I was watching an old Oprah episode and Jenny McCarthy (Jim Carrey's girlfriend) said she is convinced that the vaccine MMR that was given to her baby boy was a leading cause of autism. I have now decided not to give my baby the MMR vaccine even though it has not been scientifically proven. What do you ladies think of this topic? Would you give your baby the MMR vaccine? Also autism is much more prevalent in boys than girls....

Both mine had it and im going to let the new one too, I have a nephew who has severe autism who also had his mmr.. Normally they dont know they have autism until a certain age, which is after they have had their mmr, as im to believe. Thats why there is so much blame to the mmr vaccine. I sturggled with my 1st wether too let him have it or not, he is 8 now and at the time it was in the newspapers daily about it. I know you can have single vaccines done privately but not sure on the cost of these?

Heres an interesting article pertaining this topic. I was absolutely floored to read that in the 1980s, approx 10 vaccines were given to kids by the age of 5 and these days, as many as 36 are given by the age of 2!!!!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/02/mcc...l?iref=topnews

I dont have children yet but mine will probably be getting the combined jab as i had it and so did my partner.

My partner's Uncle has paid for his little ones to have private jabs though. They are very expensive at £200 per jab and he had to travel over an hour away to get them done. But they did not want to take the risk of getting the combined jab.

Personally, nothing has been proven so i'm happy to let mine have the combined.

xxx

I will let mine have the combined jab, as there is no proof at all that it causes autism. It is clear to me that the scare has caused many people to not have their children vacinated at all and this has caused a massive rise in deaths and cases of the diseases in the UK - when they almost didnt exist in before.

As a mum-to-be expecting a child which will be disabled, i know it makes you feel better to have something to blame, but it doesnt change anything. Sometime these things just happen and at the moment, until proof is found, I would rather minimise the known risks my baby is exposed to.

Ive let my daughter have the jab , MMR is recurring in places and im not taking a chance losing one of my girls to this awful disease.

Better safe then sorry expecially since this theroy isnt proven

This is a huge issue for me and I have done a ton of research on it. And just yesterday met with my pediatrician to discuss it. MMR is likely not the cause of autism. I worked with children and adults with autism for many, many years, and am very familiar with the research on it. You need to be biologically predisposed to have autism before you can get it. In those who are predisposed, could the MMR trigger it?...Maybe. But even if that doesn't, it is likely something else will. The MMR will not trigger autism in someone who is not predisposed. Also, MMR is one of the vaccinations which have been used for eons- before this current rise in autism. So I do not have concerns about MMR. What I have concerns about is, in the US, the MMR is often given with a ton of other vaccinations. It is this overloading that I am concerned about. So my ped said she was comfortable giving each of these individually (not separating out MMR which you have to pay for privately, but giving MMR in one visit, the polio in another, etc..which will not cost anymore than the co-pay for each visit). Also, my ped was good with my preference to not receive the flu or rotavirus vaccines- those two have a very low incidence of fatality in industrialized countries with good health care and the vaccine itself is not 100% effective. So that's my 2 cents worth.

Here what I heard... I heard too many vaccinations all at once is bad and leads to autism.. I DEFINETLTY think that autism is led on by the vaccines because thats all I heard about and read about all over the news. I will be spreading out my baby's vaccinations and I'll be sure to read more on this MMR one... Not sure what that is or anything?

That's my take!

Ragirl - so is there a higher chance of you having autism if someone in your family has it? I was listening to a program on the radio the other day and it featured a family where two of the three children had autism (although they were different forms) and later on they realised the dad had it too - but obviously his form was one that wasnt so obvious. it could be that autism is seen as more common know as there are ways of testing for it, and people aren't just shut away indoors or shuttled off to a distant relative in the country if they were seen as 'different' as they did in the not so distant past. So the incidence rate is no greater than it was before...

I think i'll be getting my child vaccinated with the MMR jab. I didnt have it when i was younger as way back then such a jab didnt exist!

Why do children these days get so many vaccinations? When I was a child I didnt have as many (didnt have MMR) and I was not sickly and I grew up in South Africa.