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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If your religion doesn't allow vaccination, then keep your kids out of school.

And to the PP who is so worried about prions -- why are you not equally worried about Hepatitis, measles or whooping cough? Do you seriously think more kids are harmed by prions than from infectious diseases? Are you really that stupid?[/quote]

I'd say that the privilege of stupidity is all yours.  Your knowledge of the biological sciences is obviously zero.

Your post is sufficiently ignorant and nasty that I don't think you deserve a response.  However, for the sake of those who are following the posts and may be interested, yes, prions scare the sh*& out of me, because there is no known cure for prion-induced diseases and because prions affect the body's central nervous system and brain. If you get Creuzfeldt-Jakob disorder, you will die.  End of story.  It can remain dormant for years, but once someone becomes symptomatic, death is inevitable.  And, 80% of CJD is considered "sporadic," as in they don't know how the person who became ill had the the PrP protein (prion) introduced into their body.

There's much that we don't know about prions.  We don't even know all their variants.  I believe it's possible that prion exposure could be behind a host of a host of mental/neurological disorders -- autism (or what is generally diagnosed as autism, but may actually be a collection of more complex issues), sensory processing disorders, ADD, ADHD, and manic-depression.  Prions cause proteins to "misfold." Proteins run many important processes in our bodies, but 69% of all human proteins are expressed in the brain. For example, neurotransmitters are made of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, as are some hormones.  So far, there are only a few diseases definitively linked to prions, but I suspect that once diagnostics for and detection of prion variants improves, they could be linked with many more.  Obviously if prions cause proteins to misfold, their impact on the brain will be disproportionately high.

Before you poo-poo the idea that an infectious agent could cause mental illness or disorder, please note that evidence has recently emerged suggesting that[i] toxoplasma gondi[/i]i, an intracellular parasite that causes toxoplasmosis, causes some forms of schizophrenia.  I suspect that over the next 20 years, the link between infectious agents and mental/neurological disorders will become better understood.

I think it's quite reckless to continue producing vaccines cultured in animal cells if there is a potential risk to public health.  The article that expresses concerns over prions in biologicals, cited in my prior post, is from the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Institute of Health.  It's hard to dismiss that as "quackery."  However, addressing those concerns might require pharmaceutical companies to invest in developing vaccines using different (and most likely more expensive) techniques.

I am not anti-vaccine in the sense that 1) I do vaccinate my kids, just at an age when I believe it to be safer; and 2) I do think vaccinations prevent illness and, on the whole, have a positive impact in helping to control disease.  However, as a parent, I obviously weighed the potential harm of actually getting the illness vs. the risk of my kids' brains being exposed to prions.  As I stated in my earlier post, most medical scientists believe that the blood-brain barrier is not as functional among very young children.  There is some quibble about what actually makes the barrier leaky, i.e. some researchers have presented evidence that the "junctions" are just as tight as in adults, but that the cause of the leakiness is faster "uptake" or transport of compounds through the blood-brain barrier or, possibly, the fragility of the brain's blood vessels in very young children.

Herd immunity can be maintained at fairly high ratios by vaccinating older children and adults.  In fact, older children and adults whose immunity has worn off pose the greatest risk to infants for pertussis, for example.  (See article below).  I've asked rabid, ignorant, pro-vax moms (like PP) whether they're up-to-date on TDap, and they look at me blankly.  Most people don't even know that TDap wears off and should be boosted every 10 years.

Further and unfortunately, being immunized against a particular illness is no guarantee of not getting the disease, especially not in an area like DC where there is frequent exposure to infectious agents from other countries.  A mutated form of the measles from Denmark could create an epidemic of measles in the United States.  So, I never considered vaccines as "guaranteeing" that my child would not get any disease.  A healthy immune system is the most important defense against disease, and it's not clear that early and frequent vaccination before age 2 necessarily promotes immune health.

Trends in Pertussis Disease in the United States (full text at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00048610.htm)

In the United States, the highest recorded annual incidence of pertussis occurred in 1934 when greater than 260,000 cases were reported. The incidence of reported pertussis disease declined substantially as use of whole-cell DTP vaccines became widespread. By 1970, the reported incidence had declined greater than 99%; [b]the fewest cases (1,010) were reported in 1976. However, since the early 1980s reported pertussis incidence has increased steadily. [/b] Cyclical peaks in incidence occurred in 1983, 1986, 1990, and in 1993 when 6,586 cases were reported -- more than in any year since 1976 (8). [b]The number of reported cases has increased in all age groups, but the increase is greatest among persons aged greater than or equal to 5 years (9).[/b] Nevertheless, infants and young children continue to have the highest risk for pertussis and its complications (4,8,10).

[b]The increase in reported pertussis cases has occurred despite pertussis vaccination coverage levels that are higher than at any time in the past. The proportion of children aged 19-35 months who had received three or more doses of whole-cell DTP or diphtheria and tetanus toxoids vaccine (DT) reached 93% in 1994 (11).[/b] (Of those vaccinated, less than 2% are estimated to have received DT {CDC, unpublished data}.) Possible explanations of this increase in disease include a) decreased vaccine efficacy, b) waning immunity among adolescents and adults vaccinated during childhood, c) increased diagnosis and reporting of pertussis because of greater awareness among physicians about the disease, and d) enhanced surveillance and more complete reporting in some states (12,13). [/quote]

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