I told my sister and my nephew yesterday that I’m feeling upset about them only contacting me when they want money. My sister got huffy and told me that she doesn’t want anything from anyone. Then as we were getting ready to pay for lunch she informed me she was laid off. Ahhh timing. I only paid for my food.
On the vaccine stuff: I find the different points of view interesting. I found ‘s post yesterday nearly funny. If I posted something of that length and validity on the anti-vax side I would have a flood of snotty comments. I would be be told that all of the things I was presenting were “anecdotal” and therefore completely unworthy of mention. *shrug* At this moment in time my feelings are basically that I don’t trust the information I am presented with. Once upon a time there was “evidence” that people should be given mercury when they were sick, or drugs to prevent miscarriage that caused terrible terrible deformities and problems in infants. This was the wisdom of the day. I could list off a dozen different things that have been part of “trends” in the past 150 years around the topic of bearing children that have been dangerous and problematic. They were all pushed heavily by doctors. Yet I am now told, “It doesn’t matter what has happened in the past. This time what we are telling you to do is right. Honest!” Well, I feel rather uncomfortable using my kid as a guinea pig for something with little history. Most vaccines have been around for ~60 years or less. That’s not a lot of time to look at the long-term effects. Especially because the people who were vaccinated 60 years ago were not given the same vaccines or nearly as many as children today are. Shanna will be vaccinated because eventually the risk of the diseases will overcome the risk of the shots because I want to take her to Asia and Africa. If I were a bit less infected with a travel bug I don’t know that I would be willing to.
If my life were different I would probably give her the vaccines on schedule. (Although frankly I like countries like Finland’s vaccination schedule more than the US’s.) Well, maybe not all of them. I’m more than a little worried about what is going to happen to people when we get rid of the more mild diseases that educate the body in fighting off illness. Do I have hard scientific evidence? Sorta. Not really. Why are things like cancer becoming so common? It’s a combination of reasons that no one has figured out yet. It didn’t happen much when people died of other illnesses.
I don’t think it is a good idea to fuck with mother nature. People are supposed to die. That’s kind of the end-goal of every human’s life. I don’t really think that trying to put off death forever is a great thing. I’m sure people will snarkily (and stupidly in my opinion) say, “You would feel differently if it was your kid.” Not really. If my child died I would grieve. I would miss her for the rest of my life. But I would deal with it. I have experience dealing with death and my experience of it colored my feelings enough that I feel pretty comfortable saying, “No really–it’s better to not stave off death as long as possible.” They should have let my brother die the first time instead of resuscitating him.
And I can’t help but think that our culture’s obsession with avoiding feeling bad at all for any length of time is contributing to a lot of our other social problems.
I have to admit that I’ve had this thought about the chicken pox vaccine. I know it’s horrible to get as an adult, but as a child, is it really that bad? I remember once my brother got it my mom sat me in the room with him ’cause she wanted me to get it (for my 7th birthday no less) as a child.
I haven’t really looked into the issue much to make an informed decision, but I’m sure I will once I’m a mom.
I enjoy reading what you have to say!
I’m kinda with you on the chicken pox vaccine
I think it might be better to have doctors purposely infect all 6 year olds with real chicken pox and be done with it.
Re: I’m kinda with you on the chicken pox vaccine
…this comment makes me wonder if you’ve ever had shingles. 😛 They suck. I think if we can prevent herpes infections, we should (chicken pox = herpes zoster). But then again, there is an argument to be made for eradicating infection to any particular pathogen… i.e. allergies have developed from the branch of the immune system that evolved to deal with parasites. I have to say I’d take my allergies over my herpes any day of the week, though. It’s trial and error, all of it, no matter how hard we try to control the outcomes. Such is life.
I had chicken pox at 12. It was *awful.* Vaccine ho.
Reye Syndrome
When I was about 12, every kid in my neighborhood got chicken pox in about a 4-week bunch. I was the only one (of about 15-18) to get Reye Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reye's_syndrome) as a result of taking aspirin while sick with the chicken pox. At the time, they still didn’t know much about Reye syndrome, and it wasn’t at all sure I’d survive it. Studies were just beginning to show a link for children (under 18 – not so much adults, for some reason)between having chicken pox (and influenza type B) and taking aspirin products sometimes led to this set of symptoms. At the worst of it, I am told I threw up nearly constantly for about three days. I don’t remember any of that. Then I slept for 3-4 days almost straight through. Then I spent a couple of weeks barely being able to move and control any muscle groups. One distinct memory I have is standing in front of a neurologist with my arms straight out. He told me to bend one arm at the elbow and touch my nose. I almost knocked myself out because I had such poor control over the rate and range of movement. It took about 6 weeks to really recover to a truly functional state.
But I’ve never met anyone else who’s had it, even though almost everyone I know has had chicken pox.
I think we’re getting so much more cancer at least partly simply because
we’re curing or preventing so much other stuff that used to kill people before they had a chance to live long enough to develop cancer.
Re: I think we’re getting so much more cancer at least partly simply because
I kinda said that. 🙂
Re: I think we’re getting so much more cancer at least partly simply because
Kinda, or maybe. I read what you wrote as being slightly different than what I wrote, but perhaps I misinterpreted what the word “it” referred to when you wrote “It didn’t happen much when people died of other illnesses.” I took that whole sentence to be referring to “a combination of reasons” rather than to “cancer”.
Anyway, it’s not terribly central to the topic here.
Re: I think we’re getting so much more cancer at least partly simply because
Amusingly what is most significant, in my opinion, is that I’m not trying to convince anyone else to vax or not vax. I’m making choices for myself based on my situation and I expect other people to do the same and I’m not in their situation so I don’t know all of the factors they need to use for decisions.
But people sure get their panties in a bunch.
getting panties in a bunch
People get upset because your decision about vaccination affect them much more directly than almost any other childraising decisions you make. If you circumcise or not, feed the kids a vegetarian or kosher diet, smoke in the house or not, teach them creationism or evolution, me and my kids are only very indirectly affected. If you choose to not vaccinate, me and my kids *are* affected.
It’s like drunk driving. The odds of getting into an accident which injures or kills someone else are pretty low, but they’re lots higher than if you don’t drive drunk.
Re: getting panties in a bunch
Don’t you trust that the vaccinations you get protect you? If you don’t, why did you bother?
And furthermore, if you are so bothered by my decision stop associating with me.
Re: getting panties in a bunch
Don’t you trust that the vaccinations you get protect you? If you don’t, why did you bother?
There are lots of reasons why this argument (in response to the previous) doesn’t quite hold up. For example, the pertussis vaccine wears off. And having an infant or elderly person or otherwise immunocompromised individual around would cause a family to not want to be exposed to anything unnecessarily. Etc. Which begs the second point…
And furthermore, if you are so bothered by my decision stop associating with me.
This only really works if you aren’t in the same community, as well (i.e. not directly interacting with the same people day to day or week to week, who could serve as vectors of transmission).
Which is not to say that you shouldn’t make the decisions you find best for your kids, but is the reason why some people – perhaps justifiably – get their “panties in a bunch” about the issue. I think it warrants compassion and understanding for why their panties are bunched, in the very least.
Panties. Bunched. Those are some funny words. 🙂
Re: getting panties in a bunch
Mr. Your Kid Should Be Compared To A Drunk Driver, I think you should read: http://insidevaccines.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/vaccines-safe-parents-dangerous/
It is *not* about whether or not people should vaccinate. It’s about attitude and approach.
Re: getting panties in a bunch
If you and I are having a discussion about some controversial aspect of evolution – some evo-psych thing, for example – and you buttress your argument with some creationist tract, I’m going to treat you as if you were preaching creationism at me.
There are valid questions and arguments and there are invalid ones. Pretty much any argument which is all about how the MMR vaccine caused autism is preaching creationism.
Re: getting panties in a bunch
Have I *ever* said I think the MMR vaccine caused autism? I’ve said that there is some interesting research.
So could you stop treating me as if I am stupid and ranting at me? It’s a good way to ruin a friendship.
I’m with you on the milder diseases… like the common cold. The result will be a generation that all suffer horrible alergies
I don’t have any problem with someone deciding to space out their kids’ vaccines to take longer than the CDC recommendations; especially to start a little later – there is some evidence that the immune system doesn’t really do a good job processing very early vaccines. But there’s a difference between not vaccinating at 2 months and not vaccinating at all.
I’m really amused that you think that 60 years isn’t enough time to see long-term effects – lots of people who got vaccinated 60 years ago are dead now; if there were long-term effects, they’d have shown up. In terms of long-term societal effects, we’ve gone from a child mortality rate of over 25% to about 1%. (Some of that is from better public health measures besides vaccination, but a lot of that impact is on infant mortality, which vaccination doesn’t affect as much.)
Incidentally, the link for Finland’s vax schedule doesn’t work. I found Denmark’s vax schedule looking around a little from your link.
Thanks for telling me about the broken link. Finland vaccinates for fewer things on a different schedule than Denmark. All of the countries in the EU have slightly different requirements. I fixed the link. You can poke around and see a bunch of different schedules.
60 years is how long we have been mass vaccinating. The vaccines they used 60 years ago are no longer used. There have been vaccines that were briefly used then taken away again because there were problems.
There are *tons* of reasons the child mortality rate has gone down and it is impossible to say how much of it belongs to which factor. You know how snarky you get when people use correlation = causation on other issues? Yeah, don’t fall into that trap now.
“Why are things like cancer becoming so common? It’s a combination of reasons that no one has figured out yet. It didn’t happen much when people died of other illnesses.”
Exactly! You have to die of something, and chances are it’s going to be something we don’t have a cure for. Since you are no longer going to die of smallpox, plague or TB, the chances of dying of cancer are that much higher, since there are so many fewer fatal diseases.