Anti-vaccination movement
 

Does anyone here believe in the anti-vaccination movement, which attributes a variety of problems, including autism, to early vaccinations. I think that the supporters of this idea have no real basis for their claims. Does anyone here disagree or think that there is somethihgn to it, and perhaps have even refused to allow thier children to be vaccinated? I would be curious to find out why.

My understanding is that the most recent studies have debunked previous claims that immunizations cause autism.

I'm among the anti-vaccination folks. Vaccinations are just another attempt to control us commonfolk by the powers that be. Resist, people, resist! Quite being sheep!

OK, maybe I overdid my rant, but if you are looking at the numbers in that report, my 5 year old is considered among those objectors.

My son started kindergarten this year. My wife is certain she sent his immunization record to the school district in mid-summer. But when they arrived at school the first day, the school said he couldn't participate because they didn't have his immunization record. My wife didn't want to disappoint my son by waiting until the next day for his long anticipated first day of school. The nurse told her she could sign one of the anti-vaccine forms (whatever they are called) so he could go to school. She did. The nurse then told her to bring the records in the next day. But my wife asked what would happen if she didn't now that she had signed the waiver, and the nurse told her "nothing". My wife figured, why go to the effort to fix their screw-up when there are no consequences to us, so she never it took it back in.

So I've joined the ranks of the anti-establishment crowd.

There are suspicions that autism is caused by the thimersol(sp?) that used to be put in most immunizations as a preservative. I've read a few articles, both pro and con on the subject, but wasn't able to form an informed opinion based upon them. But autism rates have climbed dramatically, and something is causing it. Thimersol? Who knows? The articles I read made me 1) think those who think it is the cause might well be a little nutty (you know, I got the impression many of them also have bomb shelters and such in their backyards); and 2) think the medical/government schmucks were being a bit quick to completely deny the possibility (can't have lawsuits, can we?), when based on what I read, the more appropriate response seemed to be "we aren't sure, we need to look into it more, but preliminary indications are xxxx".

I looked into this several years ago because my wife had been told about this by some friends, and was a bit concerned about whether we should immunize our children. In the end, we decided to do so, because the risk, if it exists, appears to pretty small, while the benefits are more obvious, both to our children and to society in general.

When I went to the Doctors without Borders tour, she talked about a raging meningitis epidemic going on in Africa. There was one mother that refused to allow her children to be vaccinated. After one of her sons died, she then changed her mind.

Sadly this story may repeat itself in America. Right now though the non-vaccinated are protected by the herd effect. You don't need everyone vaccinated, just a critical number.

Yeah this is a good example of people over thinking things. I am given to believe that the weight of the evidence is that a child is at infinitely more risk from the disease than from the vaccination.

It makes me think of living in Utah and there being a movement to keep flouride out of the water. Now I read that tooth decay is up all over the country because people drink bottled water and not tap water. Still haven't heard about many flouride deaths.

It is like deciding that you aren't going to quit smoking because you are concerned that the niccotine patch adversely effects a small percentage of folks. Maybe I'm using too broad a brush, but in my mind this nonsense goes squarely in the tinfoil-hat-black-helicopter-new-world-order file.

P.S. Vaccines aren't fool proof, I got the mumps as a kid. But if people think that the things that are being vaccinated against are exotic and don't really any longer exist in the population they are mistaken.

The anti-fluoride folks in Utah always call fluoride "rat poison," while the experts agree that adding fluoride to water is one of the great advances in public health over the last century.

To quote a great Utah public health advocate on the matter: "You can call anything and everything rat poison if you administer enough of it. Water is rat poison if you drown a rat in it."

I voted against it because I always vote against things like that. When it passed, I bought a system to filter out the fluoride. We give our kids fluoride supplements in chewable tablets and treatments from the dentist each visit.

We always had chewable tablets growing up in Utah, but why not just get the fluoride from the drinking water? They regulate the fluoride levels carefully so it's safe and effective.

I don't like decisions like that made for me. I'm all for freedom of choice.

That sounds more like freedom of dumb to me. You non-organ donating, flouride hating, Ron Paul loving Ute. :-)