When I was going out of the country, I decided to get my Hep B shot. My doctor didn't believe me when I told him I had never had it. I had to provide proof of a shot I never had. I was highly amused by that.

I don't think I will vaccinate for chicken pox. That is a childhood rite of passage. ;D

When I was 18 I had a bad reaction to Propolonol so I didn't get my kids vaccinated.

My mum was vaccinated and now she has Multiple Sclerosis so I didn't get my kids vaccinated.

My son is allergic to penacillin so I definitely didn't get him vaccinated.

I'm anti-social and never went to play groups, so didn't see the point... after all diseases can't be spread by the few random people that come to my house or in any other way so it's all good.




Yeah, my kids are vaccinated. They had four at a time at one point... and the worst side effects they got was a slightly raised temperature. Certainly more preferable to me than them losing limbs due to meningitis. I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I should be the authority on my children's health because I'm their mum and I love them more so that automatically makes me a better judge than a trained medical professional... I mean sure, selective and staggered vaccinations I guess are fine.. I mean they're still getting them at the end of the day.. but none at all? I'd be scared for my child to play in the garden without 5 layers of sterilised bubble wrap...

The sad thing is there are probably hundreds of illnesses and diseases that we cannot vaccinate our children for... some just as fatal. Kids are not unbreakable just because we love them. There is so much in parenting that you can't plan for and you can't prevent... of all the dangers in the world, to know that at least you have had control in protecting your child from a handful is surely better than not?

@Lady Lazarus

Propanolol is a drug for heart failure/blood pressure. It has nothing to do with vaccinations. Neither does penicillin. Furthermore, no link has been established between *any* of the vaccines and multiple sclerosis.

It was a sarcastic response to highlight the silliness of some arguments against vaccines. I think reading the entire post makes that obvious :)

lol, it wasn't clear to me so I wasn't sure. xD I thought people would read it and go 'what! penicillin allergy means you can't have a vaccine! D:' xD

@lithium layouts: I think that was her point... she was pointing out how ridiculous it is to make connections between things that are unconnected. Like saying you don't vaccinate your kids because you know someone who died from some other drug (a drug which isn't a vaccine, and is completely nothing to do with vaccines at all).

My kids are vaccinated and they are done so according to the Australian schedule.
I would never ever be able to live with myself if my kids got dangerously ill from something I could have prevented and that was offered and readily available to me.
My kids also get Hep B but that is something that we all have due to the nature of my partners work.

I keep my children vaccinated, some things on schedule, sometimes delayed. I'm not too particular about it either way.

I do vaccinate for chicken pox though, because I never had it as a child, and would prefer they not bring it home to me, if I can prevent it.

Vaccinate, don't vaccinate, it's all personal choice.

Just don't bring your disease-ridden ass anywhere near me.

But without ingredients like Formaldehyde the vaccines would be more dangerous, it is used to kill unwanted bacteria that could otherwise cause contamination. Besides, most of the Formaldehyde isn't even present anymore by the time the vaccine is administered. There are ingredients included in vaccines that are unpleasant for sure but they are there for good reason and the risks they pose are negligible as opposed to the diseases they prevent, which will likely result in brain damage or death.

To continue my thought, I ask that question because I go ask a healthcare professional when I have a question related to healthcare. Or even a pharmacist if I'm picking up a prescription. I had a very awkward (for him, not me) discussion about when I could start having sex without condoms when I went back on birth control. ;D

My doctor (actually, my nurse practitioner at the campus clinic) will have a conversation with me about the pros and cons of medication. I've had many such conversations, and often the nurse practitioner (gosh, that is a mouth full) has information I was not aware of and is able to help me make an informed decision.

Parents who don't vaccinate their children are irresponsible. The only reason their children don't break into a disease are because of responsible parents who do. If no one did then those children would catch something. I understand why some parents choose not to do certain vaccines but none at all is just insane. Keep them home so they don't accidentally spread it to kids who are.

@Tiger (Amber) - I highly disagree. I consider myself to be a very responsible parent, and we delay vaccines. I consider myself to be informed and educated. It isn't low class, uneducated people who are choosing not to vax or who are delaying vaccines. In fact, quite the opposite.

I think it's extremely narrow minded to call those of us who have spent hours researching and question the "norm", irresponsible, when you have absolutely no idea why we have made the decisions that we've made, or why.

Some of us don't vax at all (I'm not one of those), some of us selectively vaccinate, and some of us do all of them but on a delayed schedule.

We do delayed and eliminate a few, but our reason for that is simply that we are educated and don't think it's safe (or healthy) for our children to receive all that CRAP in their tiny little bodies at once.

If you were to get the equivalent of vaccines that a baby gets at their 4 month check up, you'd piss yourself -- and you'd spend days feeling like crap and run down, because your immune system couldn't catch up.

Also, if you get 4 or 5 vaccines at a time and your child has a reaction to one of them, how in the heck do you plan on figuring out which vaccine it was that caused the reaction? You can't, and you'd have to go through it all over a few months later to try to find out which one caused it, and you'd better hope to hell and back that the second reaction isn't more severe than the first.

I'm talking about those who don't vaccinate their children. Not those who only get a selected and delay the other vaccines.

Just want to add here that my sister got Whooping Cough quite badly at 5 months old, she was very very ill...
The only reason it didn't kill her was because she had had that initial 4 month vaccination which had given her some protection. Obviously there is a higher level of protection after all 3 doses.
She caught it from a child who had not been immunised against Whooping Cough and who had picked it up at school.

I'm not saying someone should be for or against vaccines but that was more than enough for me to ensure I vaccinated my children. Even if they still manage to catch it, it would not be as bad as it was should they not be vaccinated.

I have had most of the UK schedule, when I had it it was quite different though, we had the MMR at 15 months, 5 years (I remember getting this one at school) and 10 years I missed the ten year one and the Meningitis C when I was ten because I was ill (Meningitis C vaccine had been introduced that year in the UK), I did catch up on my Meningitis C but not on my MMR, my doctor thought I had it and I hadn't. I remember getting my BCG at school and we faked feeling really ill so we didn't have to go back to lesson.

If the current schedule is the same when I have children I'll have no issues with giving any of the vaccines upon the schedule, I should think it will change though as it has changed quite a bit in my life time.

I'm not 'anti-vax'... I am not 'pro-vax'... I am pro-thinking-for-yourself-rather-than-let-the-government-decide-what-is-best-for-your-family.

I selectively vax. I am against giving a newborn the Hep B vaccine (or really ANY child until they become sexually active) unless the mother or someone in the family is Hep B positive, a sex worker, or an IV drug user, and if you are in one of those situations, you have more on your plate than just vaxing vs non-vaxing...

I am against the Chicken Pox vaccine because it provides LIMITED immunity, and only until the teen years, when it is more dangerous to get chicken pox... Whether you have the vaccine or get the chicken pox naturally you are still going to be prone to outbreaks of shingles later in life... But at least I don't have to booster my natural immunity...

I am against combination vaccines and giving more than 1 shot at a time, even if I have to go back every 2 weeks... The reason for this is if you give a combo vaccine (DTaP or MMR, for example) and your child has a reaction to it, it is REALLY difficult to figure out WHICH part your child had a reaction to.

I am against Rotavirus and Influenza because influenza changes each year, and the flu shot is once again the government's GUESS as to what strain of influenza is going to hit that year. And personally, EVERYTIME I have gotten the flu shot, I've gotten the flu that year... whereas when I HAVEN'T gotten it, if I DID get the flu, it was mild and kept me down for a day or so as opposed to weeks... Coincidence? Maybe... But it works for me...

So for this one, I suppose I will be following the UK schedule, delayed a bit. And at that, I leave you with a Thomas Jefferson quote, "If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."

Regarding Hep B, it can be transmitted via direct contact with open sores or bodily fluids of an infected person and that could be anyone, an infected child at daycare for example. It is not only children of sex workers and drug addicts who are at risk.

That is so extremely unlikely to happen though. Day care workers should know how to dress open wounds to prevent other children coming in contact with them (and that other child would have to have an open wound too that came in direct contact with it), and the actual incidence of hep B is pretty low to start with. I work in a hospital and I've only ever seen a handful of patients with hep B. I see hep C much more commonly.

When it comes to vaccines, a lot of "educated" people don't know what they don't know:

http://skepticalob.blogspot.com/2009/08/claim-of-being-educated-about-health.html

Brilliant link Christina, and so true. It's the people who claim to be educated who I most often find are actually so unaware of the genuine medical facts and evidence available. Reading nonsense on the Internet, even if you read a lot of that nonsense, doesn't make you educated.

I don't have children yet either, but I will most certainly vaccinate them for everything. I feel like I owe it to them to protect them and to keep them healthy. I really would feel like an ass if I chose not to vaccinate my child and they caught some disease that has had vaccines for several years, like smallpox, polio, whooping cough, etc. I would also vaccinate myself if necessary, for example, I saw a commercial that suggested women with small children be vaccinated for whooping cough. That's the whole reason we have vaccines now so people don't just die off like in olden days when people had 10 kids and half died from some disease or another.

Live vaccines scare me a bit, because there's a chance the child will develop said sickness from the vaccine, like a flu shot. One of my bosses said her daughter is sensitive in this way. I don't understand why people don't vaccinate their children, I think it's very foolish not to. And maybe a little selfish, even.

@canceroustears: I laughed when you said your neighbor said your son would get Down's for vaccinating him. Clearly they don't know that Down's Syndrome is a chromosomal abnormality, not caused by whether or not you vaccinate a child.