I'm happy to say that my pediatrician (that is a pro-vaxx) admitted vaccines are not risk free (this is just to answer to "they are safe").
Also if you're looking beyond the "vaccines are safe" dogma and check the prescription of a vaccine, you would find lot the side effects including death.

I hope you do understand I'm not arguing with any of you here.

For those of you who have time to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVh4QaDmXB8

A science blogger I follow once looked at the risk of serious injury for the various aspects of taking your child to the doctor for jabs. She concluded, based on the most recent statistics, that the highest risk was posed by your child getting dressed (or eating breakfast). I don't recall the details exactly, I'd have to look it up.

There is no story here with two sides. As I said in my previous post, some people think the Earth is flat. Do you want to hear both sides of that, or do you agree that such people are a very tiny deluded/misguided/something minority and their view counts for nothing against the huge volume of contradictory evidence?

Seeing a story with two equal sides where there isn't one is indicative of pre-existing bias, and here is an excellent gif to illustrate the point: http://imgur.com/gallery/uZC5fF9

If you admit you don't have the education to judge scientists then why are you so doubtful of advice coming from your qualified doctor?

Tiny but.... very vocal minority..

Let me give you a little information for your research: not everyone can be vaccinated. Due to a genetic "malfunction", I could not get the BCG vaccine. That means that I am vulnerable to tuberculosis. Which means I am only protected as long as those around me are actually vaccinated. And that is why I am wary of unvaccinated people.

As a parent of a young child, I made all the mandatory vaccinations to protect my child and those, as me, that cannot be fully vaccinated. I find it's a duty as a mother - and a human being, really - to protect my progeny the best I can and extend the same curtesy to my fellow man.

The outbreaks of contagious diseases that are flaring around the "developed" world should be a warning enough to those that are against vaccination.

Pharma companies do not stand to gain by making a secret vaccine conspiracy. Funerary homes are, with mass produced tiny little coffins.

__________________

Fighting for Pluto's liberation from the Dwarf League since 2006 @(°.°)=@)x.X)' ' '

What are you are referring to is the vaccine insert document. By law, vaccine manufacturers are required to list all adverse events reported in a certain time-frame after vaccine administration, whether a causative link has been established or not. Even the VAERS database is required to report and investigate all reports; this includes falling down stairs, road traffic accidents etc.

You could have fooled me .

...a risk (in the case of the Measles vaccine) of serious complications of less than 1 in a million. Compared to a 1 in 300 chance of death is the western world if you contract measles.

Yes and I think that is the problem. By it's very nature science can only talk in probabilities and uncertainties. No doctor can say definitively that a vaccine won't cause a nasty side effect in a child. Since the anti-vax crowd is not burdened by the limits of what can be proved, they can appeal to emotions much more effectively with clickbait crap like 'my child got the tetanus vaccine and THIS happened'.

Of course they did. All medication has potential side effects, and they have to be listed on the packaging by law. These side effects occur in a tiny minority of patients, otherwise the drug would not be approved by the regulator. There is no dogma when people say that vaccines are safe. This conclusion comes from the fact that all vaccines have been put through a rigorous system of trials and any side effects have been found to occur in such a teeny tiny number of patients that the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks.

I understand you are just a concerned parent rather than someone who is trying to argue, but what I don't understand is why you think that, despite your doctor's years of medical training, their advice still needs to be supplemented with a bit of Googling.

A YouTube link is not a valid source of information about this topic, but I hope everyone will forgive me for allowing Penn and Teller to illustrate the argument https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo

If you had read the answer I gave you here: Vaccine Question and understood it, you would know that I make it quite clear that vaccines are not risk free but that the probability of damage is very much lower with vaccine than without.

If you begin skipping responses that directly answer your questions, then you will be perceived as a troll.

Tuberculosis is a becoming quite a problem now. The BCG vaccine is no longer part of the vaccination schedule for a lot of countries in Western Europe and there has been a dramatic increase in the number of case tuberculosis reported in recent years.

This. Cornetto to beat me to the link!
Not vaccinating your child is entirely, utterly, stupendously irresponsible.

Which is unfortunate, but before getting into full panic mode
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/vaccina...s-answers.aspx

I got varicella in my late twenties from one of my friend's child who was too young to be vaccinated at that time. So, the vaccine was available, the parents' were pro-vaccine and still.
I would personally encourage anyone to vaccinate their kids, unless serious health issues.

Driving is safe in Switzerland, but it isn't risk free. Is that a good reason to stay off the roads? Nothing is totally risk free, even drinking water.

Or, put another way....

I see it this way:

The probability of my child catching something from your child is a lot higher if you decided not to vaccinate and my child is too young to be vaccinated.

All medicine is based on risk:benefit ratios. In the case of vaccination programmes the benefits (for your own children and children/people at large) far outweigh the very minimal risks.

Thanks to a majority who accept the risk of side-effects and do vaccinate, the risk of your unvaccinated child catching and suffering from a vaccine-preventable disease might even be as small [although unknown] as the risk to suffer a side effect to a vaccine (which is well documented), BUT the latter will most likely be a single event (adverse reactions to second or third doses are extremely rare) while an unvaccinated person runs the risk of contracting a disease every day over and over again and heavily relies on not too many like-minded people around. Come to think of it each vocal anti-vaxxer must be a troll. If I would want to lift along with the herd I would just not vaccinate and shut up as to not convince too many others not to

Can't really follow you on that path, as the mother of a vaccinated kid. But I just wanted to say that our pediatrician has never imposed a vaccine. Her approach was simple and direct, and we were given all the information we needed to make a choice. She's even adapted the schedule to our lifestyle; he got the vaccine against tick-born encephalitis a year earlier since he goes to the forest every week with his school and he has the hepatitis vaccines because we travel a lot. But he hasn't been vaccinated against the flu and she hasn't pressured us at all.

The only vaccine she recommended us NOT to take is the BCG, although she would give it if we insisted. There are several (real) medical papers explaining why, and based on her explainations and what I read I trust her judgement on that.

It's easy to underestimate diseases such as measles, but my mother-in-law can't hear from one ear as a result of getting measles and my dad lost a baby sister to whooping cough. Many vaccines are also about protecting the others as much as your own offspring; they may not get badly ill from a given disease, but if they contaminate a kid/adult with a depressed immune system, an elderly person or a pregnant woman who hasn't done her boosters, other peoples lives can be destroyed. Just think a second about whether you would live well knowing that your kid contaminated grand-ma and she died of the complications.

My personnal pet peeve is tetanus. Google it, watch the pictures, take in the 10% mortality rate, and tell me you want to take the chance that your kid will get it while playing outside. Can't really understand while anyone would risk it.

Your paediatrician sounds very sensible. I'd be very surprised and worried if there was one that was 'anti'-vaccination entirely!

Medicines are generally about risk:benefit ratio. There is no such thing as an entirely safe one.

In the case of vaccinations, a huge weight of evidence tells us that the benefit of a vaccination programme (not only to your own children, if they are able to have the vaccines, but also to other children and adults) vastly outweighs the minimal risks.

It's good that you're trying to learn about it, hopefully keeping an open mind to actual scientific evidence rather than random anti-vaxxing websites with no scientific evidence behind their claims, but it would be good to bear in mind some of the basic principles of the scientific method whilst doing so to make your research actually useful.

I do keep an eye on the scientific evidences of course, but apparently the anti-vaxx are based on scientific evidences too....