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

[jamesbuhls]

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?

 

[Professor Yaffle]

I might post again about "strategy" when I have had a chance to think it over, but I just wanted to post this link to an article written by the children's author Roald Dahl, written before the measles vaccine had any decent uptake in the UK, reminding people of how dangerous diseases like measles are.

http://www.blacktriangle.org/blog/?p=715

I don't know if you will find it useful, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

 

[Estellea]

I'm afraid you are at a standstill. I have found that anyone that entrenched will not budge on the subject. If you can't reason with her, you may want to remind her that these (or at least one) are your children too. Perhaps you can compromise with a selective schedule and when she sees that your infant has not sprouted a third eye, might be more amenable.

Este

 

[jamesbuhls]

The biggest trouble is that my wife is one of those folks who believes in natural-is-better: she's way into homeopathy, wants to do a nearly unassisted childbirth (don't even know how I'll deal with that), says that the human body works best without medical intervention, and so on. I don't know how I can talk to her about vaccines without hearing the litany about how "the human body works better without human interference," and so on. I didn't realize her commitment to these issues was strong when we were dating, and really only discovered the full depth after we were married. I love my wife, but she makes this into an issue of "either the children aren't getting vaccinated and you can stay, or you're going away and I'm keeping the kids," and I feel really guilty because I don't know how I can ignore this in good conscience - I don't think I'd ever forgive myself if my child died from a preventable illness.

 

[Molinaro]

I can honestly say that I would tell her not to let the door hit her on the way out.

I can't imagine being happily married to someone that stupid. That is exactly what I would tell her.


PS> I was born in SSM

 

[fuelair]

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?

I can't really help as my only possible response to a parent thinking like that would depend on how nice I was feeling that day. It would be either: "I sure hope your child does not have too much pain while he/she is dying of (measles, diptheria, herpes, polio ad inf) without that vaccination/shot" ( if I was feeling nice) OR " Well, I guess it's your child to murder! But I hope you kill yourself afterwards from very appropriate guilt!" (if I am not).....


I like kids, I do not want to see them harmed by the frightened, ignorant and foolish.

 

[Drachasor]

Question: does she not trust doctors?

Hmm, you can try going over history.

Sanitation has not improved a whole lot in the last hundred years. There have been some improvements here and there, but air pollution and the like are completely unrelated to stopping the diseases that we have fought. It isn't like doctors came up with this stuff to make money. They already made money. They came up with vaccines, antibiotics, and the like to save lives. There were no vast amounts of wealth on the line when they first came out, nor were big companies behind the development.

She likes sanitation. That's artificial. She presumably likes lighting, housing, clothes, eating out, driving/public transportation, landing a man on the moon, etc, etc. All artificial. So another place to start is all the artificial things she does like. Get her to accept that there are artificial things that are good.

You can then point out that vaccines aren't as unnatural as she thinks. They are like little books for the immune system. The immune system "reads" them, and then it knows how to handle a virus. It's a bit like education. All it does is fully use our own natural defenses to their utmost.

Lastly, I'd point out that antivax people use the same sort of tactics as global warming, holocaust (might want to leave this one out), second hand smoke, evolution, and other deniers. They claim all the experts who devote their lives to a given field are wrong and that the hundreds of years we've spent slowly building up knowledge is all wrong (actually, medicine has been built up for a couple thousand years at least). To support these outrageous bold claims, they have nothing much to show for it.

Sounds like you'll have to do it slowly if you will have any hope of success. It is disconcerting she's already threatened to run away with the kids over this.

 

[Sceptic-PK]

I don’t mean to be rude, but surely you realised she was a nutter before you married her?

 

[truethat]

I can honestly say that I would tell her not to let the door hit her on the way out.

I can't imagine being happily married to someone that stupid. That is exactly what I would tell her.


PS> I was born in SSM

Honestly I am sort of "anti vaccine" but I don't think I'm stupid, though I'm sure more than a few will disagree with me on that topic.

The only reason I would vaccinate my kids is out of a sense of public duty to people around my family who are highly sensitive to certain illnesses. The same way I would never send a peanut butter sandwich to school.


Before you rage off against people who are "suspicious of vaccines" not really anti vaccine consider some points.

A few years ago Swine flu was raging in the newspapers and it was suggested that not vaccinating your kids against it was tantamount to child abuse. Roll forward how many years later? Where is the great swine flu epidemic within communities that refused to vaccinate? Where are the clusters showing the consequence?

Nowhere.


For me, I believe in a natural approach to my children's health to some degree. For example I have never given my children amoxicillin. My kids are never sick. When I say NEVER I mean never except for about 2 years with my oldest. My 17 year old has had maybe 2 colds in his lifetime, those are before I stopped giving him amoxicillin. After that all colds stopped. AND RELAX, I know antibiotics are different than vaccines.

My attitude is that the body is a machine designed (not by a creator so don't go off the deep end there) to fight illness. If you have a strong immune system, adding to that system just throws it off.

This is my stupid uneducated belief. So far it has worked perfectly. I also don't go to the doctor and rarely take my kids. I see friends of mine and family, (so it's not necessarily genetic) that are camped in doctors offices and have gone through every antibiotic imaginable.

I am only posting this because I can understand why someone would not give their kid the flu vaccine.

However if the wife wants to enroll her child in a public school she should know she will need to get vaccines. Many of these people wind up homeschooling because they are so against it.


So...........my advice would be to set up the actual vaccinations that she is suspect about and see if there are some of them she would be willing to go for, instead of lumping them all together.

I am not "anti vaccine" my kids have had the MMRI and one other. But I don't feel the need to fix what isn't broken. Maybe breaking it down will stop it from being so drastic in the discussion.

Also do remind her that it is very unfair to other people especially children going through chemo and the elderly. She could kill them by exposing her child to people in the world. Would she like that on her head?

That's one of the things that swayed me in the provaccine direction. Good luck.

 

[Dragonrock]

Don't forget to point out that rabies, earthquakes, poison ivy, and skunk musk are all completely natural and I suspect she would go out of her way to avoid them all.

 

[Molinaro]

For me, I believe in a natural approach to my children's health to some degree. For example I have never given my children amoxicillin. My kids are never sick. When I say NEVER I mean never except for about 2 years with my oldest. My 17 year old has had maybe 2 colds in his lifetime, those are before I stopped giving him amoxicillin. After that all colds stopped. AND RELAX, I know antibiotics are different than vaccines.

I can't imagine making up my mind about something based on personal experience alone when there are studies done with sample sizes large enough to actually tell you if something is significant or not.

I guess some people prefer their imagination over reality.

 

[truethat]

I can't imagine making up my mind about something based on personal experience alone when there are studies done with sample sizes large enough to actually tell you if something is significant or not.

I guess some people prefer their imagination over reality.

No people prefer their personal reality over statistics. Even statistics are based on a segment of the population.

I have three sons, except for the few colds my oldest has had, none of them has ever been sick.

So consider, 17 years or lets make it 15, not one cold among three boys, not one flu, nothing. Not even when I got sick and was puking my guts out. None of them were sick.

Why?

Well if you are a scientist you might care why, but as a mom I am pretty interested in the fact that all of my friends who do give their kids amoxicillin have kids that are regularly sick.

Ask anyone you know who has small kids what it is like to have a child who has never even had a runny nose. I'm sure you will get some strange looks.

Frankly I don't care if it works for everyone else, go on and take it or give it to your child.

I think this is the part that most people fail to understand in this discussion. I do not say that everyone should follow my lead. I don't think it will necessarily work for everyone else. But I'm only responsible for my children. So far it has worked beautifully.

And frankly my kids doctors when I have seen them have said "What ever you are doing keep doing it" my kids are in perfect health. So why should I follow along the mainstream when I don't need to?

Seriously consider this point, it's probably the main issue the OP is having with his wife. If it works for HER she's not going to care if everyone else on the planet needs it otherwise. She's not responsible for everyone else on the planet.


But I should just stop what is working because a scientific study tells me I'm wrong even though the facts I see every day say otherwise?

I'm just confused why anyone would ask someone to do that or get very angry and hostile because they won't.

Shrug.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Start by exploring why your wife distrusts valid scientific evidence and believes in the fear mongering. You need to find out what the barrier is to her accepting evidence before you can provide her with the evidence.

 

[truethat]

I would also suggest that many of the sites you are showing her like "Quackwatch" and being called an idiot and being told it's fear mongering do very little to sort of bring her around to trusting these sources.

 

[Visual Purple]

I think that the best direction to come from is that vaccines are far more natural than almost any other of the medical interventions we use. They are a way of working with the innate capacities of the immune system to, in essence, train it to deal with the more serious pathogens that it has not necessarily experienced. Many things in the body are strengthened by use--bones, muscles, brain. The immune system is a bit like this, except that it depends to a degree on particular exposures. Vaccines work with that. I don't understand why fans of naturalness prefer the artificial treatments that become necessary when serious illness strikes over using the nature of the immune system to develop a defense that prevents the illness.

Of course, I must be missing something about the psychology, because it seems self-evident that vaccines are the height of naturalness, and the "natural medicine" types don't agree with me.

 

[truethat]

Start by exploring why your wife distrusts valid scientific evidence and believes in the fear mongering. You need to find out what the barrier is to her accepting evidence before you can provide her with the evidence.

Was it last year that you and another poster were predicting dire horrid circumstances based on the "swine flu epidemic" that has mysteriously disappeared?

So who is doing the fear mongering? We were told of drastic life threatening circumstances. Told that by not vaccinating that elderly people and children with illnesses that threatened their immune system would basically be dropping like flies based on our selfishness not to vaccinate.

It didn't happen did it? Or is it being covered up in the news or something?


That sounds like fear mongering as well.


Both sides have gotten pretty creative in making their arguments I would say.

 

[truethat]

I think that the best direction to come from is that vaccines are far more natural than almost any other of the medical interventions we use. They are a way of working with the innate capacities of the immune system to, in essence, train it to deal with the more serious pathogens that it has not necessarily experienced. Many things in the body are strengthened by use--bones, muscles, brain. The immune system is a bit like this, except that it depends to a degree on particular exposures. Vaccines work with that. I don't understand why fans of naturalness prefer the artificial treatments that become necessary when serious illness strikes over using the nature of the immune system to develop a defense that prevents the illness.

Of course, I must be missing something about the psychology, because it seems self-evident that vaccines are the height of naturalness, and the "natural medicine" types don't agree with me.

I think for me it's more like, if it ain't broke don't fix it. I know that sounds incredibly dumb but it works for me.

Why would you introduce a virus into a person's body when the person's body already has a natural defense mechanism designed to fight the virus? If that defense mechanism is weakened or at risk then it makes sense to try to bolster it through the use of vaccines.

Also if there was some sort of epidemic or pandemic out there then of course.

But what was being sold as a pandemic last year has not materialized. There IS some sort of suspicion in many of the people I know who are suspicious of vaccinations, that this is done to make money for companies who produce the vaccines.

Why is suggesting this so outrageous?

 

[Segnosaur]

A few years ago Swine flu was raging in the newspapers and it was suggested that not vaccinating your kids against it was tantamount to child abuse. Roll forward how many years later? Where is the great swine flu epidemic within communities that refused to vaccinate? Where are the clusters showing the consequence?

The fact that the epidemic was not as bad as they thought does not mean that the vaccine was useless... so it only saved hundreds of lives instead of thousands.

For me, I believe in a natural approach to my children's health to some degree. For example I have never given my children amoxicillin. My kids are never sick. When I say NEVER I mean never except for about 2 years with my oldest. My 17 year old has had maybe 2 colds in his lifetime, those are before I stopped giving him amoxicillin.

Ummm... that makes no sense. Amoxicillian is an antibiotic that has to be subscribed by a doctor. The only way they should be taking it is if they were actually ill, and saw a doctor. You're not supposed to take it as a preventative measure.

 

[Visual Purple]

Why would you introduce a virus into a person's body when the person's body already has a natural defense mechanism designed to fight the virus? If that defense mechanism is weakened or at risk then it makes sense to try to bolster it through the use of vaccines.

You wouldn't go into a boxing ring against a professional without working up to it. You'd do much better sparing against people who aren't out to hurt you and working out with speed bags. But you say you're not expecting to run into a professional boxer? Well, the workout isn't bad for you. Not a perfect analogy, but I think it's right on some essential points.

Yes, the immune system is designed to handle this stuff, but if it gets hit unprepared, it can be an unpleasant fight. The only tough one I've experienced is whooping cough, which I had as an adult, and mildly, after my childhood vaccines had lapsed. Although I had it mildly, I pulled a chest muscle coughing in a way that can still hurt, many years later. We're privileged to have forgotten how bad a lot of this can be.

 

[truethat]

You wouldn't go into a boxing ring against a professional without working up to it. You'd do much better sparing against people who aren't out to hurt you and working out with speed bags. But you say you're not expecting to run into a professional boxer? Well, the workout isn't bad for you. Not a perfect analogy, but I think it's right on some essential points.

Yes, the immune system is designed to handle this stuff, but if it gets hit unprepared, it can be an unpleasant fight. The only tough one I've experienced is whooping cough, which I had as an adult, and mildly, after my childhood vaccines had lapsed. Although I had it mildly, I pulled a chest muscle coughing in a way that can still hurt, many years later. We're privileged to have forgotten how bad a lot of this can be.

An unpleasant fight is what the body is designed to do. The coughs and miserableness of being sick pale in comparison to the "unknowns" of vaccinations which exist no matter how much people want to say they don't.

When I was a kid i had chicken pox which was pretty miserable. The itching was horrible and the fever and just the general malaise of it all. But again this is what the body is designed to do, there is something somewhat reassuring in watching the body do its thang.

Why "work up" to a fight you might never have? It is not as if you are definitely going to get the virus. That's why I said if there was a pandemic or epidemic then it would make more sense.

The Swine flu was called a pandemic the first time it came around. We were cautioned and warned. It didn't manifest the way we were told it would. So we were told that was because it was mutating into some really horrible super flu that was going to show up the following year. That didn't happen either.

Can't you see how some people would be a little bit suspicious that there was a bit of fear mongering in order to sell vaccinations, since that is what happened two years in a row?

What is the last pandemic that actually was solved by vaccinations?


BTW I'm not really trying to argue you guys, I kinda think everyone but me should get the vaccine, but I thought I'd play a bit of devils advocate to help the OP. (although now I'm wondering if his post was sincere after all)