Childhood Vaccines: Anti-vax V Science?
 

Curious as to people's thoughts on the whole anti-vax movement?

I saw an article this morning where Dr. Sanjay Gupta talked about how measles and all but been eliminated a few years ago and now hundreds of cases of measles are popping up all over the place.

I know there have been multiple articles about anti-vaxers believing that vaccines cause autism and such but I'm curious if we have any folks here who struggled with whether or not to vaccinate their kids?

Thoughts, ideas welcome!

It's bollocks. It threatens the health of children who are not vaccinated; it threatens societal herd immunity at large; and with the right wing in the US already being as aggressively anti-science as it is, we certainly don't need a left-wing anti-science movement like the anti-vax movement.

Moreover, the entire thing is based upon a study that got pulled for using bad methodology. A study getting pulled for bad methodology is not a conspiracy, and no one should be endangering the health of their children and everyone around them over a single bad study in the face of all of the perfectly good ones that have found vaccines safe and effective.

A heads-up for those who would actually consider not having their children vaccinated: we don't have to deal with horrible diseases like smallpox and polio anymore because vaccines work. Vaccines are the reason you don't have to worry about your children getting smallpox or polio. Consider that by not getting your children vaccinated, you're exposing them to the risk of new outbreaks of dangerous, already-defeated diseases because a study that got pulled for its bad methodology told you to. Please protect your children from easily prevented diseases.

I do not have children but do have lots of nieces and nephews, though. I have spoken with my siblings on this issue and we all agree, that vaccines do work and that people need to vaccinate their children so others do not suffer. Especially children and some adults with compromised immune systems.

I will be damned, as an adult with a compromised immune system, that some anti vaxer and their children get me sick or damn near kill me, that is why I stay away from children in the neighborhood, etc.

Vaccinate your kids so the rest of us don't have to suffer!

I'm for vaccinations for ALL children. I think it's horrible that there are those parents that choose not to vaccinate their children and then they get ill and some have died from getting measles and other diseases. It's bad enough we have 3rd world countries that don't vaccinate and keep these diseases around, we don't need them here in the US. Measles is on the rise in the US in just about every state due to people choosing to follow that study that was pulled and found to have bad methodology. Autism isn't caused by vaccinations and there is NO valid proof it is.

As far as the measles outbreak, the US DEPT of HEALTH is asking even older adults and seniors to get revaccinated because the vacccines don't last your lifetime. It only lasts several years. To avoid a widespread epidemic worse than what already is, please go get re-vaccinated for measles, mumps, and rubella...MMR vaccine shot. I'm going to talk to my doctor about it for myself on my next appointment. I don't want to come into contact with any child that hasn't been vaccinated and there are a lot of kids where I live.
Personally, I would NEVER take the risk of not vaccinating my child VS them getting sick with a disease that is harmful or deadly. I've been vaccinated and I didn't get autism from it, and several million others in the US didn't either.

this gives a great summary of the laws regulating vaccines state by state:

http://www.nvic.org/vaccine-laws/sta...uirements.aspx


the debate is to take away the religious and philosophical exemptions to protect those with low immune systems from being exposed to potentially deadly viruses

dont get a vaccination if you dont need it, lots of vaccinations are by choice (flu, pneumonia, shingles) but mandatory vaccinations for school children protect everyone...

this is a summary of who needs a measles vaccine:

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/...c-in-short.htm

Allison is right. The autism-vaccination "study" was flawed; autism is far more complicated than that, and we don't have a great understanding of "it" (there are many degrees of autism and its behaviors).

I was born just as vaccines for polio and measles came in. Polio left its victims paralyzed and/or in breathing tubes-if it didn't kill them. Measles, mumps, diptheria, and rubella were all fatal in the first half of the 20th century. Smallpox was of course a killer for centuries, and its more mild cousin, the chicken pox, can leave you vulnerable to shingles later in life and is just miserable. There's a shot for that nowadays, but I have immunity the old-fashioned way. You name it, my kids and myself got the vaccine. My daughter also had a shot against cervical cancer, even though that is much newer.

I know parents have the right to not vaccinate, but I have the right to keep them away (when they were younger).

I think that it depends on the severity of the illness whether vaccinations are warranted or not. It is big business and there is a lot of money to be made on the sale of the vaccines world wide. Anytime there are large amounts of money to be made on human suffering, the money seems to become more important than the humans. So when I see an over kill of vaccines for minor illnesses I have to question that.

It goes against all my motherly instincts to bombard the immune system of an infant with vaccines, yet I want to protect them from life threatening illnesses or those that mame or cripple...........

My older children were vaccinated, my youngest was not. They all got the same basic childhood illnesses anyway......

I think it may be more important if you have substandard living conditions, like in third world countries. But then again, if all that money was poured into clean water and and sanitary living conditions and good food would they be needed?

I have to say that the US is NOT a 3rd world country, our water supplies are mostly sanitary and so are our living conditions for the most part. HOW do you EXPLAIN the outbreak of Measles (which is a deadly) disease here in the US, that was eradicated back in my childhood in the 60's and 70's ?????? smh

Hey Tex, Do you really know anyone who died from measles? I have not in my life met someone who lost a child from measles. I had them at least 3 times and was fully vaccinated, and live to tell the story.... Now Hep B, that is a different story. I vaccinated for that as as adult.... I do believe keeping your immune system healthy is the best preventative medicine, with help in extreme circumstances. MHO

Amulette, actually there are cases when children here in tx have died from measles and in other states as well. so YES there are deaths in the past.
Look it up. Measles causes respiratory illness in which children and immune compromised children and adults can't fight off. There is no cure for measles, there is only vaccine for it that strengthens the immune system by recognizing the disease and it's markers, so if you do get it, it's not as bad. As an adult our prior vacccines as children become less effective and our immune systems tend not to remember the markers for the diseases we were vaccinated for, therefore we still get the diseases and sometimes it's worse as an adult than if we were vaccinated and caught it as children and were able to fight it off.

Vaccines don't make you unable to catch a particular disease, they only help your immune system to fight them off better by recognizing them faster and knowing how keep them from getting a full on strong hold on your system.

I think that too many people in the world don't understand how the immune systems works and how vaccines work along with immune system and they need to do their own research to get educated instead of listening to a bunch of folks that don't know anything about it and are spreading bad information and fear. There is no cure for hepatitis either.



Amulette,
you mentioned hepatitis vaccine and that you got that one? well it's no different really than any other vaccine you took as a child. it eventually wears off and doesn't Prevent you from getting hepatitis, it only helps your immune system recognize it so it doesn't get a foot hold and become full blown, so your immune system can fight it off.

ETA: I think this is going to be a hotly debated topic on the site.

I like this signature line on one of the member's of our site.............................Are you Educated or Indoctrinated????
Debate debate debate coming.


I do have a question to those that choose NOT to vaccinate your children....


Would you put YOUR child in a room of with smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, or any other diseases you can be vaccinated for?
Why not? Apparently, you don't think they can die from them? hmmmm......
something to ponder isn't it? But when you choose NOT to vaccinate you are putting your children at high risk, along with general public, to spread disease when you contract it because you choose NOT to vaccinate. Just my opinion and I choose to have one very loudly when it comes to this topic.
If you say NO, you wouldn't choose to put your child at risk in a room of those type diseases, then why do you choose to PUT others at risk because your child isn't vaccinated? SMDH

When i was a child, i had friend with a Mother in an iron lung from contracting Polio, as well as a teacher who used crutches and leg braces. Those things burned deeply into my childhood memories, and made me grateful that we no longer lived in the past.

I honestly can't understand anyone that would put their children at risk for disfigurement, sterility (mumps in males), death, pain, etc... However i do get the American outlook that laws apply to everyone but them, and it can't possibly happen to me/mine.

Immunizations, like any medication, can cause side effects. However, a decision not to immunize a child also involves risk. It is a decision to put
the child and others who come into contact with him or her at risk of contracting a disease that could be dangerous or deadly. Consider measles. One out of 17 children with measles gets pneumonia. For every 1,000 children who get the disease, one or two will die from it. Thanks to vaccines, we have few cases of measles in the U.S. today. However, the disease is extremely contagious, and each year dozens of cases are imported from abroad into the U.S., threatening the health of people who have not been vaccinated and those for whom the vaccine was not effective. Unvaccinated children are also at risk from meningitis (swelling of the lining of the brain) caused by Hib (a severe bacterial infection), bloodstream infections caused by pneumococcus, deafness caused by mumps, and liver cancer caused by hepatitis B virus.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/dow.../f_vacsafe.pdf

what they say is right for me and mine. I don't have any reason NOT to vaccinate a child. And I personally wouldn't put MY child at risk or anyone elses for that matter.

It's extremely rare to get measles more than once, so if you've "had them at least 3 times", it says far more about your immune system than the vaccine. Surviving the disease will provide far more immunity than a vaccine will.

And yes, sometimes vaccines do fail. But I don't get that as a reason for not getting them at all. Not knowing anyone who has the disease seems to me a greater reason for getting the vaccine, and that herd immunity is working. I'm pretty sure that's why I don't personally know anyone who has died of measles.

That said, sometimes the FDA gets it wrong, and pharmaceutical companies have shown a shocking lack of ethics. They can certainly stand to have their feet held to the fire. And in the medical fix-it era of Lipitor and Lotensin, it's good that we're starting to put more emphasis on healthy lifestyle choices and are thinking more critically about what goes into our bodies. I just wish the skepticism was a bit more fact-based.

But I admit I’ve lost objectivity since learning that some anti-vaxxers have blamed the Disneyland measles outbreak on immigrants. And the Amish. Choice is indeed a great thing, and how wonderful that the anti-vax crowd is allowed to make it! But to blame another (less privileged) group for making the same choice (or not even having the choice)… well, that's about as flawed as the autism study.

My thinking is if you don't vaccinate your kid, you don't get access to public schools. End of debate. Or it should be. If you want to home school or have access to private schools and feel that strongly about it, I do not want the government to physically seize your child and force medication into her or him. But you don't get to put them in public schools.

To hell with the religious exemption. It should not exist. I had whooping cough. It lasted for nearly four months. I lived in Northern CA at the time, a place where many people do not immunize. I saw in the NYT that something like 50 percent of the students in the Petaluma School District are not fully immunized. The religious exemption is not being used by Christian Scientists but by privileged people who participate in alternative health practices. Fine. Do whatever. Just stay out of the public schools is all I ask.

There's a damn good saying I've heard on this; I think it comes from Tim Minchin. Namely, there is no such thing as alternative medicine. There is only medicine, and the rest is stuff that has not been proven to work.

Anti-Vaxxers Accidentally Fund a Study Showing No Link Between Autism and Vaccines
 

Newsweek

Anti-Vaxxers Accidentally Fund a Study Showing No Link Between Autism and Vaccines

BY JESSICA FIRGER 10/2/15 AT 2:28 PM

Most experts today agree that the belief that childhood vaccines cause autism is based on bunk science. Even still, some advocacy groups claim immunizations are responsible for raising the risk for this neurodevelopmental condition, despite a growing body of research that shows there isn’t a link. (The study that most anti-vaccination groups point to was retracted after it was found to be based on falsified data.)

Despite the science, organizations involved in the anti-vaccine movement still hope to find some evidence that vaccines threaten children’s health.

For example, the autism advocacy organization SafeMinds recently funded research it hoped would prove vaccines cause autism in children. But this effort appears to have backfired for the organization—whose mission is to raise awareness about how certain environmental exposures may be linked to autism—since the study SafeMinds supported showed a link between autism and vaccines does not exist.

Between 2003 and 2013, SafeMinds provided scientists from the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, the University of Washington, the Johnson Center for Child Health & Development and other research institutions with approximately $250,000 to conduct a long-term investigation evaluating behavioral and brain changes of baby rhesus macaques that were administered a standard course of childhood vaccines. (The National Autism Association, another organization that has questioned vaccine safety, also provided financial support for this research.) The latest paper in the multiyear project was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In it, the researchers concluded that vaccines did not cause any brain or behavioral changes in the primates.

For the PNAS paper, the researchers also conducted postmortem analyses of the primates’ brains after they had been euthanized. The team looked for brain abnormalities, including those in the volume and density of the cerebellum, amygdala and hippocampus regions, all of which have been shown to have some variations in children with autism. They also looked at the numbers and size of certain types of brain cells, known as Purkinje cells; some studies have shown there are fewer Purkinje cells in the brains of children with autism. The researchers say they didn’t find any marked differences in the brains of monkeys in the vaccine groups compared with those in the control group.

SafeMinds, the nonprofit that funded the research, is not happy with the results. Representatives from the group say the findings contradict both an earlier pilot study and interim progress reports the organization received from the researchers.

The pilot study, undertaken at the University of Pittsburgh, led to two papers, both published in 2010, showing that the vaccines did in fact affect brain development in infant macaques. One paper, published in Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, looked at the development of the amygdala region of the brains of monkeys that received the complete U.S. childhood vaccine schedule from the 1990s and then underwent MRI and PET scans at 4 and 6 months of age.

Most experts today agree that the belief that childhood vaccines cause autism is based on bunk science. Even still, some advocacy groups claim immunizations are responsible for raising the risk for this neurodevelopmental condition, despite a growing body of research that shows there isn’t a link. (The study that most anti-vaccination groups point to was retracted after it was found to be based on falsified data.)

Despite the science, organizations involved in the anti-vaccine movement still hope to find some evidence that vaccines threaten children’s health. For example, the autism advocacy organization SafeMinds recently funded research it hoped would prove vaccines cause autism in children. But this effort appears to have backfired for the organization—whose mission is to raise awareness about how certain environmental exposures may be linked to autism—since the study SafeMinds supported showed a link between autism and vaccines does not exist.

Between 2003 and 2013, SafeMinds provided scientists from the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, the University of Washington, the Johnson Center for Child Health & Development and other research institutions with approximately $250,000 to conduct a long-term investigation evaluating behavioral and brain changes of baby rhesus macaques that were administered a standard course of childhood vaccines. (The National Autism Association, another organization that has questioned vaccine safety, also provided financial support for this research.) The latest paper in the multiyear project was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In it, the researchers concluded that vaccines did not cause any brain or behavioral changes in the primates.

The PNAS paper reports findings of the full-size study, conducted between 2008 and 2014 at the Washington National Primate Research Center, that occurred after the completion of an initial pilot program on 17 infant macaques. The full study involved 79 infant male macaques, aged 12 to 18 months, broken into six groups. Two groups received thimerosal-containing vaccines for a child’s complete vaccine schedule; two were given the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine without TCVs; and two received saline injections as a control group. In each case, the monkeys were further split into subgroups: Half were on an accelerated vaccination schedule recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the 1990s, and half were on the recommended schedule from 2008.

Anti-vaccine activists have claimed that both the vaccines with thimerosal—a mercury-based antifungal and antiseptic preservative—and the MMR vaccines are linked to autism. Thimerosal was removed from most vaccines in the late 1990s. But the researchers wanted to study its potential health effects anyway.

The researchers then put the monkeys together in cages to see if they exhibited any new autistic-like social behaviors, such as fear, withdrawal, rocking, self-clasping and stereotypy (repetitive behavior). They reported that the monkeys’ behaviors remained unchanged. (Another paper by some of the same researchers, published in February in Environmental Health Perspectives, assessed the learning and social behaviors of the same group of monkeys and found the vaccines did not affect their development.)

For the PNAS paper, the researchers also conducted postmortem analyses of the primates’ brains after they had been euthanized. The team looked for brain abnormalities, including those in the volume and density of the cerebellum, amygdala and hippocampus regions, all of which have been shown to have some variations in children with autism.

They also looked at the numbers and size of certain types of brain cells, known as Purkinje cells; some studies have shown there are fewer Purkinje cells in the brains of children with autism. The researchers say they didn’t find any marked differences in the brains of monkeys in the vaccine groups compared with those in the control group.

SafeMinds, the nonprofit that funded the research, is not happy with the results. Representatives from the group say the findings contradict both an earlier pilot study and interim progress reports the organization received from the researchers.

The pilot study, undertaken at the University of Pittsburgh, led to two papers, both published in 2010, showing that the vaccines did in fact affect brain development in infant macaques. One paper, published in Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, looked at the development of the amygdala region of the brains of monkeys that received the complete U.S. childhood vaccine schedule from the 1990s and then underwent MRI and PET scans at 4 and 6 months of age.

The researchers reported that amygdala volume was different in monkeys that received the vaccines versus those that did not. They also reported differences in certain opioid receptors in the brains of monkeys in the vaccine group. The other paper, from the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, looked at differences in the reflexes of baby monkeys that received a single dose of thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccine versus those in a control group. In that paper, the researchers reported that “in exposed animals there was a significant delay in the acquisition of root, snout, and suck reflexes, compared with unexposed animals.”

SafeMinds argues that these changes all suggest a correlation between vaccination and autism. But as Alycia Halladay, chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation, points out, these findings do not necessarily indicate anything about autism. “There are likely many biological effects that occur in an organism after a vaccine administration, but that doesn’t always mean it will cause autism,” she says.

SafeMinds also believes that the research team behind the new PNAS study may have cherry-picked their data. SafeMinds Director Lyn Redwood, a registered nurse, says she received an email in 2013 from the researchers reporting a “statistically significant” 11 percent reduction in certain types of hippocampal cells in the vaccine groups. But she says the authors did not include these findings in the new paper.

Dr. Laura Hewitson, director of research for the Johnson Center for Child Health & Development, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, a lead researcher on project and co-author on all four papers, says that at the time that email was sent, it was also made clear to SafeMinds “that the data should be treated as preliminary until all of the animals had completed the study.” She added that none of the study’s procedures changed once her team moved from the pilot program to a larger sample.

“The same assessments were performed on a much larger number of primates by a team of behaviorists with decades of experience working with nonhuman primate infants,” Hewitson tells Newsweek. “For example, in the pilot study we examined 13 different neonatal reflexes from birth to 14 days of age in just two groups of animals. In the current study, we examined those same 13 reflexes, plus six others from birth to 21 days of age, in six groups of animals—a much more comprehensive experimental design.”

She added that all of the researchers, technicians and behaviorists involved in collection and analysis of data did not know which of the monkeys were in the vaccine groups or the control group. The researchers also implemented a “chain of custody” protocol once the data were collected, in which they reviewed chronological documentation that shows the control, transfer and analysis of all data sets. Hewitson says that her team used an independent statistical consultant for all data analysis, and that two additional outside investigators from two other academic institutions confirmed their findings.

“As you can see, we have done everything possible to ensure the integrity of the data. My co-authors and I stand by our published findings,” she says. “The comprehensive nature of the current study underscores why the findings from the pilot study should be interpreted with an abundance of caution, given the small number of animals included.”

But Sallie Bernard, president of SafeMinds, says she would at least like to see a re-analysis of the newest data. “We feel that embedded within these data sets there are animals that have potentially an adverse reaction to this vaccine schedule that would mirror what happens in human infants,” she says. “The majority who get vaccines are fine, but we believe there is a subset that have an adverse reaction to their vaccines. By looking at the raw data, not data in aggregate, we may be able to identify the subgroup that had that reaction.”

Halladay commends SafeMinds for financially supporting the study, but she worries that some autism advocates may be asking the wrong questions. “I'm not saying that we need to stop funding research in the environment, because we know the environment does impact neurodevelopment,” she says. Halladay likens the challenge of disputing the claim that vaccines cause autism to “playing whack-a-mole.”

“First, the proposed association was between the MMR vaccines and autism,” she says. “Then that was disproven. Then it was the thimerosal components in vaccines; now that has been further disproven in a carefully designed animal model study that aimed to specifically examine that question. It has also been suggested that the association is because of vaccine timing, but that too has been disproven. The target always seems to be moving, and the expectation is that scientific resources will be diverted to address each new modification of this hypothesized link.”

http://www.newsweek.com/anti-vaxxers...ism-and-379245

Thanks for posting that Anya.

Science Daily

One in three two-year-olds in United States have not received all recommended childhood vaccines, study finds

Date: November 18, 2015
Source: RTI International

Summary:
Approximately 34 percent of children in the United States do not receive all doses of vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) by age 2, according to a new study.
34 percent of children in the United States do not receive all doses of vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) by age 2, according to a new study by researchers at RTI Health Solutions, a business unit of RTI International.

This is consistent with findings reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ACIP recommends most children receive a series of routine immunizations, consisting of 19 doses of vaccines administered at age-specific intervals between birth and age 2 to protect against 11 diseases.

The study, published in press in Vaccine, used data from the 2012 National Immunization Survey, an annual survey conducted by the CDC, to examine vaccination coverage among a nationally representative sample of nearly 12,000 2-year-olds in the United States. Researchers estimated the proportion of children who completed the ACIP recommended number of doses by 8, 18 and 24 months of age (completion rates); and whether each dose was administered at age-appropriate times between birth and 24 months (compliance rates).

"Although completion rates of many individual vaccines, such as the poliovirus vaccine, were near the national Healthy People 2020 targets, one-third of children did not complete all vaccines recommended by the ACIP," said Samantha Kurosky, an associate director in the Health Economics group at RTI Health Solutions and lead author of the study. "This means a portion of children are protected against some diseases, yet are partially or not at all immunized against others by the time they turn 2 years old."

Researchers also estimated approximately 77 percent of children were non-compliant with the ACIP schedule, receiving one or more of the 19 recommended doses outside of its respective age-appropriate window, or never receiving the dose at all by 24 months of age. Further, 43 percent of the sample was non-compliant with one or more doses in the recommended schedule for a total of 7 months or more, between birth and 24 months of age.

"Our research indicates that a child's immunization status is dynamic between birth and age 2," Kurosky said. "There are periods of time when a child is behind according to the ACIP schedule, but may eventually catch up by the time they turn 24 months. The recommended age-windows for each dose of vaccine are developed to not only maximize the effectiveness of the body's response to the vaccine, but to reduce disease susceptibility at a time when children are at a very high risk for complications if infected with these diseases."

Western states had the lowest rates of completion and compliance. Southern states had the highest completion rates, yet compliance rates were moderate, indicating that children were receiving vaccines late, but catching up by age 2. The most undervaccinated state was Alaska where 55 percent of children completed all recommended doses by age 2; whereas, Mississippi had the highest completion rate at 77 percent.

"The regional patterns we observed point to a need for continued localized, evidence-based interventions that address barriers to vaccination at the family, provider, institutional and policy levels," Kurosky said. "By understanding each community's specific needs, we have a better chance of providing the right tools that can lead to improved vaccination rates across the nation."


Citation: RTI International. "One in three two-year-olds in United States have not received all recommended childhood vaccines, study finds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 November 2015.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1118132229.htm