AmerLisa

No kidding! What is the big deal for hepatitis all of a sudden. You leave a country for 5 years and come back and all of a sudden they need five thousand different immunisations.

rincewind

I love watching the queues in the doctors office of all the people getting their flu shots. Couple of days later, they all feel sick as dogs. Then they pass it on to everyone else. Best scam of all.

I haven't had the flu since I've been in the USA (almost 3 years now) and I don't get the shot. Waste of money.

CaliforniaBride

Here's some info for you that may answer some of your questions:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00033405.htm

I suppose some people felt like you do about the polio vaccines, they certainly did with smallpox!

mandpete

I have posted about this before but if you have ever seen an adult suffer with chicken pox you may just change your mind. My husband caught it from my children when he was 34 and ended up in a specialist hospital unit because it had spread to his internal organs and then turned into septicaemia. Fortunately the intensive care treatment at the hospital stopped it from reaching his heart. This is not an uncommon thing to happen to adults with chicken pox.

I had no idea it could be so serious and laughed at first when he woke up one morning with the spots on his face but 2 days later I honestly thought he wasn't going to make it.

g1ant

Likewise you can choose to drive your car without wearing a seatbelt. Your choice I guess.

AmerLisa

Too true. I choose to be a bit more informed before I willy nilly allow anything to be given to my child. Just because someone says its necessary or needs to be done, doesn't mean its so. Do you never question anything? Perhaps more people should.

Thank you CB for providing the link. I did some reading, but it still dismays me that the hepatitis vaccination seems to be necessary. I can understand that its hard to sometimes narrow down the 'at risk' people. But, I would want to know what possible side effects this vaccination can do to children.

Mandpete,

My older children had chicken pox....most kids do get it. I'm sorry your husband had such a very bad reaction. I would have been scared to death and I'm glad he came out of it. When I asked my daughter's preschool about the absolute need for this vaccination I was quoted the '100 children' figure that die annually. It makes me wonder.

The more vaccinations, the more medicines we injest in our bodies, we are setting ourselves up for a very hard fall. When my daughter went in for a cold that wouldn't clear up a few months ago, the doctor (well PA) went directly for the big guns antibiotics. When I questioned that (as I do and always will) she said that her cold was really bad and she needed these. I don't agree and I think she would have recovered with milder antibiotics. Do I trust the medical professionals? Not really. But, what are you going to do?

Elvira

Lisa - the modes of transmission for hep B are much the same as for HIV, and the consequences are potentially almost as serious:

"Hepatitis B is transmitted via blood and other body fluids. Infection can occur through:

* Contact with blood in healthcare settings -- this puts physicians, nurses, dentists, and other healthcare personnel at risk
* Unsafe sex with an infected person
* Blood transfusions
* Sharing needles during drug use
* Receiving a tattoo or acupuncture with contaminated instruments
* Birth -- an infected mother can transmit the virus to the baby during delivery or shortly thereafter

...Acute hepatitis B usually subsides after 2 to 3 weeks, and the liver usually returns to normal within 16 weeks. Some infected people develop chronic hepatitis. There is a higher incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma in those who have had hepatitis B virus infection than in the general population. Hepatitis B is fatal in approximately 1% of cases of acute hepatitis B.

Complications of hepatitis B:

* Chronic hepatitis
* Cirrhosis
* Hepatocellular carcinoma"

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/e...cle/000279.htm

"During 1990--2002, the incidence of acute hepatitis B declined 67%, from 8.5 per 100,000 population (21,102 total cases reported) to 2.8 per 100,000 population (8,064 total cases reported) (Figure). By region*, in 2002, incidence was highest in the South (3.6), followed by the Northeast (3.5), the West (2.3), and the Midwest (1.6). During 1990--2002, decreases in incidence were greatest in the West (78%), followed by the Midwest (72%), the South (59%), and the Northeast (52%); however, incidence in the Northeast has increased 41% since 1999."

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5251a3.htm

"The decline (incidence of reported acute hepatitis B) was greatest among children and adolescents, indicating the effect of routine childhood vaccination. The decline was lowest among adults, who accounted for the majority of cases."

http://www.hepb.org/about_us/2-0565-02-581.hepb

If there was a vaccine against HIV, would you not want your children to be vaccinated? So why not against hepatitis B, for which there is a tried + tested, safe vaccine?

Elvira

KarnalEcho

They wanted to vaccinate my 2 week old with the HepB.................Does she look like she's gonna be having sex? I'm clean, no problem. USA is rediculously overmedicated.
I'm with ya Amerilisa
and see that Rince is coming over as well

KarnalEcho

Kids will get chickenpox regardless of the vaccine if they are exposed. So take the kid around some other kid that has em is one option I would choose. The whole point is to take a miniscule amount and insert it into the human body so that the body can process and fight off the bacteria. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't...................bout like having the vaccine if you ask me. I've researched this many many years and rufuse the vaccines, myself. But like Amerilisa said it is MY choice and my child that I am thinking of here. If you're not from here, you'll learn soon enough that there is an answer for everything in the form of a needle. But do you want to take that risk?
It's your child and your call......................right?

KarnalEcho

Well I see I jumped in a bit too late, I suppose. Sorry this is just a VERY passionate subject of mine and nothing that is said on this board will ever change my mind. Only life and circumstances.

jjmb

We arrived here in 2000 and none of my kids were put down a year. They were 10.5yrs (grade 5) 12.5 yrs (grade 7) and 15 (grade 9). Our timing was bad as it was the end of the year, we arrived in April and school ended in May, so the schools were all in the middle of the state testing period.

The only problem we had was with our eldest when she returned in August as it looked as if she had no credits so she was put down as a freshman. Unfortunately, her counselor was pretty damm useless but fortunately as she was put back a grade, she had a new counselor who quickly realised that he needed more information from her previous school. Once he emailed her old school, she was given the credits she needed to complete her freshman yr and some more as she was way ahead of her peers in most things, apart from Maths (this mainly because they do maths in separate parts instead of the UK way of doing it all together as you progress) She ultimately graduated early and is now in her junior yr (based on credits earned) at university.

Have your son looked at this website http://www.elecx.net/ which is written by a young boy in San Antonio TX who moved over at about the same as your son. As you will be moving to Florida, expect things to be slightly different.

Also look at Newsweek online, as they recently did their annual piece on the 100 best high schools in the US.

rincewind

I'm trying not to pick a side here as at the end of the day, it's up to the parents. My daughter had all her shots in the UK and I don't take issue with any parent that refuses vaccines. Many have concerns over their safety and I have to agree that most are pushed far too much when they are not neccessary.

I found this article online and I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with it. So don't try and debate me on it, I ain't gonna bit Just adding a little more flavor to the discussion.

You Can Avoid Killer Vaccine
by Barry Forbes


ABC's 20/20 broke the media taboo two weeks ago. For the first time in recent memory, a major network is asking the question: Can a vaccination kill or seriously maim for life? Under attack worldwide, hepatitis B vaccine was the subject of 20/20's Who's Calling The Shots. In France, a national "hep B" school vaccination program was halted after the vaccine was connected to multiple sclerosis. In Canada, angry Manitoba parents went to court to protect 18,000 fourth grade students. In Wyoming, New Hampshire, Illinois and other states, parents are revolting.

In the U.S. alone, the vaccine has been responsible for a staggering 17,497 reported adverse reactions (1990-98.) Of those reports, 5,983 involved life-threatening health problems, hospitalization, disablement and death. Worse, former FDA Commissioner Dr.David Kessler estimated that only 10% of vaccine reactions are actually reported. Thus, actual adverse reactions from hep B vaccine are dramatically higher than indicated. 20/20 featured 4-year-old Ronnie Allen, his hep B vaccine "mandated" before entering preschool in suburban St. Louis. He received his shot the day before Halloween, and almost didn't make Christmas. Ronnie was diagnosed with a rare, painful, life-threatening form of arthritis. So far he's had 10 chemotherapy treatments; he'll require medication for as long as he lives.

In Porterville, California, Debbie Parker's son Matthew died in her arms after being immunized with hep B vaccine. The local sheriff threatened Debbie with murder charges. Last September, five-week-old Lyla Rose – the only child of Michael and Lorna Belkin of New York – died in bed beside her mother, just 16 hours after her shot. Michael Belkin is distraught, angry at the medical complex. "They emphatically denied it could be the vaccine," he told me. "Yet my brother-in-law, a British physician, immediately made the connection." In his autopsy report, the New York coroner refused to mention Lyla Rose's swollen brain – a classic vaccine adverse reaction. "Vaccines do a lot of good things for people," he told Belkin.

What's going on? Like AIDS, hepatitis B is spread through blood or body fluids. People at risk include junkies, gays, prostitutes, promiscuous heterosexuals and hepatitis B positive mothers. Since the government can't get these folks to take the vaccine, Public Health mandated that all babies must be vaccinated at birth. In 1996, only 54 children in the 0-1 age group contracted hepatitis B. 3.9 million children were born that year, making the incidence an infinitesimal 0.001 per cent for babies less than a year old. The disease is so rare for newborns that they're not even mentioned on the Centers for Disease Control hepatitis fact sheet.

"How is a baby possibly going to get hepatitis B," Belkin asks? "It is ridiculous to give this vaccine to a child. I wish we'd known that before Lyla Rose received the vaccine. No one told us." The National Vaccine Information Center is sending an urgent notice of hepatitis B vaccine adverse effects to every pediatrician in the U.S. Check out these wonderful side effects: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), multiple sclerosis, lupus, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and other central demyelinating diseases including transverse myelitis and optic neuritis; and immune system dysfunction including chronic arthritis.

Obviously, the public is a huge loser in this enduring nightmare. Who wins? The foxes in charge of the hen house are vaccine manufacturers Merck and Smithkline Beecham, both safely shielded from vaccine adverse effect lawsuits under U.S. law. Merck alone is pulling in close to $1 billion a year in vaccine revenues – not too difficult when bureaucrats and governments mandate shots. "I don't truly believe that those illnesses were caused by vaccine," Merck's Dr. Robert Sharrar told 20/20. Really, Doctor? Do you really believe that tens of thousands of adverse reactions – and hundreds of deaths – "just happened?"

Dr. Bonnie Dunbar, a pioneering cellular biologist at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine, has moved into the forefront of hep B adverse reaction medical research. In certain people, she says, "a genetic component sets off an explosive chain of events after they receive the vaccine. Within a month, most of these people have completely debilitating lifestyle changes." Who is calling the shots? If you decide that hepatitis B vaccine isn't for your child, you are. You alone have the right and the moral obligation to say no. To avoid killer vaccines like hep B, every state offers at least one of three exemptions – medical, religious, and philosophical. Many offer all three.

Contrary to what you've been led to believe, this useless, dangerous pharmaceutical nightmare can be categorically avoided. It is – as it should be – your call.

KarnalEcho

But THIS isn't what the original thread starter intended, I don't think. It's just struck a nerve with a few.

rincewind

I will consider my wrist slapped and will graciously bow out of the topic

KarnalEcho

U know I didn't mean it that way. I just hate for someone to have an honest question and we take it off topic.............

carry on