Because it is Forbidden
Sabrina Rahim doesn’t practice any particular faith, but she had no problem signing a letter declaring that because of her deeply held religious beliefs, her 4-year-old son should be exempt from the vaccinations required to enter preschool. She is among a small but growing number of parents around the country who are claiming religious exemptions to avoid vaccinating their children.
And by doing so, to put countless other children and adults at risk – a small but growing number of parents who feel entitled to endanger other people for no good reason.
[P]ublic health officials say it takes only a few people to cause an outbreak that can put large numbers of lives at risk. “When you choose not to get a vaccine, you’re not just making a choice for yourself, you’re making a choice for the person sitting next to you,” said Dr. Lance Rodewald, director of the CDC’s Immunization Services Division. All states have some requirement that youngsters be immunized against such childhood diseases as measles, mumps, chickenpox, diphtheria and whooping cough. Twenty-eight states, including Florida, Massachusetts and New York, allow parents to opt out for medical or religious reasons only. Twenty other states, among them California, Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio, also allow parents to cite personal or philosophical reasons.
I didn’t know that. I’m staggered. There’s a public health law, intended to prevent the spread of infectious disease, and twenty-eight states allow people to refuse for religious reasons? Forty-eight of the fifty states give exemptions for religious or ‘philosophical’ reasons? Well you might as well just give blanket exemptions ‘if you don’t want to’ – and say the hell with public health.
Unvaccinated children can spread diseases to others who have not gotten their shots or those for whom vaccinations provided less-than-complete protection. In 1991, a religious group in Philadelphia that chose not to immunize its children touched off an outbreak of measles that claimed at least eight lives and sickened more than 700 people, mostly children. And in 2005, an Indiana girl who had not been immunized picked up the measles virus at an orphanage in Romania and unknowingly brought it back to a church group. Within a month, the number of people infected had grown to 31 in what health officials said was the nation’s worst outbreak of the disease in a decade.
One of God’s little jokes, was it?
I’d be happy to hand them all their Darwin awards and let they contract all the diseases they can stand. Unfortunately, the more people who contract a disease, the more likely that disease is to mutate into a form that the rest of us aren’t immune to.
“And by doing so, to put countless other children and adults at risk”
Yes, that is so for sure. Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, a highly contagious disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis; it derived its name from a characteristic severe hacking cough followed by a high-pitched intake of breath that sounds like “whoop”; A similar, milder disease is caused by B. parapertussis.
I would not, whatsoever, wish this disease on any child. I developed, at five years of age, a severe form of this desease and lay dying in a darkened room in a Dublin fever hospital. To this day I still have memories of standing in a hospital cot, and of being terribly frighened as I looked up at the black covered gigantic Victorian windows.
“a small but growing number of parents who feel entitled to endanger other people for no good reason.”
Wiki >Worldwide, there are 30–50 million pertussis cases and about 300,000 deaths per year< "The small, but growing number of parents", should be made aware of the huge amount of disease cases, there are - or perhaps they do know, but simply do not want to care. “I am okay Jack – all up the ladder.”
Parents get confused and jumpy about taking an active step which they believe may irreparably harm their child.
The blame is down to those who for ideological reasons foster and propogate that belief without any legitimate foundation, in a manipulative world where agenda justifies ignorance.
Whether they are on the staff of the Daily Mail, the Vatican, a fundamentalist mosque or an evangelical church, it’s them. A plague on them.
Always worth noting that the ‘complementary’ medicine set terrify far more people into refusing vaccinations than the religious extremists – at least in the West. In Africa it is the politicals.
Oh yeah – the people who promote vaccination fears are doing a bad thing. But I’m shocked that the religious exemption exists at all (let alone that it’s so widespread). It seems insane to me to have the law because vaccination clearly promotes public health – and then to make it optional if people have ‘religious or philosophical’ objections.
I don’t think God comes into this, it’s ordinary stupidity, not divine. I think this is a generational thing, I’m of an age to remember polio, two of my school friends suffered from it, fortunately they both ‘recovered’ and went on to lead productive lives. My sister nursed in a polio hospital, the sight of children, then my age, in iron lungs is sobering. A number of years ago an elderly friend, a retired nursed, was called into the local hospital to assist the doctors in diagnosing a case of diptheria, they had read about it, but none had ever seen a case. I hope none of these children contract one of these illnesses, but if they do it will be too late.
So what is the alternative to these exemptions O.B. strap down vacination for refuseniks?
Also a parents duty is to their own child not other peoples kids!
A parent may *feel* they have a duty only to their own children, but they are *wrong*. Call it a social contract, call it common sense, ethics, or morality; any way you cut it, acting dangerously because you have irrational and selfish fears is *bad*.
“Also a parents duty is to their own child not other peoples kids!”
Precisely, which is why they are criminally negligent if they do not get their children vaccinated. It’s not other people’s children that will die from measles if you do not get your child vaccinated, it is yours.
This ranks with the jehovah witness’ dribbling idiocy over blood transfusions.
What gives any parent the right to impose their religious beliefs on their children? Children are not property.
Richard asks: So what is the alternative to these exemptions O.B. strap down vacination for refuseniks?
It’s actually pretty easy to enforce some kinds of requirements for the good of society, because it’s sensible to make participation in society contingent on meeting the requirements. For example, if you want your child to attend a day care or school facility (or participate in local sports, or…) with other children, you must provide proof of immunization. Yes, the primary duty of parents is to their own children. That means the majority of parents, who have enough fucking sense to keep their children’s immunizations up to date, have the right to entrust their children only to institutions which protect the health and welfare of ALL the children in their temporary care – and an un-vaccinated child is a health risk to all the others. Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children would soon find that they are also required to home school their children, and that they can’t get day care, and so on and so forth.
Basically, this is like any other communal activity: If you don’t like the rules and restrictions that make the activity possible and beneficial for all its participants, you don’t get to participate. Paranoid about the government having information about you? Want to avoid taxation? Don’t apply for a Social Security Number then: But when a prospective employer (who enjoys the benefits of participating in a public economy and pays taxes to support its infrastructure) asks for your SSN and you don’t get the job when you can’t provide one, don’t come crying to to the rest of us who realize that we’re all in this together!
Or, for a more casual example: Refuse to keep up with your basic hygiene? Your choice, bub. But you don’t get to whinge about it when people avoid and reject you socially!
“Or, for a more casual example: Refuse to keep up with your basic hygiene? Your choice, bub. But you don’t get to whinge about it when people avoid and reject you socially!”
Yes, that is fair, but the point of principle renmains that you are entitled not to wash yourself and, up to a point, not to wash your children. We must surely accept a parent’s right not to have their children vaccinated unless, as Rockingham suggests, we are prepared to sanction state sponsored violence to have the vaccination administered. There are circumstances where we would be prepared to do this, if we considered the child to be in imminent risk of death, for example, but it is something that we rightly (I think) shrink from. It is daft that religious belief should be the basis of exemption, of course; there should be no special condition for exemption.
Oi, I did not suggest state sanctioned violence, that was Richard.
I would settle for gentle sneering.
“Oi, I did not suggest state sanctioned violence, that was Richard.”
Sorry, my mistake.
“Also a parents duty is to their own child not other peoples kids!”
Well, sure, if you’re a selfish asshole.
“Also a parents duty is to their own child not other peoples kids!”
In my view, my duty to protect my children is also my duty to other parents’ children. Distance and not knowing the family reduces the obviousness of it, but thats the way it is.
Here in Ontario, certain Jehovah’s Witnesses have attempted, on religious grounds, to refuse blood transfusions for their children. In such cases the children are temporarily taken into care, and the Children’s Aid Society, acting in loco parentis, authorizes the transfusion.
Cannot something similar be effected in the case of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children?
“One of God’s little jokes, was it?”
Presumably, creating batty women like the non-religious example mother in the story was just such a joke.
By the way, Richard, the last time this came up I recall linking you to a simple explanation of how lousy vaccination programs increase the risk of the diseases they’re intended to protect against, with historical examples. Here it is again:
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec1181/018.htm
People who don’t vaccinate for bullshit reasons such as religion are directly harming both public health and the lives of those who cannot be vaccinated for valid, medical reasons.
“We must surely accept a parent’s right not to have their children vaccinated”
So…we must surely accept a parent’s right to allow her child to die an avoidable death? No, I don’t think so.
And as for Richard’s charming aphorism – yecccch.
To put it another way, Richard, here’s a question for you.
Suppose a classmate of one of your children is diagnosed with multi-drug resistant TB. The parents are told the child should be kept out of school in order not to infect the other children, but the parents want the child to go on having the benefit of social contact, so they refuse to take their child out of school. Your child acquires this potentially fatal disease. Do you still think ‘a parents duty is to their own child not other peoples kids’?
To put it bluntly, do you think that only as long as ‘their own child’ translates to your own child, or do you go on thinking it even when it’s someone else’s child putting your child at risk?
“Twenty other states, among them California, Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio, also allow parents to cite personal or philosophical reasons.”
What kind of personal/philosophical reasons, for example, could they cite, in order to be able to disallow their offspring to be vaccinated?
Note that this goes right to the heart of personal freedom. The so-called public health approach has been co-opted by frothing self-righteous busybodies and thats just how it is.
I have to wonder if the thrust of the story had been about non-religious exemptions, whether we would have seen enough interest to post about this at all. Remember, the source already has ‘framed’ this story for us – and I know you hate framing OB.
I have run into people who refuse to vaccinate several times. These are often people who believe the theory that autism is due to vaccination. Sometimes they have one autistic child and the autism came on right after a vaccination. Or they’re just worried about it as a general issue.
Whether or not these unvaccinated kids are a big risk to everyone else, it’s pretty unfair. The parents get all the benefit of widespread vaccination and place none of the risk on their own kids. When they really do have one autistic kid already, I do understand… but that’s not always the case.
Great answers everyone,O.B. I would think that the parents in question would be crimanly responsible but that is not the same as making the decision to vacinate a healthy child because you are potentialy going to harm that child (who has no say in the matter)by your actions, doing this for the greater good is not a good enough reason.G. its not the same as other communal activities for the same reason.
Elliot so you would be o.k with state sponsored forced vacination of a child?
State-sponsored forced vaccination. It sounds gruesome. But the question is admission into pubic school. As I say, I don’t think this has to do with religion, in many cases. I have an old friend with one autistic child, and the second child unvaccinated. Is this child entitled to a benefit (public school in the company of vaccinated children) without incurring any of the risk they do? I’m inclined to say no, but hesitate out of sympathy for the parents’ fears.
Of course your friend hasnt vacinated her other child and yes the child should go to school, but I think the school has a right to know that this child is unvacinated so they can responsibly imform other parents.
Richard, simply telling other parents that an unvaccinated child is being allowed to put all of their children at risk does NOTHING to address that risk. So, essentially, what you (or anyone else defending parents who choose not to vaccinate their children for either pseudoscientific or religious reasons) are saying is that public health should be subordinated to a minority of parents irrational and unsupported fears WITH THE CONSEQUENCE THAT CHILDREN DIE NEEDLESSLY.
And make no mistake, those fears are entirely unsupported. The current anti-vaccination hysteria has been pretty much entirely manufactured by a dishonest physician on the payroll of lawyers trying to profit from the misfortune of parents of autistic children looking for someone to blame. When all was said and done, that’s the true story of Andrew Wakefield’s “research” into the link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Oh, the fear is real enough: That is, the parents are truly afraid. I understand your sympathy with your friends, Jean K., and I probably wouldn’t say anything either. But you are nevertheless right: It is perfectly reasonable to keep unvaccinated children out of school for the safety of the other children.
ChrisPer’s strange citation of personal freedom as if that were the only important principle at stake in this matter aside, even democratic societies in which personal freedom is taken to be fundamental generally limit that freedom where it directly harms others. Not vaccinating your children doesn’t just put them at risk of serious harm or death, it also puts others in harm’s way. For example, the older child of parents who responsibly vaccinate can still bring home rubella from an unvaccinated child at school (without succumbing themselves) and pass it a baby brother or sister too young for vaccination – leading to lifelong disability, or death. A basic principle of rights and freedoms is that yours STOP where they start infringing on anyone else’s. No one has the right to inflict easily avoidable harm on others.
G. what you are basicly saying is that the end justifies the means with vacination? whatever the rights and wrongs of the autism contraversy vacination programs always produce a small number of damaged children, you seem unwilling to recognise this because it serves the greater good!
What’s your evidence for these “damaged children”? Or are you as usual repeating what someone else told you?
Also, if you want to see a “damaged child” sometime, take a look at what happens when a mother catches rubella during pregnancy.
I MY ME MINE isn’t much of a response after that.
“I have to wonder if the thrust of the story had been about non-religious exemptions, whether we would have seen enough interest to post about this at all.”
Well, I would – I’m interested in the whole subject.
Dr Joseph Mercola says: “Vaccinations are very neurotoxic and have been associated with many neurological disorders, like encephalopathies, epilepsy, convulsions, ADD, LD, autism.
…[B]efore the 1940s, autism was extremely rare or unheard of. Then in the mid-1940s we began a massive vaccination programs and autism was “born”. …[T]he psychiatrists had a hay-day with autism and at first they called it the “Refrigerator-Mother Syndrome”. They said the mother had a “cold” heart causing the child to be autistic and withdrawn.”
Vaccines and Neurological Damage.
http://www.mercola.com/article/vaccines/neurological_damage.htm –
Yet, from what I ‘also’ read, the eradication of smallpox, which was last seen in a natural case in 1977, is considered the most spectacular success of vaccination.
Richard, I would agree with you that your duty to your own child, au fond, trumps your duty to society. HOWEVER, society has the right to say that if you want to live in it and and enjoy its benefits, you must obey its rules.
The autism/vaccination thing is just crap (no, really, it is). AFAIK there is no evidence for your claim about vaccination programmes always producing a small number of damaged children, and certainly no evidence that any such risk is greater than the risk of damage to the child from measles. However, to err on the side of caution and individual freedoms, I am doubtful about actually making it a criminal offence not to have your child vaccinated.
On the other hand, society needs to be protected against “moral hazard”; the fact that it is easier for a lazy parent to decide to believe the cranks and the Daily Mail “just in case there’s something in it”, thereby putting their own child at risk and herd immunity at risk. Therefore I think that, in the UK, it should be illegal for children to attend school if they have not been vaccinated, and (as it is now) illegal for them not to receive appropriate full-time education between the ages of 5 and 16. Thus, it is not impossible for a parent to choose no vaccination, but a high hurdle is in place to make that decision serious.
Vaccines are not neurotoxic. These false correlations that bad scientists (who almost always turn out to have distorting personal agendas) talk about are based on very bad statistics. For one, “autism” as such was not a recognized disease and diagnosis category before the mid-1940’s, so of course the incidence of diagnosed autism rose sharply over the subsequent decade or two as the diagnosis was clarified and disseminated to practitioners. Just the fact that this Dr. Mercola blithely asserts that the rise of vaccination rather than the identification of these particular mental problems – as distinct from the primitive early 20th century catch-all categories such as “moron” (once a technical term rather than an insult) and “mental defective” – shows that he is a lie-peddling quack.
From Autism – Explaining the Enigma” (1989) by Uta Frith. (Found here.)
BTW: A quick Google follow-up on this Mercola guy confirms my conclusion – he’s a quack. He’s an alternative health guru who also has pushed the unsupported claim that pasteurized milk causes autism. He’s one of the “autism is the silent Holocaust” crowd dedicated to pushing the hype and manufacturing the fear of vaccination. One quackbuster lists http://www.mercola.com at the very top of his list of “Most unreliable health websites”.
If you can take the snark level, Mercola’s brain is listed among the woo-peddling nutrition sources beloved by Orac’s Hitler zombie in this viciously funny little post.
There is a similar discussion regarding ‘Vaccinations’ worth reading @ autism.about.com/b/a/257958.htm
Zum beispiel: “Claiming Religious Exemptions To Avoid Vaccinations – A Great Way to Prevent Autism, Or a Terrific Way to Create a Public Health Hazard.”
Thank you G, it is only correct and apposite that one should be scrupulously sentient of these suspected charlatans. I remember B&W having an N&C on a analogous matter. It was vis-à-vis homeopathy medicine & its hypothetical instantaneous cures, etc. I should have somehow gathered that there would be something of the same nature going on in the Vaccination situation.
Potentilla so what do you do with the parent that witholds their child from school because they feel strongly that vacinating children against normal childhood illness could harm their child? maybe the state should sieze the child and force the vacination? after all its in the childs best intrests and serves the greater good!
Richard, she told you – she thinks it should be illegal for unvaccinated children to attend school.
Notice you have yet to answer any of the requests for evidence that vaccinations harm children. You do realize that vaccinations prevent illnesses that can be fatal, don’t you? You do realize that’s the point of them?
I think the autism-vaccine connection has been thoroughly studied and the evidence is strongly against it. But vaccines do all have very small risks. They tell you this when you get your kid vaccinated. I think the level of this risk actually is relevant. 1 in a million bad reactions is very different from 1 in 100.
The thing you really have to ask yourself, if you don’t want to vaccinate, if you do want everyone else to. In other words, are you “freeriding” on other people’s risk-taking? That’s what strikes me as very unfair. So whether a kid really represents a risk to schoolmates, I’m inclined to keep him/her out of public school. The point is that the risks posed by vaccination, low as they are, should spread fairly.
I could see some narrow exceptions…. maybe.
Why do I need to present evidence? its an admited fact that vacination causes small levels of harm its just the amount of harm that is in dispute? The reason I asked Potentilla that question is because when people say something should be illegal they are basicly saying that it is o.k for the state to use force against them because that is how states enforce laws! as for as what a responsible parent should do regarding m.m.r. it depends on where they live, if there are high take up rates of vacination in your area why vacinate your kid.
Yes I know its selfish but sometimes a parents duty is to be selfish for the good of their child.
OB:”Well, I would – I’m interested in the whole subject.”
Good for you!
The subject of woo-based health care is of interest to me – it seems to be like religion in that people REALLY want you to shut-up if you criticise it.
Re vaccinations, I thoroughly support vaccination, but if the law provides the irrational a choice, then they are within their rights exercising that choice as to what they stick in themselves and their children. I believe there was no choice offered for polio and TB vaccination when we were kids, and it was a good thing.
Richard, you didn’t read what I wrote carefully enough. It is possible to satisfy the existing legal requirements for compulsory education by home-schooling, as well as by sending your child to school. To fail to do either is already a criminal offence which can carrry a custodial sentence. Home-schooling is of course an arduous and possibly expensive choice, but it is available to any parent who really really thinks that school is bad (because vaccination would be required to attend of for any other reason).
So yes, I am saying that if the parent choses not to vaccinate, to withhold their child from school AND fails to give them a proper education outside school (the LEA has a duty to check up, of course), then force should be used against them in the form of them (after warnings, doubtless, I haven’t read all the Education Acts in detail) being arrested, tried and if found guilty, imprisoned. I expect that would mean their children being taken into care, but it would depend on grandparents and so on. (And vaccinating forcefully? No small children are ever vaccinated anything but forecfully!)
Jean – yes the level of risk is relevant, but it seems to me that the important thing is its size versus the size of the risk from the disease.
So the single working mother on minimum wage would do what? you are advocating forced vacination by other means!
The single working mother on minimum wage would, like all her neighbours, get her child vaccinated, I should think, wouldn’t you?
Let’s be clear, I have little sympathy with people who decide not to vaccinate their children, and such sympathy as I do have is to the extent that they have not been sufficinetly educated to relaalise that taking the Daily Mail as a reasonable guide to life is silly.
I can actually remember my next sister down with measles in about 1970, with a temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit. She survived undamaged, but I can remember enough to see that she easily might not have done.
Potentilla, Yes, definitely–the risk of the vaccination vs. the risk of the disease.
Richard–Would you really be perfect happy if everyone didn’t vaccinate their kids? Or do you want to not vaccinate while everyone else does? I should think the latter–and that’s what’s not fair.
Not only is it not fair, it’s not logical. If one parent can make the decision to free-ride, then so can many parents. If many parents do, herd immunity breaks down and the disease becomes re-established. The free-riding parent has no reason to suppose that their child will avoid the disease or only get it lightly. (And apart from measles, mumps and rubella are both pretty horrible if you get them as an adult particularly, mumps for men and rubella for a pregnant woman).
So deciding to free-ride is only logical (leaving aside it being unfair) if you believe that most other people won’t. And why would you believe this? Perhaps if you have reason to believe that you are less moral than the average?
“I thoroughly support vaccination, but if the law provides the irrational a choice, then they are within their rights exercising that choice”
This is what I’m saying – it’s the legal exemptions in 48 out of 50 US states that was the subject of the post. I didn’t know those exemptions existed, and I’m both shocked and horrified. What a good idea: let’s be like Kano, and cause polio to re-appear and cause death or lifelong paralysis in hundreds then thousands then tens of thousands of people.
I don’t know if it is still the case, but back when I was of a traveling disposition, there were isolated areas of the world where outsiders were required to have shots and serious health-checks, lest they introduce something genocidal.
Would anyone argue for a philosphical or religious exemption to that? It’s a free world, we should go wherever we want.
Or, come to think of it, the foot-fungus pool we had to walk through on our way into the public swimming baths. Nobody forced your foot into it, but it was the only way in.
And by the way, to answer Jean’s question, Richard does apparently “want to not vaccinate while everyone else does” – at least that’s what he explicitly advocates:
“as for as what a responsible parent should do regarding m.m.r. it depends on where they live, if there are high take up rates of vacination in your area why vacinate your kid.”
That last clause is one of the nastiest comments I’ve ever seen here.
Not nasty, just individual-viewpoint rational behaviour. There is quite a bit of that around it seems.
Given the actual probabilities of harm to individuals, and the implied requirement for a very high local uptake rate, its less actively antisocial than driving to the shops – except for the high moral standard of B&W participants.
Potentilla my single mother has refused point blank to vacinate her child, she cant home school because she works 10 hours a day on minimum wage,she cant even home school after work because she is doing an on line degree course to better herself, she cant aford private school either what would you have the state do with her?
O.B a parents duty to a child is rather like a lawers duty to a client it is selfish by its very nature! I thought nasty was a bit strong by the way.
Don how is shooting a kid up with 3 vacines at once akin to a simple foot bath?
What’s so horrible about “3 vacines (sic) at once”?
If one can do harm what could 3 at once do?
Richard – asuming your question applies to circs in which my proposed legislation has become law, have some convenient person or persons (GP? social worker?) explain to her the risks to her child from mumps, measles and rubella, the nature of herd immunity, and the fact that “3 vaccines at once is a risk” is totally unscientific codswallop and then, if she continues to refuse, prosecute her.
On the 3 vaccines at once, did you actually read what Anthony Cox commented here – with citation, IIRC?
G Tingey – citation for your speculation about anaphylaxis (I don’t think you mena that anyhow, and most similar speculations are not about allergies but about the immune system somehow being “used up”).
Citation (other than your mind) for your facts about New Zealand?
AFAIK there was a large US study in about 2001/2 and a large Danish one more recently, following some 800k children, published in JAMA, both of whch found no evidence for the multile-vaccinations-cause ill effects theory. I will look for the refs later if anyone wants them. I forget whether one of these studies was the one AC quoted.
“If one can do harm what could 3 at once do?”
MUTANT SUPER POWERS!
Failing that, have you consulted the literature? I mean the scientific literature…
“So…we must surely accept a parent’s right to allow her child to die an avoidable death? No, I don’t think so.”
I realise that the curtain has probably already come Down on this discusion, but, OB, if you do not accept the parent’s right to withold the child from vaccination you are, first of all, showing (to my mind) an unwarranted degree of faith in public health officialdom (now and in the future) And secondly, by inference, proposing that children whose parents wish to withold them should be taken by force to be vaccinated with all the attendant psychological trauma. I don’t see how anyone can be confident that the effects of being taken by force from your parents and submitted to a medical procedure would be worse than having the measles. There are cases where the threat to the child is so severe that this would be warranted (such as a child needing a life-saving blood transfusion)but reducing the risk of getting mumps is one of them, surely
If you can’t source the NZ factoid, I certainly can’t be bothered to investigate it. Go away and Google the data if you are really interested.
Simultaneous exposure to several different new antigens is a different kettle of fish from repeated exposure to the same antigen (eg tetanus toxoid). The latter can produce allergic reactions. There is no evidence that the former is any more likely to do so than staggered exposure to the same antigens.
Tetanus boosters are recommended every 10 years; AFAIK, the last time you had one is more important than how many you’ve ever had.
And go back and read Anthony Cox’s response to your own also-unsourced speculation on this subject last time, Tingey. I barked at you at the time for ignoring it, and here you are repeating vague unsourced hunches again. Don’t do that.
I also have found it a little disturbing that some of the commenters here on this topic are advocating mandatory vacination in all but name,to me a liberal is the guy who stands in front of the tank(tank represents state power)not the driver!
I also dont think it is the states job to tell people what they should put in their bodies whether it be vacines or crack or anything else.
Well, Richard, on the one hand we have an incredibly minor exercise of state power with the end goal of eradicating diseases which have plagued humanity for thousands of years.
On the other hand we have stubborn and/or ignorant people whose main argument is MINE MINE MINE.
You don’t see a problem with that?
It would be an extreme libertarian position that denied the state the power to intervene in matters of public health. At one end that would mean defending Typhoid Mary’s right to remain in employment as a cook. At the other it would mean squads of Child-Catchers forcing cod-liver oil down the reluctant throats of impounded kids.
I don’t think anybody here would be outraged at the state over-riding the wishes of parents who have religious/philosophical objections to treatments which would save a child’s life.
But no-one, as far as I can see, has advocated the generalised forcible innoculation of anybody. Only that access to certain facilities should be restricted to those prepared to meet the health and hygiene standards required by those facilities.
Thanks to mass innoculation my child is not in danger from measles, mumps, rubella, typhoid, polio, diptheria, whooping cough, …
I think it reasonable to ask that the unvaccinated child of solipsistic parents should not be allowed to sit next to mine and risk her carrying these potential killers back to her (hypothetical) baby sister.
You don’t want to wash your feet, you don’t get in the pool. You don’t want your child vaccinated, you don’t get to send them to a public school. How you deal with that situation is up to you.
The fact is that mass vaccination has saved and continues to save tens of thousands of lives, and prevents millions of shattered lives. If your religion/philosophy requires that your child remain a potential carrier, then keep the hell away from my family.
Tingey, I don’t know where it is, for Christ’s sake. Do your own homework. If you can’t be bothered to do it, then don’t comment. If you know your information is inadequate, then either improve it or be quiet – dont knowingly make ill-informed comments. Jeez – it’s so obvious.
“to me a liberal is the guy who stands in front of the tank(tank represents state power)not the driver!”
Really. So liberals are the people who blocked the entrance to Little Rock High School then? George Wallace was a liberal when he promised to block the schoolhouse door?
And not all liberals are male, by the way.
Good grief, the things I get sucked into in pursuit of fact. Anthony Cox’s comment is in . He is in fact quoting one of the studies I referrred to above. The other one is here (re MMR & autism) and here (re MMR/febrile seizures).
Oh…….bother. O, I do wish you had a preview.
MMR/autism in NEJM
MMR/febrile seizure in JAMA
Multiple vaccines in Pediatrics (study quoted by AC – just as well I did this in fact as he had misspelled one of the author’s names).
‘…no information/report-back will mean I have found nothing relevant…’
Until then my breath is bated.
Thanks, p, and sorry about lack of preview function, but think of all the other amenities available here instead.
Tingey – of course you would prefer to know, rather than just be told to “look” without knowing where – but it was your idea to make the uninformed comments in the first place. And to be perfectly frank, I don’t want to spend my time doing your homework instead of updating B&W. Surely you can understand that? Two or three people read B&W quite regularly, so I don’t think it would be fair for me to allocate my time to doing your research for you rather than to maintaining B&W as a whole. (I also have other things to do. There’s a deadline for TPM, for instance.)
In short, if you don’t like the service around here, don’t comment.
Shorter Tingey: thank you for providing links to relevant papers. However, I can’t be bothered to read them (to answer one of my questions) nor to read the comments above (which addresses another) or Google (to address the final one). So I’ll just restate my position as it was.
See why I don’t do Tingey’s homework for him? Restating his position is pretty much all he ever does!
And Tingey, I wasn’t kidding – I mean it: if you don’t know, don’t comment. Don’t just strew questions around. Do your own homework or else be quiet. I get tired of cleaning up after you.
It’s just taken me about twenty minutes to turn up this and this. You can get the gist of both from the abstracts. I’m sure there’s lots more.
Can’t be bothered to try explaining the first two points again in different words.
Richard – hard cases make bad law. The problem with your single mum (as with so many philosophical thought experiments) is that you have endowed her with a set of characterisitics that don’t entirely make sense without further explanation.
Bad law also makes bad law Potentilla your proposed law is clasic bad law it begs for people to disobey it deliberately!it would work just as well as I.D cards will.
fairly obviously no present suggestions yet seem to have merit your reason for this asseveration?
There is probably no silver bullet cause, but there are plenty of hypotheses about factors which are impiicated.
Goodness, I’ve missed a lot. Especially OB’s comment about “the amenities.” What I like best is the free tea and coffee.
…not to mention the wit and wisdom.
Those few (?) UK readers who are as old as me will remember turning up to school one day and being given a sugar lump with a drop of medicine on it. No-one asked us if we wanted it and no-one suggested we could decide not to have it on any grounds, religious or otherwise. As a result, polio was eliminated in this country.
What’s the problem?
The problem is the elimination of polio. It’s an outrage! Bring back polio!
“As a result, polio was eliminated in this country.
What’s the problem?”
Well, that medicine might have slightly endangered 1/10000th of the people who would have otherwise been crippled or killed by polio. Therefore it is better to live with polio since it doesn’t hurt anyone for the greater good, it just kills and maims indiscriminately. See?
Me either.