Actually, how much do we know about whether a newborn has a compromised immune system or not? As an adult, we may know our medical history and immunity, either through testing or anecdotal evidence. However, we are talking here about newborns and infants between birth and six, who don't have 20 years of medical history that would indicate strength/weakness of an immune system.
First, I'm not a doctor, and people should consult doctors for medical advice.
Do I get to pose random questions without research? I can only assume you were referring to my question "how much do we know about whether a newborn has a compromised immune system or not?" That seems like a pretty legitimate question, does it not? Do I need a medical degree to pose a question regarding how much medical history we have about your average newborn baby?
Am I crossing some line into medical 'research' by asking that question? When babies are born, do they have clear documented medical histories that I'm unaware of?
You also asked if there were "any vaccines given to newborns that are contraindicated for immune-compromised people".
First we need to define newborns. Wikipedia says hours days or a few weeks old. I couldn't find how the CDC defines newborns.
In the first couple days, the only scheduled vaccine per the CDC is usually Hep B. Whether others are given in the first couple days probably depends on doctors, the baby's health, the parents, the country we're in, etc.
From the CDC:
"Hepatitis B vaccination is contraindicated for persons with a history of hypersensitivity to yeast or to any vaccine component (92,189--191). Despite a theoretic risk for allergic reaction to vaccination in persons with allergy to Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker's yeast), no evidence exists that documents adverse reactions after vaccination of persons with a history of yeast allergy."
So assuming you consider an allergy to be compromising to the immune system (which, by definition, an allergy is), it appears your answer is "yes, there is a vaccine given (or at least recommended) to newborns that is contraindicated for certain immune-compromised people".
Hopefully those contraindicated infants are not given that vaccine, but as I posed earlier, how much do we know about an individual infant's immune system within hours of birth? This probably depends on a lot of things as well - doctors, hospital (or home birth), availability of testing and results, etc.
The RV vaccine is usually given in the first couple months, where the 'newborn' label could still apply depending on how you use the word. RV is contraindicated for SCID.
Below is a full list of contraindications for several vaccines, listed on the CDC website.
An allergic reaction is an overreaction of the immune system to a normally harmless material. "Immune compromise" is a weakening of the immune system. These are, you might note, almost exact opposites. People with weak immune systems won't generally suffer allergic reactions, because an allergic reaction requires the immune system to overreact, and "weak" generally precludes an overreaction. At worst, they wouldn't suffer anything worse than a normal person.
Now, this does raise an interesting question, namely: are newborns ever allergic to this stuff? Could it cause a problem? The answer to the second would seem to be "no" given your CDC quote that there's no evidence for adverse reactions, and that would render the first moot. However, it's still an interesting question, but you'll notice that it's a completely different question from what you asked.
Is your question legitimate? Of course. My point is that mine was legitimate too, but when I posed it, I got a stupid "GIYF" response from you. Apparently you think you have the right to ask questions without research, but I don't. That double standard annoys me.
Worse, you don't even know what you don't know. You get the relationship between allergies and weakened immune systems completely wrong, yet you state that wrongness as fact, so obvious that you call it "by definition".
And then, when I call you out on this bad behavior, I imagine you'll call me a "fascist" and say that I'm "suppressing dissenting views" or some such crap. The reality is, I welcome dissent, but only intelligent dissent. You're not providing it.
I won't call you a fascist. We're nitpicking here. An allergic reaction is obviously not a good reaction to a vaccine, not a desired outcome. Whether an allergy is a result of a compromised immune system (the immune system isn't compromised, but the allergic person is worse off for it) an over active immune system isn't relevant to the argument. I'd also read the CDC quote again. My interpretation was a bit different, as they specified in the second sentence.
Edit - I'm not sure how far you got in my last post, but if we're going to pick about allergies not being a compromised immune system, SCID is the reason for contraindication for RV.
I don't see how it could possibly be "nitpicking" to discuss this stuff in detail. The conversation started out with the question of why some vaccines are not given to certain people, and why that does not mean that these vaccines are dangerous to other people. We then diverted to the question of dangers in infants, but understanding exactly what the dangers are and why certain vaccines have certain dangers is hardly "nitpicking".
And to be honest, no, I did not read the end of your post. I stopped at the moment I got to that completely ludicrous statement that an allergic reaction qualifies as an immune system compromise. This is not some obscure detail, this is an extremely basic fact about how the immune system works.
I wrote a longer reply that you may not have read yet (just posted a few minutes ago). I thought the spirit of the question was more to an irregular immune system and not just specifically a weakened one. Allergies are not indicative of a weakened immune system - whether or not 'compromised' is a term worth using for a system that is irregular is probably not a debate worth having, but the individual clearly is compromised.
Agreed that it's not nitpicking to know why vaccines cause a potential danger - overactive or underactive immune systems obviously react (or don't) in different ways, but I understood the nature of the question to be much less specific (are vaccines contraindicated in the sick, instead of are vaccines contraindicated in this specific group of sick people).
What you point out is not an obscure detail, but if the spirit of the conversation were how I had interpreted it, the detail wouldn't be relevant. I focused more on the vaccine being recommended to sick people and not people sick with x.
I was on mobile for my first response, but I do want to address your comments.
This whole thing got started when I replied to a comment you made stating "A weakened immune system is not a condition you can really have without realizing it."
My response was a rhetorical question about how we don't know about a newborn's immune system. If it wasn't clear that "how much do we know about whether a newborn has a compromised immune system or not" was a rhetorical question, I apologize for not making that more clear, but I think the question has an obvious answer and I didn't ask it to get your opinion. If you feel that question has an answer other than "very little", feel free to elaborate.
The reason I asked that question is that your statement that one cannot have a weakened immune system without knowing only applies to adults, as baby in the first moments does not have a medical history. So yes, someone can have a weakened immune system without anyone knowing it, but likely that would be at birth and in the earliest days of lives - when some vaccinations take place. As one gets older, weakened immune systems might become more evident, but they would be least evident at birth. I'm not sure we can debate that as anything but fact, but I'm certainly willing to listen to dissenting views on that.
So I ask a rhetorical question, and your response is to pose a question to me - "Are there any vaccines given to newborns that are contraindicated for immune-compromised people? That strikes me as rather unlikely."
Your question clearly wasn't a rhetorical question, and was something that someone could just look up (thus, the Google comment). I could have said 'I believe there are but don't care to look them up', but I figured you'd just look them up yourself and that would be the end of it. I was aware that there were some vaccines that were contraindicated for certain allergies and other conditions, mainly because I wasn't able to get certain vaccines as a child.
I'm honestly not sure why you didn't just look it up, unless you were more interested in my response than what you would have found on your own. But I did answer it, yet you chose to pick apart the one answer
Your response to that was "So you get to pose random questions without research, but I don't? How's that work?" I wasn't posing a random question, and my rhetorical question really shouldn't require research. Again, I think the answer was pretty obvious - if someone has a very brief lifespan, the person would likely have little medical history. There is a double standard about being expected to answer rhetorical question vs answering a factual question that you could also look up.
The answer to your question was clearly something you could have found on your own, but you asked me instead. Were you looking for an answer, or just looking to see how I'd answer it?
So I write out a longer reply, which you find some flaws with. You don't reference the part about RV/SCID in your reply, which seems to be the most relevant part of my response. That was the question you asked, yet you didn't even acknowledge the answer.
An allergy is not indicative of a weakened immune system, and I could have worded that a bit better. The person with allergies is 'compromised', and having an overactive immune system does compromise an individual. Having incredibly low blood pressure is dangerous, and having incredibly high blood pressure is dangerous too. Both indicate a compromised system that is not in balance, just as severe allergy and a condition such as SCID are impairments.
Whether or not an immune system is overactive (allergy) or weakened, I think using the term 'compromised' might have been the issue. Instead of "assuming you consider an allergy to be compromising to the immune system ", I could have left off at 'compromising'.
I did reference RV and SCID in the post as well, but you didn't reference those in your reply. I think your question, as asked literally, would be answered by RV being contraindicated in SCID cases. I answered the question as if you'd asked if vaccines were contraindicated in people with 'immune system irregularities' instead of 'immune system deficiencies'. The difference is, in my opinion, splitting hairs for the purpose of our dialogue, but that was what you chose to go with.
So yes, RV is contraindicated in SCID patients, and RV is recommended for newborns if you use the term newborns to indicate weeks instead of days. Hep B is not contraindicated for infants with weakened immune systems, but is contraindicated for infants with irregular immune systems that might be overreactive to yeast.
Regarding the calling out on bad behavior, I don't think I've behaved badly unless you somehow feel that my failure to clarify the difference between a weakened immune system and an overreactive one is a sin. What we are discussing here are mostly facts, not really opinions, and there really isn't much room for actual dissent. I have not problem with your opinions, as you haven't really provided any other than your opinions on my comments. I don't think you're suppressing any views. I'm not really providing opinions here, just facts for the most part (with the obvious clarification necessary to define allergy as irregular immune system instead of weakened).
