Scary stuff

I guess this is what I get for when I go to the scary side of YouTube.... Lay awake at night thinking that yeah, I had that polio vaccine when I was a child.....



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR0Vh7EBinM

There are valid concerns associated with vaccine use. There are also a lot of unsubstantiated claims against their use.
However, basic childhood vaccinations most of us received decades ago were developed in response to the very real dangers of polio, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus.

I actually contracted polio as a child. It affected the muscles on the right side of my body. Beforehand I used to throw and bat right handed. Afterwards I now still throw and bat left handed. Even now, I use my left hand when strength is needed, and my right hand when gentler operations with more manual dexterity is needed. Of course, old age has been leveling the playing field with the manual dexterity thing, since I have become much more unsteady with both hands.

So even if the scientists do come up with a vaccine against old age, I guess I missed the boat on that one.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

So even if the scientists do come up with a vaccine against old age, I guess I missed the boat on that one.

Honestly, if someone offered me such a vaccine, I would turn them down. I am really appreciating being older. I'm definitely appreciating being retired.
I enjoyed the strength of youth,and the wild oats and all, but there is a pleasure in looking at the world through the eyes of experience and knowledge gained by living.
And of course I have the cutest grand baby in the world

Originally Posted by Lucille

Honestly, if someone offered me such a vaccine, I would turn them down. I am really appreciating being older. I'm definitely appreciating being retired.
I enjoyed the strength of youth,and the wild oats and all, but there is a pleasure in looking at the world through the eyes of experience and knowledge gained by living.
And of course I have the cutest grand baby in the world

Yeah, I hear that.

As a friend of mine who recently retired said to me when I asked him how he was adapting to being retired, "I was BORN to be retired."

As for Connie and I, if we hadn't retired when we did, I'm not sure what condition (healthwise) we would be in right now. Working with as many animals as we had, it was a crushing burden that because it built up gradually over time, we never realized just how crushing it was till it was lifted from us.

I won't claim to truly know about the safety of vaccines, but I am not satisfied with the word of pharmaceutical companies or the FDA on their safety when there does seem to be a pattern of at least a couple major health issues that could be caused by them. Anyone who denies that "big pharma" is in the business of symptom management instead of actually curing diseases, that the FDA is in their pocket, or that there's not even a remote possibility that neither has our best interests and health in mind is almost a lost cause. I mean that ranks right up there with blindly trusting those in positions of authority without question...

On the other hand, I do believe they are effective in most cases against the illnesses that they are intended to immunize against. I'm not willing to trust that these ailments are not present to the point where I'd bet my daughter's health or her life on her simply not coming into contact with them.

The compromise in this situation that my wife and I decided on for her was to follow a schedule that didn't involve her being given as many of the cocktails of multiple vaccines or nearly as many doses at the same time.

I think there is likely some weight to the claimed connection between vaccines and autism, but from what I have read it would seem it's less likely from the vaccines themselves, but the extreme shock to the immune system which could potentially disrupt neurotransmitters during the most crucial period of a child's brain development. Of course none of this has been completely confirmed, but considering how little resistance we got from one of the best pediatricians in our area when we discussed the alternative schedule, we opted to at least try and mitigate the potential side effects based on what logical info we could find.

The risks associated with the vaccines are so much lower than the risks of the diseases they prevent, I'm always surprised there's even a debate.

Originally Posted by Helenthereef

The risks associated with the vaccines are so much lower than the risks of the diseases they prevent, I'm always surprised there's even a debate.

Thus my reasoning in having our daughter vaccinated, but have you ever seen what the normal vaccine schedule is for a child born in the US these days? Considering how vaccines work, can you deny that injecting a child of 15 months with upwards of thirteen live and/or dead inactivated viruses at one time (this doesn't include other the other vaccination appointments) could cause serious unintended consequences?

There is little to no actual clinical testing on the safety and side effects of most vaccines, let alone the safety of giving so many at once to a child during that developmental stage.

Basically, while there is not much in the way of hard data on the risks of vaccines, there is not much hard data on the lack thereof either. Then again, why would there be any published papers on potential long term heath issues caused by them. It wouldn't be the first time such info was suppressed by the ones who financially benefit from it remaining hidden (and that's not even touching on the subject of the profit those same entities stand to make on treatment of any ailment that could be caused by their products). The FDA can't exactly be trusted to have our best interests in mind either. There has been a rotating door between pharmaceutical companies, agrochemical companies, and the FDA at executive levels for a long time...

None of this is to say that vaccines don't work (why else would we make sure our daughter still got hers?), but I don't trust that they are totally void of major risk. At least when administered so heavily.

Originally Posted by wvaherp

Thus my reasoning in having our daughter vaccinated, but have you ever seen what the normal vaccine schedule is for a child born in the US these days? Considering how vaccines work, can you deny that injecting a child of 15 months with upwards of thirteen live and/or dead inactivated viruses

You make a good point here. As a non-parent I had no idea they were giving so many all at once. I am firmly in favour of vaccinating in principle, but I think you are probably quite correct in presuming that there is likely to be a greater stress by giving a lot at one time. In my (long gone) childhood, we had them spaced out over months and years.

Every time I go in for my yearly physical and blood work, my doctor is ALWAYS pushing a bunch of vaccines he suggests I take. Sorry, but I just decline. I just have this aversion to injecting foreign substances into my body unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary. Yeah, maybe I COULD come down with something that a vaccine might prevent or mitigate, but perhaps the odds are greater that because of my chosen lifestyle, I will not.

Of course, along these lines of thinking, I can't help but think that perhaps the pharmaceutical companies are actually using doctors and staff as their front line marketing staff. Who else would be in a better position to market their products? Certainly my doctor does act like just about every salesperson I have encountered trying to push one product or another on me. And I guess that puts an uncomfortable spin on the thoughts of how much of our best interests do doctors really have at heart. So the question is, do doctors actually get kickbacks or other incentives from the prescriptions they write? What is their actual incentive for aggressively recommending vaccines?