cos schools boys get high on it in german lessons

No doubt your numbers are right and i really didn’t think there was much point in vaccinating after infection, so thanks for explaining why it might be useful. Although last time i needed a jab they told me that it was immunoglobulin that had already been raised, not vaccine.
On tetanus i trawled through the internet once and the information i came away with that it really is pretty useless. The main argument being that there have only been cases of tetanus reported in people who are already immunosuppressed, if they have been vaccinated, partially vaccinated or recieved no vaccine what so ever. I guess the research could be flawed so i will try to find the links so you can decide for yourself…..
a quick look didn’t bring up the study i was looking for
but i did come across this ,
www.whale.to/v/mend.html

but then i guess this dr Mendelsohn is not the kind of doctor you like on here.

Anyway

thanks for your input.. food for thought indeed

Odd that to a population used to the effects of polio even the risky vaccines (the effects of which rapidly became apparent) seemed a muchbetter idea than life in an iron lung. One of the problems with our modern attitude to vaccines comes because of their success. We no longer routinely lose relatives to these diseases and so the smaller but visible risks the vaccines pose seem disproportionate to the gains.

My commiserations for your girlfriend. I am assuming an allergic reaction. I know the phrase bad luck doesnt offer much comfort but there we are. Tetanus vaccinations are far from worthless however and save lives on a routine basis because they are routine. The main risk is anaphylaxis which is rather rare.
Tetanus isnt one of your friendly childhood ailments, it is at best a horrible gruelling illness and frequently fatal (10-20% mortality with advanced medical care according to NHS advice). Tetanus is contracted from puncture wounds in most cases which is why i got injected with a buttockfull of it after i stood on a glass bottle last year. Vaccination after exposure is common treatment for diseases with longish incubation periods that target the nervous system. Rabies vaccines are also administered after exposure. In both tetanus and rabies the vaccine is effective when administered in this way. The immune response to the agent can develope whilst the agent is still incubating in the nerve sheaths.

I know this sounds like one-upmanship but my great great uncle died from tetanus after treading on a nail in a smithy. At least according to anecdotal evidence (my granny, whose description of the throes of a tetanus victim belonged in a Stephen King book)

I knew it needed commas but thought it it prettier without.(but do you know why chose it as my name ?)

Your argument is convincing except the childish name calling.

But here’s ones for you ..

why are we routinely vaccinated against tetanus ? even after a potential infection ?

There is no good reason but ‘we’ do.

Incidentally, a routine tetanus jab killed my girlfriends grandfather as a young man, leaving a young family fatherless.
And the ‘pillock’ doctor was a case worker (if that is the correct terminology ) of a patient who developed polio after vaccintion.

food for thought…

as for an after effect, is this for an example.

Burning oil … global warming

did anyone see that coming ?

111, your doctor friend is a pillock. (personal and unscientific term meaning a very poor game theorist).

Lets look at the likelihoods here. What we do know is that vaccination prevents or ameliorates the diseases against which it is intended, thereby demonstrably reducing the death and disfigurement given by these diseases. ( I am thinking of MMR and smallpox here). Even a worst case analysis on the data for death-by-vaccine shows that vaccinating is a far better course of action than not vaccinating for any disease with a significant mortality and likelihood of disfigurement.

The fact that other effects are unknown suggests that they either have a weak correlation or a low prevalence. In any case even if the measles vaccine made your foot fall off in one out of every 5000 vaccinations it would still be a better outcome than getting measles which kills roughly one in one thousand sufferers (or seems to have done in the seventies, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7425188, though possibly this was flared trousers weakening the immune system)

Child dies before MMR would be much bigger news. Also as ten days elapsed in between surely “Child dies after nappy change” would be more chronologically accurate.

I am not fighting the truth, simply trying to understand. The Doctor in question is a proper medical doctor and doesn’t need ‘inverted commas’ unless of course you are a ‘professor of immunology’.
To me you are perfectly credible and I understand the point you are making about serendipitous results and how all medicines undergo rigorous testing. (some time ago I used to administer phase one clinical trails and was once researcher at the Sir Willaim Dunn school of pathology in Oxford – I get the science)

But my point remains unanswered,
I quote
“However, the fact that there might be unforeseen beneficial effects from vaccines and drugs can take some time to unearth.”

Might the same not be true of undesired effects ?
Surely getting any unexpected results should cause us to question whats happening ?

Just a thought.

Don’t fight the truth, particularly if you have kids.

When products, such as vaccines and drugs for human use are brought to market they will go through a stringent system of checks to look for adverse effects. The reason being that that is what folk worry about and so we screen for problems before widespread useage. However, the fact that there might be unforeseen beneficial effects from vaccines and drugs can take some time to unearth.

In the history of science and medicine there have been many of these serendipitous results and these have frequently led to further advances in medicine and new treatments. There are well known side benefits of BCG vaccination, for example. Bladder cancer and type 1 diabetes all seem to improve upon BCG adminstration; leprosy can be prevented following BCG vaccination. With drugs, aspirin now is seen as much more than a pain killer.

Your “doctor” is wrong, you dont do any harm by vaccinating kids, but you may need to repeat some vaccine components. There is no such thing as immunological overload or bombardment…at all!

Why should you listen to me? I am a UK professor of immunology and hope I have some credibility, but you can chose to ignore or disbelieve this as I am not presenting any proof on this website.

Firstly I said, a doctor, not my GP.
I think your analogy with weetabix is somewhat missing the point. I dont think any studies on weetabix have been done that showed it did anything other than that which one would expect.
There is a study quoted on this web site as being credible which indicates that the MMR vaccine has side effects the nature of which are not understood, although beneficial. One might argue, and its hardly ignorance, that if this vaccine creates side effects others my also.
Now maybe i am being thick but i think it should be cause for concern when a vaccine is shown to produce unexpected results whether desirable or not, as it indicates that we don’t understand fully what is happening. Nobody else seems to have made this point so i guess i must be ignorant.

There may be evidence of protection against asthma, I haven’t looked at that myself. There’s certainly evidence that MMR protects against measles, mumps and rubella. But there is no evidence that it causes the significant negative adverse effects suggested by some. We could ask “what if” until the cows come home, but that would be silly. What if Weetabix causes cancer? There’s no evidence, but it’s not impossible.

No, the best we can do is look at the evidence that we DO HAVE and judge on that basis. Your GP, it seems, did not do this and in doing so put the lives and health of your children (and his) at risk.

As to immune system maturity- we cannot control when we are exposed to natural infection, and typically we are bombarded with new antigens in early childhood whether we vaccinate or not. Your GP’s “hypothesis” makes very little sense and seems to be little more than an argument from ignorance.

My child had no vaccinations on the advice of a doctor who also didn’t vaccinate his own kids. He reckoned that vaccines are given too early into immature immune systems. He argued that the development of the immune system is poorly understood.
Now reading the article it suggests that the MMR jab offers some ‘protection’ against asthma. I understand that asthma is an auto immune disease. Is it known how exactly these vaccines interact with the immune system in such a way as to offer to protection against diseases other that they are specified for? If this is the case it might seem prudent to follow this doctors advice. I mean, if MMR ‘protects’ against asthma (not to mention measles, mumps and rubella) an unplanned and unintended result, what other unplanned and unintended results might be happening?

Any ideas anyone ?

Go on, be fair, perhaps warhelmet wants the last word?

@.warhelmet. Awww, you’re such a spoilsport.

If people do not desist now, I will don my helm of ontological power and do the *wibble* thing. It is a terrible thing to behold, the *wibble*.

Seeking the “last word” is an admission of weakness. A cheesy fist raised to weak arguments.

“Move along now, there’s nothing to see”.

Enuff. End of. Fini.

Perhaps you’re right. I’d better shut up, or you’ll pinch my idea and make millions… Still not a bad idea. If I do write a book, perhaps I’ll dedicate it to you It would sound good, full of suggestive mystery:

“I dedicate this book to the Nameless One”

Although possibly slightly satanic.

Anyhow, oh Nameless One, I sense you are desperate for some form of victory, a bit like the Angel of Death, who once summoned cannot (I understand) return empty handed. I would not like to leave you unsatisfied after all the help you’ve given me. How may your lust be assuaged? What damning admission do you require before removing my head to the Nameless Hall of Not OK People?

@Dudley

Well if you find it meaningless, it’s one less thing to worry about, isn’t it? Fab.

It’s straightforward circular reasoning. Your system is its own evidence. In other words, while for you what you’re saying may seem profound, it is, nonetheless, completely meaningless.

Accepting what does not fit in with your preconceptions is clearly *not* part of your experience.

“I am a concerned parent, and it is not a ‘played’ role.”

Look, I’m not disputing that you are a parent; the role I say you were playing is that of an ordinary one who was honestly seeking advice… instead of someone with a homegrown philosophical system that states that your opinion is as valid as *anyone’s* on *any* subject.

And I can’t even guess what you’re trying to say here:
“It seems to me that alternative therapies do not derive themselves from the common ground of what is ‘real’ for everyone, but from the larger universal ground, which might be more to do with the nature of perception. They seem to relate to individual vagaries, not universal physical norms.”

Or is already happening, Arnold? You’re not trying to get us to sign up for the introductory online course (re-alignment guaranteed or our money back), are you?