The topic of immunisation came up yesterday when having my regular hang out with Mum's in the park. It's one of those controvertial areas where opinions can be varied and heated, therefore you don't often "go there". I thought I'd be a true coward and blog about it instead!
One mother has decided not to immunise her baby - she's one of those skeptics who believes that immunisation has more harmful side effects than beneficial ones. [She also believes that wheat is the evil grain that is the cause of everyone's allergies and that canned fruit has all sorts of additives that aren't mentioned on the can, so I take this opinion with a grain of salt. I fully expected her to pipe up about fluoride being added to the water to subdue the masses rather than help tooth decay, but apparently tap water is OK.]
I on the other hand, have not seen any convincing arguments that immunisation is unsafe, and believe in the importance of keeping disease prevalence down in the community. I kind of feel that non-immunisers are in a sense freeloading off the majority of the community who are immunising and reducing the risks of infection of mumps, measles, polio etc for all, and kind of have to bite my tongue rather than say this out loud. I'm admittedly swayed by my own family's experience - my father had measles at 9 months of age, and his mother noticed his eye started going funny soon after. He is pretty much blind in that eye, and as this was quite common when infants got measles, it's likely that the blindness was caused by the measles.
I did a bit of a web search on risks of immunisation, and found the usual government websites, designed to reassure the public that immunisation is worth it, and on the other extreme, alarmist websites - usually anonymous, citing one (scientific?) reference only, claiming all sorts of ill effects of immunisation and using graphs that apparently "prove" their points, but quite frankly, don't make sense to me. One even linked immunisation to the rise in diabetes as well as autoimmune diseases in children, without even mentioning lifestyle or diet as factors in the case of the former or improvements in diagnosis as factors in the latter.
I realise also that immune systems are complex things, as are auto-immune diseases, and doing cause-effect studies on humans is near impossible when you take into account lifestyle and genetics and time. Was wondering if anyone reading this has ever spent a bit of time looking into this issue and has some credible sources on the matter? Just for the record, I have started E-chan on his immunisation program, so am unlikely to change anyway.
It's funny - some people are so convinced and even aggressive about their opinions on these sorts of issues, and little old me feels slightly swayed by their conviction for a bit. Then I realise, hang on, I'm the one with the biology degree, and who's spent a considerable amount of my time getting tested for allergies and going on elimination diets for food intolerances and have discussed the issue in depth with allergists and dietitians and read up quite a lot on autoimmune diseases, and who's mother is a nurse and has also looked into these issues quite a lot over the past 30 years... That knowledge has got to count for something? I'm not just a sheep getting herded into government health programs that aren't in our better interests?
6 comments:
I think immunisation is a good thing. My grandmother's sister died of measles as an adult. And when I went to India I saw way too many kids who had survived polio and were horribly deformed as a result.
Personally and non-scientifically, I think kids should be exposed to dirt as much as possible. I have seen articles talking about how kids who grow up on farms have fewer allergies because of being exposed to low-level dirt and pathogens at a young age. Also, I had a friend at uni whose mother sterilised everything in site - she used to get sick every time she ate at our house and I reckon that's because she had no immunity becuase of not being exposed to bugs.
People forget that not so long ago kids and adults died in swathes, becuase of diseases that we now immunise against.
Yes - those who argue against immunisation cite figures that don't relate to pre-immunisation prevalence of the disease... even recently, tho' there was a whooping cough epidemic in the hospital that E-chan was born in!
Hey my fella is a big advocate for vaccinations after having worked on mass programs for kiddies in really poor countries. He knows the stats way better than me but the message is they're life-savers, and they're about population-level treatment, not just individuals. He's so passionate about it as to have created family feuds on the topic.
If I were you, I wouldn't let her kids near yours or anybody else's.
In communities where people live in close proximity to one another, wingnuts who choose to not have their children immunised are doing something far more dangerous than freeloading, they are actually reducing the group immunity of the population and putting all the little kiddies in danger and not just their own.
How mass vaccination works is by reducing the overall prevelance of a disease in the community. Not all vaccinations are 100% effective, especially the one for measles which can have an efficacy of as little as 80%. By vaccinating everyone, you reduce the chances that those for whom the vaccine has been less effective will catch it in the first place. The analogy I used with BSharp was like a castle's defences - those who have a strong immunity shield those whose is weaker. Every person who chooses not to immunise their children is like taking a brick out of the castle's wall, sooner or later some arrows will get through or the wall may collapse altogether.
This is why there are still measles outbreaks in countries with high coverage, such as Germany in 2004. The magic number is +95% coverage, which doesn't leave a lot of room for personal choice in my opinion. It only takes a few wingnuts to 'opt-out' for the coverage rate to drop below this and hey presto, childhood measles, brain damage and blindness in a first world country.
So, while it might seem like a personal choice it really isn't, if you're going to play the 'community' game, as many of these cristal toting nut jobs like to do, you have a responsability to play safe and that means immunising your kids.
It should be said that there have been some concerns about combination vaccinations, such as for Diptheria (whooping cough) but in the numbers game, the chances of complications from getting the vaccination are less than those from contracting the disease.
Flouride in the water however, is another matter...
I agree with immunisation in most cases, but have issues with the way it's presented to us. I have not signed the consent to have our baby immunised AT BIRTH for hepatitis B for example. Amanda and I are both immunised against this since we work in high risk jobs, but I see no reason whatsoever to stick needles into my newborn when they're in a home with no risk of infection at all. I have consented to vitamin K (not an immunisation I know, but point following) but have consented as an oral dose, not an injection.
Injecting things into ones body bypasses every immune defense the body has. Whilst in a hospital setting, which is a place filled with disease that nobody should normally be exposed to, I think I should limit the number of times my baby should have it's immune system bypassed. If a baby is breastfed and roomed in with its mum then the colostrum should help its immune whilst it's in hospital and injections can wait until it's in a safer environment. I know that hap B is a big problem in Australia, but surely some sort of screening program for higher risk families is more appropriate than giving all newborn the vaccine?
It also pisses me off that immunisations are only offered as "package deals" unless you complain and make the effort to book to have them done separately. I don't believe that immunising against multiple diseases at one time is a good idea. I know that the scientists who run these things say that you can immunise safely for 100+ diseases at one time, but the kooky stuff that happens to people who undergo heavy, multiple vaccines at one time scare me. It is suspected that "Gulf War Syndrome" may be the result of this style of immunisation and I know from having military personell in my family that many soldiers become ill in odd ways after mass vaccinations. I will immunise against mumps, measles and rubella but I will do this with 3 separate vaccines. I have always reacted very strongly to immunisations (I had an open weeping sore for months after my TB vaccine) and would hate for the same thing to happen to my baby. I would rather minimise this risk where possible.
I think that if a parent expresses fear about vaccination to a health worker then they should be provided with some options about ways to vaccinate that allay some of those fears without being overboard in either direction. I think we're very lucky in this country to have cheap and freely available vaccinations, but I think we should also be given some ability to make some alternative choices about giving these things too.
And I like to think I'm not a wing-nut either. Not all people who make these decisions about immunisation are stupid, ignorant or weird. They have just come to different conclusions than others about this stuff. If they want to put their child at risk of disease then that's their risk to take and they have to live with the consequences.
Thanks for commenting, guys and gals. Really appreciative. I feel reaffirmed that vaccinating was the right thing to do. Still quite unsure about the science of the effects on the individual and where to read up on stuff.
Not sure that I trust books written by people who aren't experts in immunology and that lack credible references (but that's just me), so may have to do a lit search in a Uni library near me one day when E-chan can be looked after. If people were really just trying to raise awareness of the dangers of immunisation and not making their own profit (book sales, targeting parents who naturally worry about doing the right thing for their kids), they would spend time lobbying governments and getting credible advocates on their side. I've known people who have done a lot of advocate work in similar fields (food additives), and they have done LOTS of lobbying for food labelling and got changes made to the system back in the 80's.
As for injected vaccinations bipassing the immune system - wouldn't oral doses do the same for diseases that are usually passed through the respiratory system (lungs etc)? And given babies don't swallow well until they are effectively eating solids (around 6 months), doesn't that mean oral doses risk not being effectively administered at the 2, 4, and 6 month doses? Questions, questions!
Injecting Vit K made E-chan howl in hospital, but we were kind of glad at the time, as he hadn't really been breathing all that well up until then. His 2 month injection was a bit traumatic - he howled, and got a slight fever and was a bit grizzly for a few days. At the 4 month one he was consolable much more quickly, and had no other recognisable side effects. Since then, I have seen him howl just as much for other reasons (ie waking up from wind or possibly nightmares, bumping his head when he fell over from sitting position before I could grab him, putting on his top after a bath when he must have wanted to stay just in his nappy, getting hungry earlier than expected during growth spurt and mum & dad taking longer than usual in their half asleep state to work out what the problem was... etc etc). He heals quickly also.
Agree that one is not informed well by the authorities when making decisions about your child. Was aware about Vitamin K, but don't remember having much time to think about Hep B - they kind of "sell" it to you in hospital as "you don't know what their lifestyle is going to be like", but don't really say that you can wait until they are a teenager or anything.
But agree that there isn't really a lot of room for personal choice regarding whether or not to vaccinate given the risk of epidemics arising. Most of the diseases we vacinate for we do so for a reason...
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