Give up Paul. There are something’s that you can’t win you will go on knocking your head against a brick wall until the cows come home. You know what’s what, life’s too short.
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I have spent a fair bit of time in the developing world and also with refugee populations, childhood illnesses are killers and there is as much autism as there is elsewhere, it isn’t always labelled as such though.
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I’m going to say something rather contentious in response to this. I should stress that this is just a personal belief.
Vaccines do not need to be safe.
Before apoplexy consumes you let me explain. Vaccines certainly need to be as safe as possible and the evidence is that they are safe but they do not need to be 100% safe.
The thing is that all a vaccine needs to be of benefit is to be safer on average than the consequences of natural infection - with some adjustment for efficiency as no vaccine is 100% effective at conveying immunity, but then neither is natural infection.
The anti vaccine crowd often overlook the fact that measles has significant morbidity - even Veronique mentioned that two of the children locally (out of, what? a few 10’s of cases) had been hospitalised. Smallpox and polio even more so; these are not benign childhood diseases.
Consequently it is not hard for vaccination to benefit the individual - if the attenuated measles vaccine typically produces a mild fever and rash with almost no incidence of respiratory complications or af encephalitis compared with the natural illness which is 5-10 days of misery, high rates of pneumonitis, and a decidedly non-zero mortality rate I, personally would take the vaccine. Assuming it works of course but the evidence is that they do.
I know 
Partly I invoke xkcd 386 (don’t worry if you don’t get the reference).
Partly I am not trying to convince Helen or Geoff but maybe there is someone who is “out there” who is still uncertain and stumbling across this thread might think a bit more about the issue.
Partly I just find it worth challenging my own beliefs and re-validating them from time to time.
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OK, that’s 8 minutes I’m not getting back.
Here’s an interesting graph - in fact it looks very like the one in the video, might even be the one in the video - the quality is pretty crappy though so difficult to tell.
Dr Humphries’ lecture is a classic example of confusing correlation with causation - just because the shapes of the graphs line up a bit does not prove that DDT “causes” polio.
In fact from that perspective there is a much more interesting line - it’s the orange one showing DDT in body fat. If I were looking for a measure to correlate with polio incidence this would be the one - but there’s no correlation there, DDT in body fat stays high, way after the incidence of polio starts to fall (in line with early vaccination programmes).
I have recently inscribed my 6 year old in school and 3 year old in creche. For the school, proof of their vaccinations was required. For creche, only a certificate of health from the doctor was required. The doctor asked if vaccines were completed and noticed that there was a difference between the French and Irish schedule of vaccines. For the second MMR in Ireland it’s age 5, in France it’s between 13-24 months. The doctor didn’t insist on the second MMR. However after my sister who is an NHS nurse alerted me to the measles outbreak in the UK recently I arranged the second MMR jab. A week later my son’s school sent back a letter about a measles outbreak in the area.
Right - I’m going to take David’s advice but before I do one thought strikes me - there is a tendency in the anti-vaccination stuff to pick the wrong index.
DDT production is a poor proxy for DDT exposure , polio and measles deaths are a poor proxy for incidence.
Not understanding this leads to the wrong conclusions.
I think it is the old facts/ faith conflict as well as confusing correlation with causation. Agreeing to disagree is about the only way out of a sterile argument. (The same thing goes for talking with creationists).
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you can’t have your cake and eat it Paul, studies have indeed been done (I am refering to your penultimate paragraph) which do show a relationship, however I am sure those who are unwilling at any cost to consider the unthinkable would just say ’ oh that study was not credible’ - because it was not done by a public recognised body.
With regard to your final parragraph regarding what you call conspiracy theories, it is simpy a matter of fact that the profits of the pharmacutical are paramount - they have by far the largest number of political lobyists worldwide - twice as many in fact as their nearest rival (petrochemicals) and are so powerful that they are able to suppress and dissent on the effectiveness or risks through unsafe vaccines.
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thanks Georgina, in fact this was how I began the thread which has gone beyond what I was asking. Please can you clarify for me, for the creche, did you have to just ask your French GP to give you a statement of good health - and did this doctor take your word for it that your child was up to date with the vaccines?
for the school, what actual proof did you have to give them , was it acopy of your childs vaccination record in Ireland?
sorry to labour this, but I wand to know the actuall procedure followed here.
thanks
geoff
Hey Paul:
Thank you for providing push back on the anti-vax ideas that were being pushed on this thread. You have been far more civil than I could have possibly been.
On a lighter note I would point you towards Tim Minchin and his excellent video ‘Storm’, which contains the following gem:
‘By definition, (I begin)
Alternative medicine, (I continue)
Has either not been proved to work,
Or been proved not to work.
Do you know what they call ‘Alternative medicine’
That’s been proved to work?
Medicine.’
Yes, I’m definitely a Tim Minchin fan
At the risk of repeating myself tediously, seeing I answered this some time ago, documentary evidence is needed in the shape of the carnet de santé or equivalent, with the name and batch number of the vaccine used as well as the doctor’s stamp and signature.
As I said, if you intend to put a child born before 2018 into creche/school/centre aéré etc (what we understand by the term ‘collectivité’) you need to provide proof of vaccination ONLY against diphtheria, polio and tetanus since they are the only compulsory vaccinations for children born up to the end of 2017. For a child born in 2018 the protocol is different.
A French GP will not give a ‘certificate of good health’ for entry to crèche etc if the vaccines have not been done or if proof that they have been done has not been seen, because that would be against the law.
I would simply say that if people choose not to do their own research and simply go with what they are pushed towards, then let them go;
If people are given the information they need, or research it themselves and come to another conclusion, then they should be able to follow a different path if they so choose.
Talking of pro vax or anti vax is foolish. If people take the time and make the effort to research the topic they will come to a conclusion. For my part, I have concluded that a path of ‘some’ vaccines spaced out over a longer period than ‘the state’ recommends is the way forward for us. Others may reach a different conclusion.
I am neither pro vax or antu vax - but I am certainly for safer vaccines and more research.
regards
geoff
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There is an extensive review on the safety of MMR here - to quote the study (which was a review of a large number of other studies)
The conclusion?
There were a few safety blips, I might have a look at those.
For school enrollment, they asked for and took a copy of the vaccination record as we don’t have a livret famille, however the doctor just asked as part of the medical examination, we didn’t have to provide a copy of the vaccination record.
Geoff, I should add that I told the doctor I would be returning in a few weeks for the MMR2 and she saw and signed the vaccine record then.
It’s hardly conspiroratorial to be questioning the safety of vaccines especially when it comes to making them mandatory…mandatory removes freedom of choice and the rights of parents to making their own informed choices…and the rights of the doctors to only do what’s best for the child in front of them…it removes the right to informed consent…So in a mandatory setting then I would argue that safety IS absolutely paramount…injecting known neurotoxins into babies and on an escalated mandatory schedule…and making it mandatory to do so is totally against the Hippocratic oath of “Do no harm”…The vaccine corporations have blanket immunity from prosecution they have no incentive to make the safety of their product a consideration…If after studying then you would be happy to have an MMR then that’s fine…personally there is nothing that would ever convince me to have the MMR nor any other vaccine…but it’s not about me…my kids are adults now and have their own little ones and asking their own questions and doing their own research…I actually posted the 34 page document in relation to the mention of studies v placebo…you would expect a placebo to be inert but on page 4 the placebo in that particular study was a previous vaccine…Dr Offit once said he would be happy to give a child 10,000 vaccines in one go…he didn’t say at the time about his patent for a rotavirus and the millions of dollars he made…and I doubt very much that he has a vaccine damaged child himself…Or how about the “dirty vaccines” study that identified all sorts of metals in vaccines …gold lead tungsten…even glass shards in gardasil…
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Scary Scary World
I hope I’m not being too apocalyptic Paul…but what do you make of this…first published in the lancet…repeated by all the global news agencies…took a year for the authors to be held to account for spreading untruths…and for it to be retracted but by then it had taken hold in the collective consciousness…hardly scientific…??? x 
http://nocompulsoryvaccination.com/2016/06/02/3559/