No. Those are people who can’t vaccinate for medical reasons. They are few and distinct from anti vaxxers
Oh gee, an “opinion” piece from an anti-vaxxer who is profiting off the anti-vaccine movement. Why am I not surprised?
What people “perceive” to be true, and what is actually true, are two different things.
There is a government program to compensate for vaccine injuries and that is why the vaccine manufacturers cannot be sued. I wonder how the statistics for vaccine injuries compare to injuries from other common childhood medications.
Just so I’m very clear about where I stand on this (as I already complained about people who profit off this movement), I’m always immunosuppresed to a minor degree and am rather immunosuppresed right now (on purpose) from medicine for a condition where all other treatments have failed. My mother is permanently immunosuppressed from a different condition which develops later in life and is known to be hereditary.
I, more than most other 24 year olds, am dependent on herd immunity. I have all of my vaccinations and boosters because, luckily, my immune system has been relatively healthy enough to receive them. This will likely not always be the case so I, like my mother, will have to rely on the intelligence and selflessness of others.
I also have two cousins with Autism. One verbal, one not. My partner has devoted his life to working with special needs children. I am fully, 100% aware of how terrible and life-changing Autism is and would do almost anything for a treatment or a “cure” so that those beautiful children and their families have an easier time in life. I’ve also seen children suffer and know of children who have died from preventable diseases because they were too young or too immunosuppresed to receive vaccines.
With all of that said, I do not believe “Autism” is on the rise. I think diagnosed rates are on the rise but not the actual condition. Why do I believe this? I am in charge of a dataset of 20,000 hospital records from mental institutions and feeble-minded homes between the 20s and the 50s. The majority of these records are of children (minors). I have read thousands of patient records who, if alive today, would undoubtedly diagnosed with what we call “Autism.” However, at the time they didn’t have that term so they called them “Feebleminded” “Idiots” “Morons” “Subnormal” “Deviant” “Catatonic” the list goes on. We’ve luckily gotten past the point where we simply throw our children into institutions and pretend that they don’t exist because they’re not neurotypical. The records are also saturated with death and morbidity due to diseases that we’ve now nearly wiped-out due to vaccines and other modern medicine. That these are making their way back is terrifying to anyone who is even vaguely familiar with history.
And of course she has irrefutable proof that it was vaccines, not anything else that could have happened to her baby in utero or during or after birth, that caused his autism.
People would WAY rather blame a vaccine than the genetics that are a likely factor from themselves or their partners.
The mix of people who tend to fall into the anti-vax camp is weirdly fascinating. Refusing to accept a genetic angle seems to fit with the wealthy liberal types, but you’d think the conservative Christians (like the woman cited above) would accept their child’s differences as “God’s will.”
I had the measles when I was two and my mom said she had never been so scared because I was so sick. She claims I “nearly died”. Maybe a mom’s exaggeration. But measles does often go to pneumonia and in a small child, that is very serious of course.
Oh Lord. It never fails to amaze me.
Parent A chooses not to vaccinate her child. She basks in the protection of herd immunity. Ah, but then…her dear child gets pertussis and transmits it to a friend’s brand new baby sibling who has not yet been vaccinated. The baby dies. How could someone live with themselves? One child ill, one child dead. It just never adds up for me.
^ VaBlue, that is one of the reasons I could never be friends with an anti-vaxxer. In my mind, there are few things more selfish than not vaccinating yourself and your children to the extent that you are able.
Not vaccinating for non-medical reasons is also foolish even from a purely selfish point of view. A selfish point of view would be “I want to be more resistant to various dangerous contagious diseases, so I will get applicable vaccines for myself.” (and the same for any kids that the person has)
The thing that really gets to me is the dependance upon the herd immunity. It is so blatantly selfish that I would imagine that anyone who does that would try to hide that fact. But no, they talk about it openly as in “It’s okay that I don’t immunize my very special child because all of the parents of children not so special are vaccinating them and it will protect my very special offspring.” It’s okay that others put their children “at risk” with those poisonous vaccines because that will save those children whose parents are smart enough and caring enough to spare them form immunization. Really?!!!
This article gets at the mindset of some of these people.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/21/4767530/vaccine-deniers-inside-the-dumb-dangerous-new-fad
Thalidomide, like other experimental drugs of that era, was foisted off on an unsuspecting and uninformed public in the form of samples that doctors provided to patients. These patients were used as unwitting human subjects to test the effectiveness of medications that had not yet been approved for human consumption. There are reasons people don’t trust the government or pharmaceutical companies.
DES is probably the most notorious drug that was prescribed to our pregnant mothers.
The FDA held up distribution of thalidomide, and it was pulled in 1962 from the world markets.
My mother did not think she had taken DES with me, but I have similar problems as others.
I don’t blindly follow any medical recommendation, but that doesn’t mean I am against immunizations.
I just had a shingles vaccine, yesterday!
Thalidomide was not an “experimental drug” given out as “samples”. It was approved for human treatments and widely marketed and sold throughout Europe. Apparently, in (West) Germany it even went OTC. It did not make to the US market at that time because the FDA had much stricter standards than its European equivalents. And the FDA still does!
It is true that it was not yet approved, but it was prescribed to 20,000 women in the US, 207, who were pregnant.
https://helix.northwestern.edu/article/thalidomide-tragedy-lessons-drug-safety-and-regulation.
Why are we bringing ancient examples of one or two experimental prescription drugs into a discussion about current vaccines? No comparable.
My kids get VERY ill when they get flu vaccines. Their MDs have advised them NOT to take it and try to stay away from sick people. They have been fortunate that only D has gotten the flu and only when she was home for us to nurse her back to health.
There are a lot of people who benefit from herd immunity, including aging adults, infants, and those of us with immunocompromised systems. It really saddens me that bright, affluent people are anti-VAX. Scary!