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Good pro-vaccination websites?

dissonance

Critical Thinker
dissonance
Joined
Mar 7, 2003
Messages
273
I'm wondering if any of you are aware of any websites that outline nicely the many, many problems with the major anti-vaccination arguments?

I'm pregnant (my first, and she will be vaccinated barring any good reasons not to, like allergies), and I have been surfing a lot of parenting bulletin boards lately. Frankly I'm shocked at how the anti-vax types seem to be everywhere. And the problem is they are impossible to argue with, because although it's relatively easy to counter most of their arguments, they just have so damn many of them and it gets really tiresome really quickly.

What I'd really like is a website that outlines the major anti-vaccination arguments and explains, simply and clearly in lay language, why they are wrong. I'm not so concerned with convincing the die-hard anti-vax types (because those people appear to be immune to logic), but more the group of people who might be reading the anti-vaxers and falling for the faulty logic and bogus arguments. A lot of the anti-vaccine people can be very persuasive if you don't understand the problems with the arguments they are making, so it would be nice to have a decent website to refer people to.
 
I am sure that Eos will be chiming in here soon...

Well, you can start out with the "Pink" book, it explains in detail each disease and about the vaccine:
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/pink/def_pink_full.htm

Then there is the basic info page:
http://immunizationinfo.org/ and this: http://www.immunize.org/

Then there are the anti-"anti-vax" sites that look at how information is used or "misused" on the anti-vax site:
http://www.pathguy.com/antiimmu.htm
and
http://pages.ivillage.com/vaccinesupport/antivaxsites.html

And a bunch more listed here: http://www.ratbags.com/greenlight/vaccines1.htm

And for your reading pleasure, the Ratbags Page Anti-Vax Liars pages:
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/vaxliars1.htm

Good luck with your baby... your life will never be the same again.
 
Awesome site on the anti-vaccine people and why what they say is wrong:

http://www.geocities.com/healthbase/vaxquotes.html

A ton of links on good vaccine information and what to look out for in bad:

http://www.geocities.com/healthbase/vaccination.html

Vaccine testing:

http://www.apologia.com/vaccines/vac_test.html


CBS on taking apart anti-vaccine arguments:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/health/vaccines/miscon.html


Good site that is updated regularly:
http://www.geocities.com/issues_in_immunization/

ON MMR:
http://www.mmrthefacts.nhs.uk/news/newsitem.php?id=68

On the baby's immune system:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-01/chop-iis010802.php


Another mom on anti-vaccinators:
http://pages.ivillage.com/vaccinesupport/antivaxsites.html

A million more links starting here:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-01/chop-iis010802.php


My site:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/eostory/Vaccinations.html
http://www.members.shaw.ca/eostory/Vaccine Quotes.html




Any questions? :D

Seriously, anything that you still need to ask after reviewing these, please fire away.

Congratulations on your new little life and good for you for allowing some prevention that will lead to your child's best step forward to realizing their full potential disease free.

I'm impressed you are putting thought into your choice to vaccinate and looking for fact based information.
because although it's relatively easy to counter most of their arguments, they just have so damn many of them and it gets really tiresome really quickly.
Click to expand...

I have given up arguing with them or trying to explain the truth even in simple terms. No amount of facts or even observation dissuades them.

Kudos to you for keeping your sanity and still presenting information. Just when I think I've heard everything, there's a new argument put forth.

Feel free to present some of the arguments here. I really do like looking up information. This is my favorite topic to address as well.

Hi HCN!
 
Thanks guys, I knew you'd come through on this! Great stuff in those links. There's seriously no way to convince a lot of anti types that they are wrong, but at least now I can post some counter-arguments and maybe keep a fence-sitter or two from falling into the anti-vax black hole.

My very favourite anti argument has got to be the 'more vaccinated people get Disease X than non-vaccinated people, proving the vaccine's ineffectiveness!' I like that one because it's easy to explain why the interpretation is wrong, and it really shows that the person using it hasn't actually thought about or researched the issue that carefully.

In my experience, eventually you can get them down to the conspiracy theory arguments (the government is covering up vaccine problems! Doctors don't report on vaccine problems because of...something!), and really what can you do with that?
 
One thing I have done recently is to use the http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&gl=us to find out what diseases are breaking out over the world.

For instance... Polio has been reported in Mecca:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/02/10/news/polio.html .

Anti-vax somehow do not like discussing the fact that when certain people in Nigeria started to spead propaganda on the radio how the polio vaccine was a way to sterilize Muslims, polio started to spread. Not only in the Kano state of Nigeria, but in neighboring countries.

They are also blind to the fact that measles still kills hundreds of thousands of people a year... they seem to like to ignore third world countries.

But then ignore the real consequences of an epidemic of mumps among high school and college students in the UK (I suspect there will be a significant rise of sterile men there soon).

editted to fix a link
 
dissonance said:

In my experience, eventually you can get them down to the conspiracy theory arguments (the government is covering up vaccine problems! Doctors don't report on vaccine problems because of...something!), and really what can you do with that?
Click to expand...

When my kids got vaccinated it was at a clinic and done by a nurse. All the children were monitored for 15 minutes afterward. No side effects to report.

There are ways to report if something actually does show up that merits reporting...VAERS. Now, a doctor would not have seen any reactions since there weren't any there. The nurses would have had to report.

Now, what merits reporting? A fever, redness, soreness? Most parents don't worry about that since they expect it, and are happy when it doesn't happen. They are given tips on how to help the child if it does happen. There's usually nothing to report.

What if a kid gets a fever and then convulsions two days or two weeks later? The things that get reported are usually things that happened due to something other than the vaccines. Things that merit reporting aren't usually vaccine reactions, but they are things that happen after vaccination (that would have happened anyways).

VAERS Data analysis project:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15247605
We found no significant difference in the proportion of HBV-vaccinated (31%) and unvaccinated (35%) neonates dying of unexpected causes (P = 0.6). Further we could not identify a plausible causal or temporal relationship between HBV administration and death for the 22 vaccinated neonates who died unexpectedly. CONCLUSIONS: A relationship between HBV and neonatal death was not identified.
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Really no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations (unless you look at the fact that there were a tiny bit fewer deaths in the vaccinated population).
From 1985 (before universal HepB immunization of infants) to 1996, the total number of neonatal deaths in the United States decreased from 7.0 to 4.8 deaths per 1000 live births.16 During the years 1992
to 1996, the number of SIDS cases (the predominant cause
of infant deaths) reported to VAERS decreased by nearly
50%
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http://sids-network.org/experts/poa9078.pdf


Arguing with an anti-vaxer about the conspiracy theories:

http://www.ssr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?1:msp:89894:maacgiaoljkebkahdiko

Ah, yes. Finally. The "conspiracy" angle. These people want kids to die, are getting rich off vaccines, or whatever. Conspiracy theories, the last refuge of the desperate. C'mon. Do you really think people, with kids of their own, just blithely sit by and turn a blind eye to something killing kids? If you beleive that, you haven't met many pediatricians. You ought to see a pediatrics ward when there's a kid in for protection vs child abuse--closest thing I've ever seen to a lynch mob brewing.

In fact, you'll find that people like Dr. Laider who have seen the
consequences of anti-vax lies, hysteria, and misinformation are those who tend to be most vocal because (surprise) they CARE about their patients. Heck, if we didn't vaccine we'd have a lot more sick people to take care of. Docs would make a lot more money out of treating kids in ICUs than they ever make on vaccines.

And, in the interests of full disclosure, my clinic gives vaccines, I don't make a dime off it, and I have to occasionally fight with the public health department to give us the serum for things like tetanus and the like. :-)
Vaccines almost end up _costing_ me money, and yet I wasn't about to forgo them....

Fact is, vaccines are not money makers for anyone: MDs, drug companies, no one. The only people who are money ahead is the public, since they don't pay the costs of care and rehab of those who would otherwise get vaccine preventable injuries. Quebec had TWO cases of congenital syphillis, and they started testing every pregnant woman in the province because it was cheaper than caring for even one afflicted kid for their life. I think you'll see similar economics come to the fore for, say, preventing vertical transmission of Hep B.
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I'm trying to dig up a great pdf on vaccines at well that dispels a lot of the conspiracy theory angles by describing how they are made (funded, etc.)
 
Possibly relevant story.

Earlier this week a labrador puppy had his first vaccination. The vet noted that he was "a little quiet", but didn't see any reason not to vaccinate. The puppy died that evening.

Fortunately a post mortem examination was requested (paid for by the vaccine manufacturers). This revealed that the puppy died because a nasty abscess in its abdomen (which must have been present for at least a week or two) had ruptured. Absolutely nothing to do with the vaccination, except that it's possible the handling of the puppy during the pre-vaccination clinical examination precipitated the rupture of the abscess.

OK, another potential vaccine horror story nipped in the bud. Or is it? How do we know the owners won't just go around posting everywhere that their apparently healthy 10-week-old puppy died a few hours after it was given its first vaccine dose? (Note, I have to information at all that the owners of this puppy are doing this, it just struck me that we couldn't prevent someone from doing it if they felt like it.)

With animals, you don't always get the post mortem done, and in that situation it would be very easy for this to turn into a vaccine horror story. I suppose, with children, there will always be a full investigation into every unexpected death. Even so, there's still scope for people to ignore the findings of the actual cause of death and go on spreading whatever misinformation they like. How many of the alleged vacine-related deaths have really been diagnosed by a pathologist as falling into this category?

Rolfe.
 
I've seen people (like in Yurko's Case) not only blame vaccines, but claim doctors are lying about the actual cause of death. Then suddenly vaccines are being blamed for causing symptoms of shaking a baby to death. It's more than sickening. These people get an adoring public after they murder children.
 
Rolfe said:
OK, another potential vaccine horror story nipped in the bud. Or is it? How do we know the owners won't just go around posting everywhere that their apparently healthy 10-week-old puppy died a few hours after it was given its first vaccine dose?
Click to expand...

Way too on-target, Rolfe. A few years back, some pet BBs and mailing lists were circulating an anonymous story about a breeder who lost two back-to-back litters. The story wasn't written by her, but by her friend. She claimed both litters were vaccinated against parvo and that all the pups died of parvo shortly after.

I openly and hostily attacked this second- or third-hand story. To my surprise, somebody came forward, claiming to be the "friend" who authored the story. She further claimed she had a B.S. in biology, trying to assert authority on that basis. I returned fire, and asked for copies of the post mortems. Breeder didn't have them. Okay, the vet's adverse reaction reports. Nope.

Now, at this point, the more rational people are getting very angry. Not only did that original letter impugn the vaccine with no evidence to back it, it named the catalog from which it was purchased (oh? ya mean the breeder gave the shots herself?) and the vaccine's manufacturer. I contacted the catalog. They had no comment other than to state they were suing the people behind the letter. I contacted federal authorities who reported they had heard about the letter, but had yet to receive any documentation, such as veterinary reports or post mortems.

The average person's take on the story? I'm afraid it just confirmed the anti-vax position for all the anti-vaxxers. As debunked as the claim was, it mattered not to them. The more rational people were, minimally, disappointed and, more often, aghast at the whole incident.
 
I like the line from 'House', where the yuppie mother informs him that 'Oh, we don't vaccinate'...
after asking her if she doesn't want to help the pharmaceutical companies get rich from selling her kiddies unneeded vaccines, he says:

'And you know what else really makes a nice profit?........

Little baby coffins'.
 
BillHoyt said:
it named the catalog from which it was purchased (oh? ya mean the breeder gave the shots herself?) ....
Click to expand...
WHAT?????

I don't know about Merika, but here it is mandatory for a veterinary surgeon to sign a vaccination certificate, and in order to do that the vet has to do the injecting himself. Otherwise, he has no means of knowing that the vaccine was administered, even if the owner bought the vaccine from him.

I remember once doing a small animal surgery in Shepperton, and the receptionist said "your next patient's outside". Next patient was a pony, saddled and bridled, with his rider holding the reins. She'd ridden to the small animal surgery to get her pony vaccinated, and thus save on the visit fee she'd otherwise have had to pay. I gave the pony a quick once-over and vaccinated him right there on the pavement of the High Street! The owner then mounted up again and trotted off. Perfectly legit.

But buying vaccine from catalogues is not. Because there's no way you'd get a vet's signature on the certificate, and thus no way the certificate would be valid for any purpose beyond lighting the fire.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
WHAT?????

I don't know about Merika, but here it is mandatory for a veterinary surgeon to sign a vaccination certificate, and in order to do that the vet has to do the injecting himself. Otherwise, he has no means of knowing that the vaccine was administered, even if the owner bought the vaccine from him.

I remember once doing a small animal surgery in Shepperton, and the receptionist said "your next patient's outside". Next patient was a pony, saddled and bridled, with his rider holding the reins. She'd ridden to the small animal surgery to get her pony vaccinated, and thus save on the visit fee she'd otherwise have had to pay. I gave the pony a quick once-over and vaccinated him right there on the pavement of the High Street! The owner then mounted up again and trotted off. Perfectly legit.

But buying vaccine from catalogues is not. Because there's no way you'd get a vet's signature on the certificate, and thus no way the certificate would be valid for any purpose beyond lighting the fire.

Rolfe.
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Yeah, the whole claim was a pile of crap. Even down to the claimed time between vaccination and supposed onset of parvo. The woos ran with it, however, and haven't stopped since. Except, of course, for the original claimants who suddenly went silent, presumably after hearing from the catalog company's attorneys.

But, as with the Wakefield scandal, the fact that the original reports were absolute bunkum won't stop a good evil-medical-industry story.
 
BillHoyt said:
presumably after hearing from the catalog company's attorneys.
Click to expand...
Well, was the catalogue company operating within the law, selling prescription-only veterinary medicines to the lay public? Round here they wouldn't be, and anyone who bought from them would be breaking the law even if the web site was outside the country.

Rolfe.
 
I found the ending of the article touching. The girl who contracted the disease didn't want any more, and filled in a form for the vaccine that the school sent home. She told her parents she wanted it. She had to suffer through mumps and had had a taste of a disease that could have been prevented by the vaccine.
 
Excellent sources folks. While I have seen many of them, there are some new ones I'll be checking out as well.

The second page of HC's CDC link has many other excellent sites on this subject.

http://www.cdc.gov/nip/home-partners.htm

I thought I'd add that adults need vaccinations as well.

And flu vaccinations are greatly misunderstood.

Flu vaccine is safe, doesn't make you sick, and flu puts many healthy children and adults in the hospital every year as well as being lethal to some. There is no reason, (except the loss of 45 million vaccine doses this season), everyone shouldn't get a flu vaccine every year.

If anyone isn't so sure of that I'd be happy to support my advice, infectious disease is my area of expertise.
 
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