Vaccines: how do I talk to my anti-vac wife about it?

[Clayton Moore]

Considering vaccinations, what specifically needs to be moderated?

Huh? Moderation and common sense say you don't drink three shots at one time.

Other than insurance companies having to pay for three doctors visits what's the need for MMR?

 

[Tomblvd]

Huh? Moderation and common sense say you don't drink three shots at one time.

Uh, you do realize there is a difference between a vaccine and a shot of alcohol?

Other than insurance companies having to pay for three doctors visits what's the need for MMR?

To prevent measles, mumps and rubella???

 

[Clayton Moore]

Uh, you do realize there is a difference between a vaccine and a shot of alcohol?



To prevent measles, mumps and rubella???

 

[Tomblvd]

Do you have a point?

 

[Tatyana]

Huh? Moderation and common sense say you don't drink three shots at one time.

Other than insurance companies having to pay for three doctors visits what's the need for MMR?

How about not having to put a needle into a child more times than necessary?

How about the fact that a lot of people have busy lives and it is often difficult enough for them to find the time to come in for normal vaccination schedule without adding to it?


As well, all countries except for the USA have completely different health care systems with different methods of payment for immunisation, so your argument actually supports the MMR.

In every single other country where doctors are more likely to be rewarded by outcomes, not the number of procedures, as in the USA.

Financially, doctors and insurance companies would prefer more jabs than fewer jabs.

Do you realise the number of potential pathogens we encounter every single day?

Just about everything is covered in foecal coliforms as well as other bacteria.

This doesn't even include the number of viruses or fungal spores our bodies deal with every single day.

Three inactivated viruses is a cake walk for our immune system.

http://www.webmd.com/news/20070625/top-spots-for-bacteria-at-home

Toilet bowl: 3.2 million bacteria/square inch
Kitchen drain: 567,845 bacteria/square inch
Sponge or counter-wiping cloth: 134,630 bacteria/square inch
Bathtub, near drain: 119,468 bacteria/square inch
Kitchen sink, near drain: 17,964 bacteria/square inch
Kitchen faucet handle: 13,227 bacteria/square inch
Bathroom faucet handle: 6,267 bacteria/square inch
Bathroom sink, near drain: 2,733 bacteria/square inch
Pet food dish, inside rim: 2,110 bacteria/square inch
Kitchen floor, in front of sink: 830 bacteria/square inch
Toilet floor, in front of toilet: 764 bacteria/square inch
Kitchen countertop: 488 bacteria/square inch
Bathroom countertop: 452 bacteria/square inch
Garbage bin: 411 bacteria/square inch
Dish towel: 408 bacteria/square inch
Toy: 345 bacteria/square inch
Kitchen tabletop: 344 bacteria/square inch
Home office phone or refrigerator door: 319 bacteria/square inch
Toilet seat: 295 bacteria/square inch
Bathroom light switch: 217 bacteria/square inch
Microwave buttons: 214 bacteria/square inch
Kitchen chopping board: 194 bacteria/square inch
Child-training potty: 191 bacteria/square inch
Infant changing mat and infant high chair: 190 bacteria/square inch
Kitchen phone: 133 bacteria/square inch
Bathroom door's inside handle: 121 bacteria/square inch
Toilet's flush handle: 83 bacteria/square inch
TV remote control: 70 bacteria/square inch
Home office computer keyboard: 64 bacteria/square inch
Home office computer mouse: 50 bacteria/square inch

 

[ehcks]

Huh? Moderation and common sense say you don't drink three shots at one time.

Other than insurance companies having to pay for three doctors visits what's the need for MMR?

We know the effects of excessive alcohol consumption. We also know the effects of vaccines.

The former is generally dangerous, the latter is generally not.

And as said before, the need for the MMR vaccine is to prevent measles, mumps, and rubella. What's the "jaw drop" for? Do you think we need more cases of measles, mumps, and rubella?

 

[Estellea]

Once again you demonstrate the dishonest tactic of completely overlooking human suffering when it doesn't support your point of view. The incidence of 1) healthy person, 2) vaccination, 3) unhealthy or deceased person will always be quickly followed by 4) causation denial. The people are only partially fooled and then only if they aren't aware of all the others dropping around them and across the world.

Au contraire; you are using the Morton case as an appeal to emotion even though there is no biological plausibility for the girl to have magically grown a tumour so large it infiltrated her lung and killed her in less than two hours after the jab. No one denies adverse vaccine reactions, we just don't buy into the conspiracy theories required by dodgy anti-vaxxers to make a case against vaccines. This is not a case of vaccine injury but feel free to explain the physiological process by which it is since you believe it.

The vaccine industry and pro-vaxxers use the dishonest tactic of ignoring the wave of suffering that follows the vaccination program or when your feet are held to fire by indisputable evidence, you use the false claim that you're saving more lives than you're destroying.

Oh really? And this is why the U.S. has NVICP and several other Western countries have vaccine injury compensation schemes? Please post the statistics to support this "wave of suffering" and you will have my attention but I suspect another dodge on your part instead.

The evidence is there and given 20-30 years will even be admitted to by relevant authorities along with the assurance that it couldn't happen nowadays. This book, Vaccine supply and innovation By Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Division of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, includes the cases of a number of people who were injured or worse by vaccines in which the only dispute is who has liability. On page 11 are the poignant words:

Please excuse me for highlighting those specific words but try explaining to a parent how their child's sudden post-vaccination illness or death is just an unavoidable vaccine injury!

If the evidence is there now, then where is it? Surely you must know since you made the claim. You fail to understand what "unavoidable vaccine injury" is or you do and you are being disingenuous. If you read the entire passage in context (and not cherry-pick), then it is obvious that some vaccine injuries are unavoidable in that the safest manufacturing possible is undertaken but individual biology that can not be predicted can influence a severe adverse event.

(Sorry - I forgot to mention that I didn't find a table when I followed your link this table)

There are links to multiple tables in the supplied URL, you need to click on them.

Este

 

[randman]

Hi, folks; can you offer me some help? The trouble is that my wife and I disagree on the importance of vaccines: I think children should be vaccinated, and she thinks vaccines are deadly. She so strongly opposes vaccines that she has said she would leave me before she agreed to vaccinate our children. She has one child from a former spouse, and she's pregnant with our first right now.

Every time I talk to her about vaccines, she tells me stories about how vaccines are at best worthless and at worst fatal - that the incidence of disease goes down due to public sanitation improvements, not vaccination campaigns. She's read a lot of stuff and tells me about all the anti-vac stuff she's read, but it's always a, "I read a (book / report / study / article) by this (guy / doctor / magazine / health group / researcher) that shows vaccines (cause autism / induce fits of paralysis / injure the child / kill the child / other bad stuff)."

She even pulls this story out about how she took one of her cats who up until this point had been completely healthy to get vaccinated for feline leukemia and who after the vaccination came down with feline leukemia and died thus proving that vaccines are a fraud. It's even worse because her mother is of the same opinion and the two reinforce each other's beliefs.

I don't know how to talk to her about this; I've done my reading on JREF and Quackwatch and shown her the reports that so many anti-vac reports are bogus (or the doctors who wrote them are discredited), but she doesn't hear any of it. She's totally convinced that vaccines are dangerous and no matter how I try to broach the subject she gets really hostile and shuts down the conversation.

I feel like I'm in a really tough position because from what I've read I believe vaccines to be really important and safe, but from what my wife has read she believes they're the biggest and most dangerous scam of the 20th century. We both love our children, but I feel like she's the one putting them in harm's way. Can anybody here recommend conversation starters, sound arguments, or other methods of helping her come off the anti-vac wagon?

Maybe compromise. Seems like those that think vaccines are bad (due to mercury but she may have other reasons) also think the impact is worse when the children are younger, first few years. Believe it or not, anecdotally this can actually seem to be the case.

So try a deal.....no vaccines until they start school which is kindergarten these days. Schools require it and so at that point, you could sell her on the idea that it's not likely to cause harm and the benefits of school outweigh the risk. Of course, you may have trouble finding a good pre-school but maybe not.

Just an idea.

 

[randman]

We know the effects of excessive alcohol consumption. We also know the effects of vaccines.

The former is generally dangerous, the latter is generally not.

And as said before, the need for the MMR vaccine is to prevent measles, mumps, and rubella. What's the "jaw drop" for? Do you think we need more cases of measles, mumps, and rubella?

I thought within the past year they did actually discover multiple vaccines and some of the content were dangerous.

Sometimes you cannot just rely on science because what's known in science changes, and science can have it wrong. Doesn't mean you ignore science but erring on the side of caution sometimes is the right path.

 

[Chris Haynes]

...
This link provides a great deal of info.


http://www.whale.to/vaccine/yazbak1.html

...

That site has two strikes against it. First, as was noted earlier, quoting John Scudamore's Whale.to website falls under Scopie's Law: anyone cited has automatically lost the argument as we are laughing too hard to care about your opinion.

And second, there is absolutely no reason to care about the opinion of someone who defended a man who murdered his girlfriend's baby by shaking him to death, then tries to blame a vaccine. You can read more here:
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/yurko.htm

 

[Clayton Moore]

I thought within the past year they did actually discover multiple vaccines and some of the content were dangerous.

Sometimes you cannot just rely on science because what's known in science changes, and science can have it wrong. Doesn't mean you ignore science but erring on the side of caution sometimes is the right path.

Hear Hear!

Not even erring. Postponing and separating into single vaccine doses.

 

[Estellea]

Hear Hear!

Not even erring. Postponing and separating into single vaccine doses.

There are less risks of having MMR as a triple jab than as single doses and no evidence of single doses being safer, in fact in countries like Japan who do use single jabs, are experiencing record high prevalence of rubella and mumps. Show a benefit of single jabs and policy will change.

Este

 

[Clayton Moore]

How about not having to put a needle into a child more times than necessary?

How about the fact that a lot of people have busy lives and it is often difficult enough for them to find the time to come in for normal vaccination schedule without adding to it?


As well, all countries except for the USA have completely different health care systems with different methods of payment for immunisation, so your argument actually supports the MMR.

In every single other country where doctors are more likely to be rewarded by outcomes, not the number of procedures, as in the USA.

Financially, doctors and insurance companies would prefer more jabs than fewer jabs.

Do you realise the number of potential pathogens we encounter every single day?

Just about everything is covered in foecal coliforms as well as other bacteria.

This doesn't even include the number of viruses or fungal spores our bodies deal with every single day.

Three inactivated viruses is a cake walk for our immune system.

http://www.webmd.com/news/20070625/top-spots-for-bacteria-at-home

Oooops. I didn't see any mention of viruses. You do know that none of those mentioned enter the body by injection.

 

[ehcks]

Oooops. I didn't see any mention of viruses. You do know that none of those mentioned enter the body by injection.

What significant difference is there between injection, ingestion, or inhalation.

What difference at all is there between injection and a scratch?

 

[Tatyana]

Oooops. I didn't see any mention of viruses. You do know that none of those mentioned enter the body by injection.

Are you seriously saying people never stick themselves with needles and/or never suffer puncture injuries?

Seriously?

 

[Belz...]

The junk that landed/fell on them did modify their surfaces slightly - to that small extent they've been modified by man. My point is that 'modified by man' is very blunt instrument for distinguishing natural from artificial. I also wonder if distilled water counts as natural or artificial by this criterion - artificially distilled water generally has less contaminants than rainwater.

Well, like all definitions it has its problems.

For example, the definition of "species" is problematic at times but car from unworkable.

 

[Tatyana]

Maybe compromise. Seems like those that think vaccines are bad (due to mercury but she may have other reasons) also think the impact is worse when the children are younger, first few years. Believe it or not, anecdotally this can actually seem to be the case.

So try a deal.....no vaccines until they start school which is kindergarten these days. Schools require it and so at that point, you could sell her on the idea that it's not likely to cause harm and the benefits of school outweigh the risk. Of course, you may have trouble finding a good pre-school but maybe not.

Just an idea.

Great idea.

Let's just ask all the various forms of bacterial encephalitis to wait until children are five years of age before they choose to infect them.

Of course the vaccination schedule is just so nasty, a needle in the spinal column is preferable.

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/encephalitis_meningitis/detail_encephalitis_meningitis.htm

We vaccinate children at a young age because before we developed antibiotics and vaccinations, almost one quarter of children died before the age of five.

 

[Hazel]

In ways, our children are less healthy than we were. They say that asthma is rapidly increasing, no doubt from air pollution and the fact that we keep children shut up in air-conditoned houses rather than letting them run around and get acclimated to the outdoors. A doctor once said that keeping our children overly sanitized weakened their immune system. They get no chance to build up a natural resistance to germs. Then, there are all the chemicals in our foods and BPA in baby bottles. Is this why we have more allergies today than used to be? What about the medicines that stop working because we take too much of them? Think antibiotics.

I am not condeming vaccines. I am saying that maybe we overdo in many ways, leaving the children with weaker immune systems which would protect them naturally. That is why I emphathize with your wife in her beliefs. There are two sides to every argument and a quandary left to fret over. Do we or don't we? How can we do enough without doing too much? How can we protect without being overly-protective?

I remember when it was recommended that we let children be exposed to measles while they were young before their immune system weakened. It would build up their resistance, we were told. The same with other childhood diseases. And, by the way, wasn't there a year when they did admit that the flu vaccine caused the flu epidemic that year?

Does one dare suggest a compromise? Vaccinate against the worst ones, the hardest ones to cure (polio?), and go easy with the rest. Just a thought. One thing that I do feel fairly certain about (even with no expertise) is that these multi-vaccines are not as safe as giving one now and one later. Slowly does it.

As an aside, may I jump all the way back to your wife's story of the cat. That also happened to my cat. She didn't die but she was one sick girl for a while. After that, she got no more vaccines.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Of course the counter argument is that it SEEMS that our children are getting weaker because all those that would have died before the advent of vaccination and the use of antibiotics now actually live and thus give the impression of an increase in unhealthy children.

 

[Tatyana]

In ways, our children are less healthy than we were. They say that asthma is rapidly increasing, no doubt from air pollution and the fact that we keep children shut up in air-conditoned houses rather than letting them run around and get acclimated to the outdoors. A doctor once said that keeping our children overly sanitized weakened their immune system. They get no chance to build up a natural resistance to germs. Then, there are all the chemicals in our foods and BPA in baby bottles. Is this why we have more allergies today than used to be? What about the medicines that stop working because we take too much of them? Think antibiotics.

I am not condeming vaccines. I am saying that maybe we overdo in many ways, leaving the children with weaker immune systems which would protect them naturally. That is why I emphathize with your wife in her beliefs. There are two sides to every argument and a quandary left to fret over. Do we or don't we? How can we do enough without doing too much? How can we protect without being overly-protective?

I remember when it was recommended that we let children be exposed to measles while they were young before their immune system weakened. It would build up their resistance, we were told. The same with other childhood diseases. And, by the way, wasn't there a year when they did admit that the flu vaccine caused the flu epidemic that year?

Does one dare suggest a compromise? Vaccinate against the worst ones, the hardest ones to cure (polio?), and go easy with the rest. Just a thought. One thing that I do feel fairly certain about (even with no expertise) is that these multi-vaccines are not as safe as giving one now and one later. Slowly does it.

As an aside, may I jump all the way back to your wife's story of the cat. That also happened to my cat. She didn't die but she was one sick girl for a while. After that, she got no more vaccines.

The clean house hypothesis has nothing to do with 'weakening' the immune system.

I request you stop buying into the advertisement of the whole 'immune system' meme of 'strengthening your immune system' and the opposite, it is total rubbish.

It is thought that the increase in asthma (and other autoimmune diseases in older Western adults) is because we do not deal with parasitic infections.

It is one branch of T helper cells that isn't activated unless we encounter multi-cellular parasites, so the other T helper cell are over active (hypersensitivity reactions).

People forget how awful some of these diseases are for children, and while they are not fatal to all children, they are fatal to some.

No offense, but please read a few more posts, a neonate is going to encounter more pathogens from its mother's birth canal than it will from vaccinations.

The reason most infants don't develop encephalitis or some other infection at this time is that placental tranfer of maternal IgG is going to protect them for approximately the first 4-6 months of life.

Please provide evidence children are less healthy.

Also, less healthy than when?

Such wooly thinking really does need clarification.