Guardian Today

[Soroush Ebrahimi]

Dear All

Today The Guardian in its G2 supplement has ‘A Problem Shared’ page.
For next week’s consideration is the following:

My partner believes in homeopathy. How do I convince her that vaccinations are a good idea?

My partner of a year has been raised by her mother a homeopath, shunning modern medicine, vaccinations, antibiotics, fluoride toothpaste and even anti-malarials when travelling to at-risk areas. Instead she has been given homeopathic remedies to “cure” her whooping cough, measles and numerous preventable infections.
At 25, she has not been seriously ill, and attributes this to he “activated” immune system. All past (massively prolonged) recoveries have been put down to the “homeopathic remedy”, where extracts of plants are diluted to billions of times. We have discussed this at length. When I provide facts from verified sources, I am met with anecdotal tales without provenance.
How do I convince her, if we want to go travelling and one day have children, that she is safest getting herself (and any kids) vaccinated, against her mother’s “teachings”?
To answer, send to private.lives@theguardian.com
HOWEVER – beware that this may be a ploy to get homeopaths to make a statement on vaccination. Watch out as Simon Singh and Good Thinking Society may be at work here!!
Regards

Soroush

[Rochelle Marsden]

Soroush, I think those were very wise words re a ploy to get homeopaths to reply re vaccination and i don't trust that Good Thinking Society not to be up to no good!!

I think the best thing we can do is to ignore it and read the answers with amusement!!

Rochelle

[Shannon Nelson]

Maybe it wouldn’t be inappropriate if those readers were advised to explore vaccination policies in other developed countries, and the reasons why those policies differ from US polices.

My information on that topic isn’t current, but I am thinking in particular of Japan’s experience in decades past, that their SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, aka “crib death”) rate jumped to nearly the same as ours, when their vaccination schedule was similar to ours. Then (as I remember from what I had read) the policy was changed so that the first vaccination does not take place until age two, and their SIDS rate dropped back to nearly zero.

Does anyone know if I’m remembering this right, and if there’s any update?

Shannon