Yeah. Keep not vaccinating your children, y'all.

[Black]

beagledave wrote:
In a sermon posted online, senior pastor Terri Pearsons encouraged those who haven't been vaccinated to do so, adding that the Old Testament is "full of precautionary measures."

Did he say anything about keeping kosher?

[JoeH]

Anthony wrote:
Whoa, Nelly. There is also significant evidence that links vaccinations to seizures and health problems.

I think each parent has to make a choice based on what they feel is appropriate and deal with the consequences.


My point is that you don't have to be an unconscious religious freak to make this choice.

Actually, there isn't significant evidence of that link. The ex-doctor who was behind most of the calimed evidence that turned out to have cooked the books on his research and had his license lifted. There is a very small number of adverse reactions.

[haikuman]

JoeH wrote:
[quote=Anthony]
Whoa, Nelly. There is also significant evidence that links vaccinations to seizures and health problems.

I think each parent has to make a choice based on what they feel is appropriate and deal with the consequences.


My point is that you don't have to be an unconscious religious freak to make this choice.

Actually, there isn't significant evidence of that link. The ex-doctor who was behind most of the calimed evidence that turned out to have cooked the books on his research and had his license lifted. There is a very small number of adverse reactions.
miley-score010: JoeH ~!~ enuff said *(:>*

[Ca Bob]

Anthony wrote:
Whoa, Nelly. There is also significant evidence that links vaccinations to seizures and health problems.

I think each parent has to make a choice based on what they feel is appropriate and deal with the consequences.


My point is that you don't have to be an unconscious religious freak to make this choice.

Here is the CDC summary of what is known about vaccines.

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

There is about a one in three-thousand chance of a fever leading to a febrile seizure, but these are not terribly serious, and they go away -- I'll leave the details to the doctors on the board here. Some people (including young children) have strong allergic reactions to vaccines. Again, the chance is incredibly small for most of us, but allergic reactions to vaccines, like allergic reactions to peanut butter, chocolate, or milk, are not unknown.

The argument that parents have to do their own research (not what Anthony said here, but a commonly made argument) and make up their own minds strikes me as fairly thin, to say the least. We don't say that parents should do their own research about putting their children in car seats or fastening their own seatbelts -- these are well established public health measures that were enacted into law based on a lot of data that was reviewed by real experts, and then considered by elected officials subject to the political process. Protecting the public from extremely dangerous, contagious diseases such as polio and diptheria is something that the public health system has long since figured out and ruled on. The fact that measles and chicken pox can be deadly, not only to adults but to children, is part of the equation. It just took longer for vaccines against these diseases to come into existence and gain widespread usage. The mortality for measles is only about one case in a thousand, but there was one such death in the UK this year due to their measles outbreak. That epidemic seems to be hitting the young adults who were not immunized after the Andrew Wakefield generated scare over the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine which began in 1998.

I don't agree that matriculating in the University of Google is the same as doing eight intensive years of anatomy, physiology, pathology, virology, bacteriology, therapeutics, obstetrics, etc etc. -- and just to begin these studies requires a background in chemistry and organic chemistry. So whenever I read some scientific illiterate arguing that "I did my research," I want to quote Dr Gorsky in telling them (I paraphrase here) that they don't understand the words they are using in the way that those words are understood among trained scientists.

Shorter version: When a backwoods German doctor named Robert Koch analyzed transmission of disease, he actually did his research and proved pretty conclusively that an infectious agent caused the disease, that it expanded itself in each new animal that received it, and that this could be carried on indefinitely from one animal to the next. Pasteur did similar work with rabies.

Even shorter version: The people who argue against the use of vaccines don't usually take the rational approach, which would be that there is some very small risk even to a very safe procedure -- instead, they make the totally ridiculous autism argument and to add injury to injury, claim that the vaccines aren't what really stopped polio and measles anyway. You really have to try hard to make that dumb an argument.

[Lemon Drop]

sekker wrote:
Last year, 24 children died of measles in MN.

All of these deaths were preventable and caused by lack of vaccinations.

This is not a political issue - this is science.

The truly unconscionable aspect is that vaccines are not perfect. So by not vaccinating your children, you put not only your kids but everyone else at risk.

I believe the outbreak in Minneapolis was cases of measles but no deaths. I don't think we've had a death from measles since '03 or so?

[sekker]

Lemon Drop wrote:
[quote=sekker]
Last year, 24 children died of measles in MN.

All of these deaths were preventable and caused by lack of vaccinations.

This is not a political issue - this is science.

The truly unconscionable aspect is that vaccines are not perfect. So by not vaccinating your children, you put not only your kids but everyone else at risk.

I believe the outbreak in Minneapolis was cases of measles but no deaths. I don't think we've had a death from measles since '03 or so?
I think you are right (no deaths, but a lot of cases). Here are some stats; 26 measles cases in 2011 from that outbreak. All are from lack of vaccination.

http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/idepc...stats.html

All scientific links between major adverse health side-effects and vaccinations have been quantiatively debunked. The main risks are acute - i.e. someone might be or develop an allergy to the material we use in common vaccines.

[freeradical]

Of the 15 cases in Tarrant County, 11 of the infected people were not immunized against the measles.

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/...-religion/


Note that 4 people who were vaccinated for measles still got the disease. Vaccines are not perfect. This is why we need high vaccination rates. Your little bundle of joy needs to be vaccinated so someones else's little bundle of joy is not put into harms way by your little bundle of joy.


The wealthy folks in Marin county don't much care for vaccinations, but they do listen to Jenny...

In Marin County, the personal belief exemption rate -- which allows parents to opt out of immunizing their children by signing a waiver acknowledging that their children may be kept from schools during disease outbreaks -- has increased from 4.2% in 2005 to 7.83% in 2012-2013. California is one of about 20 states with such a loophole in its vaccination law. The statewide personal belief exemption rate reached 2.79% in 2012-2013.

http://www.californiahealthline.org/arti...ly-doubles

[Bill in NC]

Wait until herd immunity drops low enough for polio to make a comeback...

[Lemon Drop]

In the wake of whooping cough epidemics and a few outbreaks of measles, both Washington and California (and I believe a few other states) have new laws that will make personal exemptions from vaccines more difficult to obtain. The parent will have to sign a form, along with a health care provider, saying that they discussed the issue with the provider and are aware of the risks of not vaccinating.

It's too early to see if vaccination rates go up, we'll see if that helps.

[gabester]

What most concerns me is the likelihood that diminished herd immunity may allow a new variant of these diseases to evolve that is a) resistant to the normal immunizations already available and b) harder to immunize against in general and may c) require new vaccines that DO have greater side effects and thus do deter more people from getting them.

The science on the former is LIKELY... just a matter of time. The latter options... could become a vicious cycle when we've almost succeeded in wiping out some of these brutal diseases.

So damn you and your "personal beliefs" exemptions. You could be unwittingly damning me and my family and friends to illness despite having done our best to do the right thing not just for ourselves but everyone as a whole.

To be sure, it pulls at the heartstrings to think that YOUR CHILD could be one of the unlucky ones that suffers some terrible consequence from immunization; but the data continually and repeatedly show that overall very few of the standard pool of childhood immunizations have negative consequences. Don't want to overwhelm the little tot's systems? Make multiple visits to your doctor over the course of weeks/months instead of having several shots at once. Of course, that would take more time out of your life and be less convenient... but that doesn't mean that instead you get to opt out and compromise those who physically cannot tolerate the immunization.

Suck it up, be brave and immunize your kids. They'll thank you for it some day.