I like this bingo better than the first two. I thought it was really cool.

Thanks!

I object to the implication that people who don't vaccinate are anything but hazards to their children and public health. This is not a theoretical problem.

Questioning medical practice is only a good idea when the practices are in at least some sense questionable to begin with. There has never been sound cause to reject vaccines, and there is even less now that the alleged connection with autism has been completely and utterly disproven. Nonetheless, people continue to reject them, and we gain nothing b associating ourselves with such irrational people.

Alice, parents have the right to question all medical treatments of their children and themselves. Parents do research and make educated decisions. They are not irrational when they do and don't agree with you. You win a square! Congrats.

Hilary - Parents have the right to question medical treatments for their children, but there *are* areas of the country where few enough people are immunizing their children that the "herd" immunity rate - % of the population needed to be immunized for the whole population to be safe - is far below needed levels. You might not think that there's anything wrong with a child catching the measles, mumps or TB - but the side effects and lasting health problems of some of these viruses is WHY vaccines were invented in the first place. And a ten year old may be able to fight off the infection , but a much younger child may die because his hippy-dippy-not-immunizing-fight-the-man neighbors didn't feel the need to get their kids' shots. And if that wins me a square, fine - I'm in a master of public health program at the place where the polio vaccine was proved viable. The parents making the decision to not immunize are doing so from an an extreme position of privilege.

for the win.

cardi - and there's no privilege in saying "i have a upper level degree. you should listen to me" ?

as henci goer said, my authority to question the practices of medicine, and just about anything else, comes from my ability to read.

The fast/instant vs. scratch food one is so true.
I practically grew up on
fast food, and now my mom
criticizes her sister for feedinger
her lil'ones the same stuff.

Alice and cordi also win the bonus prizes of being incredibly naive and judgmental. Congrats!

A masters of public health simply places you right in the middle of the administrative side of the medical industry. And that is the key word. The medical industry is first and foremost an industry, which exists to make money. The health and well-being of its patients is not the primary concern of this industry; making money is. If this were not the case, we wouldn't have such a ridiculously high infant mortality rate. Some third-world countries have lower infant-mortality rates than we do. Why? Because the medical establishment is dedicated to maximizing their profits, and where childbirth is concerned, the safest way is not the most profitable way. And you want me to mindlessly entrust my child to these capitalists? Not a chance. I'll educate myself and make the best decision I can after hearing from all of the sources, thank you very much.

And wow, hippy-dippy. That's just about the saddest little ad-hominem I've heard all day. You can't do any better than that?

P.S. Henci Goer kicks ass.

Haha. Just reading the Bingo card, I figured the vaccination thing would be the first one to go. :)

I don't vaccinate. I did the first one, and she got VERY sick from it, and IMO, never recovered. I started with the second one, and saw him going the same way as the first and refused to continue. The Public Health industry informed me that it was coincidental, and that I am a horrible parent for refusing more. #3 will not have a single vaccination. Not until s/he's ready for school. At least.

I have the right to question everything and make up my own mind. I would be a hazard to my children if I watched them get sick (and stay sick) and continued to mindlessly do what the government tells me to.

Congrats Luna .... I also chose to hold off vaccinating my #2 after he started to show the same signs of illness that my #1 got. And as for saying that we are bad moms because of it makes me laugh. Even the man in charge of my local dept of human services says that it is irresponsible to give our children the same doses of vaccines that we as adults recieve. Hell who is a better judge of who is a bad parent then the man who goes in and takes children away from unfit parents?

@Rachel: As a **public** health student, I am not part of the industry. I am in fact in graduate school because I find most of the industry insidious - I think it's sick and wrong to view patients as nothing more than revenue streams, particularly the ones on Medicare (let's bleed the government dry, who cares if our kids have to pay the price down the road!), and to see all the different ways we can cut costs (ie deny care) to get a few more bucks of profit!

And I'm not for all vaccines - I don't think that the HPV vaccine should be being mandated by various locales as part of the school package. Standard vaccines are required because they are communicable, as in you can catch it if the guy next to you sneezes. And there haven't been the long-term studies done to prove it's not going to accidentally cause sterilization (notice how it's mostly minorities in the promotion ads to "be one less"?).

The point I was trying to make is that this should not be part of a bingo at all. Yes, I understand the point someone has if their child was sickened by a vaccine. One of my best friends is allergic to eggs - she can't be immunized for anything, because egg proteins are used in many formulas. I do think it is wrong to knee-jerk reject all vaccines. But to not get vaccines and risk being one of the 55,000 sickened or 120 dead, numbers from the last major measles outbreak? It is playing with fire either way. But I look at it from the perspective of having recently undergone a blood screen to show all my vaccinations were still active prior to being accepted as a hospital volunteer, to *protect other people, particularly sick patients I would be visiting as part of my role*.

@uberhausfrau - It wasn't like I said I was from the government and here to help... You can question medical practices all you want, but you are making that decision for *your child*, and then sending them off to public schools and exposing them to children whose parents may not have made that same choice for *their children*. Unlike motorcycle helmets, which tend to impact mainly the rider, vaccines attempt to impede the *spread* of disease between individuals. Of all the bingo options on the card, vaccinations are the only ones that have the ability to affect the long term health of people other than your child.

I thought the 'mommy wars' was something made up by the MSM to keep women occupied and defending their parenting choices anyway.

Cardi - I am the original poster and I am in medical school. I base my information on my PhD virology teacher. You are not involved in the decision making process that these parents make, and using insulting terms to describe these parents such as "hippy dippy" and "irrational" is wrong and inflammatory.

Herd immunity is actually down for shingles due to chicken pox vaccine, for example, and they have actually had to develop a new vaccine just for the older population to make up for this. Shingles is generally a much more serious condition than chicken pox. Hepatitis B and measles vaccines wear off, and many of the recent outbreaks of measles have involved vaccinated children.

This is not a black and white issue. To discuss vaccines, you need to intelligently discuss each vaccine and each child. Insulting parents is not the intelligent way to discuss this issue.

Oh, and the mommy wars is not invented by the MSM community. I have heard all of these statements from women. Many were on this site, some on hipmama.com, some on mothering.com, some on other parenting sites, some from parents or friends in person. Please don't dismiss my post as being a made up problem. Most mothers can identify with many of these criticisms, and it is very divisive when it is at the hands of feminists and other parents.

BTW, I updated this chart and added "Parents who are not heterosexual are not fit to parent". Too late to fix it on here.

Cordi, I agree that parents should be thoughtful and well-informed about vaccines. I don't make blanket judgements about any of them, and read a ton of material about each one individually before my child is due to get them. So far I've only skipped the chicken pox vaccine, because I know several families whose children had the vaccine and then got shingles in their teens or twenties. I just think it's better to get chicken pox and get it over with. I've also requested thimerosal-free shots for my kids, because from what I've read the jury's still out on that and I'd rather not take the risk. For this reason we skipped the flu shot last year for my 4 y/o stepdaughter, who never really gets sick anyway. But my 10 m/o did have the RSV vaccine because she was born prematurely, at the beginning of the RSV season, and I paid extra to get a thimerosal-free flu shot brought in for me so that my daughter would be protected through my milk.

So I think a lot of us are more thoughtful and discriminating than you think. Vaccination is not an all-or-nothing venture, and I think parents should be encouraged to research their children's medical treatment and be as educated as possible. I know that doctors dislike this because it produces uppity patients who waste their time by asking relevant questions. But when your children are too young to decide for themselves, you are their only advocate, and it's something that should be taken seriously.