When I used to counsel a vaccine-reluctant mother, I would take this line. All vaccines can have side-effects. Some, very rarely, can have very serious side-effects. The diseases they prevent can also be dangerous, sometimes frequently, sometimes rarely. The only question to ask yourself is this: is it safer to have the vaccine, or not h…
When I used to counsel a vaccine-reluctant mother, I would take this line. All vaccines can have side-effects. Some, very rarely, can have very serious side-effects. The diseases they prevent can also be dangerous, sometimes frequently, sometimes rarely. The only question to ask yourself is this: is it safer to have the vaccine, or not have it and risk the disease? Many mothers (it always seemed to be the mothers) would reply that childhood diseases are now rare, and as long as other kids had the vaccine then their child would be safe. The only arguments to counter that is that for herd immunity to work, some highly infectious diseases (measles for example) require a very high vaccination rate, and if two in every ten parents think that way your unvaccinated child will get measles. Also, just because you've never heard of anyone getting diphtheria, doesn't mean the disease has gone—look at what happened after the collapse of the USSR: 4,000 deaths from diphtheria withing two years of the vaccination schedule being disrupted.
I'm old enough to have seen children die of chickenpox encephalitis and whooping cough, be born disabled from rubella, seen measles kill babies, and watched meningitis kill children. All preventable. Even the earaches that destroyed most of my hearing are prevented with pneumococcal, meningococcal and H.influenzae vaccinations. The pancreatitis I had after mumps doesn't happen now, if you have your MMR. Even the old pertussis vaccine that really did cause encephalitis in 1:10,000 doses was safer than the death rate from whooping cough (the new acellular vaccine doesn't have that issue).
I'm afraid RFK Jr. is totally wrong, dangerous even, to be against vaccination. Certainly there is a question of individual liberty, but remember you are making a decision on behalf of your child, not for yourself, and that public health considerations—herd immunity— are important. I have had to put my money where my mouth is, having recently had a bone marrow transplant for leukemia, which leaves me with a brand new immune system and no immunity to anything, so I have had to have the full childhood immunization schedule in my sixties! Same consideration for me as for infants: is it safer to have them, or not to have them? Easy decision.
I believe before a vaccine is to be mandated, it should undergo long-term animal and then long-term human trials. Also, I have heard that past efforts to create a coronavirus vaccine (before Covid-19) that there were issues with pathogenic priming, which could lead to an auto-immune response, sometimes deadly. How can we know if there is no long-term study? Go to 47-48 minutes in the Megyn Kelly interview of RFK jr. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEjftGvrcw
RFK doesn't say to NOT vaccinate. He says to do your research on the vaccines and make the best choice for yourself and family. He himself has been vaccinated against a variety of diseases.
You fail to address a third option: delayed vaccination. Rather than injecting infants with a cocktail of multiple vaccines at 2, 4, and 6 months of age, vaccinations are spread out over the the first year, with pertussis prioritized. Considering that breastfed infants maintain some immunity from their mothers, and that most infants are highly unlikely to be exposed to these diseases until after they have been vaccinated, it seems better to allow their immune systems to mature a bit more before subjecting them to the challenges of vaccination.
The "my way or else" attitude of the medical establishment is a big part of why people are no longer willing to trust doctors as if they were gods.
Here's the problem I see. When a child contracts measles that is followed by encephalitis and ends up disabled or deceased, the medical community makes a causal link and says the injury/death was due to measles, because it caused the encephalitis, ergo measles is dangerous. When a child is given the MMR vaccine and spikes a high fever with high pitch shrieking and/or has a seizure and/or contracts encephalitis and either dies, or recovers but with the parents witnessing a permanent regression in the child's abilities and behaviors, the medical community does not make a causal link and say the injury/death was due to the vaccine. They say it was just a sad coincidence because vaccines are "safe and effective."
Precisely! I personally know a number of people with vaccine-damaged children, so I am not comfortable with the cavalier attitude of the medical community.
Question - if through vaccination we have minimized the opportunity for diseases such as chickenpox and measles is it that rather than the spreading out of vaccinations as I had they are applying them all within months/days of birth? How does that seem rational?
There is no need for immediate vaccination after birth, as there is some temporary passive immunity from the mother with antibodies crossing the placenta and in breast milk. When this passive immunity wears off, the diseases of childhood can strike. For this reason we start immunizing babies at three months here.
I think that this argument misses the point and forces mothers to make a false choice between two harms. RFK's point is quite clear: make vaccines safe. When any corporation loses the potential for any legal or financial liability, then we are blindly hoping in the better angels of their inherently profit driven motive. It never works in any industry to rely on such an inclination. We should collective agree that companies that wish to push a vaccine on children should be held liable for the risks since they receive the profits without limitation. Also, you should respond to the first post: explain why a child must take a Hep B vaccine nearly immediately after they are born? We do not need to defend corporations and actually fight against tighter regulation and greater transparency because they hang the sword of death and sickness over our necks.
Jeez, "make vaccines safe"? Don't you get it? As long as having the vaccine is safer than not having it (ie the risk of the infection), a rational person would choose the vaccine. No vaccine is 100% safe. But as long as it is safer than the risk of the disease (factoring in the chance you may not catch it), it is the safer choice. This is not rocket science! Sure, let's make vaccines as safe as we can, but they are never going to be 100% safe: nothing is. You are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Do you think it possible to make a totally safe vaccine, or medication? Even if it were, one day, possible, why not follow the safer course, the lesser risk, right now, and use a vaccine rather than have the disease and its risks? You're saying we must not use vaccines because they are not perfect, which is an excellent example of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Why must I respond to a comment about Hepatitis B vaccines? Where I practiced, in the UK and in Canada we do not give Hepatitis B vaccine until grade 7
The 1986 Childhood Vaccine Act that gives pharma indemnity from vaccine safety risks literally says in the act that vacinnes are “unavoidably unsafe.” That doesn’t mean they don’t do good. But to J. Yeats point, the incentive to make them safer (such as removing mercury, etc) doesn’t exist. There is only upside. And I don’t know all the history, but based on RFKjr’s book the original Dtap vaccine was not approved by the FDA (although that original one was approved for use in Africa where pharma makes big money off something that was too unsafe even for the US).
When I used to counsel a vaccine-reluctant mother, I would take this line. All vaccines can have side-effects. Some, very rarely, can have very serious side-effects. The diseases they prevent can also be dangerous, sometimes frequently, sometimes rarely. The only question to ask yourself is this: is it safer to have the vaccine, or not have it and risk the disease? Many mothers (it always seemed to be the mothers) would reply that childhood diseases are now rare, and as long as other kids had the vaccine then their child would be safe. The only arguments to counter that is that for herd immunity to work, some highly infectious diseases (measles for example) require a very high vaccination rate, and if two in every ten parents think that way your unvaccinated child will get measles. Also, just because you've never heard of anyone getting diphtheria, doesn't mean the disease has gone—look at what happened after the collapse of the USSR: 4,000 deaths from diphtheria withing two years of the vaccination schedule being disrupted.
I'm old enough to have seen children die of chickenpox encephalitis and whooping cough, be born disabled from rubella, seen measles kill babies, and watched meningitis kill children. All preventable. Even the earaches that destroyed most of my hearing are prevented with pneumococcal, meningococcal and H.influenzae vaccinations. The pancreatitis I had after mumps doesn't happen now, if you have your MMR. Even the old pertussis vaccine that really did cause encephalitis in 1:10,000 doses was safer than the death rate from whooping cough (the new acellular vaccine doesn't have that issue).
I'm afraid RFK Jr. is totally wrong, dangerous even, to be against vaccination. Certainly there is a question of individual liberty, but remember you are making a decision on behalf of your child, not for yourself, and that public health considerations—herd immunity— are important. I have had to put my money where my mouth is, having recently had a bone marrow transplant for leukemia, which leaves me with a brand new immune system and no immunity to anything, so I have had to have the full childhood immunization schedule in my sixties! Same consideration for me as for infants: is it safer to have them, or not to have them? Easy decision.
I believe before a vaccine is to be mandated, it should undergo long-term animal and then long-term human trials. Also, I have heard that past efforts to create a coronavirus vaccine (before Covid-19) that there were issues with pathogenic priming, which could lead to an auto-immune response, sometimes deadly. How can we know if there is no long-term study? Go to 47-48 minutes in the Megyn Kelly interview of RFK jr. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEjftGvrcw
RFK doesn't say to NOT vaccinate. He says to do your research on the vaccines and make the best choice for yourself and family. He himself has been vaccinated against a variety of diseases.
You fail to address a third option: delayed vaccination. Rather than injecting infants with a cocktail of multiple vaccines at 2, 4, and 6 months of age, vaccinations are spread out over the the first year, with pertussis prioritized. Considering that breastfed infants maintain some immunity from their mothers, and that most infants are highly unlikely to be exposed to these diseases until after they have been vaccinated, it seems better to allow their immune systems to mature a bit more before subjecting them to the challenges of vaccination.
The "my way or else" attitude of the medical establishment is a big part of why people are no longer willing to trust doctors as if they were gods.
Here's the problem I see. When a child contracts measles that is followed by encephalitis and ends up disabled or deceased, the medical community makes a causal link and says the injury/death was due to measles, because it caused the encephalitis, ergo measles is dangerous. When a child is given the MMR vaccine and spikes a high fever with high pitch shrieking and/or has a seizure and/or contracts encephalitis and either dies, or recovers but with the parents witnessing a permanent regression in the child's abilities and behaviors, the medical community does not make a causal link and say the injury/death was due to the vaccine. They say it was just a sad coincidence because vaccines are "safe and effective."
Precisely! I personally know a number of people with vaccine-damaged children, so I am not comfortable with the cavalier attitude of the medical community.
Question - if through vaccination we have minimized the opportunity for diseases such as chickenpox and measles is it that rather than the spreading out of vaccinations as I had they are applying them all within months/days of birth? How does that seem rational?
There is no need for immediate vaccination after birth, as there is some temporary passive immunity from the mother with antibodies crossing the placenta and in breast milk. When this passive immunity wears off, the diseases of childhood can strike. For this reason we start immunizing babies at three months here.
I think that this argument misses the point and forces mothers to make a false choice between two harms. RFK's point is quite clear: make vaccines safe. When any corporation loses the potential for any legal or financial liability, then we are blindly hoping in the better angels of their inherently profit driven motive. It never works in any industry to rely on such an inclination. We should collective agree that companies that wish to push a vaccine on children should be held liable for the risks since they receive the profits without limitation. Also, you should respond to the first post: explain why a child must take a Hep B vaccine nearly immediately after they are born? We do not need to defend corporations and actually fight against tighter regulation and greater transparency because they hang the sword of death and sickness over our necks.
Jeez, "make vaccines safe"? Don't you get it? As long as having the vaccine is safer than not having it (ie the risk of the infection), a rational person would choose the vaccine. No vaccine is 100% safe. But as long as it is safer than the risk of the disease (factoring in the chance you may not catch it), it is the safer choice. This is not rocket science! Sure, let's make vaccines as safe as we can, but they are never going to be 100% safe: nothing is. You are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Do you think it possible to make a totally safe vaccine, or medication? Even if it were, one day, possible, why not follow the safer course, the lesser risk, right now, and use a vaccine rather than have the disease and its risks? You're saying we must not use vaccines because they are not perfect, which is an excellent example of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Why must I respond to a comment about Hepatitis B vaccines? Where I practiced, in the UK and in Canada we do not give Hepatitis B vaccine until grade 7
Not true, my kids and niece were given hep A and B and I live in western Canada. I was asking the same question why does my kid need Hep B
You see, it isn't all heaven living in the West! I'm in the Maritimes.
And they were 3&4 and my niece was under a year
The 1986 Childhood Vaccine Act that gives pharma indemnity from vaccine safety risks literally says in the act that vacinnes are “unavoidably unsafe.” That doesn’t mean they don’t do good. But to J. Yeats point, the incentive to make them safer (such as removing mercury, etc) doesn’t exist. There is only upside. And I don’t know all the history, but based on RFKjr’s book the original Dtap vaccine was not approved by the FDA (although that original one was approved for use in Africa where pharma makes big money off something that was too unsafe even for the US).