this sucks

cuzin chris

As was probably to be expected, the foul Dorey person has gone bleating to the buffoons at Age of Autism. See http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/02/australian-vaccination-network-asks-for-your-support.html

There it is requesting financial aid to prevent the AVN from folding. (My use of the third person impersonal pronoun is not an error). Does anyone know if AoA has enough of a following to be able to scrape together some funding for the AVN?

Cheers,
Jeff

PS. If there were are particularly bad flu season in Australia one year of a strain that had been included in that season’s flu shot, would it therefore be correct to refer to that flu as the ‘AVN flu’? (Baboom-tish)

Pete

We believe in vaccination. My whole family are all vaccinated for pertussis, and everything else. And Dana would have been too, if she’d been given the opportunity. Did you read Phil’s comments (@ 1) at the top of this post?

Babies don’t receive their first dose of pertussis vaccination until 2 months of age. Dana was 2 weeks old when she contracted whooping cough. Too young to be vaccinated. She died 2 weeks later, terribly.

My wife & I went public to raise awareness of the deadly pertussis epidemic in our country, especially in our local area and the need for vaccination.

Read this @ http://www.danamccaffery.com/

Your lack of respect (or awareness) has really hurt my family, especially on the day that would have been Dana’s 1st birthday.

Phil???!!!

As someone that DOES believe in vaccination: Dana’s testimony is the clear example about why we should continue our fight! My children have been all vaccinated and will continue receiving their shots as time comes.

Dr. Plait: thanks for keeping us up to date with all of this. I’ve posted a reference to your article in my Blog.

Michel, Dana was too young to be vaccinated. Her parents would’ve vaccinated her when she got to the appropriate age (six months, if I recall correctly).

The first DTaP is given at two months, and then there are few more to complete the series. The child is still vulnerable until they have completed the series, when they are just over a year old.

Unfortunately, the vaccine is not 100% effective. It is somewhere between 80% to 95% effective (depending on which population is part of the study, there are only a bit over 500 hits on PubMed). It also does not last forever, so boosters are required (those looking for the adult version, just call and ask where you can get a tetanus booster and then ask if it is the Tdap, or ask for the Tdap!).

Michel, look at the dates under Dana’s photo. She lived for a month and one day. What you have said is very cruel, and heartless. You could have saved yourself more grief if you had just looked at those dates.

Also the whooping cough vaccination definitely wears off because I had a blood test to check my immunity before I received the whooping cough vax as an adult because I’d had a recent tetanus shot and wasn’t sure if it had been part of DTP or not. I wasn’t immune and in the end my GP decided to go ahead with the DTP as the risk from catching whooping cough and passing it to my baby was higher than the risk of receiving two tetanus shots within a couple of years.

It is expensive when you factor in how much doctors consultations cost, but when you consider how much the death of a baby costs, or how much it costs (emotionally and financially) when you have to hospitalise children for extended periods of time – the doctors consult doesn’t seem so bad.

However nobody can use finances as an excuse for not vaccinating their kids. At my work we offer free vaccine clinics for 2mth – 4 years, every second Monday. Free vaccinations, free consultation … check with your local community health centre, most of them would have these clinics.

@Michel you are a good example of why it is important to vaccinate against measles, mumps, etc. The anti vaxxers claim that these childhood diseases aren’t very bad and that their children/they have all had them without consequence. The complications down the track can be devastating, as you’ve shown.

We just need to make those who don’t believe in vaccinating, to start believing in it. Pronto.

This isn’t one of those cases where an erstwhile anti-vaxxer paid the price and then saw the error of their ways. This is a case where a pro-vaxxer paid the price for the anti-vaxxers’ stupidity.

@Doug
A little thing about science. Science, although I’m a strong supporter, is in a sense naive. Science calls those who don’t follow its logic “naive”, however, the reason science is naive is becuase of that logic. Our logic is based on what we know, and as new discoveries pop up all the time we find how very little we truly know. So, basing our logic on what we know, thus, proves that our logic can be flawed. What we may consider by logic to be impossible today, may be very possible tommorrow. So there’s a possibilty that in some way, ANY way, we do go on. That’s what “some form or another” means. That includes memory if that’s your choice. I don’t actually see the reason to even post an attack against a comment meant to be benevolent, that doesn’t do any harm. I’m not sorry I said it.

In time this whole “anti-vax” scare will hopefully end.

Do you knwo what they thought of vaxing? The natural way. If one of us got something they all brought their kids so they got it too, or not. And if one of them didn´t get it it was said that he/she had the resistance.
Oh oh what a great resistance I´ve got.
I think from now on I skip these kinda topics here. Makes me hopping mad and angry.

My condolences on your situation though – people suck.

probably, but hang on

@justin

I´ll explain.

I´m from a 800 year old lineage. Bloody old blood. All of them nice chrstians (Calvinist since the 1600´s). And as these kinda families do, they meddled in politics, clergy, military and medicine (for those who wanted to good in some far away colony).
Anyway.
The medical bunch who wanted to do good vaxed the hell out of Africa. But never vaxed their own kids. And the rest og the family ofcourse didn´t either. So in my lifetime I saw nieces and nephews ending up sick, crippled or dead.
I can´t have kids since I never was vaxed against Mumps.
Some nasty thing you end up with when you get it later in life.
Maybe I´m just pissed, bitter or whatever, living a life without real purpose.
sorry

Whether or not it helps, I personally believe we all go on in some form or another. I don’t need proof to see, especially in children, something special and unexplainable. Believe me when I say Dana lives on.

Ahh, no it doesn’t help and no I don’t believe you. The only way someone “lives on” is in the memories of the living.