It is a marked characteristic of the current Labour Junta that despite maundering on about choice there is very little choice indeed for families constrained to use state provision of social welfare services. And much of this constraint for many families is delivered via punitive levels of taxation. So much is taken from earnings by the state that there is no hope of opting out.
Measles is a frightening illness; one small H.Girl caught it because the gap between the first jab and a temporary shift to another country became too long and unawareness of a missed vaccination intervened; like most small children she made a full recovery, but don't get measles, not even when you are grown up.
Any reasonable and reasonably aware parent must have been following the controversies over the combined MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccinations. So why, when the separate administration of vaccinations againt these three such dangerous illnesses is easily provided, was so much good will (and it is good will and the highest form of social cooperation, there are always a few who seek to swim in a sea made safe by the risk taken by others, and there is always some miniscule risk) deliberately undermined by the insistence from the state-provided health services backed to the hilt by a political, government directive, that separate vaccinations would not be provided throughout the country. It is on offer throughout Europe for those who want separate vaccinations but not all can afford to set off for France.
The impression that we must take not just what is offered but be forced to take it, even when crucially important and acceptable alternatives can be made available readily, - that we will do as we are told, when we are told or face the consequences (in the case of measles a steady rise in its incidence and the fear of an epidemic on return to school), is overpowering.
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You really should be better informed before making such statements (see a summary of the position below taken from the HPA's site).
Having gone (sucessfully) through the ordeal of having a 1 year old daughter catching rubella from her nursery, because others ignored the vast weight of medical evidence and did not get their children vaccinated (and individual vaccines spread over a number of years would have given little protection)this is one area where I'm in favour of a little authoritarianism.
All the evidence suggests that uptake is in fact poorer with single vaccines than with the MMR, and so with single vaccines fewer children would be protected. With six injections it is very likely that many children would not complete the course and therefore, to suggest that giving six injections rather than two will improve uptake is incorrect.
Some people argue that making single vaccines available would improve uptake because parents who refuse the MMR would take the single vaccines. In fact, the evidence from the UK and elsewhere is that the opposite is true. One of the most striking features of the replacement of single measles vaccine with MMR in 1988 in this country is the significant improvement in vaccination uptake which followed.
Unlike MMR, where the evidence shows no link, no study has been conducted to look at single vaccines and either autism or bowel disease. In fact, there is no reason to think that single vaccines would be any less likely to cause autism or bowel disease than MMR.
Parents are asking for these vaccines because they are scared by all the unfounded stories they have heard and read about MMR, not because there is any evidence that single vaccines are any safer. Single vaccines imported into this country have not been independently tested for potency and toxicity – we have evidence that some of the single vaccines are less effective or less safe than MMR.
If children do not have protection against all three of these diseases, we run the risk of the resurgence of the infections. This means not just measles outbreaks, but, for example, the return of babies born with terrible defects as a result of congenital rubella syndrome, or of children becoming deaf following mumps.
No country in the world recommends vaccination with the three separate vaccines - the UK is unique in this scare story. Some single vaccines are available in other European countries, where they may be used rarely in special circumstances (for example in France measles vaccine is used for children aged 9 to 12 months attending nursery schools. These children usually go on to have MMR six months later).
Usually anonymous comments cannot be accepted here, but when speaking of our children nothing can cover them enough.
That your daughter did not benefit from the gift that so many parents make to all children,the gift of accepting a small risk for the return of the protection of all children is a source of great regret Anon.
But no gift can be given under any compulsion; and there should always be the ready availability of any effective alternative, which there is in the other Eropean countries.
The acceptance of general vaccination is a matter of the greatest sensitivity and the ultimate exercise of free, not state driven, will. Your first sentence tells where you are coming from and it is not right to impute ignorance and follow this merely with assertion.
My daughter's immune system changed completely when she had the MMR vaccine. Previously, when she got hot, she perspired (glowed!). After the vaccine, not so. She would get very hot and dry at night as if she was cooking, and, unable to perspire, she had trouble throwing off these low grade fevers. She developed a permanently snotty nose and had to be taken off dairy or she would have cold after cold with these concurrent low grade fevers and chest congestion. This change was immediate and very noticable. When she was called in for her pre school booster I declined, having had so much trouble with her health after the first vaccine.
I had Rubella, Mumps and Measles as a child, but I didn't have them all at once. Each illness came separatly and my body had to fight each one. My mother nursed me. I sometimes wonder if we have lost the skill of nursing our young when they get sick (Measles and Mumps can mean 3 weeks off work for one child and if you have 3 children going down with it, one after the other, well..)
Measles is a killer in older children and grown ups. These are childhood illnesses that we are designed to cope with, in general, with proper care. I worry that the Measles vaccine has left a lot of people thinking they are immune and actually, in spite of being vaccinated, they are not. (Hence the recall for boosters, which also may not "take", there are no routine tests of immunity) and as young adults they are very vulnerable.
The first signs of measles are a wet chest. If the individual rests and looks after themselves in this period (the rash takes 5 days to appear and follows this chesty phase) their illness will be less severe and is less likely to have complications.
Watch your children's chests!
To agree to submit a child to the risks of vaccination in the interests of all children embodies the quintessential act of social solidarity and exchange - the binding co-operative assent that builds any reasonable and moral society.
Interfering with this generosity of spirit is the repugnant underlying destructiveness of authoritarianism, the beginning of 'some are more equal than others'. There are few matters that so illuminate the difference between choosing social exchanges and our social worlds, and the thrusting of controlling systems down the necks of people too powerless to prevent it.
Ours were offered separate vaccinations at decent intervals and from a later age, just as you suggest L. The point about nursing the sick is very powerful - at a purely impressionistic level when the children were small, some of their classmates were atrociously cared for in every possible way, not least their care when ill, and their care to avoid getting ill; and it wasn't to do with income levels either.
I saw a 9 year old with Shingles once, HG. His mother hadn't been aware of him ever having had chicken pox. Anf what kind of stress is a child under to get shingles at 9?
It's not acknowledged, but for some children, to attend a school is to take a tremendous hit on their standard of living; inferior built environment, poor levels of upkeep, poor food, greatly increased stress-inducing conditions of noise, lack of space, low levels of attention, immensely long periods of boredom and lack of stimulation, and increased exposure to carelessly spread dangers. The settled community providing a stable background to school attendees is missing often now as well, so children are in constantly altering social relations. My mother knew all the families of the children in my class, and their brothers and sisters in other parts of the school were with mine. But my children in a city primary faced a turnover hard to keep track of - it can't be helped but it needs to be taken into account, all of this stuff. It's a big ask of the children and of their parents.
It's not just social assent to immunisation that should be nurtured and accepted as a gift. This top down issuing of peremptory demands and the inappropriate attitudes displayed widely through the tax provided state services is causing enormous inefficiencies and social disfunction.
In response to Anon:
I think that the Blairs did untold damage by refusing to tell us whether or not baby Leo had recieved the triple.
Without reference to autism I notice that there are now significant numbers of children with behavioural disorders who are prescribed Ritalin and require specialist teaching at my boys' school. I happen to think that these 'disorders' (and here I include the over-diagnosis of dislexia)are more oft born of poor parenting and bad teaching. Now, if the State administering of drugs to dull the wits of naughty children and the mis-diagnosis of dislexia to excuse poor teaching - all backed by the MEDICAL PROFESSION to cover for liberalist failure (unwitting or otherwise) - is not sinister then I don't know what is.
Do you understand why I'm sceptical about MMR - and perhaps the HPA too ? Nu Lab has created a climate of distrust in this country. Their lies about Iraq, crime, inflation, education, Europe, immigration ... et al, taint everything. This can't simply be blamed on the press.
Regards
Kevin Peat
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