Vaccinations for Infants While Cruising

[foolishsailor]

Originally Posted by foolishsailor

But what you didnt post was the fact that only the TD vaccine and some flu shots still contains mercury. Also we are talking about 3 micrograms, less mercury than a child would get in a year eating fish.

My mother is a microbiologist and i grew up in the medical world as such. Some of the total ***** i hear about autism and vaccines is unreal. There is NO evidence. The only evidence ever produced and now quoted everywhere turned out to be totally fabricated and the individual in question ended up being charged and going to prison as the faulty evidence was used for his own person gain.

Yes we in the states and mostly in western europe give too many vaccines in too tight of a timeframe, it is hard on little immune systems. However with a good doctor who will work with you, you can generally create a better vaccine schedule.

Having a doctor who is also specialized in expedition medicine, as we have, or one familiar with the needs of other countries also helps tremendously.

Most of the things we are vaccinatd against are issues that are compounded by population density. Contrary to what many landlubbers think it is actually safer to sail than stay at port in terms of infectious disease.

No one wants encephalitis at sea, but your odds of exposure are literally exponetially less based on the population density of your last port of call.

The only main vaccinne that i am aware of that you need for children to travel safely and is required is for yellow fever. You can get this one safely at 9 months

Oops, meant that the only vaccine you need in addition to the normal spectrum for kiddies is yellow fever...

[foolishsailor]

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.

[rebel heart]

Originally Posted by micah719

Yeah, but it's hard to work out which of the vaccinations are beneficial and the ones that are not. 1 in 88 US children have autism, which was very rare a couple of generations ago, practically unheard of. We're being had.

Every peer reviewed study debunks a link between autism and vaccinations, and the researcher who popularized the theory was discredited and admitted he lied in his results. I'm not going to argue the point, but in the land of real research and science there's nothing there.

Frontline (on PBS) did a great segment on autism and vaccinations.

[Moe R]

Vaccinate or not, your choice. Does not hurt to look at both sides of the coin. There sure is a ton of crap on the net.

WHALE

[Katiusha]

I'd like to clarify: we are in contact with a good travel doctor, but I want to not blindly agree, but have an opinion of my own as well

Regions on our list to visit in the next while are the Med, Caribbean, Atlantic [both north and south] islands, southern Africa, and possibly North America. Various countries choose to interpret WHO vaccination guidelines differently: some recommend all, some - just a subset, Greece being the most relaxed one. I was just curious what parents do in situations like that.

And yes, like all parents, we want to minimize risks, both from having and not having vaccinations done. One of the ways we have found to minimize number of injections while still immunizing the baby is to use Infantix-hexa as it covers a lot of WHO recommended vaccines without subjecting child to more junk in separate vaccines.

[sck5]

"Does not hurt to look at both sides of the coin."

Actually, there ARENT two sides to the coin. Before there were vaccines, children got the now-preventable diseases and died. Now they don't. If you want to see a place where kids are routinely not vaccinated, there are still countries in Africa where they can't afford it. And yes, many of their children die of these diseases.

Don't let urban myth masquerade as science. If you take your kids to tropical low income countries and don't vaccinate them then I think you are certifiably insane.

[Mimsy]

Originally Posted by foolishsailor

But what you didnt post was the fact that only the TD vaccine and some flu shots still contains mercury. Also we are talking about 3 micrograms, less mercury than a child would get in a year eating fish.

My mother is a microbiologist and i grew up in the medical world as such. Some of the total ***** i hear about autism and vaccines is unreal. There is NO evidence. The only evidence ever produced and now quoted everywhere turned out to be totally fabricated and the individual in question ended up being charged and going to prison as the faulty evidence was used for his own person gain.

Yes we in the states and mostly in western europe give too many vaccines in too tight of a timeframe, it is hard on little immune systems. However with a good doctor who will work with you, you can generally create a better vaccine schedule.

Having a doctor who is also specialized in expedition medicine, as we have, or one familiar with the needs of other countries also helps tremendously.

Most of the things we are vaccinatd against are issues that are compounded by population density. Contrary to what many landlubbers think it is actually safer to sail than stay at port in terms of infectious disease.

No one wants encephalitis at sea, but your odds of exposure are literally exponetially less based on the population density of your last port of call.

The only main vaccinne that i am aware of that you need for children to travel safely and is required is for yellow fever. You can get this one safely at 9 months

I need to correct you about there being no collected evidence. The evidence, which was anecdotal but if its your kid you give it some weight was from parents of children who had reactions to Thimerosal/mercury preserved vaccines. Wakefield, the Dr. who falsified the information got the idea to do his "study" from the stories of parents of affected children. Wakefield's falsified evidence has done more to set back the vax/austism link research than can be comprehended. They have not DISPROVEN the link, they have only stated that they've not yet found it. Kind of like ths studies in the 1950s that absolutely proved smoking was a healthy, enjoyable past time that did not cause cancer.

I am not anti vaccine, but you HAVE to do your own research rather than blindly trusting the pharmaceutical companies who profit from the vaccine industry and it IS a business, not a charity. Next time you go to get a vax, actually read the manufacturers warnings and release of liability. There is a reason that they make you sign off on them.

An intelligent person will weight the risks of either vaxing or not vaxing based on their own risk factors. Vaccines have done much to improve the health of the world but every coin has 2 sides, every sword 2 edges.

I picked up the cause and efffect of the MMR vaccine and the onset of my sons autism years before Wakefield published anything. I have 3 children. One was vaxed on schedule and after his MMR, had a reaction which included febrile seizures and a few days later, we noticed motor skill changes and then a decline in development. I have 2 other children who we delayed vaxing for until after we felt their immune systems were up to speed. Despite a 50% greater chance to them having autism, neither one is ASD.

Carry on.

[Katiusha]

Originally Posted by Mimsy

I have 2 other children who we delayed vaxing for until after we felt their immune systems were up to speed. Despite a 50% greater chance to them having autism, neither one is ASD.

Carry on.

How long did you wait for?

[Mimsy]

For the most part, we have followed the Sears alternative schedule. http://www.mothering.com/community/t...ccine-schedule
We skipped rotavirus as that is pretty preventable and if a kid gets infected, highly treatable. We skipped the Hep B shot in the hospital because Hep B is largely sexually transmitted or through blood exchange. We also skip varicella as chicken pox is really annpying but only very, very ,VERY rarely life threatening. If you look at the CDC reports of reactions to the pox vaccine, there are more cases of kids who have bad reactions to the vax than to the disease itself.

We are waiting with our pediatricians blessing on the MMR for the baby until the last possible minute before leaving. She will be 3. Immunity takes place about 2 weeks after initial innoculation.If we were not going to Central America, we would wait until she was over 3. With our older girl, she got MMR at 4 as she entered preschool- no need before then as her exposure was not great at all. Look at the rates of infection for various locations you plan on visiting to help in your decision making process. Every country is different.

I should add that if you want to know whether you have immunity after vaccination, you have to have titer testing done. Just because you got the shot doesn't mean you got the immunity.

[foolishsailor]

Mimsy,

Thanks for presenting such a realistic, reasonable and effective alternative to vaccination schedules.

So many want to throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to vaccine fears and don't realise that there are middle ground options, the best being, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, to work with your paediatrician to modify your vaccine schedule.

[Katiusha]

Originally Posted by Mimsy

For the most part, we have followed the Sears alternative schedule. Dr Sears Vaccine Schedule

Thanks for the link. Did you do PCV7 [usually given] or PCV13 [US switched to 13 strain for infants recently]? Was there a reason for choosing one over the other?

Originally Posted by Mimsy

We skipped the Hep B shot in the hospital because Hep B is largely sexually transmitted or through blood exchange.

We also skipped all vaccines at birth [BCG and Polio]. Had BCG done at 3 weeks. We asked about HepB that is normally given in the States and were told that "US practice of giving HepB at birth to everyone is highly controvertial". Turns out only France gives HepB at birth and only to those whose mothers test positive for HepA.

[Sea Conquest]

Originally Posted by foolishsailor

Mimsy,

Thanks for presenting such a realistic, reasonable and effective alternative to vaccination schedules.

So many want to throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to vaccine fears and don't realise that there are middle ground options, the best being, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, to work with your paediatrician to modify your vaccine schedule.

Just wanted to thank Mimsy as well. We have also delayed and selectively vaccinated our 3.5 year-old son in much the same fashion, and for the same reasons. We are a pro-vax family. We just select the vaccines and the timing of such in accordance with our individual lifestyle, personal risk profile, and after much research and in consultation with our ped. It is not an all or nothing decision.

[foolishsailor]

Originally Posted by Sea Conquest

Just wanted to thank Mimsy as well. We have also delayed and selectively vaccinated our 3.5 year-old son in much the same fashion, and for the same reasons. We are a pro-vax family. We just select the vaccines and the timing of such in accordance with our individual lifestyle, personal risk profile, and after much research and in consultation with our ped. It is not an all or nothing decision.

+1

While I am not in entire agreement with Mimsy's position regarding vaccines and autism, what she has done is create a constructive and educated process to regain control of her children from the medical process without being reactive.

We did similar, however we both restricted our vaccine regimen, changed the scheduling but we both slowed some down and speeded some up.

As stated here we delayed many since we were doing a boat rebuild with much smaller contact population than a child in crèche or preschool, however we were expecting to be in south America before our child was of the "safe" age for yellow fever vaccine which i believe is 9 months. We discussed this with our paediatrician and he was willing to evaluate our child's health and development to determine the suitability of giving a vaccine early. He ended up finding a nurse that was flying down to south Africa where we were for other work and she agreed to bring a temp controlled container with a yellow fever vaccine and administer and monitor our little one at 6 months to allow us to go.

Amazing what can happen when you have medical professionals who have intelligence, education and open minds...

[Mimsy]

Originally Posted by Katiusha

Thanks for the link. Did you do PCV7 [usually given] or PCV13 [US switched to 13 strain for infants recently]? Was there a reason for choosing one over the other? .

We opted to skip this one for now. If we head to South America where infection rates are higher than the US and Caribbean we will reevaluate but the baby will be a preschooler by then with a more fully formed immune system so better equipped to handle vaccination. Our reasons for skipping this is that there are over 91 strains and the vaccine only protects against 7 or 13. The yearly death rate from infections in the under 5 population before vaccination was only 200 (More children die crossing the street in the US each year) yet the incidence of febrile reactions to the vax is 1 in 3.

We are cautious on vaccines which have a high incidence of febrile reactions because those are the vaccines which effect the neurological system. Due to my son having neurological impairment as well as having other family risk factors (allergic reactions to meds, family members with diagnosed OCD, etc.) we really weigh the risks vs benefits for all medications. Polio was an easy one for us to get because the rate of reaction to the vax is incredibly, incredibly low.

The most common illness in children who are not given the PCV7/13 vax is ear infection. The best defense against ear infection in babies and toddlers is breast feeding and avoiding day care/creche care.

[micah719]

Amazing what can happen when you have medical professionals who have intelligence, education and open minds...

....in contrast to the stupid, uneducated and narrowminded reactionaries.