#freejustina Pelletier and Measles

Photo courtesy of susanknowles.com

I have continued to follow the case of Justina Pelletier.  I have to say I am appalled by what has been going on!  Tomorrow's court date will help to determine what will happen with Justina.  I pray she will be allowed to go home but I am worried that Massachusetts DCF will continue to fight for custody over her.  Once it was decided that Justina's original doctor from Tufts could resume care then DCF should have released her back into the custody of her parents.  That was the reason DCF and Boston Children's Hospital used to take custody from the parents in the first place.  Being child protective services (which does very little to really protect children) they LOVE to keep their hooks families to control what the parents can/cannot do with their children.  I hope tomorrow goes will for the Pelletier family!  They will be on Dr. Phil tomorrow (check you local listing).  I will be watching and I hope you will be too!

Some items you can do to help #freejustina :

1.  There is a group taking a survey for parents of children with rare and undiagnosed diseases.  If you have a child that fits into that category please take the time to go and fill out the survey.
http://globalgenes.org/protecting-children-with-rare-undiagnosed-disease-from-discrimination-a-survey/

2. People are working on doing a "Twitter storm."   If you have a Twitter account please participate!  Information can be found here...  http://pastebin.com/LaCdeY0G

It is not one shot but at least two. If you go
college then you get another shot and now
some adults are recommended to get a fourth
vaccination.  Not so sure the vaccination
confers immunity as the CDC says if you
need so many boosters!
Photo courtesy of nlm.nih.gov

On to other news...

I hear a lot of flack occasionally about not vaccinating my children.  With Joseph having some disease that is undiagnosed I am in no hurry to vaccinate the children.  There was recently, a rather offensive opinion piece, published in the The Daily Beast titled Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers. You Just Brought Back Measles in NYC. The article was rather assertive. In 2000, when measles were declaired eradicated,  there were 89 cases.  So the extra 100 cases last year made for an outbreak?  Really?  There are roughly 318 MILLION people in the United States yet only 189 cases of the measles were reported last year. That was 0.0000006% of the population.  That is NOWHERE close to an outbreak to me!

From January 1 to August 24, 2013 the CDC reports some interesting information.  First, of the 159 cases reported to the CDC 157 of the cases were import-associated.  This means that someone went abroad and came to the US with the measles and infected others.  The US itself does not have a high incident of measles but other countries, with poorer nutrition and sanitation, have higher incidents of measles. Second, out of the 159 cases reported there were only 17 people hospitalized for some reason related to the measles.  Only FOUR people out of 17 had something more serious (pneumonia) and NO DEATHS were reported.  This is in stark contrast to the quotes I have been seeing saying about 30% of measles cases have serious complications.  IF ALL of the 17 cases that were hospitalized were done so for serious complications (and I doubt it or the CDC would have reported it) then only 10.7% of the measles cases caused a significant health problem. Not the 30% figure that is so often thrown around.  If, as I think, there were only FOUR serious complications for the measles (I would consider pneumonia serious) then only 2.5% of the measles cases caused a serious complication. Again, no where close to the 30% figure.  I think the CDC and others use that figure as a tactic to get people to vaccinate.  If you are wanting to read a bit more on measles and why there is no dire need to vaccinate then please read the blog post by gianelloni titled Thanks, Pharma. You created the “anti-vaccine movement”.

I have done my research on vaccines and I have to say I would rather leave my children unvaccinated.  With the health issues they have and the low risk they will be exposed to measles I am not worried.  Even if they got the measles I think they would handle the disease just fine.  Then they would have a permanent immunity to measles versus the false hope they would never get it because they were vaccinated.