Anti vaccer movement.

[too-open-minded]

So my fiancee is leaning towards the anti vaccer movement while I'm neutral.

 

The mercury and other ingredients in the vaccines, whatsup with that? Is that all misinformation or something I'm not understanding?

 

The spikes in viruses, is there any hard evidence to support it's caused by the anti vaccinates? I think it is but have nothing to hold up an argument with.

 

I don't believe that vaccines cause autism, haven't been able to find any hard evidence on that though.

 

Can anybody help me form a valid opinion on this?

[swansont]

Mercury (thimerosal) was taken out of a lot of vaccines years ago, and gee, autism didn't go away. Rates didn't drop.

 

You know something? There's Chlorine — a poison — in table salt. But it's no big deal, because it's not in a form that's harmful. Much like ingredients in vaccines, including mercury, that the anti-vaxxers point at.

 

If you haven't found evidence that vaccines don't cause autism, you can't have looked very hard. It's been debunked a number of ways, including my previous observation that removing thimerosal didn't lower autism rates. And that the original study linking them was found to be fraudulent.

 

http://www.passporthealthusa.com/2013/04/cdc-study-debunks-vaccine-autism-link/

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/29/vaccine-autism-connection-debunked-again/

[Essay]

Vaccines are much easier, and much less risky, than sending your child off to fight for your country's future. Part of being a good parent is being a good citizen. The future that your children inhabit will be shaped by fulfilling our civic responsibilities now.

 

~ connecting good science with good citizenship.

[iNow]

The valid opinion is that vaccines work and those who don't vaccinate their children are best classified as well intentioned misinformed idiots.

.

 

More: http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/dear-parents-you-are-being-lied

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/huge-meta-study-vaccines-reveals-no-link-autism

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/06/26/peds.2014-1079.abstract

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.

 

Btw - The always outstanding NOVA will be doing a special on vaccines this Tuesday evening on a PBS channel near you (and viewable online): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/vaccines-calling-shots.html

[John Cuthber]

And don't forget that the whole "story" was kicked off by a bloke who was trying to sell his own company's rival product.

[Greg H.]

In many areas of the United States, children who aren't properly vaccinated cannot get into public schools, and with good reason. The simple fact is that even if vaccinations caused autism (which they don't), your child would be better off autistic and alive than dead of say measles at the age of 3, in my opinion.

 

There's also a misconception about what it means to be autistic. It's does not necessarily mean that the person is socially inept or incapable of functioning on their own.

[John Cuthber]

 

 

I don't believe that vaccines cause autism, haven't been able to find any hard evidence on that though.

 

Can anybody help me form a valid opinion on this?

I can try.

 

A vaccine for measles came on the market in 1963

The take-up of the vaccine must have been high and fast because this is what happened to the incidence of measles.

 

 

The marked rise in the reported incidence of autism started around 1985.

There is no possible explanation for the 20 year delay if the vaccine was the cause of the rise in autism.

[CharonY]

So my fiancee is leaning towards the anti vaccer movement while I'm neutral.

 

The mercury and other ingredients in the vaccines, whatsup with that? Is that all misinformation or something I'm not understanding?

 

The spikes in viruses, is there any hard evidence to support it's caused by the anti vaccinates? I think it is but have nothing to hold up an argument with.

 

I don't believe that vaccines cause autism, haven't been able to find any hard evidence on that though.

 

Can anybody help me form a valid opinion on this?

 

In addition to the points mentioned by others I wanted to emphasize that mercury as preservatives are generally not harmful in the used concentrations. Typically ethylmercurithioslicylate is used which breaks down in the body to ethylmercury. Ethylmercury is cleared from the body rather fast and should not be confused with more toxic variants (including methylmercury, which the form you hear about in wildlife and other tox studies).

[too-open-minded]

Actually I have done some research on the matter and found multiple things on how vaccines don't cause autism. My fiancee just seems to not believe anything I find but will believe any Bullcrap article she reads online..... Frustrating, she's actually pretty intelligent but her mama bear instincts can be over baring.

 

No pun intended.

 

Thanks guys, she doesn't believe any of this either. Oh well.

 

Btw I think there's no correlation between the "spikes" in autism and it's actually just that we either overly diagnose autism or it just get's more notoriety than it used to.

Also she tried telling me the CDC website even posts I can't remember if she said autism or what but, they post on their website something freakish as a side effect to a vaccine. I'm going to have her find this when she wakes up and post it here. Please debunk this guys, she won't listen to me.

[Fuzzwood]

Try to make her read an article about confirmation bias.

[Phi for All]

Try to make her read an article about confirmation bias,

 

And focus on the part where once the bias is introduced, more evidence refuting the bias tends to make people even more certain they're right. It's a pretty vicious circle.

 

I think the best approach is to show her some websites from children's hospitals around the country.

[breekee]

Maybe you could encourage her momma bear instincts by showing her the consequences of the diseases the vaccines prevent.

[John Cuthber]

Ask her for her explanation of the fact that the vaccines were in wide use for decades before there was a rise in the reports of autism.

[StringJunky]

Vaccination is an important act of social responsibility benefitting the collective physical well-being of society and not just the individual.

[Delta1212]

Vaccination is an important act of social responsibility benefitting the collective physical well-being of society and not just the individual.

But since this strikes a chord with so few people, I'd go with pictures of babies hacking up a lung thanks to whooping cough.

[StringJunky]

Delta1212, on 11 Sept 2014 - 8:42 PM, said:

But since this strikes a chord with so few people, I'd go with pictures of babies hacking up a lung thanks to whooping cough.

Yes, a blunt visceral instrument like such a picture you mention speaks louder unfortunately.

[too-open-minded]

Okay so I've whiped out the Autism argument but she still stands by that Vaccines are harmful to health. She said that 85% of the people who get sick are the ones who have been vaccinated..... Someone in one of her mom groups, but she believes it. Some 50 year old mom who has been "researching" vaccines for 20 years is against them. She says she's heard of babies going deaf, blind, seizures, brain swelling, mostly relating to the high fevers and some adverse reactions. All of these on her moms groups. She also said that babies don't process things as well as our bodies do and that's why she is against the preservatives?

 

I don't know about the 85% percent thing and I call BS on that. The other stuff I can't really argue because she knows these moms on a personal level.

 

Here is some stuff from the CDC she has shown me.

Possible side effects - http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm#dtap

 

These cases are very rare but apparently she's met quite a few mothers who have experienced things like the severe reactions. I'm gonna look up the likelihood of getting a bad virus while unvaccinated contrasted to the likelihood of an adverse reaction.

So her argument is that why take the risk of our child getting an adverse reaction or pump poison into, when they could most likely survive the virus anyways.

 

I'm taking y'alls word for it, I just don't know how to convince her.

Showed her this and she still argues that vaccines were introduced when they were dying out and that's why it seems that vaccines cured it. She says sanitation did this.

 

http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/misconceptions-about-vaccines

[John Cuthber]

You need to point out what a post hoc fallacy is.

Just because some babies fell ill after vaccination, that doesn't mean the vaccine is the cause.

Also, point out that the information that she relying on comes from the same discredited sources that told her the nonsense about autism.

 

The sanitation "explanation" doesn't work.

Smallpox is wiped out throughout the world- even the bits with truly appalling sanitation problems.

Diseases don't just "die out" we know that some f them have been with us since the stone age.

 

Re "So her argument is that why take the risk of our child getting an adverse reaction or pump poison into, when they could most likely survive the virus anyways."

That would be a valid point, but it's the wrong way round.

Why take the risk of being killed or maimed by the virus when you will most likely survive the vaccination anyway?

The odds work out in favour of vaccination- by a long way.

[Delta1212]

When your baby is killed or left permanently scarred by an easily preventable childhood illness, or worse, gives it to someone else's child who is killed or left permanently scarred and who wouldn't have otherwise been exposed, please make sure she understands whose fault it is.

 

Refusing to vaccinate should be considered child abuse.

[swansont]

 

These cases are very rare but apparently she's met quite a few mothers who have experienced things like the severe reactions. I'm gonna look up the likelihood of getting a bad virus while unvaccinated contrasted to the likelihood of an adverse reaction.

 

 

Perhaps she should make an effort to meet some of the mothers of children who died from contracting measles (some of whom were too young to have been vaccinated) and see what their experience has been like.

[CharonY]

One thing to consider, especially if our child is not vaccinated and you are surrounded by non-vaccinated children (if you happen to be surrounded by like-minded parent) then you are putting all of the infants at an unreasonable risk. To put it bluntly, you risk health and well-being of your child for some unfounded beliefs. The risks of long-term effects (including death) are much higher.

Take DTaP : 1 in a million have sever effects (which may be unrelated to the immunization). If your child contracts diphtheria (which is unlikely now as most are immunized and as a result incidents have dropped close to regional extinction , but if people stop, it will come back) it has a chance of ~20% of dying. 1:5 vs 1:1000,000 (if that). Take your bets.

Edited September 12, 2014 by CharonY

[too-open-minded]

I'm going to try and find organizations or groups of moms who hadn't vaccinated and had something bad happened, maybe that will sway her. Thankyou Swansont.

[fiveworlds]

Doctors here will only give the BCG vaccine to young children since the risk of having an adverse reaction to the BCG is much higher in adults. It is not considered ethical to allow a patient to receive the vaccination as an adult and it is illegal to provide it. However in order to work in the medical and education industries you must have the BCG vaccination. Your child may decide they want to teach when they are older and simply can't.

[MonDie]

I don't believe that vaccines cause autism, haven't been able to find any hard evidence on that though.

 

Autistic Traits in the General Population (Constantino, Todd, 2003)

"Most cases of autism follow an oligogenic pattern of inheritance, with heritability estimates of 0.6 to 0.9."

However, I don't know whether those estimates compensate for measurement error.

Table 3 looks like their results, but they used a social responsiveness scale (SRS), not an autism scale.

 

The correlation with advanced paternal age suggests that it's caused by mutations.

 

The problem seems to be extra synapses. http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2014/08/21/children-autism-extra-synapses-brain/

Edited September 13, 2014 by MonDie

[Essay]

I'm going to try and find organizations or groups of moms who hadn't vaccinated and had something bad happened, maybe that will sway her. Thankyou Swansont.

 

After watching that recent Nova episode on vaccinations, and the long history (back to ancient times!) of vaccinating people, it also occurred to me that it is your future grandchildren that you put most at risk, by not having your own kids vaccinated now.

 

~ ...think of the children grandchildren!