MMR

[MelowMeldrew]

There are widespread calls for compulsory MMR vaccinations after areas in Wales have had mini epidemics of measles breaking out everywhere, and after the Healthy Office panned single vaccination approaches, do Autistic parents still have reservations over this ? and would they comply with coercion ? Has the damage been done already to the safety aspect of MMR ? I can't help feeling what I know now, and if I knew that then, I would not have gone with the triple vaccine approach either. I visibly winced when I saw a child getting his MMR on TV yesterday, it brought it all back for me, and my child closing down 36hrs after that.

[bid]

<'> MM

 

I read about this elsewhere, and quite frankly I think it would be an outrageous abuse of government power, whatever the safety profile of MMR.

 

My biggest concern is the age at which tiny children are given a cocktail of vacs. My two youngest didn't have MMR for health reasons because of their severe multiple food allergies (I think the vac is cultured using egg?).

 

I also had concerns about my eldest, not because I think MMR caused his autism, but rather I fear that there may be a genetic susceptability so that MMR might trigger more severe autism.

 

My personal feeling is that single vacs should be available too, so that anyone with concerns can get the protection that way, rather than having no choice.

 

Bid

[lisac]

i dont think it will ever happen

[Mumble]

There are widespread calls for compulsory MMR vaccinations

I'm afraid I'm going to be unpopular with my view - and remember I'm not a parent and may think differently if I were - but hopefully this forum can sustain a difference of opinion. I'm afraid to say that when I heard this on the news today I clapped :clap: and thought 'thank God, sense at last'.

 

Too much damage is done to very vulnerable children through not being protected (either children themselves whose parents are not vaccinating or children who can't be vaccinated and so rely on others being vaccinated). Additionally a huge amount of damage has been done both to parents of autistic individuals who may have been left feeling guilty about their decision to vaccinate when there is no proven link, and to the autistic community at large who have to deal with a misunderstanding of what autism is.

 

Personally I don't believe it will actually be made compulsory, but I believe it should be, with the option of single jabs on the NHS for children requiring them for medical reasons (i.e. allergies) and with counselling/ongoing guidance for parents whose children need single jabs (as they are at risk for longer) and those who have been made fearful about the MMR through very irresponsible media coverage.

 

[Kathryn]

Some countries do have a compulsory vaccination policy. I agree with much of what you say. Mumble. Measles is a horrible illness which can also devastate lives, although I have nothing but sympathy for those whose children have had adverse reactions to the vaccine.

 

I have reservations about a blanket policy of compulsory vaccination, but I think the single vac should be available to all parents who request it. I also think any parent who wants complete exemption should be able to demonstrate that they have clear medical reasons for opting out, maybe by producing a GP letter before a school place is offered. This would show that they had thought about the issue seriously and responsibly and discussed it with relevant professionals rather than having decided on a whim or just jumping on the bandwagon because of (e.g) a scare story in one of the tabloids.

 

K x

Edited June 3, 2009 by Kathryn

[lisac]

How about compulsory counselling, compulsory damage pay outs, compulsory adequate specialist autism education, compulsory on-going care for an autistic persons life, throughout the country, for those made autistic once they've had the MMR?

Edited June 3, 2009 by lisac

[joybed]

I have always said the MMR did not contribute to Marcus autism and had no reservations at all about the twins having it and still don,t really. However today i was having my annual tidy out of rubbish and found Piers development books from nursery and they described a perfectly normally developing child who showed lots of love and affection and no aggressive tendencies whatsoever. This got me thinking about a comment my DH made only this morning (that Piers wasn,t popular at school because he was immature and too babyish and wasn,t on the same level as the other kids, he added he was stuck at age 3). This led to thoughts that indeed he has not matured or even grown at all since age 3 and is in fact now regressing. Result of MMR?, not sure but interesting thought.

I did look into the research prior to the twins having it and discussed with my health visitor but as we are both health professionals and know the damage of measles mumps and rubella we gladly opted to have it and think i probably still would. My sister didn,t let her youngest have it as she has chrohns disease as well as my DS1 having ASD and thought it was too much of a risk.

I don,t think compulsory vaccination will come in either will cause way too many problems (freedom of choice and all that).

[MelowMeldrew]

I have always said the MMR did not contribute to Marcus autism and had no reservations at all about the twins having it and still don,t really. However today i was having my annual tidy out of rubbish and found Piers development books from nursery and they described a perfectly normally developing child who showed lots of love and affection and no aggressive tendencies whatsoever. This got me thinking about a comment my DH made only this morning (that Piers wasn,t popular at school because he was immature and too babyish and wasn,t on the same level as the other kids, he added he was stuck at age 3). This led to thoughts that indeed he has not matured or even grown at all since age 3 and is in fact now regressing. Result of MMR?, not sure but interesting thought.

I did look into the research prior to the twins having it and discussed with my health visitor but as we are both health professionals and know the damage of measles mumps and rubella we gladly opted to have it and think i probably still would. My sister didn,t let her youngest have it as she has chrohns disease as well as my DS1 having ASD and thought it was too much of a risk.

I don,t think compulsory vaccination will come in either will cause way too many problems (freedom of choice and all that).

 

 

It mirrors mine then then, my son's development recorded was above average for his age, I posted here a long time ago how he did reams and reams of A4 written work barely able to hold a pencil, it was mostly numbers and counting but he was well ahead of his peers at that time, he was also learning sign language at a very young age too ! 36 hours after MMR I had a mute child who would not talk, even babble, hold a pencil, and just stared into space.... it took 4 YEARS after that before he'd hold a pencil again... they keep telling me "This is how autism appears..."

[NobbyNobbs]

in order to go on exchange to a US university i had to prove i had had the MMR vaccine. if i hadn't been vaccinated as a child, i would've had the vaccine without thinking twice about it.

 

i'm afraid i'm of the 'make it compulsory' persuasion too. there are endless side effects of everything, and its only because people have jumped on the MMR and shouted that any more fuss is made of that than anything else with potentially serious side effects. a lot of people who choose not to vaccinate their child do so out of ignorance. they read scare stories on the internet without looking into the other side of the argument, and then put other peoplels lives at risk by making an il-informed decision.

 

if there are medical reasons why you can't have a vaccine, or form of vaccination, fair enough different options should be available. but if the vaccine works for the significant majority of people, why should an already overstretched NHS fund anything else?

 

i'm allergic to the hepatitis B vaccination, so despite SS rules that all foster carers must have it, i can't. i know i run a risk of contracting it, but there's nothing i can do about it. however, i know the rest of my immediate family are protected, so its very unlikely i would pass it on.

[sesley]

they have neither proved the mmr causes Autism or not, most people are of the opinion that Autism is a inherited condition, for you people that believe the vaccine caused your childs autism,have a dig around your family,if you can and see if any of the characteristics show up in family members.i did have reservations after P's statement of ASD of getting the booster for school incase it was a risk,and it did cause him to regress,this was at the time when there was so much being said against it and of course Tony Blair not saying if Leo had had it, or seperate vaccines. Then just before Christmas,my elder teenaged sons were advised to have the boosters ,because Mumps had became a threat, so we had P done with theirs aged 5. and there was no signs of regression at all from him. In fact his characteristics mirrors some of ours,things like wanting to stick to rules and routines and finding mixing and socialising with others difficult.

Edited June 3, 2009 by sesley

[NobbyNobbs]

It mirrors mine then then, my son's development recorded was above average for his age, I posted here a long time ago how he did reams and reams of A4 written work barely able to hold a pencil, it was mostly numbers and counting but he was well ahead of his peers at that time, he was also learning sign language at a very young age too ! 36 hours after MMR I had a mute child who would not talk, even babble, hold a pencil, and just stared into space.... it took 4 YEARS after that before he'd hold a pencil again... they keep telling me "This is how autism appears..."

not wanting to offend but...it could be argued that the behaviours you have described before his vaccine were not 'normal' behaviours, assuming you were referring to the pre-school vaccination. its very hard to know where to draw the line between when you start looking at differences in development as negatives, and when you see them as positives.

 

MMR falls around the same time that developmental differences really start to show their face, as children become more standardised in nursery and early years education. it becomes easier to compare your child to others, so more problems are noticed, when before they were just quirks

[katie123]

I dont think mmr caused my sons Autism, and I was happy to let my younger daughter have it, If I think back to even when he was a tiny baby he was always a bit different, would only eat certin foods and was very quite.

[Flora]

Bill was always a handfull, but after the first MMR he developed permanent diahorea and became incontinent (within the first day and it lasted for months and he was under a consultant for a year), after the booster he regressed over night after a severe local reaction (leg swelled to 3 times normal size and very high temperature), as did ben after the first one and so I never let him have the booster because by then I realised there could be a connection.

 

I work with a woman whose son is severely autistic. She has video of him before his MMR triple vaccine which shows him walking and talking, the video she has of him afterwards is of a mute child (still mute at age 11) not walking or doing anything at all. She is currently battling with his proposed secondary school who won't take him in September unless he has the booster MMR.

 

As far as I can see by experience and observation, there is enough anecdotal circumstancial evidence to cause serious concern regarding the MMR triple vaccine.

 

Flo'

[dana]

<'> MM

 

I read about this elsewhere, and quite frankly I think it would be an outrageous abuse of government power, whatever the safety profile of MMR.

 

My biggest concern is the age at which tiny children are given a cocktail of vacs. My two youngest didn't have MMR for health reasons because of their severe multiple food allergies (I think the vac is cultured using egg?).

 

I also had concerns about my eldest, not because I think MMR caused his autism, but rather I fear that there may be a genetic susceptability so that MMR might trigger more severe autism.

 

My personal feeling is that single vacs should be available too, so that anyone with concerns can get the protection that way, rather than having no choice.

 

Bid

 

I totally agree with everything in this post!

 

Danaxxx

[pearl]

I also agree with bid.

 

As you probably know I am extremely ancient, so when I was little there were no vaccines for these diseases. I had the lot - mumps first, I think (first noticed when I appeared hamster-cheeked at the breakfast table & my dad thought I was finally putting a bit of weight on ) followed by measles (I was delirious at one point but the only legacy is my extreme short sight, see the contact lens thread) and finally rubella, which I barely noticed.

 

I'm not making light of or minimising in any way the severe effects that these illnesses can sometimes have, including infertility, the damage done to a foetus from the mother contracting rubella, and, very rarely I believe, death from measles. What I'm saying is that, back when there were no vaccines there wasn't much choice - it was a question of luck as to whether you got the disease & how badly it affected you. And when we got them it was regarded as a "normal" part of childhood & you were quarantined to minimise the risk to anyone else. Now that most people are vaccinated I'd have thought we could bear the risk of the few who aren't, even though we might not agree with them. It goes against the grain for me to agree with compulsory vaccination, I'm afraid.

 

But by all means educate so that people make an informed choice.

[Cat]

 

I too have video evidence taken after my middle son had the MMR. He was one of the first to have it and he was 3 when he did have it you can certainly tell if a regression is occuring when they are 3. Looking at videos leading up to the MMR is like watching a different child. Within 48 hours of having the jab he had his first ever convlusion and to be quite honest his general health continues to be very poor and an issue. Up until his third birthday he had only ever had one bout of illnes and that was at the age of 10 months. When my son was 11 years old he had a booster because there was an outbreak of measles outbreak. The aftermath of that was something else again although at the time I did not realise what had triggered this much worse regression. Even my sons school said that they had never seen a child change so much in six weeks.

 

I am not sure that anyone has ever said that the MMR causes autism and I for one do not believe that it does but I can accept that for 'some'children it could act as a trigger for autism. I firmly believe that autism is in our family. My youngest did not have the MMR and he is autistic BUT we did not have the regression with him and I knew from him being 10 months old unlike his brother who was find right up until he had the jab. So although some people would say case closed I am not one of those people. They often say that seeing is believing and it was for us.

 

Cat

 

 

[MelowMeldrew]

I too have video evidence taken after my middle son had the MMR. He was one of the first to have it and he was 3 when he did have it you can certainly tell if a regression is occurring when they are 3. Looking at videos leading up to the MMR is like watching a different child. Within 48 hours of having the jab he had his first ever convlusion and to be quite honest his general health continues to be very poor and an issue. Up until his third birthday he had only ever had one bout of illness and that was at the age of 10 months. When my son was 11 years old he had a booster because there was an outbreak of measles outbreak. The aftermath of that was something else again although at the time I did not realise what had triggered this much worse regression. Even my sons school said that they had never seen a child change so much in six weeks.

 

I am not sure that anyone has ever said that the MMR causes autism and I for one do not believe that it does but I can accept that for 'some'children it could act as a trigger for autism. I firmly believe that autism is in our family. My youngest did not have the MMR and he is autistic BUT we did not have the regression with him and I knew from him being 10 months old unlike his brother who was find right up until he had the jab. So although some people would say case closed I am not one of those people. They often say that seeing is believing and it was for us.

 

Cat

 

 

Such is the situation the health authorities will NOT conduct any researches into autism that 'may' suggest MMR 'could' be a factor, we are just told to shut up, there is no link and never was, I feel there were enough doubts raised for further research to happen, but the knee-jerk killed it all off and still does, I don't want money, and feel offended people suggest that is all we are interested in, and I don't want someone to blame, I just want to know how and why it happens. At present ALL I have to go on is the MMR. As for research into autism in the family, given anything and everything is seen as autistic behaviour if you look hard enough, then what point ? Was your great uncle very shy with people ? Can your great grandad drink 12 pints standing on his head ? Oh there's the autstic link ! I DID look as far as I was able and there was none in my side of the family with any obvious trait as an autistic as we understand it. There are also suggestions it is environmental induced as well... so that isn't hereditary a link. We don't know do we ? nobody does... we can only go on our evidence of our own experience. We are not going to be listened to because the result could mean a mass measles outbreak so we are dispensable so are our kids.