He is dead, may he rest in eternal grace. We thank God we found him.
That was good Mick
And notionally true! Thanks for the laugh.OK I've said my bit on this one.
Debunking Vaccine Myths
- Thread starter Dan Wilson
- Start date
And notionally true! Thanks for the laugh.OK I've said my bit on this one.
Jason
Senior Member
I thought people were directing those sentiments towards seeking out a naturpath or homeopathic specialist over seeing a real Dr. Or at least that's how I perceived it. Lotions are lotions, and all of them have their own variations. Considering what I went through with my daughter I can understand why some might look to natural lotions that don't contain the irritants which literally burn the skin of your child.
deirdre
Senior Member.
homeopathy is off topic... but just quick, I don't think choosing a different lotion qualifies as homeopathy.
I think you might be confusing homeopathy (medicine which contains hyper-diluted substances, so diluted there is none left, essentially nothing) with herbalism (medicine which contains extracts of plants, some of which actually do something).
I think it's safe to avoid the whole thing.
Come to think of it, if someone had subsequently told us "It was probably the egg", which it turns out was fully within their ability to know before shooting egg into our child's veins, and then suggested injecting something else that didn't have egg into his veins again, I'd have turned them down. I'm comfortable that I made the right choice. And Metabunk confirmed it in their spirited defence of the status quo.
Last edited:
deirdre
Senior Member.
turned the non egg down? did the pediatrician know he was allergic to egg? but the Naturopath couldn't have meant the egg anyway if he said the mmr vaccine. <which of course he never would have said because the 'mmr vaccine' is a mix of ingredients. he would have told you the specific ingredient to watch out for in the future.
Yes. I'd have turned down any and all future needles until we figured out what the heck was going on. Which is what we did and which is what I'm comfortable with.
Imagine you went to an auto-body shop for a paint job and your car came out looking like complete crap. Would you give your car back to that same shop to "fix it"? I wouldn't. I'd go somewhere else and sue. Alas, our laws prohibit suing the government in this circumstance. But we were free to go elsewhere which we did.
At the time of the shot we did not ourselves know he was allergic to egg. We found this out subsequently with the electrodermal testing. But that test is very easy to perform. It was within the ability of the nurse administering the MMR shot to test for egg sensitivity in exactly the same way our Naturopath did. It would take about 30 seconds. But our system prohibited incorporating this test for what I believe to be flawed reasons. I'm going to rack it up to arrogance or greed. Likely one or both of these was involved in the series of decisions that led us to devalue such a good, non-invasive, and fast analytical tool for identifying potential allergens.
Last edited:
Pete Tar
Senior Member
How does that prove anything? The defense could be because that is simply where the science goes, not because 'status quo, must defend'.
It's irrational to have a situation where there may be more than one possibility, but you end up choosing one only because it doesn't align with the status quo and because people you have identified yourself as being opposed to propose the other.
Your experience does not equate to complete evidence against the other possibilities - it's good it worked for you but there is still room for interpretation. You have not established that anything can not possibly have been coincidental; to do so would be science and would require more data and more controls and more elimination of other possibilities.
It's not your job to do this, but you can't present your conclusions as being the only possible interpretation, there is still room for other possibilities and you shouldn't close yourself to them.
Dan Wilson
Senior Member
Do they have evidence? Do they site papers? The "establishment" is run by many individuals who all do research independently. If one of those researchers finds solid evidence suggesting that vaccines are unsafe, millions could be made with lawsuits. It is pretty cynical to assume that all of the scientists in the community are simply listening to what they are told rather than doing tests themselves. Whenever I was in a class where we would read journal articles, the professor (he also did this with textbooks) would demand that whenever we see a claim we ask, "How did they figure it out?" Many researchers, the people who stay in labs and don't normally talk to you, are taught to never accept things at face value and ask the nitty-gritty questions. In fact, you must do these things if you want an edge in research and development. So check the sources of anti-vax web sites. In my experience, they never tell a story or cite research correctly.
In science, nature decides truth. Not any person or institution. Science is a way of knowing, it is a process of asking questions, doing an experiment, and then asking more questions. If you have a better way of knowing, please suggest it.
The science of vaccines? That is not true and it is not okay to advise others to not get vaccinated. Your child is fine and much better defended now that he has had the vaccine.
Your naturopath is not the topic of this thread. He likely just recognized that your child was having severe allergic reactions, asked you and your wife some details about his life, assumed (correctly, apparently) that it was food allergies and gave you a long list of foods to stay away from; many of which turned out to be right and many (I'm willing to bet) are wrong. Whatever the case, that is not what we are here to discuss.
Your child likely had an allergic reaction to the egg proteins in the MMR vaccine. That can happen and it does seem that you are the victim of negligence in the medical community. Doctors can and should screen for food allergies before vaccinations containing egg protein. In their defense, however, severe reactions to the relatively small amounts of egg protein in MMR vaccines are, indeed, very rare. It is negligence, but I want us to understand the situation here. Doctors and scientists are not perfect, it took me a bit to put together the food allergy in your son and the egg in the MMR vaccine, and it is reasonable to imagine the average doctor not putting it together in one short visit. Our medical system is imperfect in many ways and it is truly unfortunate that your son suffered the rash and discomfort that he did. But he is fine and protected now and everyone around him should be thankful for that. The point is, you should be advising people to have their children checked for certain allergies before getting certain vaccines. Telling people to avoid vaccination altogether is NOT the answer.
deirdre
Senior Member.
I agree with that. It is absolutely fine and great to warn people to look out for food allergies. I looked up mos tof the earlier vaccines and didn't see egg protein listed, so that is definitely something new to baby with the mmr shot.
BUT (I thought something didn't sound right). MMR is actually 12-15 months (2007)
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm5551-Immunization.pdf
so it's not unreasonable for the Dr to also assume a Severe egg allergy would have been noticed before the MMR. unless injecting such a small amount is different?
heres a totally hokey article ( didn't try to look up real studies) saying, I think, they are not finding correlations between allergies and eczema.
External Quote:
Jason
Senior Member
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_settlements
Let's also not forget that when drug companies mess up, and don't disclose the facts, they suffer financially by way of settlements. Above is a list of settlements Big Pharma has paid out, and it's literally in the many of billions... Whistelblowers, or off-label promotions have cost the industry billions in lawsuits and caused them to either pull the product or revamp the medication. I know these aren't vaccines, but it does defy the logic of "cover it up so no one can find out". Someone always finds out, and when they do its BIG news. Keep in mind these are only the larger cases, there are many smaller independant or class action suits against them. Also if you've ever stayed up late watching TV and had the pleasure of watching commercials at this time, you get bombarded with advertisements from lawyers prompting people to call them if they ever took such and such medications in the past. So if something as a big as a vaccine had off-lable promotions and adverse side effects "covered up" it would be big news and any lawyer in America would jump at the chance to take on big pharma as a result
Let's also not forget that when drug companies mess up, and don't disclose the facts, they suffer financially by way of settlements. Above is a list of settlements Big Pharma has paid out, and it's literally in the many of billions... Whistelblowers, or off-label promotions have cost the industry billions in lawsuits and caused them to either pull the product or revamp the medication. I know these aren't vaccines, but it does defy the logic of "cover it up so no one can find out". Someone always finds out, and when they do its BIG news. Keep in mind these are only the larger cases, there are many smaller independant or class action suits against them. Also if you've ever stayed up late watching TV and had the pleasure of watching commercials at this time, you get bombarded with advertisements from lawyers prompting people to call them if they ever took such and such medications in the past. So if something as a big as a vaccine had off-lable promotions and adverse side effects "covered up" it would be big news and any lawyer in America would jump at the chance to take on big pharma as a result
@deirdre, that vaccine schedule was very interesting and I pulled the Canadian guide, which also says that MMR is administered at 12 months. I must be wrong about what he was injected with, because we know it was his six month shot. Here is the Canadian schedule for babies/infants:
I have to go back to that ingredient list and look at what is in DTaP-IPV-Hib and Men-C and Pneu-C-13. Does anyone know offhand if egg is in any of these? Egg isn't listed in the ingredient list for MMR that @deirdre posted either....so presumably it is not considered an extra or whatever...but is rather used as the base?
I notice we are now transitioning to vaccinating against Varicella in Canada too, at least according to the guide. That is Chicken Pox. I'm probably more partial to just going to a chicken pox party to be frank. I'm extremely confident that after you have had chicken pox, which are pretty harmless if you get them when you are young, that you don't ever get them again...where if you haven't had them, they can be bad when you are an adult.
I was vaccinated against the measles and got them. So I'd probably rather my kids just contracted chicken pox like we did as kids.
Doesn't chicken pox manifest as "shingles" or something when you are old? I've heard that is really bad.
We didn't get any shots at 2 months or 4 months, but I remember the nurses sticking his foot with something when he was born. Not sure what that was all about.External Quote:
I have to go back to that ingredient list and look at what is in DTaP-IPV-Hib and Men-C and Pneu-C-13. Does anyone know offhand if egg is in any of these? Egg isn't listed in the ingredient list for MMR that @deirdre posted either....so presumably it is not considered an extra or whatever...but is rather used as the base?
I notice we are now transitioning to vaccinating against Varicella in Canada too, at least according to the guide. That is Chicken Pox. I'm probably more partial to just going to a chicken pox party to be frank. I'm extremely confident that after you have had chicken pox, which are pretty harmless if you get them when you are young, that you don't ever get them again...where if you haven't had them, they can be bad when you are an adult.
I was vaccinated against the measles and got them. So I'd probably rather my kids just contracted chicken pox like we did as kids.
Doesn't chicken pox manifest as "shingles" or something when you are old? I've heard that is really bad.
Last edited:
SR1419
Senior Member.
yikes. Thats problematic considering you have been "reporting" this to all your friends.
We feel like telling people that the contents of the vaccination shots made our child hive up and his skin crack apart and start bleeding and oozing puss is very important. It seems I was wrong about it being MMR, unless we had a different schedule. But I can't think of a reason why our public health nurse would vary from the recommended schedule. So now I know to warn people away from DTaP-IPV-Hib and whatever else he got shot up with. But frankly I'm inclined to throw the whole lot of the shots out with the one that made him sick. We'll throw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. With the exception of Tetanus. I'm pretty sure there is a dedicated single shot for Tetanus...which is obviously really important that kids be protected against. The nurses in Canada won't administer it as a single shot until kids are six years old....so I guess it's time to bring our boy in for that one.
Bottom line is that immediately after his 6 month shot, his skin reacted very violently, and our Naturopath tested the contents of the vial(s) he had which were supposed to correspond to the 6 month shot, and indicated he was highly sensitive (i.e. allergic) to it. Everything else he tested we could verify by seeing his reaction when exposed to it orally. We will not be testing his reaction to something being injected into him again...Except with the tetanus antibodies which we have researched thoroughly and know are absolutely necessary given he plays around rusty things all the time.
We don't have any faith whatsoever in the public health system after what happened. None of our discussion has persueded me to think otherwise...because the best any of you have come up with is "coincidence" which is a complete dodge.
I think the dodging is really why we withdrew consent. We are constantly advised to consider the possibilty that it was coincidence, despite watching his skin respond to everything else in such a direct fashion. But those advising we should consider it being a coincidence do not assess the implications of it not being a coincidence. So why have the "debate" with them? It's so much easier to withdraw consent.
Last edited:
WeedWhacker
Senior Member
Coincidence.
A child is in the backyard, playing with her favourite toy. She picks it up, and it begins to rain.
Does this child (then) equate her actions, of picking up that toy, with the rain? Does she then equate that action to her "imagined" ability to "control the weather"?
THIS is the danger of mis-understanding "cause & effect".
Pete Tar
Senior Member
It seems unethical, that on the basis of something that affected you, with the cause still not completely confirmed, you will be warning them not to get shots that don't seem to effect others in the same way. Your experience is obviously in the minority, or everyone will be reporting something like this after shots.
Why aren't you advising they get allergy tested as a precaution to early shots, rather than encouraging them to forego the whole thing entirely?
This seems like a good compromise. Unfortunately it is difficult to test babies using the needle poking method that we have settled on in North America. The electrodermal testing method that our Naturopath used worked with amazing accuracy for us, but it is not an approved testing method in Canada at least. I believe it is the same in the US. So if there isn't a good method for allergy testing in North America for babies, is it not best to not do any vaccinating until testing can be exhaustively completed?
Also I have difficulty with what the notion that "shots...don't seem to effect others" in this or that way. In practical terms, use of the adverse side effect reporting system in Canada is almost discouraged. It was for us, anyhow. Enough so that we did not correlate the side effect until nearly three months later. I suspect that many highly adverse side effects are not reported for similar reasons, and because what are actually very serious side effects such as fever are advertised as being "normal". We need to know what the true rates of side effects are, and this is not being tracked, seemingly on purpose, or as a result of a deep confirmation bias amongst practitioners. How can we change this?
Last edited:
Trigger Hippie
Senior Member
You jumped into this thread claiming that AEFI's were being under reported. By not reporting a possible adverse effect to a vaccine you are contributing to the very problem you originally complained about.
Report the incident through your doctor, or do it yourself. They couldn't possibly have made it any easier.
Web site:
Public Health Agency of Canada
PDF link to the form:
Consumer Side Effect Reporting Form
External Quote:
deirdre
Senior Member.
pretty sure the FLU vaccine has egg in it. I looked at all the others no egg.
PLEASE do more research before warning people against DTap!!
didn't even realize they gave flu vaccine so young.
deirdre
Senior Member.
no it didn't. you said the test "pegged" the MMR vaccine.
This is not correct. The nurse practitioners administering the shots advise that there is near zero change of having an adverse side effect, and advise that one of the biggest and most prevalent side effects, namely fever, is not a big deal, which is not true.
I said MMR because that's what I thought he'd received at his six month appointment. It obviously was not...or at least there is a very high likelyhood that it was not. Mistaking the DTaP-IPV-Hib for MMR was mine, not his.
Trigger Hippie
Senior Member
What are you taking about?
If you believe the vaccine caused an adverse effect then go to the Public Health Agency of Canada website and report the incident. Here are the links again.
Web site:
Public Health Agency of Canada
PDF link to the form:
Consumer Side Effect Reporting Form
External Quote:
Evidence?
Pete Tar
Senior Member
Well the schedule is for a reason, to protect against what is most likely to kill your baby when they are young and weak, when exposure risk is high, or just because any exposure at that age will be dangerous.
There are alternative schedules, but they're not backed up by the studies that went into creating the official schedule.
External Quote:
deirdre
Senior Member.
deirdre
Senior Member.
either way then, his test did NOT peg the vaccine as you have been claiming and "shouting from the rooftops!!"
Do you understand there are measles outbreaks everywhere because of this type of misinformation being tossed about? and now you threaten to tell people not to give the DTaP!!!! How dare you.
I understand you were confused and the Naturopath didn't help. But PLEASE stop your campaign, since we've proven (I hope) to you that you have NO proof as to what caused it.. was it the DTap or the flu vaccine or some other random set of circumstances.
I am answering your statement that "They couldn't possibly have made it any easier." A website which no-one visits that encourages reporting, while the actual public health nurses discourage it in fact, is not making it easy. It is the precise opposite.
In response to @Landru's request for evidence, I have already given a personal account, multiple times, of having been advised that there was practically zero chance of a side effect and being told that fever is normal. Being told that it is "normal" encourages people to think it is not a problem. Perhaps they mean to say that it is common, which it is. But it is certainly not "normal" and needs to be reported. Which in practice we actively discourage, at least in Canada.
No, the Naturopath DID help. And you have proven nothing by throwing out the question of whether it could have been coincidence, which we practically determined it was not, repeatedly. This again is why we are forced to opt out, and why we should continue to advise others to do the same. The system that wants to inject us all with god knows what no longer cares about what happens to those that are injected. We have lost sight of the reason for vaccinating, which is better health.
deirdre
Senior Member.
you didn't mention fever. if you did I would have thought yes, it was a reaction to the vaccine.
deirdre
Senior Member.
bull.
the reason for vaccines is so your kid and my kids don't DIE from preventable diseases. You kid getting a rash (yes it sucks) is NOT equivalent to all these diseases being protected against. (and don't forget your kid is NOT protected from mumps, measles ruebella. since you stopped all shots... <just reminding you.)
Yes fever is a very common reaction. Ours was not so common. But the propaganda being spouted by the nurses (namely that nothing ever goes wrong after these shots) was so convincing that we did not correlate our baby's very serious reaction to the shot with that shot until months later with the assistance of an alternative health practitioner, at great expense. Our system sucks. It should be avoided until it doesn't.
He didn't get a rash. His skin broke open and started bleeding and oozing puss, and went all bumpy and scabby and felt like sandpaper. I had measles (despite being vaccinated for it). I would prefer to have them again to what our son had happen to him.
Last edited:
deirdre
Senior Member.
children outgrow eczema. I see no evidence the Naturopath helped.
Trigger Hippie
Senior Member
What is preventing you from filling in the Adverse Events Following Immunization form?
Web site:
Public Health Agency of Canada
Link to PDF form:
Consumer Side Effect Reporting Form
deirdre
Senior Member.
that is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. You'd rather your kid get polio then a rash? oy
Pete Tar
Senior Member
That is irresponsible - other people don't have the same issues you do so why warn them to avoid something proven to help based on your singular experience?
Campaign for better information, more information about reactions to allergens in vaccines, a better screening process for infants, tell them what happened because your child was uncommonly highly allergic - but don't scare them off by using something that has a very low chance of happening to them, that's unethical.
ETA - or maybe try and get the testing method you are convinced worked actually scientifically evaluated first. If it works then good, prove it to the world.
No, of course you don't. You are fully bought in and that is your choice. But we do see it. And we don't feel like just putting a blindfold on and joining the "don't see it" crowd.
It is the job of the medical system to make full disclosure and they do not. So yes I agree with campaigning for better information, more information and reactions to allergens, and a better screening process for infants.
And yes I will tell them what happened. We will report it despite it being very long ago now, and also despite my belief that the system has chosen to willingly blind itself to the actual true number of side effects and is thus unethically leading parents down the garden path.
I disagree that telling people exactly what happened to our son is unethical. I think it is the best thing we can do to solve the problem, and prevent such things from hapenning to others as a result of the unethical nondisclosure.
Dan Wilson
Senior Member
We offered you an explanation of what happened to your child. The DTaP-IPV/Hib vaccine has calf serum in it. The fact that you do not even know which vaccine your son received concerns me... It should concern you too. The naturopath seems to have been right about the food allergens but didn't offer much specificity, causing you to have to experiment on your child. A rash is much better than your son having any of the diseases he was immunized against.
There are always ongoing clinical trials and reviews to assess the efficacy of vaccine. Some of them were posted here. Many vaccines never make it to the market because the system you don't believe in stops them in their tracks if anything goes wrong. There are examples of vaccines in development that could be incredibly useful but at some stage had presented a hint of danger that forced the researchers to work for another decade in order to demonstrate that the incident implying negative side effects was, indeed, a coincidence.
Present it as the truth, then. Don't tout it as a reason to avoid vaccination.
