stream than "boner pills", are made with the profit motive in second place to safety.


I also agree with hammer that anecdotal evidence is practically meaningless and cannot be generalized but respectfully disagree with the rest for the most part. 

And it is very hard to trust pharma corps and government officials esp when governments give them immunity from lawsuits with the flu shots - governments protecting corporations instead of their citizens, mmm. I wonder if the people can then sue the governments?

plus it was shown in the inquiries conducted in Europe following the H1N1 gig that members of the board of directors of the World Health Organization were connected to the pharma corps (hugh conflict of interest situations) and, not surprisingly then the WHO changed the parameters for level of severity for pandemic to a much lower threshold - making the H1N1 shots worth hundreds of billions worldwide for the pharma companies.

health issues aside, I have a real problem with that kind of crap.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Ah, trust.

I try to follow contemporary thinking about what it is, and how it works. As near as I can tell, there are essentially 3 broad categories of trust that combine, in different proportions, to form the basis of what individuals think about organizations, institutions, and/or individuals.

Ar one level is trust in the person/org's competence. Do I trust my younger son with power tools or my beloved cast iron pan? Not completely. He means well but he doesn't know as much as he needs to. Competence-based mistrust could mean you think that the person/org/institution doesn't know what they are doing, either because they lack the skills in the first place, or because they lack the information to properly apply the skills they do have. Mistrust in their competence does not mean they aren't trying.

At another level is one's trust in the intentions of the individual or organization. That is, the extent to which you "trust" them to act in your best interests or the best interests of some other party, which could also include the organization itself. At the moment, I don't trust Moammar Gadhafi to act in the best interests of his country. Such mistrust needn't imply evil intent, though. It could simply mean the wrong motives. There are some managers I don't trust, not because I think they are bad people, but because I think they are too easily sidetracked or focussed on the wrong things.

Beyond that, I think there is another form of trust, which is the likelihood of someone with presumably good intentions, and no lack of competence, to accomplish something. I guess this is more like what some might call faith. In some respects, it is really more about trust in circumstances than individuals.

So what is this mistrust that people have about "pharma corps and government officials"? Is it disbelief that they will ever act in the public interest? Disbelief that they have the knowhow and intelligence (in the sense of what is gathered, not brain capacity) to accomplish things; that they are bumbling fools? Disbelief that they could ever get their act together such that they are on the same page at the same time?

The views bluesmostly and mrmatt express are certainly not unique to them, and they certainly didn't start when X-Files hit the airwaves either. Lots of folks have had suspicions and forms of mistrust about innoculation programs. Speak to folks from Medecins Sans Frontieres, and they'll be happy to tell you about places where they can't gain traction for a vaccination program because locals have some bizarre beliefs about what will happen.

Do folks know how these programs come to be? Do they have any sense of the vast network of collaboration that exists within government to exercise the most prudent course of action? Go to the Public Safety Canada website ( Welcome - Public Safety Canada | Bienvenue - Sécurité publique Canada ) and you'll see Emergency Management at the top of their list of responsibilities. Since a former colleague works there on various epidemic files (Avian flu and H1N1, most recently), I know that national management of outbreaks, and having a plan in place, just in case, is part of what they do. But they don't do it alone. Public Health Agency Canada also plays a role in tracking, analyzing, and disseminating information about communicable diseases. Go to their website, and you'll realize how huge and sprawling a machine this is, and how far reaching their intell extends ( Public Health Agency of Canada ). Of course, they'd be quite limited in what they know if it were not for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research ( Welcome to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - CIHR ), who, in turn rely on, and support the network of academic epidemiologists, immunologists, virologists, bacteriologists, communicable disease specialists, allergists, pediatricians, geriatricians, etc., to keep the public policy folks on top of things and provide the most up-to-date information to health Canada, PHAC, Public Safety, etc. The Privy Council Office operates to co-ordinate the intell and activities of all these agencies and departments and align it with the responsibilities of the various ministerial portfolios, so that it can be effectively translated into policy. Then you have all the various and sundry medical organizations and colleges, who regulate and are regulated themselves. And let us not forget the good folks in Geneva at the World Health Organization, and the folks down in Atlanta at CDC.

There are hundreds of thousands of people involved in providing the intell, making the most prudent decisions in the public interest. And I probably have not even begun to tackle the full list. Now, it may well be the case that the Prime Minister's Office can lean on a cabinet minister and suggest that they ought to do X, in order to shore up support in the Maritimes, or the Prairies, or among the South Asian vote, or Bay Street, but it would take a master stroke of insanity, and the suppression of a machine many times bigger than the PMO to turn a golf course chat between the PM and a "big pharma" rep, or a visit from a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist into public policy.

Now, I am not going to sit here and tell you with a straight face that no Prime Minister thinks about the size of the pharmaceutical industry in Quebec, and the votes that would get them if THOSE companies were busy preparing vaccine, instead of companies somewhere else in the country. But none are so foolish as to box themselves into expenditures that they didn't think ultimately had some benefit to the nation, or to the province (if they are the premier). If anything, they are all more likely to minimize the need for expenditures.

As for members of W.H.O. being "connected" with the pharmaceutical industry, just whom exactly did you want to have on those boards? If W.H.O. says "We'll, we'll need 43 million doses of this vaccine for that outbreak in sub-Saharan Africa", don't you want to have someone on the board that puts up their hand and says "Well, realistically, that is going to take 3 months to produce because only this company, that one, and this other one are tooled up for that, or that level of production. And keep in mind the vaccines keep under refrigeration for XX days, and it will take approximately YY days to distribute it."? Isn't relevant expertise important?

Now, is the "right" decision made every single freaking time? I don't know. Does your bank make the right investments every single time? Does your city council zone every single street the right way every single time? Does the green grocer at your local Loblaws/Sobeys/Save-On/Safeway/Metro make the right call on the flat of apples they picked out at the warehouse every single time? Does your car mechanic call it right every single time? Does your family doctor make the right diagnosis every single time? People make mistakes, but that doesn't mean they aren't trying to avoid them. And ultimately, you just have to trust that that's what they are attempting to do.


----------



## bluesmostly (Feb 10, 2006)

good post hammer, always a good read, but no I don't have to trust that 'they' are trying to do what is best for us, not by my standards at least. I don't think they are acting incompetently or with bad intentions. Are they doing what _they _think is best? I suspect they believe so but it wouldn't jive with what most of us consider good practice. 

I don't see the world of Health Care, or most other factions of society, as working within such a complex and cumbersomely layered system as you describe. Are all those systems and agencies in place doing their thing and contributing in their own way, sure. And yet the remarkable consistency of practice and policy within the Health Care system for example, with seemingly little room for alternate approaches or philosophies are clear evidence to me that it is relatively easy for a small select group of policy makers at the 'top of the pyramid' to implement policies and programs rather quickly and effectively. The way this H1N1 thing came together was evidence enough for that imo. 

It is hard to find two doctors that agree on this stuff or how it should be managed, yet a worldwide vaccination program can be thrown together in a matter of weeks that operates essentially the same in every country with the same rhetoric and 'sales pitch' throughout? The idea that the system is too complex to control and the fact they we have these monolithic procedures and policies sweeping thru society is incongruous to me. 

relevant expertise is indeed important for _consultation_, not decision and policy making done by insiders. I don't know anyone that thinks that would be OK. It is like having weapons manufacturer's deciding weather to go to war or not,... and I suppose I think that happens too under my tin foil hat, lol.


----------



## bw66 (Dec 17, 2009)

Yeah, the flu "vaccines" are a whole other issue. The traditional vaccines - the ones in the "public domain" i.e. polio, MMR, etc - I'm pretty sure are beneficial. And I think that if you are "at risk" the flu vaccines may have some benefit, but if you are healthy, I suspect that they are not beneficial in the long run. Unfortunately, it will be decades before we really know for sure.

And, yes, I have about as much faith in the W.H.O. as I do in the Olympic committee. I do, however, trust my family doctor and if I'm not sure about a vaccine, I ask him if he's given it to his kids...


----------



## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Um short memories are short. The Ontario Government was literally badgered into the doing the flu vaccine *the first year*. It was by pressure on it by parent groups, medical groups, employers and schools that they caved in and relented to providing "as a trial only" one year of flu shot.

That year was a full 80% reduction in confirmed cases of flu across Ontario.

The next year the government didn't have to be badgered they ran to it willingly and instead of hemming and hawing and feet dragging they are actively encouraging participation.

As to "how do we know Polio or MMR is working or not" well, easy peasy, Sanatoriums in Canada no longer exist, we no longer see this as a NORMAL part of life (however, any nation that chooses to stop using these, will very quickly get these back for their children. Such as the UK that has had the highest global rate of recurrence of M M and R since the breww hawhaw over autism and parents on mass not vaccinating their children):


----------



## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

Absolutley correct Keeps. In my son's case, we got more information on his condition (SSPE) from UK sources, as they do not have an MMR vaccine program. The occurances of SSPE are quite a bit higher in non-vaccinating countries than in Canada, my son being the 3rd person diagnosed since they started keeping track of these things in 1965.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Thanks for that image KotG. Worth a million words, for sure.

And I think that's the nub of it. Regular folks, going about their daily business, are less likely to be in touch with what was previously around but is now missing from the landscape.

Incidentally, I probably haven't mentioned it, but I think "Ewwwww, yuck!! I HATE needles" is a perfectly acceptable excuse. It is an unfortunate forfeiture in many instances, but at least it is founded on something solid from 1st hand experience. To my mind, a much more substantive argument than the ill-informed conspiratorial notions that some folks have about medicine or governments...you know, the folks that keep Kevin Trudeau rich.

Finally, for bluesmostly...

While the immensity of "the machine" may well be sufficient to assure incorruptability, it is not any assurance of seamless integration, efficiency, and lightning-fast responsiveness. If there's only one parent, they pack everything. If there are two parents, then the "I thought YOU packed the kids' swimsuits!" conversation is more likely to take place.


----------



## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Thank you Mark. 

In Canada the reality of measles or of mumps or of polio IS very far removed from the common persons day to day experience. That is not to say it is gone, our no longer there in society. There are still cases of these in Canada. Few. Very few. For measles the cases world wide are low enough that the WHO has been talking about doing a world ringing vaccination and simply ending them for good the same as was done with small pox. 

Polio is an 'interesting virus' as my biology teacher put it. It was a darling of the debate "are viruses alive?" because polio can extract itself from infected tissue, crystallize and remain as an inert solid for 100 years and yet remain as infectious once hydrated in the presence of blood cells as when it was crystallized. This is because (in simple English) the protein of polio is only half the functional unit, the replication component comes on entry to a cell from that cell as the first stage of infection. 

So yes, no polio in the kids in the class around your kid does not mean your kid are safe because the "how you can get it" is not just child to child or person to person or even contact/a few weeks/infection. If you look even at Leprosy for example there are numerous cases of this infection laying dormant in people for 30 or more years before becoming infectious.


----------



## bluesmostly (Feb 10, 2006)

I like the analogy of the parents packing stuff hammer, but the point I was trying to make was exactly the opposite - the system, inspite of its complexity, is remarkably monolithic, homogoneous, and does act surprisingly seemlessly and effectively to implement such programs. 

Your argument of how infectious diseases operate is logical and well argued KOTHG, but that is not my understanding of how it works. And what do you suppose inspired the citizens of Ontario to pressure their government to put on a vaccination program? Surely they weren't reading the same stuff I was.

I don't consider myself ill-informed, just a different view or perspective is all.


----------



## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

mhammer said:


> It's anecdotes like yours that often form the fundamental obstacle to effective public health programs. And while I do not wish to sound condescending, from a purely logical perspective, such testimony is right up there with folks who are absolutely certain that their alcohol intake is completely unrelated to their driving, given how often they have driven home intoxicated and arrived safely, all those folks who make a point of "going bareback" and have yet to be claimed by a sexually transmitted disease (to the best of their knowledge) despite their recently-defrocked friend who misused a condom their first time out and came out with genital warts, and all those folks who point to their uncles and aunts and grandparents in their 80's, noting that so-and-so smoked every day since they were 17 and it hasn't killed them yet.


...i guess i should have clarified: my anecdote was NOT intended as a "here's what works for me, therefore what works for me should work for and be heeded by everyone else, as well". it wasn't intended as advice, or even a suggestion. i merely offered it as one person's experience.

my experience would be completely different if i were a parent with young children, a senior (although, at 62, i often qualify for a senior's discount!) or employed in public health.


----------



## Ship of fools (Nov 17, 2007)

Well at 58 years of age I can offer just this, I am a polio survivor, having spent 6 months in an Iron Lung I still hear the belows of the pumps keeping me breathing, and I still see the ill effects of Polio at places like George Pearson Hospital and today I get to still suffer the ill effects of this terrrible bug and why all because I was born to early for the Salk vacccine was not yet invented by DR. Jonas Salk ( a fellow Hungarian ) and so my life at the age of 18months was turned upside down and inside and out.
I hear from other parents who try to blame this vaccine or some other vaccine on todays austic kids or other aliments saying well there is a rise of autisim amoungst our kids these days compared to when you were born, well dang it I should also hope so as there are more kids being born today then there was when I was born so obious corillationdon't you think. Its like when folks talk about how this is happening more then it did when our parents were young untrue again as we now have an instant news flash compared to when our parents were much younger.
All I know is that I talked to my kids about immunization of all the diseases they immunize for and it made sense to them and hopefully none of you will be resposible for spreading Rubella mumps measles and god forbid polio to your family or neighbours, you'll never understand the effect it will have on your children and I can tell you I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy any of it.
I survived because I was lucky and stubborn but I do know many didn't and others who were left with even worse physical shape. Today I am lucky because I am still able to walk even thought they said I would never walk and I am able to control the pain I feel everyday with out taking heavy duty meds for it I pray that in my life time I will never hear about another outbreak but when I do I shed many of tears for those it will effect and for the many others who will never get to see another sunny happy day.
Let us try to understand the benefits out weigh the risk of doing nothing and try to understand that it is not just about your child but the children of the world.ship


----------

