Are you guys for or against childhood vaccines?

For.
I've been a nurse for 25+ years and have seen the crippling effects of polio and other diseases that could have been prevented by vaccination.

Perhaps the greatest success story in public health is the reduction of infectious diseases resulting from the use of vaccines. Routine immunization has eradicated smallpox from the globe and led to the near elimination of wild polio virus. Vaccines have reduced some preventable infectious diseases to an all-time low, and now few people experience the devastating effects of measles, pertussis, and other illnesses. Prior to approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), vaccines are tested extensively by scientists to ensure they are effective and safe. Vaccines are the best defense we have against infectious diseases; however, no vaccine is 100% safe or effective. Differences in the way individual immune systems react to a vaccine account for rare occasions when people are not protected following immunization or when they experience side effects.

Has the reduction occurred due to vaccination or has it occurred due to improved sanitation, better access to nourishing food and less crowding in dwellings than in the past, when people had much larger families? It might interest you to know that pertussis outbreaks are more likely to affect the vaccinated than the un-vaccinated. Since it is not effective at establishing immunity in infants, why is it given to them?

Improvements in sanitation etc have helped but are by no means all the story.

In Australia a marked reduction in certain diseases like HIB have occurred in a very short period of time, like within couple of years, once the vaccine was put on the free schedule and therefore given to much greater percentage of children. In that short period of time, there was no corresponding change in sanitation, living conditions, family sizes, which would explain the difference.

Your comment about pertussis more likely to affect vaccinated children than unvaccinated is extremely misleading.
Given that whooping cough vaccine does not provide 100% coverage and 90% of children are vaccinated then this will obviously be so. Simple statistics.

It's like saying people who have the free flu vaccine are more likely to die in the next 12 months than those who do not.
True fact.
But given that the free vaccine is only available to those aged over 65 and / or with chronic illness, then this is not actually indicative of anything.


However disease when it occurs in vaccinated people is almost always MUCH less severe than when occurring in unvaccinated people.

For all of you who say you have your children vaccinated against most things, but not chicken pox, please reconsider, especially for girls! Like rubella/German measles, if a pregnant woman gets chicken pox it can cause birth defects. I was too old to get the chicken pox vaccine as a kid, but never caught it, so my gyno had me get vaccinated as an adult.

that is why chicken pox parties exist for kids in elementary school.

Great idea. Be sure they exchange email addys so they can schedule Let's-Celebrate-Our-Shingles parties when they're older.:drinker:

I personally have NEVER met a person that has had shingles. Just saying it is not very common. I was involved with chicken pox party as a kid so was my sister, wife, sister in law and parents/uncle/aunts. So i will let you know if any ever get shingles.

It's extremely painful I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy

Meh. My husband's monster-in-law got shingles. We didn't feel a bit sorry for her mean *kitten*.

For all of you who say you have your children vaccinated against most things, but not chicken pox, please reconsider, especially for girls! Like rubella/German measles, if a pregnant woman gets chicken pox it can cause birth defects. I was too old to get the chicken pox vaccine as a kid, but never caught it, so my gyno had me get vaccinated as an adult.

that is why chicken pox parties exist for kids in elementary school.

Great idea. Be sure they exchange email addys so they can schedule Let's-Celebrate-Our-Shingles parties when they're older.:drinker:

I personally have NEVER met a person that has had shingles. Just saying it is not very common. I was involved with chicken pox party as a kid so was my sister, wife, sister in law and parents/uncle/aunts. So i will let you know if any ever get shingles.

I was not vaccinated against chickenpox because "back then" the vaccine was not available. I did get it as a child and I DID get shingles as an older adult. OMG, it is not fun, it is terrible painful, debilitating and very contagious.

Shingles is very common in older adults and it could be very damaging .Furthermore, having had chicken pox and the shingles, DOES NOT mean that you cannot get it again (shingles), so I got the shingles vaccine and so did my husband. I am not going thru that misery again.

I have a friend who got the shingles vaccine and still got shingles. She was very angry with her physician who assured her that she would not get the shingles again after taking the vaccine.

My understanding about shingles vaccine ( which has only just become available in Australia) is that it is less helpful in preventing shingles if you have already had shingles.
Most helpful in preventing or at least markedly reducing severity, in those who have not yet had shingles because virus has not yet re activated.

Shingles is relatively common in older adults and is very painful.
I have met many people who have had it.

I feel God would not have given us such smart people to create these vaccines if he didnt want us to have them... Just saying! I am in for them! I have a toddler who has gone in for the whole shebang his whole life, not because I like to torture him by sticking him with needles, but because I would rather do that that have to watch him die from something I could have done something about. That is what having kids is about... Doing what is best for them, which in my mind is getting them vaccinated.

P.S. In Minnesota, you dont have to have your kids vaccinated to attend Public School, you just have to sign off that you didn'thave them vaccinated. My boss is one of those people who does not believe in taking his kid to the doctor or doing vaccines, he would rather bring him to the chiropractor.

I don't know when it become okay to avoid using condoms, but I find it appalling.

http://www.cdc.gov/condomeffectiveness/latex.htm

The best prevention for cancer is regular screenings. An immunization is a false sense of security in this instance, I think.

ETA: And the best prevention of STDs is CONDOMS! When I was a kid, everybody was pushing condoms, not it's like condoms don't even exit anymore. smh

Actually, no. The best prevention for cervical cancer is to get the HPV vaccine to help prevent contracting the HPV strains it does cover, and then regular pap smears including the advanced HPV screening (not more than every 6 months for most women or, at minimum, annually) and if positive to do further testing and then retest every 3-6 months until clear.

We can eliminate abnormal cells by removing them, sometimes in pretty painful ways, if we catch them in the pre cancerous stages. That's still not as good as preventing the contraction of a virus, since the virus will remain in the body and reappear and since most procedures for removing the cells cause permanent scarring, damage, and fertility and childbearing problems.

Even if an infected woman does not have her HPV result in precancerous cells, she is still passing HPV on to other men, who then pass it along to others.

And, condoms do not and cannot prevent the transmission of HPV, which technically does not specifically require a sexual act for transmission.

Condoms protect against unwanted pregnancies and STDs. There is NO SHOT or MED that will provide the same protection as condoms. PERIOD.

Condoms may be good for REDUCING the risk of contracting certain STDs and be passable as birth control (12% failure rate with perfect, lab condition usage is better than nothing, but not ideal BC for anyone wishing to be serious about not having a pregnancy), but they do NOTHING to even reduce transmission of the HPV virus. Ever.

They also don't do much to reduce liklihood of chlamydia which is commonly asymptomatic and can fairly rapidly lead to infertility in men and woman, but is detectible with simple testing. The upsurge in comdom usage has actually correlated with an uptick of undetected chlamydia infections leading to PID and infertility because people thought condoms prevented everything...and they stopped getting tested. Is the answer to stop telling them to use condoms so they won't have a false sense of security?

No. The answer is that complex, multifactored health risks require education and a complex, multifactored approach to prevention. For HPV that means vaccines and frequents paps WITH HPV screening.

Transferred a 1 month old baby to the NICU from my emergency department with pertussis ... have no idea if they lived or died. It was horrendous.

I am definitely pro-vaccine.

Even if every adult or older child in the family had been vaccinated (which is unlikely), that is no assurance that the baby would not have contracted the bordetella p. infection. The best insurance against infection in newborns is breast feeding---the mother's immunity is passed through her breastmilk. And that is the case with all infectious diseases--and there are many for which we do NOT have vaccines (and likely never will have). Vaccines are not some magic elixir.

Recommending condom use in casual sex and giving HPV vaccines are not mutually exclusive.

I don think anyone in favour of HPV vaccines is against condom use.

I don't think ANYone advocates condoms anymore the way they used to. It's like it's long forgotten.

In cuz thats life!

The best prevention for cancer is regular screenings. An immunization is a false sense of security in this instance, I think.

ETA: And the best prevention of STDs is CONDOMS! When I was a kid, everybody was pushing condoms, not it's like condoms don't even exit anymore. smh

Actually, no. The best prevention for cervical cancer is to get the HPV vaccine to help prevent contracting the HPV strains it does cover, and then regular pap smears including the advanced HPV screening (not more than every 6 months for most women or, at minimum, annually) and if positive to do further testing and then retest every 3-6 months until clear.

We can eliminate abnormal cells by removing them, sometimes in pretty painful ways, if we catch them in the pre cancerous stages. That's still not as good as preventing the contraction of a virus, since the virus will remain in the body and reappear and since most procedures for removing the cells cause permanent scarring, damage, and fertility and childbearing problems.

Even if an infected woman does not have her HPV result in precancerous cells, she is still passing HPV on to other men, who then pass it along to others.

And, condoms do not and cannot prevent the transmission of HPV, which technically does not specifically require a sexual act for transmission.

Condoms protect against unwanted pregnancies and STDs. There is NO SHOT or MED that will provide the same protection as condoms. PERIOD.

Condoms may be good for REDUCING the risk of contracting certain STDs and be passable as birth control (12% failure rate with perfect, lab condition usage is better than nothing, but not ideal BC for anyone wishing to be serious about not having a pregnancy), but they do NOTHING to even reduce transmission of the HPV virus. Ever.

They also don't do much to reduce liklihood of chlamydia which is commonly asymptomatic and can fairly rapidly lead to infertility in men and woman, but is detectible with simple testing. The upsurge in comdom usage has actually correlated with an uptick of undetected chlamydia infections leading to PID and infertility because people thought condoms prevented everything...and they stopped getting tested.

That's not true! Sorry. I will repost this here:

http://www.cdc.gov/condomeffectiveness/latex.htm


Also: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ReproductiveHealth/story?id=2102991
And: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9383-condoms-provide-protection-against-hpv-study-finds.html#.Uxne3fldVzo

Nothing is 100% effective other than abstinence, but condoms remain the best form of protection, in spite of efforts to downplay their effectiveness.


Condoms save lives. And I have personally known people that had sex with HPV-infected partners who did not contract it because of condoms. I also remember the feeling of waiting for test results to come back. Why should a new generation ignore everything we learned during the AIDS scare?