Quote:

I believe that vaccine is setting us up for a lot of problems in the future. Something like shingles that nobody will know what to do with. The side effects will probably be so far away from the time of inoculation that it won't get the blame, either.

Oh, but they've got that covered. There is now a shingles vaccine. :smirk:

 Quote: michael_wise

That's the thing. Not *all* cases of HPV(nobody jump on me), but the ones that they are mainly targeting(STD's) come from a personal choice. Maybe you didn't know that one night stand had HPV, but you did decide to jump in bed with 'em.

Please don't consider it jumping on your thought but if you're lucky in life you get this decision. Without going in to too much detail I once sat in a room of 140 people between the ages of 15 - 50 with no similiar backgrounds, everything from garbage men to neurosurgeons and the speaker asked "How many of you have been raped?" Almost 40 people raised their hands. This was not a conference on assault. If the next question was How many of you have or have gotten an STD I wonder how many people would have left their hands up and how many new people would have raised their hands? Would any of them deserve cancer?

Please don't take this as a raging endorsement of the HPV vaccine. I'm no more a fan of vaccines than the next person. I believe a bad vaccine caused my own immune problems but that said, while I believe over vaccination has a cost both to people and to dogs but the basic principal is still sound. After all vaccinations did rid the world of small pox (bioweapons excluded), made measles a rarity, and it's made polio a thing that most US families just don't have to experience. I'm not saying that vaccines give people an excuse for bad behavior. People do stupid things sometimes, heck, I've probably done two stupid things since I got up this morning by someone's standards. Hopefully neither of these cause cancer but even if they don't should the stupid tax on those decisions have be that high?

Maybe this is a little abstract but I guess the best example I can think of this is a bike helmet. Will it save you every time from dying when you crash on a bike? No. But if it does save you 1 out of 8 times even if the decision is a bad one you make that causes that crash, or if someone hits you with their car either delibrately or accidentally is the simple act of wearing one an indicator of an increased willingness to make a bad decision? I tend to think that's not the case.

Anyway, I hope this was a coherent thought pattern. It's very early for me still, and I was up very late at work last night and one of my bad decisions of the morning aka coffee hasn't kicked in yet.

I understand the point you're trying to make. But if you knew that the act of putting that helmet on your head could kill you, could cripple or paralyze you, or give you life long problems, while still maybe not adequately protecting you in the event of an accident, would you still be so willing to put it on?

And please, I'm not criticizing anyone who chooses to get this, or any other, vaccine. It is a highly personal choice. I just wish more people would know and weigh the risks before making this decision. And I wish that doctors and pharmacuetical companies wouldn't skew and hide results and side effects.

 Quote: melissa thom

Please don't consider it jumping on your thought but if you're lucky in life you get this decision.

I know your not jumping on me.:smile:Your example is part of this vaccine discussion. Its a sensitive one as well, that I'm not even going to touch. Never been in that situation, hope like hell I never am.

 Quote: melissa thom

After all vaccinations did rid the world of small pox (bioweapons excluded), made measles a rarity, and it's made polio a thing that most US families just don't have to experience.

I would really like to hear of a real vaccine experts view on this. I hear and read this all the time, but have also seen "evidence" to the contrary. My pediatrician couldn't answer my question about disease decline pre-mass vaccination. Or the question of decline in non-vaccinated disease that mirrored mass vaccination for another disease.(pointing towards natural disease ebb and flow around the time a mass-vax was started.) I would like to hear a reason other than, "there was a decline in disease reporting leading up to mass vaccination".

These are legit questions, too. I didn't have to deal with any of these diseases in my time, so I don't have any first hand knowledge of the emotional impact of these diseases and vaccines. My questions are true in looking for discussion and answers. I don't have an agenda but to gain knowledge. No judgment is being placed on my part.

 Quote: melissa thom

Maybe this is a little abstract but I guess the best example I can think of this is a bike helmet. Will it save you every time from dying when you crash on a bike? No. But if it does save you 1 out of 8 times even if the decision is a bad one you make that causes that crash, or if someone hits you with their car either deliberately or accidentally is the simple act of wearing one an indicator of an increased willingness to make a bad decision? I tend to think that's not the case.

Putting on a helmet is nowhere near as complex as the immune system.

My questions and worries are, what are we doing to the natural contraction, spread, and finally immunity from diseases.

I don't know enough about vaccines or immunity to even have a conversation about it. I just feel like we are playing with some very complex processes. Not looking far enough into the future to see what problems we could be creating.

Like in the chicken pox link I gave above. Now there is a rise in shingles because mass chicken pox vaccination has lowered the chance of running into chicken pox throughout your life. Without "wild" chicken pox, they are even finding that a vaccine loses some effectiveness since individuals don't have the opportunity to "remind" there immune system of the disease.

Anyway, I can see that I am quickly getting in over my head.I believe I should shut up now.:smile:

 Quote: Shody Lytle

And please, I'm not criticizing anyone who chooses to get this, or any other, vaccine. It is a highly personal choice.

Me neither. And if anything I have said came off that way, please PM me so we can get it straight. Not my intentions AT ALL!

 Quote: melissa thom

.... I believe a bad vaccine caused my own immune problems but that said, while I believe over vaccination has a cost both to people and to dogs but the basic principal is still sound. After all vaccinations did rid the world of small pox (bioweapons excluded), made measles a rarity, and it's made polio a thing that most US families just don't have to experience.

 Quote: shody lytle

...It is a highly personal choice. I just wish more people would know and weigh the risks before making this decision. And I wish that doctors and pharmacuetical companies wouldn't skew and hide results and side effects.

This is the kind of dialogue that I believe is crucial.

I contracted paralytic polio when I was a little kid during one of the national epidemics in the 50s, kind of in between Salk and Sabin. Good recovery, but now, like 25 to 50% of polio survivors, I have PPS (post polio syndrome), which is like a recurrence (although often far milder, still a PITA) that starts years, decades after the initial attack.

Every summer in the 40s and 50s, thousands of kids contracted it. Now there are maybe 400,000 survivors here, but research into PPS is pretty scant, for the obvious reason that those of us who have it are in the second half (or even the last quarter) of their life expectancy, and no big group of polio survivors in this country follows (thank goodness).

Now the wild virus has been virtually wiped out, with 2500 or so cases here of paralytic polio in 1960, and 60 in 1965, and now maybe 10, and the new cases in the US every year are caused by the vaccine.

So I weigh this all the time, along with the other vaccine miracles, against what I agree are terrible vaccine effects.

I don't believe that there is an easy answer, either practically or ethically.

My gut feeling, though, is almost always "Oh no. We are just discovering what over-use of vaccines has done to our babies and our dogs. Let's not make the same terrible jump-right-in mistake again."

That gut feeling trumps my clear memories of Boston (and the rest of the country) in the 50s, and the so-called iron lung (Drinker respirator), and the valid fear every single summer that one's kids would join the thousands every year who succumbed.
http://www.utexas.edu/research/profiles/oshinsky.html

Connie,

My mother's best friend died in an iron lung. Her sister had scarlet fever. My next door neighbor has PPS, and is confined to a wheelchair. My sister's boyfriend had the same condition, and used a cane. This is exactly what I am talking about. Poeple have very short memories. Same problem (as I see it) as when people deny the Holochaust occured. "I wasn't there, I didn't see it, it didn't happen."

 Quote: polly gregor

I am sure this is a complete waste of bandwidth

Of course it's not.

 Quote: polly gregor

We are spoiled my modern medicine, and have forgotten the dangers of communicable diseases.

Of course we are.

 Quote: polly gregor

Is it not a conspiracy, it is science.

There's the rub. The science is murked up continually by those with financial interests.

As Shody said:

"I wish that doctors and pharmacuetical companies wouldn't skew and hide results and side effects."

And they do. Who here has not heard of or known a vet who wanted to vaccinate a sick dog or combine all the shots in one session? This is just a degree of failure to educate and failure to use vaccines wisely ..... against the science.

The old (now-changing) protocols of puppy vax were protocols formulated by the companies that make the money on the vaccines.

 Quote: Polly Gregor

Poeple have very short memories.

Well, many don't have those memories at all. Hard to draw on a memory that's not in your banks.