"To take a silly example to an extreme, if I stamped the hands of 2 million people with a purple Mickey Mouse stamp, some of those people would be dead the next day. Some of them would develop rare diseases. It doesn't mean that my hand stamp caused them, although it would be hard to convince those people."

The studies that have been done to determine long term side effects look at many different aspects before coming to their conclusions.  This statement sounds to me like you believe research in general is bogus.  I'm sure that isn't what you meant at all but that is how this came across.  Like saying that just because smoking, and radiation etc have been linked to cancer we can't believe that b/c it could be anything and the research that shows this isn't reliable.  Long term side effects won't be known for awhile.  Again I guess my opinion is not the popular opinion on this but I just feel that the media has made such a huge deal about this when the seasonal flu does the same thing if not worse every year.  And as someone else stated so does car accidents, cancer etc.  But you don't hear the media helping out our cause any, or trying to find ways to prevent childhood cancer in spite of the fact that the US has THE HIGHEST childhood cancer rates in the world!  And my guess is this is b/c of the pollution, if that is the case then poor Canada is paying for our pollution and thus we are making their kids sick.  I just take everything the media says w/ a grain of salt as they have been known for years to blow everything out of proportion.  For example, our local news posted a story about a child dying, the lead in to the story was "Did H1N1 kill this child?"  When the story actually played they said they had no idea what the child died from and that they were going to be doing tests, the media is known to incite panic, b/c it sells, it brings in viewers.  I pray that there aren't going to be too many terrible side effects in the future from this vaccine but you know if there are then the media that has been strongly endorsing the vaccine will have nothing but bad things to say about how the government wanted mass vaccinations and rushed this vaccine, and now look what is happening. So I respect everyones decisions and opinions, this was just mine and I always have to share if I feel strongly about something.   

One public heath issue is that scientists talk like scientists. They are very careful and considered, and list exceptions. It's just not as impressive as the wingnut fearmongers. Scientists won't say "vaccines don't cause autism" until the studies are done. Well, now they have been done, and vaccines don't cause autism, but it's too late -- what most people remember is the original frightening (wrong) links.

Wired magazine has a long article on this issue this month that doesn't pull any punches.

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

"So what has this award-winning 58-year-old scientist done to elicit such venom? He boldly states — in speeches, in journal articles, and in his 2008 book Autism’s False Prophets — that vaccines do not cause autism or autoimmune disease or any of the other chronic conditions that have been blamed on them. He supports this assertion with meticulous evidence. And he calls to account those who promote bogus treatments for autism — treatments that he says not only don’t work but often cause harm."

That reminds me, I should get my husband immunized for mumps. In one community in our province there has been an outbreak of mumps, due to the lack of vaccination. So babies and people too old to have been vaccinated as children (and didn't catch it) are now in danger. Mumps is very dangerous for males in their teens and older.

For those interested, there is also an article in Atlantic magazine theorizing that the flu shot program for seniors might be a waste of money. The group of seniors who choose to have flu shots might not be the same (wealthier, more interested in their health, who knows) than the group of seniors who do not, leading to a false conclusion about the death rate. One scientist speculates that a much more effective way to safeguard the elderly (who do not always mount an effective immune reaction to an immunization) would be to innoculate school children. Very controversial, and I can't wait for more studies to be done.

Gosh - I love these discussions!  It proves that you can find data and stats to support just about any decision you make.  Marlene - I agree with you by the way.  When I studied health care adminstration we did a course in the use of  stats and data analysis that stuck with me the rest of my life.  There was also an article in the new york times quite a few years ago that also described the way stats are reported by the media.  One of the key things that stuck with me there was that they will report whatever section of the statistics or data that will create the most buzz.  So they will report on the number people have died, but not out of how many that got sick in the place (i.e no percentages because the percentages are so small)  They will use percentage increases but not tell you actual numbers because actual numbers or incidence is really small.  For example if your chance of getting ill is .50% and that increases to .75% - that's a fifty percent increase.  They will never report on the actual incidence or prevalence - the .5% - unless it's really juicy.  They will simply say that if you do ( or not do something), you increase your chance of getting ill by 50%.  They will never tell you the chances of getting that illness is actually less than 1%  because takes all the scare away.  These are the same media that give even more time to Jon and Kate ( I still don't know who they are or why I should care), and David Letterman's affairs ( why do I care), or who got divorced or is having baby, or the turkey on the turnpike or the cat stuck in the tree.  Then the health research: coffee/no coffee, red wine, no red wine,  the food pyramid is finally revised, it's been upside for 50 years (oops), good cholesterol/bad cholesterol, hormone replace therapy increasing the risk cancer and stroke, cholesterol meds increasing the risk of heart attack, mammogram/no mammogram, pap smear/no pap smear,  moderate exercise/vigorous exercise, jog/walk.  Good grief! The 20 year study that found that overweight people had lower levels of cholesterol and heart attacks than normal weight people never made it to the news, because way too many people are invested in the weight loss business. And who would want to be responsible for saying to fat people that they are actually healthier that the skinny ones that keel over and die even more frequently? LOL! The list is endless.

Childhood cancer is rare.  It's not rare to us, but it's rare relative to the rest of population.  One of  the good side effects for all of us of having a child that's ill, is the research and reading that we do. The questioning that we do. The discussing that we do.  The net result and decision making is a more informed one.  And the beneficiaries are our children, and family and friends with whom we get to share our research and opinions.

Love this board!

Angela

Great post Angela!! You said it better than I ever could.  It is so true that if you look hard enough you can find research to support any opinion.  Two people can also read the same research and take two different opinions away from it.  We all must remember that we go into things with a certain bias. For example we go into restaurants, malls, schools....seeing all the germs and potential risks have they always been there sure but now that we are dealing with childhood cancer it all seems worse.  These discussion are wonderful, as long as we keep from judging each other and allow for the open airing of differing opinions I think in the end we all win.

Nana

Thanks Angela,

I too love these boards; they are a great place to share opinions and compare notes on what is happening in different places and how issues are handled by different medical teams.

Regarding the dangers of not vaccinating, I absolutely agree that the benefit to the common good far outweighs the individual risk of uncommon side effects, except in this case.  But I don't think it's a fair comparison to discuss the H1N1 vaccine in relation to the importance of vaccines in general or of vaccines for other illnesses like mumps, smallpox, polio, etc.  That's like comparing apples to anteaters, never mind oranges.  They're not even in the same ballpark.  Firstly, that comparison implies that H1N1 is equally as dangerous as the others, and that is simply not true.  H1N1 has a worldwide death toll of 7299 people (source: http://www.flucount.org/).  Smallpox killed approx. 300 million people worldwide.   This link lays out the dramatic reductions in deaths and long-term effects from various diseases thanks to vaccination  http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm.   Look at these numbers, and you will see that H1N1 doesn't rank among them.

Secondly, vaccines for these diseases are important because they work.  And we know they work because they were tested.  Which Arepanrix was not.  We also have decades of historical data to show that rates of infection and death have declined dramatically thanks to these vaccines.  We have no such data on Arepanrix.  It is an unknown, and I personally am data-oriented, results-oriented, and I am not willing to put my trust in something that is an unknown.  Some people are comfortable doing that, and for those who are, I respect your choice.  My sincere hope is that things work out well for all of our families.

I certainly hope that nobody took my point to be the insignificance of getting your children vaccinated.  That was not my intended message at all.  I very much believe in the value of vaccinations, just not this particular one.

Finally, I think the biggest lesson to be learned from this whole situation is the cavalier disregard for public safetly/wellness shown by the mass media.  When the WHO increased H1N1's status to pandemic level, this was done mostly for protocol reasons, to facilitate the distrubution and delivery of the vaccine and to raise awareness of preventive measures.  But the mainstream media, particularly in North America, turned it into Death Watch 2009.  Sensationalizing the situation and scaring people because it gets better ratings/sells more copies does us all a disservice.

Marlene