Vaccine-hesitant parents are taking treatment into their own hands after claims from the US Health Secretary, experts fear

Summary

Texas hospitals are treating children with vitamin A poisoning linked to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promotion of the supplement as a measles treatment.

At Covenant Children’s hospital in Lubbock, patients with measles showed abnormal liver function due to excessive vitamin A intake.

Kennedy, the U.S. health secretary, claimed vitamin A dramatically reduces measles mortality. Experts warn his messaging confuses parents and downplays the proven protection of the MMR vaccine.

The U.S. faces its worst measles outbreak in decades, with nearly 500 cases across 21 states and two confirmed deaths.

    • VanillaFrosty@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      12 days ago

      People don’t get the right to endanger our most vulnerable because they are stupid and religious.

      I guess I should say stupid or religious but I have a feeling the initial statement is correct.

      I agree with your other comment on not trusting insurance agencies though.

        • Andonyx@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          11 days ago

          This statement is the poster child for why letting individuals use their own judgement on scientific data is such a crap idea.

          *Changed medical matters to scientific data.

        • Critical_Thinker@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          11 days ago

          Drug companies shouldn’t be in the equation of telling you what is best for you and your family medically.

          That should be left up to doctors.

        • Null User Object@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          11 days ago

          It’s not up to the experts to bend over backwards to convince you that a medication is safe and beneficial to yourself and to society. If they’ve convinced most of the population, but haven’t convinced you, then maybe you’re the problem. It’s your job to learn to distinguish between trained experts and quacks with an agenda, and listen to the experts, not the quacks.

    • rockhard@lemm.eeEnglish
      16·
      12 days ago

      This would still respect choice while cutting back on the utilization of emergency services covered by insurance companies. It could lead to reduced costs and people who pay into insurance shouldn’t be forced to pay for the negative health outcomes of people who willingly flout preventative health measures. It drives up costs for everyone.

        • rockhard@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          12 days ago

          You don’t get what I’m saying. Insurance companies aren’t making the choice for consumers. Consumers refuse to take preventative health measures, that is the choice they make. Insurance in turn, refuses to provide coverage to them because they willingly cost them more in the long run. Medicare and Medicaid, what will be left of them, should also refuse to cover them. Let these consumers cover their own healthcare costs.

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      11 days ago

      Sure sure, but should parent be allowed to forego low-risk, high-efficacy medical advice to the long term detriment of their child’s and other children’s health? Children, who are unable to legally advocate for themselves…

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          11 days ago

          If you were a good parent, you’d read up on what the risks were for vaccinations vs catching the disease and realize that even the worst performing vaccines are 300+ times less dangerous than an infection, instead of relying on Jenny McCarthy’s fucking Facebook posts as a source of medical information.

            • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              11 days ago

              If*

              I hope that word is getting hazard and overtime pay with the entire weight of your argument resting on it.

              If your research came to the conclusion that feeding your kid gave them too high of a risk of diabetes, should you legally be allowed to starve them to death?

                • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  10 days ago

                  Sure. That if is still holding up your entire argument. Counter point, there are plenty of vaccines we don’t administer because the risk of the vaccine doesn’t outweigh the benefits. Off the top of my head, I can think of polio and smallpox vaccinces. There are large organizations doing actual research and crunching the numbers to find out, so we already do consider the efficacy before we just inject kids full of vaccines for no reason.

                  I imagine, if you went to court about not wanting your child to receive a certain medical treatment, and you showed up with 50 or so peer reviewed and supported journal articles showing the benefits of the treatments along with the risk and their rate of occurrence, then referenced current and predicted rates for the conditions they are medicating against and the severity of those conditions and summarizes with your own peer reviewed research that the particular treatment is no longer efficacious… Then you can make the claim that you did your own research.

                  If you show up with a fucking Facebook post and a Bible, then the state ought to take your kids away for their own safety.

    • HamsterKiller666@lemm.eeEnglish
      101·
      12 days ago

      Well if the people that tell you what to take are the ones that you go to when you are Ill because you didn’t want to listen to them, they should be able to refuse you.

    • amateurcrastinator@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      12 days ago

      Why go to the doctors then? Just take whatever pink medicine your best friend/shaman/faith healer recommends and accept your fate. Why after choosing your medication and you and yours get fucked up, you rush to the hospital?

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        161·
        11 days ago

        Yes. I would 100% enjoy mandatory vaccinations when those vaccines are standardized, well regulated, and proven to save countless lives. I want to be forced to take the shot, I want the person to my right to be forced, I want the person to my left to be forced.

        I want to save people from horrible death and lifelong disability. I want to eradicate diseases.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            11 days ago

            There have been and there will be. And there have been reports of adverse side effects. We study these cases in depth. You’re worse off without the vaccine by a massive margin. Society is worse off.

              • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
                11·
                11 days ago

                One thing you mentioned is that studies lie. Academic Studies are the first and foremost most reliable source of information on this earth, your distrust of them is basically an admission that you prefer comforting lies.

                  • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    12·
                    10 days ago

                    Literally everyone will die after taking the vaccine, be it one day or a hundred years later. Nobody has ever died from the vaccine. We’ve studied this, there is no potential way for a person to die from being injected with a target antigen.

      • ifItWasUpToMe@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        11 days ago

        If the thing has been proven time and time again to be a benefit for the entire society?

        Yes.

        Only someone clearly deranged and selfish would choose otherwise.