A generation of stolen children

[celticdragonfly]

I saw a link today to this: http://buggydoo.blogspot.com/2005/07/i-am-very-sad-today.html
which really struck home with me. I followed her link to this:

http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/news/rfk.pdf

Go read it. Really, read the whole thing.

It just makes me so sick and so sad. I have three children who fall into what they're describing as the "Thimerosal Generation". I've kept two of them safe. I wish I'd known more before the first one was born.

Comments

Immunity curve

[bkseiver.livejournal.com]

Selenite, first, I can't answer your questions on spacing various vaccines. But there was one important timing curve to immunity we studied in microbiology. On an x/y graph, the first injection of vaccine gives a sharp up-line of immunity. Just as its "trajectory" starts to curve to the right, the first booster must be given. This maintains a straight line, elevated, parallel to the axis. The third booster must be given before the line representing immunity starts to descend. So, in summary, the intervals for a multi-injection vaccine are essential. With that given, you could chart out a plan for the desired vaccines, spacing them apart from each other, while maintaining the desired results.

Oh, and yes, you can get vaccines as "individuals" instead of combined. I know: I got just the mumps vaccine when it became available, because I had never had mumps. They were giving it to children as part of a trivalent vaccine with measles/measles. Interestingly, they had to separate out measles and give it again as a booster because too many college students were getting measles. Celticdragonfly had to get it again as a teenager because they gave it before age 1, and later studies showed such vaccines would not give lasting immunity.

Re: Immunity curve

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

I recently had a doctor INSIST to me oh NO, you couldn't get them separated. GRRRR.

Re: Immunity curve

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

He's partly right: At any given time some vaccines may be unavailable: the most likely ones are the individual shots (such as measels) because they're used so infrequently to assist the teen/adult population.

Your local library reference department should be willing to provide this service: "Please look up and print out for me all doctors within X driving distance from Y (Y=your home addy*)" - ask them to place it w/your "holds". Then, if your mom (or another local relative/friend) is feeling incredibly generous for time she (or they) could cold-call the doctors to determine whether they'd be willing to handle an individualized immunization schedule. That's how we ended up with our pediatrician: "Not an option. Okay. You don't get our business. Next."

*I don't know how service-oriented your local librarians are: One bit of manipulation that is often effective on our breed is to rave about what a Godsend librarians are in this age of information overload and much you lurv your local library. :-)

Re: Immunity curve

[selenite.livejournal.com]

That curve nicely illustrates the root of the problem. Lots of data points were averaged out to produce a nice, clean line. Now we're wondering where the plus-and-minus-two-sigma lines should be, but the data's gone. Tracking the outliers would've been very useful to identify the problems we're dealing with now.