Six Reason to Question Vaccinations

Hydrogen Cyanide said:
Also automobiles have changed over the past several decades to reduce death and injury. The glass no longer breaks into sharp daggers, the frames are designed absorb crash forces and even steering wheels have been changed for safety reasons.

In the same way a vaccine helps change the human body's immune system to deflect infections like measles, mumps, etc.
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Why are SUV's and 4x4's so popular with parents to drop the kids off at school? The shape of these vehicles has been shown to be more lethal to children because they smack right into their heads and bodies, rather than pushing them up onto the hood.

As we in the UK have been made aware, driving at 40mph rather than 30mph, significantly increases the risk of killing a child if you hit them. IIRC, it changes from 80% surviving to 80% dying.
 
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You've got it backwards, Ivor. Adults are safer in lower-ended car collisions, because it scoops them up onto the hood. Children are safer in high-bumper collisions, because it spreads out the impact over their entire upper body rather than hitting them near the pelvis only.

Why can't we save the lives we can, rather than discarding them because there are others elsewhere in danger too?
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
Why are SUV's and 4x4's so popular with parents to drop the kids off at school? The shape of these vehicles has been shown to be more lethal to children because they smack right into their heads and bodies, rather than pushing them up onto the hood.
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I would not know... personally I find them silly, pretentious and expensive (isn't petrol more expensive in the UK?). I had to rent a Ford Explorer once when my minivan was in the shop. I hated it, it drove like a truck. Though parallel parking was made a bit easier. Curb? What curb? Just drive over them!

Also, I meant safer for the PASSENGERS, not the victims of stupid drivers who do not or cannot look where they are driving.

In reality today's Suburban Assault Vehicle is technically safer than the land yachts I remember from the 1960s, when my father actually installed the seatbelts into his new car. Even still, those seatbelts were only lap belts. The SUV's should have shoulder belts in the back (our 1985 Subaru station only had lap belts in the back).


Ivor the Engineer said:
As we in the UK have been made aware, driving at 40mph rather than 30mph, significantly increases the risk of killing a child if you hit them. IIRC, it changes from 80% surviving to 80% dying.
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Hence the use of school zones where traffic violation fines double. Do you get the same traffic safety radio ads at the end of the summer holidays reminding drivers that children will be out going to school?

Of course it does not matter how safe you design the car, or how well traffic laws are enforced when you have to rely on human elements who may be driving with distractions, sleep deprived or under the influence of alcohol or medication (though is is being worked on, http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/robotics/4228634.html?page=1 ). All you can do is reduce the risks with the factors that can be controlled.

Like vaccinating for measles, instead of hoping you can depend on herd immunity.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
Only if spending the money on prevention or treatment for 'that some other way' would not save more lives using a similar amount of money. MMR is probably worth it. Varicella vaccine, no way! E.g, let's save 100's of kid's lives in the third world before we save 7 in the UK.

It's not the harm to 'these children's lives', it's all the other kids (and adults) who don't get treated (as well as they could) because there's less money and resources left to spend and use on them. Try explaining to a mother's children that she's going to die soon because we spent all the money vaccinating them against chickenpox, meningitis and flu.
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Now that's why I said I was listening to the paediatric epidemiologist, because that's exactly the calculation he was making. Would introduction of the chicken pox vaccine be value for money (he used these exact words), in terms of lives saved and serious illness averted. Remember, the lives saved by the vaccine have worth, just as do lives that might be saved spending the money in other ways. This was exactly the topic of the discussion, and to be honest I'm more inclined to listen to an "authority" on that one, because it is a very complex calculation.

Rolfe.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
You've got it backwards, Ivor. Adults are safer in lower-ended car collisions, because it scoops them up onto the hood. Children are safer in high-bumper collisions, because it spreads out the impact over their entire upper body rather than hitting them near the pelvis only.

Why can't we save the lives we can, rather than discarding them because there are others elsewhere in danger too?
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No, you have:p

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4829628.stm

...However, Euro NCAP's secretary general Adrian Hobbs says children are in greater danger if hit by a 4x4 than an ordinary car, because the height of the front-end means they're more likely to injure their head and chest.
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Sorry, Ivor, I missed an important part of your post. You'd rather the money went in medical aid to the Third World.

A good argument, but once you start that one, where do you stop? What other healthcare we have in this country would you axe in order to find a cure for malaria or bring MMR to children in Zimbabwe?

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Now that's why I said I was listening to the paediatric epidemiologist, because that's exactly the calculation he was making. Would introduction of the chicken pox vaccine be value for money (he used these exact words), in terms of lives saved and serious illness averted. Remember, the lives saved by the vaccine have worth, just as do lives that might be saved spending the money in other ways. This was exactly the topic of the discussion, and to be honest I'm more inclined to listen to an "authority" on that one, because it is a very complex calculation.

Rolfe.
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7 children's lives per year.

At £5 per shot, that's £3.2 million/year. So for 7 lives £463,200 per life.

For 1 year olds with 75 good years in them £6259/life-year saved.

BTW, the costs in the US are estimated at $49/shot, so I may be grossly underestimating the cost by as much as a factor of 3.5.

Personally, I'd only offer it to children who had passed a certain age (16?) without contracting chickenpox, as 80% of the deaths from chickenpox occur in adults.
 
Rolfe said:
Sorry, Ivor, I missed an important part of your post. You'd rather the money went in medical aid to the Third World.

A good argument, but once you start that one, where do you stop? What other healthcare we have in this country would you axe in order to find a cure for malaria or bring MMR to children in Zimbabwe?

Rolfe.
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I think the question is can we bring ourselves to protect our population from ever decreasing threats to its health at ever increasing costs, while millions are dying around the world?

It's not so much an argument for stopping treatment for actual illness people have to treat people elsewhere, more for not introducing expensive risk-reducing measures for tiny risks that, in the grand scheme of things, are insignificant. I.e. let's use our resources to treat people who are actually ill and suffering.

3 of the 7 kids will die young because they'll be obese and 2 because they'll smoke. Another will probably have an alcohol problem. Future treatment for those 7 kids who would have died is going to cost a lot of money.
 
The current price for Varilrix (GlaxoSmithKline UK) is £27.31 for a single vial, Varivax (Sanofi Pasteur MSD) is £32.14 and there is a third from Bio Products Laboratory which doesn't have a price listed.
Mass vaccinations would mean the health authorities buying in bulk making the purchase price considerably cheaper and the companies would have to ramp up production facilities which would also serve to bring the price down.
 
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Ivor the Engineer said:
I think the question is can we bring ourselves to protect our population from ever decreasing threats to its health at ever increasing costs, while millions are dying around the world?

It's not so much an argument for stopping treatment for actual illness people have to treat people elsewhere, more for not introducing expensive risk-reducing measures for tiny risks that, in the grand scheme of things, are insignificant. I.e. let's use our resources to treat people who are actually ill and suffering.

3 of the 7 kids will die young because they'll be obese and 2 because they'll smoke. Another will probably have an alcohol problem. Future treatment for those 7 kids who would have died is going to cost a lot of money.
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But now, you're back to using that money in the UK to treat the problems of affluence. Do you want to spend it on campaigns to halt the problems of affluence (which sadly will probably fail), or save it up to treat the problems of affluence when they occur?

I think at that comparison, you're back in the arena the paediatric epidemiologist was discussing, but probably with less data and less expertise.

I liked the suggestion of using the money for foreign aid a lot better, I just wondered how far you'd go with it.

Rolfe.
 
These people are crazy. If knowing two dead kids killed in the same year from the same disease is not enough to convince you to get a vaccine for your own kids, then you have to be just crazy. These two dead kids were healthy until they got meningitis. There was nothing different about them, except they caught a deadly disease that my kids weren't exposed to yet. Of course I want to protect MY kids from the same fate. This not "fear" but common sense for crying out loud!

You don't care about your kids, that's your problem, don't go around saying parents with an ounce of common sense are "just controlled by fear".

Sheeesh!
 
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Ivor the Engineer said:
I think the question is can we bring ourselves to protect our population from ever decreasing threats to its health at ever increasing costs, while millions are dying around the world?

It's not so much an argument for stopping treatment for actual illness people have to treat people elsewhere, more for not introducing expensive risk-reducing measures for tiny risks that, in the grand scheme of things, are insignificant. I.e. let's use our resources to treat people who are actually ill and suffering.

...snip for irrelevance...
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Almost precisely argued.
If it is purely an economic equation let us weigh the benefits of universal vaccination against chicken pox against the losses from the occurence of chicken pox. How much does is cost to hospitalise these children and what is the cost , in purely economic terms, of their death? As Rolfe has said the economics may point to universal vaccination.

But is there not an emotional cost?

The severe injury of a child or even its death produces a dysfunction in society that is immeasurable. This is the cost/benefit we should be considering, not purely the numbers ascribed by an accountant or a mere engineer.
 
Ivor, one factor not in your equation are the indirect costs of treating the children who become ill when they get the disease. As I said initially, I am still unsure whether universal vaccination against chickenpox is "worth it". But for illnesses like measles, the costs of treating the several hundred children with pneumonia, encephalitis, otitis, laryngotracheobronchitis etc that occur each year and the long term care of brain damaged children would far outweigh the costs of vaccine supply and administration. So you don't need to go to your third world argument to look for better ways to spend the money - UK vaccination has sufficient cost benefit.

As Rolfe says, there are numerous examples of how money spent in the UK could be better spent in the third world, so to be consistent you need to look at all interventions, be they preventative or curative, and not focus on just immunisations.

For example, a liver transplant for an alcoholic costs £60k. That would fund about 200 thousand MMR doses in Africa.

Alternatively, you can say a liver transplant at £60k saves one life. How many lives in the UK would £60k of MMR/chickenpox vaccine save? (I haven't done the calculation, but it would be several orders of magnitude higher - for measles alone if you assume 3 shots and a case fatality of 1 in 2000, then it would save 33 children's lives - if my math is correct)
 
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Acleron said:
Almost precisely argued.
If it is purely an economic equation let us weigh the benefits of universal vaccination against chicken pox against the losses from the occurence of chicken pox. How much does is cost to hospitalise these children and what is the cost , in purely economic terms, of their death? As Rolfe has said the economics may point to universal vaccination.

But is there not an emotional cost?

The severe injury of a child or even its death produces a dysfunction in society that is immeasurable. This is the cost/benefit we should be considering, not purely the numbers ascribed by an accountant or a mere engineer.
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I like the "mere engineer" bit at the end;)

Let's do some more calculations:

Assume 90% of individuals by the time they are 16 have had chickenpox.

There are about 12 million children in the UK 0-16 years old, so 90% is 10.8 million. Every year, 10.8 million / 16 = 675,000 children get chickenpox. Just under 7 die, so that works out to a child with chickenpox has 1 in 100,000 chance of dying, with no varicella vaccination programme.

1 in 100,000 chance of dying.

Check out this page for other yearly risks (US again):

http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm

Pedestrian: 1 in 49,139
Car occupant: 1 in 19,216
Fall on and from stairs and steps: 1 in 179,278
Accidental drowning and submersion: 1 in 88,772
Inhalation and ingestion of other objects causing obstruction of respiratory tract: 1 in 91,340
Accidental poisoning by and exposure to noxious substances: 1 in 14,017
Complications of medical and surgical care and sequelae: 1 in 101,858
Assault by firearm: 1 in 25,263
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How much does cancer cost to treat? How about heart disease? All those children who don't die of chickenpox end up having to be treated for these and other illnesses. Does the cost of these and other (expensive) treatments get added on to the cost of saving their lives?

As for the hospital admissions: Let's use 1 in 500 cases:

1350 children admitted to hospital each year for chickenpox.

0.85 per 100,000 children have serious complications, giving 102 children.

So 1350-102 = 1248 children admitted to hospital each year for chickenpox do not have serious complications.

Please don't play the emotional cost card. You don't bat an eyelid when 100 times that number of children are dying around the world for lack of such luxuries as food and water.

Life in the West has become so safe that our public health researchers have to dig around in the noise to find things to protect us from.
 
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Eos of the Eons said:
These people are crazy. If knowing two dead kids killed in the same year from the same disease is not enough to convince you to get a vaccine for your own kids, then you have to be just crazy. These two dead kids were healthy until they got meningitis. There was nothing different about them, except they caught a deadly disease that my kids weren't exposed to yet. Of course I want to protect MY kids from the same fate. This not "fear" but common sense for crying out loud!

You don't care about your kids, that's your problem, don't go around saying parents with an ounce of common sense are "just controlled by fear".

Sheeesh!
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Many people have natural immunity to bacteria that cause meningitis. In fact, no one knows why the few who do get it, get it. Currently, it's considered just extremely bad luck.

If you worry enough about your kids getting meningitis to do something about reducing their risk of contracting it by a small amount, you must be in a state of constant fear, given all the much more likely risks to their life they face every single day. Talk about ignoring the elephant(s) in the room.
 
But how many of those other causes of death in your list have one simple thing that would prevent the vast majority of them? You can't just look at the mortality rate without also looking at how easy these deaths are to prevent.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
But how many of those other causes of death in your list have one simple thing that would prevent the vast majority of them? You can't just look at the mortality rate without also looking at how easy these deaths are to prevent.
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Motivate people to avoid going into the water? Ban all garden ponds? Tax people heavily for using cars for journeys of less than a mile? Only allow bleach and other potentially dangerous household substances to be sold in non-lethal quantities?

Let's not forget that the varicella vaccination wares off after less than 20 years, meaning that more than one shot is needed to avoid cases of breakthrough chickenpox in adulthood.

Why not think of having childhood chickenpox as a very safe one-off medical treatment?
 
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I see you are 4 times more likely to die if you are in a car than if you are on a motorbike. Clearly we should ban all cars, not just 4x4s.
;)
 
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