Split from religious exemption for not vaxing

In the kitchen

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 4:08 am

BusyBeeMommy wrote:

In the kitchen wrote:

I am a bit shocked at how hateful that reply of yours was. Attacking people doesn't strengthen your argument. I didn't say who is right or wrong, and how would I know? I simply was explaining why there are many people who don't trust doctors because yes there have been many tragic mistakes. Doctors do NOT know everything, they are not G-d and they are not perfect (they are only human). We can only hope they are good shluchim. Just like Gemara says, every great doctor has a place in gehennom.

I think it would be good for you to reevaluate how you reacted to my post because I found it to be hateful and out of line. I also think the other poster who keeps insulting that Rebbetzin should reevaluate what she is saying and putting out there because you do not know how or why she made that decision.

Aside from my sarcastic remark at the end of the post, I'm not seeing what was hateful about my reply, but apologies to you if that's how you feel. My post was passionate about my belief, but there was no implication to the subtlest degree of attack in it. The opinions I expressed are different from yours, but that's no reason to feel it was out of line.

Your posts however, do belittle the vast knowledge and expertise of medical professionals which I take offense to. As I've written in my post, all are just humans, there are no G-ds. The risk for adverse reactions are way too minute to even compare to those of communicable diseases, which as we see about yearly, creep up and are not eradicated as of yet. Anyone can sit for endless hours reading all there is to read online, opinions of who-knows-who, individual personal accounts, etc. They do not spend years in training, learning the mechanisms of multitudes of diseases and health processes, learning how to evaluate and critically appraise quality research studies. Even published research is not quality research, it needs to meet a lot of criteria. Compare that with all the junk on the website that untrained laymen are reading.

Thank you for the apology.

I think something is not coming through typing here. I said that your pediatrician who is administering the vaccines does not know anything about them. I know someone who works in their development. He does not have anything to do with patients, he is an expert in his field. They are completely separate fields. My friend works long hours every day in a lab and never sees a patient ever. I am not saying that there is no valid knowledge, there is plenty. However, your pediatrician and family doctor have no hand in the creation or production or research of vaccines, it is not their profession and therefore they simply cannot know all that goes into it. They simply do as they are told. This friend, who is currently working in this field says that the more they learn (which they do of course discover more and more all the time) the more they realize just how much they don't know.

5*Mom

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 4:11 am

groisamomma wrote:

5*Mom wrote:

Barbara wrote:

Because the "sole" reason that the anti-vaccination movement is able to exist and thrive is because the majority of people do vaccinate. IOW, in weighing the risks and benefits of vaccination, you are assuming that others will take the risk for your kids.

Let's look at smallpox. About 30% of cases ended in death, an estimated 300 million deaths in the 20th century alone. Now, we don't need to vaccinate for it anymore. Its eradicated, because "everyone" got the vaccine. But let's think about the time before it was eradicated (1977). In 1910, you would have been glad for the vaccine. By 1975, it would have been much easier to say risk from vaccine is too great. But that's only because OTHERS took that risk.

In all honesty, if there were an outbreak of polio at your children's school, would you immunize them? Or would you take the chance of them getting polio and recovering? (And would you purposely expose them?) If you would immunize them, then you believe in immunization, you just want other people's kids to do it in order to protect your kids.

Barbara, take a breath. I did say I vax.

5*Mom, do you agree with the bolded in Barbara's statement?

Again, public health policy, as developed by medical professionals, is always based on an assessment of the level of current risk vs. current benefit of a particular situation/action/inaction/plan... This is why public policy can change over time and place, as well as allow for alternatives on an individual level; because situations change and therefore so do the levels of risk and benefit of a particular plan. Public policy is, and should be, constantly reevaluated based on current *facts on the ground*.

The current facts on the ground are that polio has been eradicated from the US. As a response to this, public policy has changed to reflect the new risk vs. benefit profile, with the decision being made to switch from OPV to IPV which confers individual immunity only but does not prevent infection or transmission to others. IPV does not effect public health, only individual health. It does not, will not, cannot prevent a polio outbreak should there be a threat of one. This switch from public health protection to individual health protection is a pubic policy decision made by medical and public health professionals that can only be made because all children from 1960-2000 have already taken the risk of getting the OPV. It is what it is. Different times and different situations call for a different assessment based on current, updated information.

So to answer your question, acknowledging that each disease and its vaccine have an individual risk vs. benefit profile and must be assessed individually, when it comes to polio, you are protecting only your own children when you choose to vaccinate your own children against polio and you are still potentially endangering others when you vaccinate with IPV and not OPV. So you, too, agree with Barbara's bolded statement.

5*Mom

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 7:29 am

rosenbal wrote:

Barbara wrote:

In all honesty, if there were an outbreak of polio at your children's school, would you immunize them? Or would you take the chance of them getting polio and recovering? (And would you purposely expose them?) If you would immunize them, then you believe in immunization, you just want other people's kids to do it in order to protect your kids.

Barbara! I can't like this enough!!! You've hit the nail on the head. You're RIGHT - they all DO believe in immunization because who in their right mind would "just take the risk" in the example you mentioned. Brilliant point.

This is a gross over-simplification. Much as people would like to, you just can't reduce the complexities to all-vaccines-are-always-good-all-the-time-for-all-people (your "they do believe in immunizations") vs. no-vaccines-are-ever-good-for-anyone. Even the medical establishment conducts risk/benefit analyses differently for different populations at different times in different places.

And on a micro level, regarding polio, unvaxed children are not relying on the protection they get from vaxed children because they get absolutely no protection from vaxed children. Immunization with IPV (as opposed to OPV) does not prevent infection and transmission of poliovirus. One can actually catch polio from healthy vaxed children who can still carry and transmit poliovirus. They may be putting themselves at risk (again, depending on the actual level of risk in their area), but they are not endangering others any more than an IPV-vaxed individual and they are not relying on others for protection because such protection does not exist.

doublemama

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 7:56 am

This thread is full of emotionally charged oversimplification. Neither choice is 100% right (unless it is your choice then be sure to tell everyone how incredibly wrong they are). As for encephalitis, that can occur with a plethora of diseases such as a sinus infection, the flu, strep throat, not just the diseases you can vaccinate yourself from. As a nurse I have seen cases from something as simple as a head cold. As for vaccinations I make informed decisions: whooping cough, tetanus, diphtheria, polio= yes measles, mumps, chicken pox= no. As far as immune compromised children in a classroom with my own, it is a wait and see attitude. In that situation we could easily say 'all kids with the sniffles or have been around someone with pneumonia needs to stay home because of this one child'. Run of the mill everyday diseases are just as dangerous to immune compromised as an unvaxed classmate.

Barbara

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 10:44 am

mendelsmommy wrote:

I am just curious. There are many people who trust our medical system and the dept of health and the unrefutable research of the safety of the vaccines that are recommended for us. They believe that it should not be questioned. What are your opinions regarding the new laws for metzitza b'peh in bris milah that they have researched and are requiring for us for our "benefit"?

First of all, most of us research. We just place more faith in peer-reviewed studies that can be duplicated than in, say, Jenny McCarthy, or in someone who claims that wild polio is not dangerous when, in fact, we know that polio killed hundreds of thousands of people in the 20th century alone.

As to metzitza b'peh, the legislation demands informed consent. If you're so all-fired in support of people actually researching things before they do it, why are you afraid of telling people the risks of metzitza b'peh, and allowing them to make their own decisions?

BusyBeeMommy

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 12:35 pm

In the kitchen wrote:

BusyBeeMommy wrote:

In the kitchen wrote:

Ok, firstly, it is not true that every pediatrician doesn't have a hand in research about vaccines, some do. Because of limitations such as time and energy, a doctor can't have a hand in everything, can he. But he is fully responsible in being educated about the risks and benefits of every procedure that he performs and every medication or vaccination that he administers. He should not be a practicing doctor if he does not know these things. Same thing for a nurse. And they are not monkeys who simply do as they are told. They read reports of systematic reviews and meta-analyses with the latest data and are educated via pharmaceutical companies, etc. They take that information and synthesize it with their personal clinical experiences and individualize that to the patient. A good doctor does all of those things. Of course they don't know everything. Who is arguing that? But they know much, much, much, much, much, much more than you or anyone else who did not got through rigorous training and gain years of clinical experience treating many patients. You continue to minimize that. Again, I will emphasize that even if they are not actually involved in the creation of the vaccines, medications and medical equipment that they use to care and treat patients, they are knowledgeable about it from credible sources such as databases like PubMed and CINAHL. They are not technicians that have no brains who do as they are told. They are diagnosticians who you trust to diagnose your child and then create a treatment plan for. That's a big thing. Are they always right? NO. They are human. We will not debate that anymore. But they know much much much more than someone who wasn't educated in medicine.

ally

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 1:25 pm

5*Mom wrote:

ally wrote:

If I think tyou are increasing MY probability of disease and the probability of vulnerable populations based on junk science, why shouldn't I be angry.

Ah, here we agree. I don't support junk science either. You might be surprised to learn, though, that real science is not black and white.

I am quite aware of that. In fact, science can never be black and white because according to modern theory we can only ever calculate the probability that an event will occur.

Quote:

ally wrote:

To say that we should decide based on the facts on the ground today is short sighted and shows a lack of understanding of how vaccines work.

Actually, this is exactly how public health policy decisions are made by the medical establishment all the time, including with respect to vaccines. Take polio vaccine (as my pediatrician explained it to me): From 1960 to about 2000, everyone received OPV (live virus); it was the standard. In about 2000, *the facts on the ground* showed that polio was essentially eradicated in the US and a new cost-benefit analysis was conducted, weighing the risks of OPV (which include contracting polio from the vaccine itself) against the risks of a polio outbreak. The conclusion was that the risks from OPV outweighed the risks of contracting polio and the OPV was discontinued in favor of the IPV (inactive) which confers immunity but does not prevent against infection and transmission to others. This was a decision made by the medical establishment based on the facts on the ground and shows exactly how public vaccination policy works.

So what you are saying is that the powers that be don't just give out vaccinations ad hoc and for no reason.
And that when the risk of the OPV was seen to outweigh the risk of polio, they stopped, reconsidered and changed vaccination protocol.
All this despite Big Pharma and their money interests.

Finally, please let us not pretend that the research methods used to develop public policy is equivalent to looking up random websites on google.

5*Mom

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 1:32 pm

ally wrote:

5*Mom wrote:

ally wrote:

If I think tyou are increasing MY probability of disease and the probability of vulnerable populations based on junk science, why shouldn't I be angry.

Ah, here we agree. I don't support junk science either. You might be surprised to learn, though, that real science is not black and white.

I am quite aware of that. In fact, science can never be black and white because according to modern theory we can only ever calculate the probability that an event will occur.

Quote:

ally wrote:

To say that we should decide based on the facts on the ground today is short sighted and shows a lack of understanding of how vaccines work.

If you're having a discussion with me, then have a discussion with me. I have said nothing about pharm companies and their money interests. Neither do I get my information from random websites. You can't lump everyone who takes a position that is different than your own all in one category, assume they are all the same and interchange their arguments; this issue is far more nuanced than that. Well, actually you can, but then it's not a rational, intelligent discussion.

GreenEyes26

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 4:29 pm

amother wrote:

Ruchel wrote:

Vax or not is a big topic (we vax partially and delayed etc).

Now, religious exemption sits bad with me. It is not halacha to not vax, and if they know other Jews they will know that. We also suffered enough of the nasty Jews spreading diseases stereotypes Crying

A person is allowed a personal religious belief. His belief is based on his scriptures, in this case the Bible. I am entitled to my own private and personal interpretation of the Bible; it does not need to be a part of an organized and recognized religion (such as Judaism). Claiming a religious exemption has got nothing to do with being Jewish or with halacha.

The difference is, Seventh Day Adventist's or Jehova's Witnesses or whoever it is that refuse all medical treatment, that is *part* of their religion. Refusing life-saving vaccines is *not* in any way, shape or form part of the Bible - no matter how you interpret it. Your reasoning is, "I don't want to vax my kids because blah blah blah..." and then you use the "Bible" to justify it. Not seeing in the Bible that it's forbidden and going from that. Your starting point is your "informed" decision not to vax, and then perverting the Bible, or using any means necessary, to get an exemption.

Barbara

Thu, Aug 22 2013, 4:41 pm

amother wrote:

groisamomma wrote:

Barbara wrote:

groisamomma wrote:

Since my knowledge of science is limited (due to not learning Evolution in high school) can someone tell me this: If all the non-vaccinated people lived on an island far from vaccines, would they get polio, mumps, and all the other eradicated diseases all over again?

Are you familiar with germ theory?

Mostly from what I read here. I'm trying to understand if what you said about non-vaxers relying on us to protect their kids is 100% true.

I am not a scientist, but I doubt it for the simple reason that vaxers are exposed to disease and may shed it (such as chickenpox) to non-vaxers.

And btw, mumps is not an eradicated disease.

Actually, none of them are eradicated.

But WADR, please read a basic science book on how disease is transmitted. You cannot possibly make an informed decision about health care without knowing about germ theory.