Immunisations

I have never noticed resistance to questioning on here. What is clear is that the majority of members consider vaccination to be a good thing having considered the downsides and the huge benefits.
I highly respect my GP and his attitude is that parents who refuse vaccination should be prosecuted for child neglect. He came to this conclusion after years of seeing the dreadful effects of childhood diseases on little ones.
Yes, very occasionally a child has a reaction to a vaccination but the sometimes awful effects of common illnesses like measles which are now avoidable far outweigh these concerns.

I had measles age 4. It left me quite deaf, which has been very isolating throughout my life. It also caused lung damage, so my lungs fill up with mucus, which stagnates and attracts bacteria. I've always been in & out of hospital for intravenous antibiotics. This severely affected my education. I take 18 different drugs and spend 2-3 hours every day doing lung physio. Anyone who thinks measles is a benign childhood ailment should think again. Both hearing & lung damage are common side effects. If you want this sort of life for your grandchildren, you must be crazy.

Interesting thread. It's fascinating to read of people's experiences and interesting that homeopathy is now considered a 'quack' medicine. It is the same as a vaccine - treating like with like. There is so much we don't know about the human body, It's so good to read of Splednan and her daughter doing some thorough research into conventional vaccines.

When my children were of an age to have the whooping cough vaccine, there was a lot of bad press around it. Like many parents I was concerned about whether I should let them have the vaccine. I asked my GP, he told me that the risks from whooping couch were statistically greater than the risk from the vaccine. A few years later there was an outbreak of whooping cough - my cousin, aged 9 and unvaccinated, ended up spending a week or so in hospital.
There may always be some risk from vaccines, but the medical profession will always (I hope) look at current research and calculate where the greater risk lies. Anectdotal evidence - such as I used - will not relied on.

Speldnan, did you take your DD to a hospital? Sometimes the fever can't be a side effect. I heard that mild fever can be the result of your bodies resistance to germs.

this has been debated many times on my daughter's pregnancy & birth boars & the very informed posters have evidence to prove that these "noxious"substances are either in different forms ( think water & carbon monoxide) or are not enough to make any reaction possible. If too many people rely on the herd immunity then it stops existing.

A highly charged area and possibly the more you read the more confusing things become. I can only comment on what I have seen and experienced in over 40 years NHS. experience. Drug resistant TB is now on the increase. I have personally seen a diagnosed case of Diptheria in this country from someone from the Soviet block. There is evidence of some vaccines not being 100% effective, but any subsequent illness of whooping cough etc., will be less virulent and the child more able to recover with fewer lasting effects. I have seen moribund children with mumps and many other distressing scenes. I have also seen an infant with whooping cough too young for the vaccine. As others have acknowledged a BCG is often done before discharge with neonates in some areas. So all in all a highly charged debate. I have been involved in the original trials of two childhood vaccines including the Men C.

To answer (again) the question about a localised reaction, I have seen many with the thousands of immunisations I have given over the years. It demonstrates one of two things. A good response from the immune system which is good. Alternatively bad injection technique or a child who (understandably) wriggled.

My first staff nurse post was on an Infectious Diseases unit and I saw what measles encephalitis, septicaemia and meningitis does to children (in Essex not the developing world). Later as a Specialist Nurse in Infection Control I saw a great deal more of unvaccinated children and adults in intensive care units, the effects of drug resistant TB and good deal else beside. My own daughter had measles at 2 years old (too young for the vacc and asthmatic) she was gravely ill. DH had chicken pox at 33 because his mother had kept him wrapped in cotton wool and he hadn't had any childhood diseases so caught it from our daughter and he was a deaths door for a month.I would always say look at the NHS websites and have the recommended ims and vacs for your children and yourself anything else is taking a big risk.

Absent- that wasn't what was going on here I can assure you- my DD is well aware that childhood diseases are still around- there was a case of Measles in my GSs preschool. And someone mentioned websites? I don't believe I did though! My DD was reading books and medical papers on the subject not random websites.
However some newspapers online do have some interesting things to say and as my DD says- it is a fascinating subject once you start reading around it and not anything like as straightforward as the layman thinks (or some in the medical profession- the nurse who gave my GD her jabs knew very little about the vaccines she was giving)
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/11/should-i-pay-to-vaccinate-my-child-against-meningitis?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
This was an interesting one about the Men B vaccination

One of the reasons why modern parents may decide against immunisation is that it is a victim of its own success. Measles is a clear case in point. As a result of herd immunity – i.e. a large uptake of immunisation – the disease became far less common than it was when we were children and parents have no anecdotal experience of how devastating it can be, causing many serious health problems as well as deaths. They, therefore, feel that it is unnecessary and decide not to immunise their children against measles. Consequently, there are localised outbreaks all over the place every few years.

I don't think there's any evidence on here about resistance to questioning. What is on here is evidence of people looking at problems that may be associated with vaccination and deciding that the positive results far and away outweigh any possible negative results. And lets remember that a whole generation of children were endangered by one set of very spurious results by a discredited scientist on the MMR vaccine.

speldnan I agree with you. You you will find there is a great resistance to questioning whether there are any downsides to the many vaccinations which are now given to children.

Speldnan, I presume you have been on mumsnet?

I also really wanted to hear about anyone who had had a baby who had a bad reaction to the new Men B vaccine ( which nobody was interested in answering!)

I have no experience of the meningitis vaccine.
Perhaps Mumsnet may know more about this as it is relatively new.

My DD reacted badly to the measles vaccine, that was 40+ years ago; she caught a mild dose of measles from it but if she had not had the vaccine she could well have been very poorly indeed if she had caught the disease.
Because of all the scares at the time about the whooping cough vaccine many of us mums did not let our children have it and the GP said whooping cough was a disease of the past.
However, he was wrong, she caught whooping cough and had chest problems when she was a child as a result.

I would definitely allow a child to have the meningitis vaccine, it is a terrifying disease. A tiny girl in our local area lost all her limbs as a result of meningitis.

For the sake of the minority who cannot have certain immunisations due to illness/allergy etc. it is right that those who can be protected take that opportunity.

2/3 days moderate discomfort is a risk worth taking when compared to the potential damage from the disease.

I can only say that DD (Biochemistry PhD) is quite happy for her children to have every vaccine going. She also had the Whooping cough vaccine herself last time she was pregnant. She wasn't able to have the measles vaccine as a child because she had recently been seriously ill. As a result she caught measles and her eyes are still affected by it 35 years later.

It is some years since my DGC were vaccinated and the meningitis jab was not available then.

NICE and other organisations are not going to give approval for anything considered unsafe, but medicine is a science and continuing research will always provide further evidence to show that some drug constituents are not as safe as believed or can be improved.

Any medical intervention, whether immunisation, drug based or other always contains an element of risk, all drugs are essentially poisons and all immunisations introduce substances into a child's body that could, in some circumstances, be harmful. Everyone, parent or guardian and medical authorities has to take a calculated decision that the potential harm of the immunisation is balanced out by the greater good to the individual and community by the elimination of a disease which can both disable or kill. This is not to deny or diminish the very real individual tragedies where children (and adults) are harmed by the immunisation.

I hesitate to say, because I am sure you know, that you need to very careful evaluate the reliability and authority of websites you use, especially where medical matters are concerned. Dr Andrew Wakefield's research into the MMR vaccination, was deeply flawed but was given undue weight by many in the media leading to, probably more children being damaged by not having the vaccination than were damaged by having it.

I know some areas offer TB as my daughter lives in one of them. If you read my posts carefully I have not actually said anything against vaccinations and my daughter has given her children all if them anyway! Also I understand about 'herd immunity' and the need to keep up the program of vaccinations. But- there are some questions raised about the effectiveness of some of the vaccines as well as the dangers of some of the extra stuff put into them ( until recent years Mercury was added to the vaccine but was proved to be dangerous and removed). I was just asking whether any of the members had families who had questioned or researched the subject. I also really wanted to hear about anyone who had had a baby who had a bad reaction to the new Men B vaccine ( which nobody was interested in answering!) my GD was very unwell for 3 days and has a large hard lump on her leg where the injection was given. I was wondering if this was usual.

I don't know where you get your information from Speldnan as some of it is wrong and for something as important as this people need accurate information.
TB vaccinations are still given in high school in some areas and also to children/adults travelling from and to countries where TB is rife. Some areas have chosen not to give it unless it is high risk for financial reasons.
Polio and diphtheria will not be removed because of travel/migration between countries where it is endemic, indeed they were added to the routine adult anti-tetanus vaccine some years ago to protect adults from these diseases.
I give these vaccines and have to do annual updates so I know what I am talking about. They are not compulsory you are right but the diseases vaccinated against can kill as well as leaving life long disabilities.
I have looked after babies with whooping cough in ITU because every time they cough they stop breathing and it is terrifying.
Smallpox has been eradicated because of the vaccination programme worldwide.

My cousin had meningitis nearly 50 years ago and was left partially sighted. A little boy in the next village to me had meningitis about 6 years ago and lost both legs and one arm. My children and grandchildren have every immunisation which is offered to them. If it results in a few days irritability then so be it

What Luckygirl and almost every other contributor to this thread has said. We are so very fortunate to have an immunisation programme that means our children are so well protected from what were life changing or killer diseases, even when many of us were children.
I don't know any doctors who haven't had their children immunised and I do believe that generally, they know much better than those of us who haven't spent years training and working as doctors.

Elegran is right, parents who choose not to vaccinate are relying on other people to keep these diseases at bay. We all rely on each other, or at least most of us do .

These illnesses will come back, because they are still around, and people are travelling and mixing far more than they used to.

Smallpox HAS been eliminated, because everybody was vaccinated against it, in a concerted world-wide campaign, and the pockets that lingered were gradually cleared up.

Tuberculosis has NOT been eliminated, in fact it is on the increase.

Because most people have been immunised against these infectious diseases, it is less likely to be in the community, so you are less likely to meet them, but the more people who say "It is not common, so I won't get my child immunoised" the more likely it is that there WILL be an outbreak, and the more likely it will be that children are exposed to them.

Maybe not your child, if he/she is lucky, but other people's children are just as beloved. You are relying on other people to keep them at bay, and other people are relying on you.

PS a case in point- TB and Smallpox immunisations are no longer given in this country and its quite possible that sometime in the near future Polio and Diphtheria jabs will also cease to be given to children. I also had Whooping cough as a child so I know how nasty it can be and measles is still doing the rounds so there's no way I wouldn't want my Gchildren to be immunised against them..

Whitewave childhood illnesses were dying out anyway even before immunisations because of better health and living conditions. My DD and I are not stupid and well aware of the past benefits of immunisations. However they are no longer compulsory in the UK probably for the very reason that many of them are not strictly necessary. It doesn't hurt to question things now and then- she fully intends to give her daughter the MMR jabs although there are doubts that the whooping cough one is effective. There are approx 900 cases of Men B in the Uk annually which includes children and teenagers so I think that is pretty rare but 1/10 die which I think is what makes it worth while having children immunised- but as I said- the medical profession admit that they don't yet know if the vaccine works effectively. I was just putting it out there and wondering what experiences others may have had. As usual with this subject people have a gut reaction when they maybe haven't even looked into the subject further.