Sunny 9 for 2004 October 26 (entry 0)

(5) Tue Oct 26 2004 19:09 Doctor Visit: I went to the doctor today for Lily's 2 month check up. She had to get 4 shots today, poor thing. She only cried until it was done and stopped right away. I was suprised, but then again she is a really good baby. The nurses said she had muscular thighs. That is from Aaron b/c he has large muscular thighs. Also, her height is in the 75th percentile and her weight is in the 25th percentile so she is tall and skinny- also like Aaron. At least she has my eyes and chin, maybe mouth. A lot of her body is Aaron though including her long arms and long fingers. I have such a cutie! I also got a flu shot b/c the nurse suggested I should. It didn't hurt at all.

Comments:

Posted by Joe at Wed Oct 27 2004 14:40

I have been wondering about Vaccinations lately and doing some research on them b/c a few of my friends are very anti-vaccinations. Louise's Brothers also don't vaccinate their kids because they think that it will do more harm than good. I wonder what other people think and what causes this vaccinationphobia.

Posted by Kristen at Wed Oct 27 2004 17:03

I have heard that, but there is a reason why no one has polio, measles, blah blah, etc in the US. The vaccination itself is the disease, and I guess very rarely some people react poorly to it and end up with the diesease. I don't know much about it, but we got them and so did our friends and nothing happened to us. Plus you can't enroll in public school unless you have had certain vaccinations. Hope they like to home school.

Posted by Frances at Wed Oct 27 2004 22:21

I always think a light disease from the vaccine is much better than the disease. I lived through the "childhood illnesses" that they vaccinate for nowadays, and I can tell you they are no picnic. Measles, Mumps, Whooping Cough. Jonathan was in the hospital for weeks with measles, and my mother contracted chicken pox as an adult and nearly died. Pox broke out in her lungs and she couldn't breathe, and in her digestive tract and she couldn't eat. Leonardw and I spent six weeks taking it in turns to run home between classes and shake her to wake her up so she wouldn't die.

When I was a kid, they vaccinated against smallpox. I have the little pox scar on my arm. Then when I had kids, the dr. told me they didn't vaccinate any more because smallpox had been eradicated from the earth. Yeah, I'll bet, I thought. Some terrorist could get the virus and spread it all over, and sure enough twenty-five years later the thought I dreaded has come to pass, and we have a whole generation of humans not vaccinated against the disease.

These non-vaccinating, homeschooling, attachment-parenting fanatics have the potential to cause great stress for the rest of us in society.

Posted by Joe at Sat Oct 30 2004 13:18

I would tend to agree. I there is an editorial in Science magazine a few months ago that said that there are certain "critical mass vaccination ratios" or something like that in which the population must be vaccinated. Take flu for example, if 90% of the population vaccinated every winter against flu then there would be no flu outbreaks (the sickness resistance would prevent the communication of the sickness to others). If 80% (I seem to remember) of people were vaccinated for MMR, then that would prevent any outbreak and protect those who aren't vaccinated (who in turn reap all of the benefits of those who do vaccinate). That is why places like latin america had "immunization days" where all of the nurses would go to the schools and blanket vaccinate every, say 3rd grader.

The Anti-vaccination people in our family (who live in Australia and can go to school without vaccinations) are concerned because there are studies that show that a preservative, Mercury, is used widely in the MMR shots, and that has been shown to correlate strongly with Autism (there are a small percentage of people who consistantly show autism as opposed to control groups).

All of those shots have been pulled off the shelf in america, but in countries like Canada, Australia, England, Europe, China, parts of Africa, etc. (where they have socialized or inadequate medicine) The Mercury shots are still in wide use.

Just ask this question, Why are the flu shots that are comming in from Canada and England being rejected by the FDA? In most cases, these shots are still being used by these countries.

I am just grateful to live in America where there is quality control in medicine-- and people looking out for other people. This brings me to many other areas of concern in medicine (pharmaceuticals, etc.) I guess that Frances, you can be happy knowing that you are funding AIDS drug dispersements in places like Africa and Canada, for example, but it is still a difficult burden to bear. When America spends close to 94% of the worldwide pharmaceutical research, and other international pharmaceutical companies simply read the work that is being done and gerericize the drug for their profit, then there is going to be a price disparity. Limited resources and unlimited demand is the greatest problem in medicine.

Posted by Kristen at Mon Nov 01 2004 17:01

Interesting...I agree.