Contamination Vaccination
Oct. 10th, 2007 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenite0Kent Sepkowitz is a doctor I like. He's actually willing to admit more people have been saved from disease by ditchdiggers than by doctors.. What he's worried about is deaths from bacterial contamination of food, and I agree that trying to make the food supply utterly safe is impractical. Well, at least impractical for most people. The "pick two" for food seems to be "cheap, safe, tasty" and there's not many people willing to subsist totally on MREs or blow half their income on food. So Sepkowitz advocates dosing people with just enough pathogens to train their immune systems to deal with the inevitable contamination they'll have to deal with.
Rather than frantically throwing money at new ways to eradicate the pathogens that reside in shit, we should fund the boring scientists who focus on untangling the intricacies of the gut's immune system. Labs, answer this: How much shit can we safely eat and, as importantly, how much must we eat to remain healthy?What I love about this is that a doctor is looking at the vaccination question from the other side, trying to establish minimum and maximum total amounts for the immune system insults. It's a wonderful change from the folks who insist that vaccines are good, therefore more vaccines are better. A good next step would be performing their studies on statistically valid sample sizes. After that they can analyze the distribution of the reactions to see what fraction of the population would handle this badly and how to recognize them, instead of calculating a mean optimum dose and prescribing it for everyone.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 06:08 pm (UTC)Are they panaceas? No. People can and do have negative reactions and adverse effects. Doctors who downplay that are being disingenuous at best. There's a cost/benefit ratio that the parents should be able to assess before deciding to vaccinate their child. Tendencies to adverse reactions can be genetically linked - previous bad experiences are valid reason for avoiding future exposure.
What concerns me more than vaccines is the current fad for antibacterial everything. Dishwashing liquid, soap, bathtub cleaner, floor polish. Antibacterial toilet paper! Shampoo! Pencil erasers! (Okay, that last was a joke, but you get the idea.) Combine that with the idea that a doctor who gives you a prescription has done something for you, while a doctor who says "it's a virus, get rest, liquids, take over the counter cold meds and it'll go away on its own in a week or so" has done nothing. People use antibiotics incorrectly and indiscriminately and we're creating superbugs just as we antiseptic-ing ourselves into the state of immuno-incompetence your author decries.
Whew. Sorry. Got on a bit of a rant there myself.
Anyway, yes, I agree that research to see what would strengthen our own immune systems is a good idea.
Too bad it doesn't make the pharmaceutical companies any money.
Cynical? Moi?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 06:36 pm (UTC)This.
There's a theory that the inisistence on slathering kids with antibacterial everything and raising them in what is effectively a bubble is what's resulting in the increased amounts of severe allergies developing in kids. Their immune systems are young and unexposed and primed to go off and start developing antigenic responses, but there's nothing to focus on, so they go hysterical at the first exposure to peanut dust or some other foreign protein.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 06:44 pm (UTC)With the peanuts, I've read that part of the problem is fancy lotions and creams, with peanut oil base. Stuff that the system might encounter via digestion and handle fine, if it's encountering first by the skin, it doesn't handle.
So I'm agreeing with you, just adding more detail that might be of interest.
And hey, makes me feel better about my house not being that clean. :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 06:57 pm (UTC)That sounds like mysticism. And it's an oversimplification besides; the immune system has far more than two parts. You can broadly, very broadly, speak of innate immune response and adaptive immune response, and say that vaccination stimulates the adaptive immune system and not the innate immune system. But so does natural exposure to previously-unencountered pathogens; the artificial nature of a vaccination doesn't change that. Get infected with chickenpox, your adaptive immune system is stimulated. Get vaccinated for smallpox, and your adaptive immune system is stimulated. One of these isn't any more or less "balanced" than the other. And in any event, it *does* stimulate the innate immune system as well, it's just that the innate immune system isn't what confers long-term immunity or resistance.
I've read that part of the problem is fancy lotions and creams, with peanut oil base. Stuff that the system might encounter via digestion and handle fine, if it's encountering first by the skin, it doesn't handle.
Hadn't heard that. I could see that as an answer for "Why is Type I hypersensitivity to peanuts" becoming more prevalent, but not as an answer for the increasing prevalance of allergies in general. But still, if you're a parent and you're slathering your children with fancy lotions and creams, You're Doing It Wrong.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 07:12 pm (UTC)I do think more parents need to get good info on things like the peanut oil, though. Too many cases these days of parents who never really had kid experience, and then have a baby, and figure well, if Babies R Us has this stuff, they must need it, right? Noooooo.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 10:03 pm (UTC)Singing the harmony on your rant
Date: 2007-10-10 06:42 pm (UTC)My kids have the genetic bad background, so I'm avoiding vaccines for them. But it IS a cost/benefit ratio, just I have some different cost info than most people. For the polio example you bring up - that's one vaccine with a less likely history of bad reactions, so a lower cost than some, and dayyum, a lot of benefit. Especially now that Maggie's farther along in neuro and immune development, I'd like to get it for her. But the doctors won't give the kids any vaccines unless I'm giving them all - I've asked repeatedly. Bah.
And oh yeah, the antibacterial everything. I can't BUY non-antibacterial handsoap, even though I'd like to, I just can't find it. And the prescriptions.
Re: Singing the harmony on your rant
Date: 2007-10-10 06:49 pm (UTC)The ideal might be to TEST, but tests are specific, what are you going to test for? Everything? That's going to be considerably more expensive than the alternatives. And even in cases of actual infection with some actual pathogens, tests can very likely be negative; tetanus is only culturable from the wound in something like 30% of cases.
Re: Singing the harmony on your rant
Date: 2007-10-10 07:10 pm (UTC)Re: How does lying sound?
Date: 2007-10-11 08:16 am (UTC)I don't recall whether or not the tetnus and polio vacs are available bundled without the diptheria one, but if you can bear that one extra load:
1. Find a new clinic / pediatric doctor.
2. Call and say you want to schedule maggie's vaccines.
3. Say you want to start with "the most important" Tetnus and polio. (You might have to take the diptheria with it, too, but maybe not) you'll get the others "afterwards" (for values of "after" = when Maggie is an adult and can decide for herself what she wants to do)
4. Take Maggie to get the two shots (or one bundled shot you want for her)
5. Pay upfront (cash/check) for the vaccination.
6. Fail to show up for any future vaccines.
Etc.
Bloody bureaucrats!
Re: How does lying sound?
Date: 2007-10-11 02:57 pm (UTC)First off, "find a new clinic/pediatric doctor" is harder than it sounds. I'd actually gotten a recommendation for a doctor that I thought might do this, and would also be able to evaluate if Jamie needs ADHD/autism meds. Tried to get to see him - and found out that with the switch from Northrup to Lockheed, we now have an HMO instead of a PPO, and they don't cover him.
I've tried calling up doctors and asking their offices if they'd do vaccines on older children. Each time they've refused to answer and told me I'd have to make an appointment. So - I'd have to pick a new doctor out of a hat, with no information, apply to my insurance company to change our primary doctor to him, wait until we get the new cards in the mail, (honestly, they won't even talk to you on the phone to make an appointment until they have your insurance info) call the doctor, make an appointment - probably for just one kid, they mostly don't want to do two at a time - drag all three kids into a strange waiting room, fill out all the paperwork and go over all the history again, go in, talk to the doctor, and quite possibly get turned down. Then, repeat the whole process. This is NOT very appealing. Anybody who's ever dealt with Jamie in a waiting room will understand why. Oh, and it can only be done while they're healthy - I am not risking getting a vaccine when they're sick, that's really adding to the risk of problems, and makes appointments problematical.
Honestly, they won't DO this. We've tried talking to Cooks, and they wouldn't do it. It was recommended maybe we should try a county health clinic. Those are AWFUL places, I really don't want to be in those waiting rooms with all three kids, and I doubt they would anyway. They're going to get in my face about why doesn't she already have the full set and then they're going to want to do it in their own order and time if they'll do them at all. Or give them all to her at once. Which I think is VERY likely to horribly mangle her for life, given our family's autoimmnue system response.
If I can find a doctor who I know ahead of time is friendly to partial vaccinations at later ages, I'll go through the work of switching and redoing all the history.
And no, I haven't been able to find anything about kids first tetanus shot unbundled with diptheria and pertussis - and that triple shot is one of the ones MOST likely to cause problems.
Polio is an individual shot, and I'd want it given separately in time from the tetanus.
Re: Singing the harmony on your rant
Date: 2007-10-10 08:45 pm (UTC)Isn't Ivory non-antibacterial? It is the only one I've seen, but we can still get it here. We get both kinds - I use the antibacterial in the bathroom, on cuts/abrasions and on my eyes (outside, 'cause I was recommended to and found it helps).
Re: Singing the harmony on your rant
Date: 2007-10-10 10:04 pm (UTC)Re: Singing the harmony on your rant
Date: 2007-10-11 03:02 pm (UTC)And on competitors - see http://selenite.livejournal.com/198060.html?thread=906924#t906924
above. It's not easy to find better competitors. You know anybody who'd know of a doctor in the Fort Worth area who is willing to do a-la-carte vaccinations? I'd love to get recommendations. Playing a long game of rotate-doctors in a wild-goose chase is not a great use of my limited spoons.
Re: Singing the harmony on your rant
Date: 2007-10-11 12:29 am (UTC)Nothing useful to say, really, except that I am amused by "non-antibacterial." If the soap were not antibacterial, and also *against* antibacterial soap, would it be anti-non-antibacterial? And hey, if it were not antibacterial, against antibacterial soap, *and* somehow betrayed the principles of other soaps of its kind, it would be un-anti-non-antibacterial soap!
Sorry about that. I have these lapses, you see..
Re: Singing the harmony on your rant
Date: 2007-10-11 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-11 04:57 am (UTC)