Seen on the net...

[rivka]

With practice, I have figured out how the intelligent mother reads the message boards at mothering.com. You find a couple of sane boards (I skim "Toddlers" and read "Learning at School" and "Learning at Home & Beyond"). Perhaps you look for second-hand Hanna Anderssen clothes in the Trading Post. You avoid the "Gentle Discipline" board unless you're feeling reckless and/or bulletproof. And you figure out which boards you personally should never, ever, ever open up even for a moment, or even let your eyes stray to the teaser subject line next to the board title. For me? That would be "Lactivism" and "Vaccinations."

Nothing good comes of relaxing that last rule. Nooooo-thing. But today I saw a subject line in the teaser spot, and I was weak.

I expect that this post will ultimately disappear - it's already been locked by the mods - and I want to preserve it just because otherwise it would be hard to believe that I really had seen someone say this - and other people agree with her.

Poor vaxed babes...

Whenever I am out and see other little kids, I automatically assume they have been vaccinated and all I can think is, "that poor child!" I think about the vaccines doing their dirty deeds inside the children. Especially when the kids don't have that "spark" that children should have...

And I occasionally think about something MT said once, about her sons not finding partners that have been untouched by vaccines. I think about how my ds is probably going to end up with someone that has been "altered" by vaccines.

Does anyone else do this? Or am I just a nut??

Later on, after some agreement (e.g., "There is a difference between vaxed and unvaxed babies. I know the "spark" that you're refering to. I try not to think about it anymore. But I also wonder about all the poor babies I see and I wonder who they could of been and how much healthier might they be had their systems not been tainted by vaxes.") and quite a few challenges, she clarifies that of course she doesn't think that vaccines are the only thing bad, evil mainstream mothers do to take away their children's spark:

There are most likely many other factors at play - parenting, food choices, other medications like antibiotics, etc. I think the mamas here on MDC are mostly (not ALL, but mostly) more holistic than most mainstream mamas, so know that the choices we make with our children affect their health.

My all-time favorite of the responses she got before the post was locked:

My dd was not vaxed, but don't worry - when you look at her and don't see that 'spark' you look for in children you can blame it on the fact that she was supplemented with formula when she was an infant.

(btw, I think she has a spark. Are you so sure other people see this spark in YOUR kids? Don't we all think OUR kids have 'the spark'?)

I might have more to say about this later, or I might not. Right now... I guess I just feel like this mindset is an important one to bookmark.



(Plus, it's a chance to use my other new icon. The text is tiny-tiny, I know: it reads "Pseudoscience: Is It Catching Up To Real Science?")

Comments

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

You're a better person than I am. My immediate reaction?

That "spark" you see? That's the fever that comes with the onset of polio you dumbass.

N.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Heh heh... I was trying to think of some sort of spark that goes with a vaccinatable (is that a word? I made it up) disease! :-)

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

::blink blink::

Oh yeah. I know that spark. It's the spark of a mother who refuses to understand the meaning of "peer review"...

[thette.livejournal.com]

I am a horrible, horrible person. But deep down in my black little soul, the first thought that came when I read about the evils of vaccines and antibiotics was "Then DIE like you would have without them!"

If this is too much, feel free to delete the comment. I'm ashamed that I think like this, but I do.

[ailbhe]

The thing that really gets me about the autism-MMR link is that even though I knew there was no link really, and even though I'd read enough to be confident that vaccinating was the right thing to do, I still felt frightened for weeks afterwards.

[ailbhe]

"Does anyone else do this? Or am I just a nut??"

I know what *I* think...

A.
Who is sure that, in a well-vaccinated population, many unvaccinated children will be just fine.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

Who is sure that, in a well-vaccinated population, many unvaccinated children will be just fine.

Well, not so much, really. If the unvaccinated child is the very rare exception, then that's true.

There are always going to be the few rare kids who are severely immuno-compromised and so cannot tolerate vaccination. There are always going to be people in whom the vaccine just doesn't "take". There are always going to be people who "outgrow" their childhood immunity.

These people are protected from the virus anyway when you have herd immunity. But you need a critical mass of vaccinated people to achieve herd immunity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity) (usually 90%, but for an extremely contagious virus like measles the threshold is higher).

Measles kills. It blinds and mentally maims. It's a terrible disease, particularly in adults. And people like that anti-vax Mom are putting all of us in danger by reducing the herd immunity that protects us.

She's a nut.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

OMG. WTF. BBQ.

Stuff like this makes me want to rip my hair out. Has this woman considered the loss of "spark" that results from exposure to measles in utero? Or from months spent inside an iron lung? Does she know what lockjaw looks like, or severe diptheria, or streptococcus gone systemic?

I am betting she doesn't. Fact is, I don't either. I haven't encountered people with those problems because I'm lucky enough to live in a highly developed nation with routine vaccinations for childhood diseases.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Seeing that and this post (http://livredor.livejournal.com/182597.html) by livredor about the out-and-out fabrication of "evidence" linking MMR vaccines to autism in close proximity has me... too furious to post, because streams of invective won't achieve anything.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know exactly what you mean. The reason that I try not to even glance at what people say on those particular boards is that I Can't. Let. It. Go. I can't just say, "Whoa, some people are nuts," and move on. When nothing I could say would do any good, there's no point in torturing myself.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

*shudder* Bad message board flashbacks. But none of my weird message board encounters holds a candle to that one, I think. I'm still a bit dumbstruck.

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

Oh fer crying out loud.

That is all.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

If you're looking for a good userpic for your comments on such posts (although I love the "pseudoscience" one), you might try the one I've used above.

Or this one...

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of Christopher Robin as an asskicker, I surely do.

[eeyorerin]

Oh geez.

So I suppose my dad, who survived polio (which he caught before vaccinations for it were widely available), still has the spark?

How long has this anti-vaccination mindset been so wide-spread? It seems very recent to me -- or is that just because the Internet makes it more visible now and people have been thinking things like this for ages? (Or maybe it's not very prevalent and I just run into it a lot.)

And now I'm picturing one of those mothers demanding in the future to see vaccination records for all of her son's partners, and just cracking up.

[ladyvonkulp.livejournal.com]

But can you prove a negative?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Nice icon. Scary subject. Some people just don't have the sense God gave a grape.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

My usual phrase is "... don't have the sense God gave a washcloth", but it's the same sentiment, yeah.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Hoo, boy.

I bet the people whose children are immunocompromised or otherwise *can't* get vaccinations love this type. It's really not fair to rely on "herd immunity" if you've got no better reason than this claptrap. (So if her kids get sick, whether because they weren't vaccinated or because kids just get sick, will she accept antibiotics? Hospitalization? Will she just sit by their bedsides and think happy-granola thoughts really hard?)

[ailbhe]

Personally, my principles all crumble instantly when confronted by my children's needs. It only works when they can swan along quietly together.

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

Posts like that are why I only read the Working and Student Mamas board, and occasionally the TP if I'm looking for something. Otherwise, I use up my daily outrage quota almost instantly.

[going-not-gone.livejournal.com]

Does anyone else do this? Or am I just a nut??

My money's on "not just a nut, but a total freaking loonball." I'm also willing to bet that her kid is an indigo child (http://www.indigochild.com/).

But then, I'm a judgemental, closed-minded mainstream mother with vaccinated kids. I think they're pretty sparky, though...maybe because I breast-fed them.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of "indigo child" before, and the "symptoms" sound a lot like me when I was a child, which my neurologist says was probably mild Asperger's.

[marith.livejournal.com]

On top of everything else, the phrase "vaxed babies" leads me to suspect this person sees herself as living in a cheesy science fiction dystopia.

[ckd]

Nah. Those kids are all running OpenVMS.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

Rivka

I love you.

And I totally agree with the way to deal with MDC. I only read certain boards when I want to get riled up - mainly when I am bored. But I will never ever enter the anti-circ or the anti-vax boards.

My favorite recent thread was a 14 page one in TAO about whether the whole "frosted/toasted" PM forward thingie was "mean and exclusionary" or not - and whether it was fitting for the warm and supportive community of MDC.

WTF? Warm and supportive? MDC? On a board where people find it perfectly okay to say that other mothers (on or off the list) are abusing and maiming their children because of their different parenting decisions? I was personally accused of mutilating the genitals of my boys by one poster and about a dozen other posters agreed with her.

Yeah. I got warm fuzzies at the memory.

I posted saying how idiotic the entire discussion was, and luckily got about 10 responses agreeing with me. So there ARE sane people on MDC.

[ailbhe]

There's a reason I started my own parenting community. It's called "the whole rest of the interwebs argh".

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

And I just want to add that the anti-vax thing drives me bonkers. The amount of pseudoscience they use really comes close to the amount that ID or creationists use.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

There are no words.

I'm so grateful that when I was a baby my mother made sure I was vaccinated for everything recommended at the time. I know someone who got mumps at 20 years old in 2005; I spent rather a lot of time with him in rehearsals and exams just before he started displaying symptoms. He was out of classes for a month and a half, and really took a while to get back to full capacity.

Thankfully my own risk was lessened because of having been vaccinated.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

fyi, many post-puberty men with severe mumps infections are rendered sterile by the infection.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

http://www.queenofwands.net/d/20031208.html

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

I used to work in child survival and spent time in West Africa.

I am personally offended by people who are so blinkered when it comes to vaccinations - I have seen first hand what happens to polio victims who live. I have met families where they lost a child or two to measles or RSV/pneumonia.

My SIL and my aunt both nearly died from Whooping Cough at around age 7 months. My aunt was actually brain damaged as a result of it and cannot use the right side of her body.

My FIL was made sterile due to a mumps infection he got as an adult.

vax are not perfect. But at least MOST children survive them.

[ckd]

I'm just old enough that I got a smallpox vaccination among all my other shots. This may mean that I survive after al-Qaeda gets their hands on old Soviet stocks, or it may not, but I don't feel any less sparkly for it.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Right. Because nothing gives a baby that "spark" like a brain-threatening fever from diphtheria or whooping cough.

[larcb.livejournal.com]

We have many children in the school where I teach from Bangladesh, Yemen, and Bosnia. The parents I've heard from are amazed that anyone would opt out of vaccinations.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"Or am I just a nut??"

You're just a nut.

P.S. How about a blog post, talking abut said nuts.

B