Here is section 113 of the USA’s Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (free download), which became federal law in 2010. It outlines what the federal government’s responsibility is for protecting children, and how money will be given to prevent and treat child abuse.
But this section gives some parents license to abuse their children—on the grounds of religious belief:
Because of this (see my earlier post on this issue), 37 states, as well as Guam and Washington D.C., have laws preventing criminal prosecution of parents who withhold medical care from their children on religious grounds.
Note too that of all 50 US states, 48 (all except, curiously, Mississippi and West Virginia) also have laws that exempt children from vaccinations on religious grounds, while only 19 allow exemptions on “philosophical grounds.” There are no good reasons for exemption*, neither religious nor philosophical.
This unwarranted hatred of vaccination is echoed among Muslims in Pakistan and other places, who campaign against polio vaccination on religious grounds. It also shows a convergence between religious-healing pseudoscience and secular anti-vaxer pseudoscience. The problem is wider than religion: it’s faith.
These laws are enacted and supported not just by fundamentalists or faith-healers, but by moderate religionists. It is the most blatant example of how so-called “moderate” religion damages our society. Hundreds of children have died because their parents withheld medical treatment, relying instead on useless prayer and spiritual healing. If they are punished (under state law), it’s rare, and nearly always includes only a moderate fine or probation. That’s hardly a deterrent.
How many deaths will it take before we notice that this is a byproduct of a general sympathy toward religion, a sympathy buttressed by liberal believers?
________
UPDATE: There are sometimes good medical reasons for exemption based on things like preexisting conditions or allergies. See the CDC page on this, as one reader noted below.
“There are no good reasons for exemption, neither religious nor philosophical”.
Not on religious/philosophical grounds, but there are good reasons for exemption from vaccines.
Damned few, and they only apply specifically to specific vaccines and specific individuals for specific reasons. For example, a child with a severe allergy to eggs should not get a flu shot, but I don’t think there’s any caution against said child getting the nasal spray variation of the vaccine (but, of course, consult your physician!). Also, those with compromised immune systems should exercise caution.
However, those people rely upon the overwhelming majority of the healthy population being immunized in order to provide a firewall that prevents the diseases from spreading far enough for the unvaccinated to encounter them.
That’s even more true because vaccine aren’t 100% effective. Those who’ve been vaccinated but who, for whatever reason, did not get a significant immunological response from the vaccine are also at risk and also depend on the collective immune responses from the rest of the population for protection.
So, unless your primary care physician tells you otherwise, please, please, please, please, please, please make absolutely certain that you are current on all of your vaccinations. Schedule an appointment if you’re not sure.
Even if you have to pay out of pocket, it’s the cheapest insurance you can buy. For example, I’m too young for my insurance to cover the shingles vaccine…but I have no desire to experience what my father did, and my doctor had no problem with me getting it, so I paid a few pennies and that’s one less disease to worry about.
Cheers,
b&
I was referring to people with compromised immune systems (including those undergoing chemo or radiation therapy).
Legitimate medical grounds are actually even more of a reason to disregard bullshit philosophical/religious grounds.
People who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons have no defense but herd immunity, and anything that needlessly jeopardizes reaching herd immunity in the general population puts their lives and health at risk. You can bet the “conscientious objectors” don’t spare a thought for them.
Indeed. If everyone that CAN get vaccines, did so, then the people who can’t get them would most likely be protected. Also, some people that get certain vaccines, still might be susceptible to the disease (depending on the effectiveness). These people are also, for the most part, protected if everyone receives the vaccine. One area where this is important is with babies. They may not be old enough to be vaccinated and if they’re exposed to, say measles, they can die or have other severe complications. This is why it’s important to keep your B. pertussis immunity current. As an adult, you should get one Tdap shot in lieu of a td shot. Pertussis is making a comeback and immunity fades over time. Anyone who’s going to be a new parent or grandparent should update their shots (especially Tdap).
Yes, I’ve added a note and a link about the medical exemptions based on allergies or medical conditions.
…and people wonder why I’m an anti-theism-ist….
b&
+1
My wife used to wonder why I called myself an anti-theist. She no longer does. The internet and, particularly, stories of willful ignorance with regard to vaccinations are convincing her that it is a near-necessary stance to take until this nonsense goes away.
I have yet to hear of a judge or prosecutor in a death by faith healing case argue the notion that medical science is a god-given way to take care of ourselves. Maybe it would make too many heads explode.
It reminds me of the story of a man sitting out a flood. His neighbors offered him a ride when the rains started, be he said, “God will save me.” Later, some people in a boat offered to rescue him from his attic window and he said the same thing. Finally, a helicopter came by with an offer to lift him off his roof. He still refused, and drowned. When he stood at the gates of heaven, he said, Lord I trusted you. Why did you let me die. A great voice said, “I sent you a car, a boat and a helicopter. What more did you want?”
@mordacious1`, you’re going to need a lot more explaining to justify that statement. What are those reasons and why are they good?
Typo apology: “be he said” should have been “but he said”.
I refer you here:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/should-not-vacc.htm
Thank you for the link. Blanket statements like the one in your original post do not go over well here.
Absolutely disgusting, and these are the people that claim the moral high ground?? Their high all right.
Religious exemption for laws and health are anachronisms that need to be excised from legislation. No one should get a free pass.
+100
1++
Reblogged this on The Road.
As regards problems with vaccination programmes in Muslim countries the CIA has a lot to answer for.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-cia-fake-vaccination-campaign-endangers-us-all
God damn.
Those are war crimes the CIA has committed, as far as I’m concerned. It’s genocide of the same type the Church is committing in Africa.
Everybody who’s currently employed by either the CIA or the NSA or who has been for the past decade needs to spend decades, if not the rest of their lives, behind bars. They are the worst menace to civilization we face.
An overwhelming majority of our elected officials, especially the ones on the various intelligence committees, need to be their cellmates.
b&
“Note too that of all 50 US states, 48 (all except, curiously, Mississippi and West ” . . . have laws that exempt children from vaccinations on religious grounds, while only 19 allow exemptions on “philosophical grounds.”
What if some anti-vax Philistine declines to identify his “grounds,” be they religious or philosophical or whatever? Can a state compell him to state his grounds? If so, can he get by with merely uttering the one word answer, “religious,” regardless of whether he is a believer?
“This unwarranted hatred of vaccination is echoed among Muslims in Pakistan and other places, who campaign against polio vaccination on religious grounds.”
Not only do they merely campaign but also kill, if I correctly recall that what I’ve read is true.
“Blanket statements like the one in your original post do not go over well here.”
“There are no good reasons for exemption*, neither religious nor philosophical.”
Seems to depend on who’s blanket it is.
I have no truck with the anti-science anti-vaxers, but I have long held that a national vaccination policy (hint: that word policy) is a matter of politics, not science. It may be somewhat justified given the blind dogmatism of the anti-vaxers, to take a blindly dogmatic position in favor of vaccination, but I just don’t see it.
The issue for me has never been one of efficacy or supposed harms to individuals. Yes, vaccinations work and they only are really effective with mass participation. You get no argument from me on those scores.
But as a policy matter, there are, I think, valid questions of cost versus benefit. Certainly there are cases (think smallpox, where the disease is deadly and potentially widespread) where a mandatory vaccination program is entirely justified. But there are just as certainly other cases where the disease tends to be either very rare or generally mild (think chicken pox), where the efficacy of vaccination has to be measured against the costs to implement the program; costs both tangible and intangible.
There are very real material costs to manufacture and distribute serums. And there are social and political costs to supporting expensive programs that may help a increasingly smaller numbers of citizens while seeming to override highly valued personal liberties.
For my money, those who claim that there is zero room for rational disagreement on vaccination policy have not thought deeply about the subject at all, and are simply reacting on an emotional level to a currently polarized political situation.
It is possible to disparage the nonsense of the anti-vaxers without taking a dogmatic pro-vaccination stance. And it is possible to remain rational and question the attitude that vaccination programs are always and in every case (except for the noted medical contraindications) an unmitigated social good.
There are those who believe that saving even one single life, no matter what the cost, would make any vaccination program worth the effort and expense it entails. But that is a judgment of values not a judgment of science. I can respect anyone who adheres to those values and campaigns for vaccinations even if my own value judgement differs. But it is hard to respect the view of people who insist their own personal/political view of the matter is the only correct view (scientifically) while making proclamations regarding the insufficiency of any room for rational disagreement, even philosophical disagreement, i.e., disagreement on matters of value and policy, not efficacy.
Vaccination efficacy is an empirical matter. Whether we, as a society, ought to pay the costs (both social and material) of mandatory vaccination for every possible disease for which we can produce a vaccine, is not at all an empirical matter. I don’t see how you can claim there is no room for rational disagreement on what our social values ought to be.
The reason I said that was that mordacious1 said
without giving any examples of those “good reasons”. That’s something that doesn’t hold water no matter whose blanket is is. Without qualification, mordacious1 could just as easily meant, “because the sky is blue” or “because the moon orbits the earth”. This page exists to promote reason, and reason without reasons don’t count for much. I can’t speak for Professor Ceiling Cat, but I suspect he agrees. mordacious1 clarified his original comment with a link to the CDC.
I also see your point about cost vs. public benefit, but prefer to think that it is a result of medicine for private profit rather than medicine as public policy. I grew up taking vaccines for granted because both my parents saw family members succumb to easily preventable diseases and wanted for their children a world where that didn’t happen.
Yes, I get where you’re coming from and I think you were right to challenge mordacious1 to be more specific. I also note that Jerry’s statement was both challenged and corrected! Really, I like you guys and am a long time reader and sometime participant here.
Nevertheless, I sometimes cringe when the subject of vaccination comes up here. I just don’t think the issue is as cut and dried as it is made out to be by the anti-anti-vaxxer crowd.
So I try to give my good reasons and my best thinking on the subject. I’m glad you seem to get my point. I don’t really understand what you mean by “…prefer to think that it is a result of medicine for private profit rather than medicine as public policy.” Not sure what the “it” referes to or what difference that would make in your cost/benefit analysis…
But I would say that our private profit medical system is also a result of our public policy about which there is ample room for disagreement (as we see in the news every day concerning our current national health care system). Certainly the costs/benefits of our (actually hybrid private/public) system as it is has been endlessly compared to different sets of assumed costs/benefits for other proposed systems. We may choose which systems we think are best, but I see no criteria for declaring that only one is “rational”. Even if all parameters are operationalized, we still have to chose which ones to try to optimize. Personally I would optimize on health, not profit, but I realize others disagree).
And in the end it always comes down to our personal experiences. Thanks for telling about your family’s losses. I am certainly not saying that your position is irrational. I am a parent who elected in consultation with doctors and my spouse to selectively vaccinate my only child. I had never heard of the anti-vaxxers at the time. I naturally asked questions about the risks and potential benefits of each series and made what I considered to be the most informed choices I could make (based on empirical data, not faith). When I looked, in some cases the statistics and clinical trials showed a very small probability of harm (small chance of contracting the disease and small likelihood of harm if contracted) versus a substancial cost (not just dollar amount but other costs that would take many words to detail—there are both private and public costs; both social and material, and different costs when evaluated as social policy and as personal or family policy). I’m not trying to defend my actual choices. I’m just saying I engaged in the most rational process I know for decision making and I concluded that not every vaccination made sense to me given the data I had available. Other people can go through the same process and arrive at different conclusions because not everyone will evaluate the risks and the costs in the same way. I have no problem with that, but I hugely dislike comments that imply that because I chose not to accept every vaccination offered, that I am an ignorant and befuddled follower of woo…
I am open to rational arguments in favor of any particular vaccine. I could be swayed, even on values, by a sound argument that caused me to look at the matter differently. But I will never be swayed by an argument that looks to me like the following:
Because there are irrational people who are against vaccines, therefore being against vaccination is irrational and any parent who fails to vaccinate their children is not only irrational but a bad parent. I’m sorry, but it’s just not that simple. (I don’t mean to imply that you specifically have made that argument and I am quite certain that is not something Jerry would ever endorse—he is far too logical for that. But it is an attitude that many anti-anti-vaxxers do seem to hold and express with relative impunity here and on a number of sites I generally like to visit. It frustrates me that we don’t seem to be able to have a more nuanced discussion about the subject than “anti-vaxxers are stupid; vaccination rules!”
You wrote, “I’m not trying to defend my actual choices. I’m just saying I engaged in the most rational process I know for decision making and I concluded that not every vaccination made sense to me given the data I had available.”
Assuming you have more data available now, would you make the same decisions today? Your comment sounds like an extensive rationalization. Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but it sounds like you are justifying a past poor decision because it made sense at the time, based on the available data. And so you don’t want to judge others who make the same mistake. That’s understandable and I might agree if we were only talking about adults, but children should not have to suffer due to their parents’ or their doctors’ ignorance.
You raise a valid point, and I am aware that I may be rationalizing. It is difficult for us to see our own rationalizations for what they are; I know this. But I am not second guessing my past decisions. I do not think I made the wrong decisions (even if I would make a different one today). And that is rather on the side of my arguent anyway unless you wish to claim that no one can ever make a wrong decision by a rational process. Were I by some miracle to have another child today, I would go through the exact same process of investigating the options and looking at the current data. I would not asume the situation (the state of our knowledge) was the same as it was in the past. This might lead me to different conclusions, but maybe not. I don’t know how mutable health statistics tend to be. But I do think I would assign costs and benefits in a roughly similar way because my basic values have not changed very much.
Also, perhaps I have not been clear enough that different analyses apply to individual or family choices and to public policy. What I chose for my own family and what public policy I would endorse are two separate things. Even if I chose to accept all vaccinations for my own family, I might still baulk at mandatory vaccinations in all instances as public policy.
Out of curiosity, should one of your children develop a mild — perhaps even unnoticeable — case of whatever it is they’re not immunized against, and your child then passes that infection on to an immunosuppressed playmate who was not a suitable candidate for vaccination, would you feel comfortable attending that child’s funeral?
Cheers,
b&
Extreme hypotheticals can be tools to illuminate difficult moral issues, but I don’t think one ought to make day to day decisions, nor set national policy, based on them.
It’s not at all an extreme hypothetical.
According to the WHO, in 2008, a million and a half children under the age of five died of vaccine-preventable illnesses, and virtually every single one of those children contracted their infections from somebody who was not vaccinated.
If one of your child’s playmates was amongst those 1,500,000 dead, how would you feel about attending the funeral?
Cheers,
b&
I disagree with your analysis and conclusions. It is an infringement on your freedom or liberty to force you to vaccinate your children. It is also an infringement on your liberty to force you treat your child’s illness. But in a civilized society we accept some limitations on personal freedom. If your child has diabetes, you do not have the right to withhold insulin treatment and allow your child to needlessly suffer and die. You may say that government has no right to force you to puncture your child’s skin with a needle and inject an artificially derived chemical which can be deadly in high doses, but most of us do not want to live in a society which preserves that right. You say that there may be good, non-medical reasons to forego standard vaccinations. The burden is on you to provide those reasons. You have not do so. A parent’s ignorance and/or superstition is not a valid reason to injure a child. Without knowing the details of your personal situation, I can infer with a fairly high degree of confidence that you made a mistake regarding your own child’s vaccinations. It seems that you have learned from your mistake and appear unlikely to repeat it (if you could). You are arguing that others should be free to make the same mistake. I disagree. We (the medical community) know the right answer – which is to vaccinate when there is no medical contraindication. It is not civilized to allow citizens to harm their children in the name of “freedom.” This is the whole point of Jerry’s original post.
Absolutely — but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Child abuse is horrific, but, as terrible as it is, spreading infectious diseases to other people and their children is far, far worse. Any arguments one might be able to make for Christian Scientists to have the right to deny treatment for their children, invalid as said arguments assuredly are, don’t even apply to questions of vaccination.
When you fail to vaccinate your yourself or your child for anything other than the recognized reasons (severe allergy to eggs or another vaccine component, an immune system compromised such as by AIDS or chemotherapy, etc.), you’re not just putting yourself or your child at risk of infection. You’re putting everybody at risk, especially including those not eligible for vaccination.
We have seatbelt and child seat laws, which is the parallel to the restriction on “freedom” for parents with respect to their own children.
But we have far, far more serious laws against drunk driving, and that’s the analogy that really applies.
You have no moral right and no legal freedom to jeopardize the lives of innocents around you by driving drunk. You also have no moral right (but, sadly, you do have the legal freedom) to jeopardize the lives of innocents around you by turning yourself and your children into toxic infestations of contagious diseases.
Cheers,
b&
Yes, well I agree with you. But even you qualify your statements: “in a civilized society we accept some limitations on personal freedom.” You find it necessary to qualify the limitations we accept with the word “some”. Why is that? It’s because we make an analysis, consciously or not, of the benefits and costs of those limitations, we don’t just take them as given. I don’t claim to have all the answers. I simply claim to be a rational agent who sees room for disagreement on vaccination policy. Note I said ‘rational’, not ‘infallible’.
You wrote: “You find it necessary to qualify the limitations we accept with the word ‘some’. ”
Actually, I don’t. That sentence would work just fine without the word “some.”
Anyway, I think we’re getting a little lost and sidetracked. Your position is this – A rational argument can be made for withholding recommended vaccinations. {Where “recommended” means “age appropriate and not medically contra-indicated.”}
You support that position by saying that there are costs which must be weighed against the benefits of vaccination. But you will not tell us what those costs are. Even if you are right about there being a rational argument, it would be irrational to agree with you based on your comments here, which amount to “I don’t want to get into the specifics; just trust me.”
You wrote: “You find it necessary to qualify the limitations we accept with the word ‘some’. ”
Actually, I don’t. That sentence would work just fine without the word “some.”
Anyway, I think we’re getting a little lost and sidetracked. Your position is this – A rational argument can be made for withholding recommended vaccinations. {Where “recommended” means “age appropriate and not medically contra-indicated.”}
You support that position by saying that there are costs which must be weighed against the benefits of vaccination. But you will not tell us what those costs are. Even if you are right about there being a rational argument, it would be irrational to agree with you based on your comments here, which amount to “I don’t want to get into the specifics; just trust me.”
And yet the dollar cost is the only one you specifically mention. I’d be very interested in a rundown of all those other costs you allude to.
I did specifically mention the cost of degrading the personal freedom that is so important to many citizens of the U.S., but I mention that in another post below so you perhaps didn’t see it. I didn’t want to get into explicating what I see to be the social costs, because it is a very complex subject. (I think I also mentioned political costs, which are distinct from social costs.) A book could easily be written on the social and political costs of vaccinations and public policy, and every individual will assign costs and benefits idiosyncratically. I am not interested in pushing my particular values here. I am just asking people to recognize that there is a values issue that is dogmatically dismissed by the claim “there are no good arguments against …”
If you don’t know what I mean by social and political costs, ask again and I will try to clarify out of respect for you, but if you are only interested in my idiosyncratic cost assignments, I appreciate your interest, but I don’t want to get into that. Discussing the specific costs I would account for, or how I would assign them is wide of the mark for this post. (I would very much like to have that discussion in the future, perhaps when the host broaches the subject in a post such as “What are the social and political costs of mandatory vaccination programs and when are those costs worth paying?”). Let us first try to establish that there may be room for rational disagreement on vaccination policy before we get into the details of how to compare policies.
Jamie wrote:
Chicken pox is an interesting example. A study, published in the journal Pediatrics, concluded, “The results show an annual savings of $100 million since the varicella, or chicken pox, vaccine was introduced. The hospital bill savings were considerable for Medicaid and private insurers, and ultimately for the taxpayers, employers and employees who pay for that coverage.” The savings don’t include other chicken pox costs, such as doctor visits, prescription drugs, over-the-counter remedies or lost work time for parents or adult patients.
There are no good arguments against mandatory vaccinations, but trying to make an economic argument is among the worst.
Thank you for the link. I will take a look at it and it will perhaps change my mind. But I wonder at your confidence in declaring there are no good arguments, including economic ones. I can accept that there are no good arguments of which you are aware. I can also accept that my own cost/benefit argument may be fatally flawed and I may have made the wrong choices in the past based on bad data or a bad theoretical framework and I may have to recant and adjust. But there are many ways to assign costs and benefits, which is kind of my point originally. They are assigned on the basis of values and there is always room for honest disagreement on values.
Since you are an unapologetic proponent of mandatory varicella vaccination (if I read you right) then tell me what value did you assign to personal liberty in your analysis and what cost of abrogating it for the public savings of 100 million (pocket change in the economy of the U.S.)?
The $100 million is not in relation to the entire US economy, but to the cost of vaccinations, which was your point. That the cost outweighed the benefit. That is false. As far as what value do I assign to your personal liberty, I feel that it is far outweighed by the danger you put your child in by withholding vaccines. You can make the same argument that your personal liberty is abrogated if you are forced to use modern medical care instead of prayer for your child. In such cases, as in withholding vaccines from children, I assign a value of zero to your personal liberty.
Even if you assign a value of zero to personal liberty, you must be aware that there are other people who would assign it a higher value. You must, therefore, see that a disagreement over values can lead people to different conclusions concerning vaccinations and that your statement “there are no good arguments” is simply a dogmatic assertion of your values. You certainly have a right to make your dogmatic assertions, and I have a right to point out that they are dogmatic assertions and not rational arguments in their own right, and that rational people can disagree on this matter.
Personal liberty must have a value of 0 whenever the rights of others are violated. This is the case in vaccination.
That is a very simplistic view. We have a Supreme Court that is empowered to adjudicate cases where there are competing rights. It is not always so simple as “your rights end where my nose begins”. Sometimes, yes, that is the case. But if we lived in the simple world you describe, we would not have national controversies such as we have over abortion.
There are people on either side of the abortion debate who would like to erase the rights on the opposing side. As a society we are very uncomfortable with trying to balance these rights. If the state has a duty to protect children from parents who oppose vaccination, does it not have a similar duty to protect unborn children from abortion? Or is the moral argument for vaccination made solely on the grounds of the need for herd immunity? You can say, within your value system, the liberty of parents to direct the treatment their children receive is zero under certain conditions. I have no argument with that. As it happens, that is true under my value system as well. But you and I may not define those “certain conditions” in precisely the same way. One of us may be more risk averse than the other. One of us may have more resources available to pay the costs imposed than the other. Questions of policy are often difficult for this reason. There is seldom a single policy (or a sigle perfect law) that justly resolves all cases. That’s why we have case law.
Many people here have offered up extreme hypothetical challenges and I am frankly not up to answering all of them. I can only reiterate my point: I believe that where the benefit is likely to be small and the cost likely to be large, a mandatory vaccination policy could be a costly mistake. This really has nothing to do with rights and noses….
If I may be allowed to offer my own absurd hypotheticals by way of example, would you support mandatory vaccination for a disease that has never led to anyone’s death? If the cost were $500.00 per injection? If the cost of administering the vaccination program caused cancer research to be defunded? If the vaccine efficacy was less than 50%? Less than 10%? If the cost was $1000.00 per injection and there was no government assistance to cover the costs? Should people be forced into bankruptcy to pay for state ordered vaccinations that may save no lives or perhaps one life? How about three lives? Or ten? Where do you draw the lines?
Suppose 100 million children are vaccinated and then 200,000 of them die from malnutrition because the government decided to cut the food stamp program when, after fully funding the vaccination program it was decided that the deficit was too high?
It is always possible to push the extremes of hypotheticals to the point where anyone would baulk. Why is it so hard to imagine that other people might make different valuations without going to such extremes?
Please, for the love of all that’s unholy, do not sidetrack this into an abortion debate!
Would you care to offer an example of a vaccine you think does not withstand a reasonable cost / benefit analysis? You earlier suggested that the chickenpox vaccine might be one, but even back-of-the-envelope math shows that universal vaccination would cost less than even a single year’s losses due to the disease.
I am unaware of any vaccines that cost $500 per dosage, let alone $1000. The most expensive vaccine the CDC has listed is the shingles vaccine, at just over $11 / dose for CDC prices. I personally paid for that one for myself out-of-pocket a few years ago as my insurance wouldn’t cover it, and I think it cost me something like $70 to get it at my doctor’s office — and, knowing what I now know about how medical pricing works, I probably could have haggled that down below $50, maybe even to below $20 if I could plead financial distress. I doubt my doctor paid more than $18 for it.
So, do tell. What are these insanely expensive vaccines that protect against nothing worse than the sniffles?
Cheers,
b&
Jamie wrote:
But you have made no rational arguments. Your rationalizations include unspecified “social costs”, which are apparently too complicated to explain, since it would take a whole book to detail them. And “political costs”, whatever they may be. The only political angle is that politicians fear organized religion so much they will not oppose the exemption that religion enjoys. And you feel your personal liberty is infringed upon if you do not have complete and utter control over your children, in spite of their medical needs. This is the same argument that Sen Dan Burton, R-IN, made on the Senate floor, when CAPTA, (quoted in the OP), was up for reauthorization. That parents have a First Amendment right to withhold medical treatment from their children. You may agree with this, but that does not make it a rational argument.
Jamie wrote:
Of course, there is no mandatory vaccination policy in the US, nor is there any push to institute one. There is a requirement for a minimal amount of vaccinations in order for children to attend public school, but that is a far cry from a mandatory policy. All 50 states allow exemptions for legitimate medical reasons, and 48 states allow an exemption in order to cater to the religious beliefs of the parents. This, I assume, is the “personal liberty” that you are so intent on protecting. The liberty to put your child, and other children, at risk of infectious diseases because of a parents’ beliefs. That liberty is already protected. Still waiting for you to name some of the “social costs” of vaccinations that you claim are so obvious.
There is no personal liberty issue. By not being vaccinated you are a threat to all around you, and you have no right whatsoever to threaten your fellow citizens.
When substantial numbers of people go unvaccinated for serious diseases, the probably of deadly epidemics approaches 1. If there is a good reason that society should allow you to go unvaccinated (allergy, or whatever)then that’s a special favor granted. It’s not a favor that should be granted more often than necessary, and certainly never for frivolous reasons such as religious belief.
Crap, that reminds me that I forgot to ask my doctor about getting MMR vaccine. I can’t remember what I was vaccinated against & I had Rubella as a kid already….don’t think I had mumps but with all the unvaccinated, I want to look into those new fancy ones I might’ve missed since I was no longer a kid when they came out.
You can do a blood test to check your titers and see what you are immunized against and what you need boosters for. If you haven’t had a tetanus shot in the last ten years, you are probably due for that. And of course, if you haven’t gotten the flu shot yet this year, you should do that right away.
I’ve reacted badly to the flu shot in the past and gotten really sick. I have a bizarre immune system and we don’t know why – it is weak but tends, at the same time, to attack anything resembling an illness in thermonuclear style. I may try it again but I have to get over all the illnesses I’ve currently had because you get so sick if you get the shot while sick.
Damn — that’s not good.
And, unfortunately, it might mean you’re all that much more vulnerable to the flu if you get hit with the full, live, real infection.
Which is why I hope everybody you interact with has been vaccinated, and that you recover quickly enough to get a shot for yourself.
(A thought…might a different dosing regimen or the nasal spray be appropriate for you? If you haven’t asked your doctor about that, it’s worth a phone call….)
b&
Yeah, I do get really sick if I get sick. I’ve sometimes been sick with colds for months that wax and wane. Flus knock me out. I get very angry with people coming to work sick when they can just as easily work from home. My parents get vaccinated every year. I think the nasal stuff is pretty much the same as the shot, it’s just for people who hate needles….they give them to kids a lot. I may try it again this year (the last two times I got it, I was sick for months and had a rash). I used to get them when I was a teen because I got sick a lot (due to bad eating habits) and never reacted like that but things went bad once I passed thirty, I suspect from chronic work stress.
The flu nasal spray vaccine is a live attenuated virus. The shot is a dead virus. That’s the big difference. The shot CANNOT give you the flu. The nasal spray can cause a milder, flu-like reaction. You may be better off with the shot. Even if it has happened twice, unfortunate coincidence is probably more likely to explain your situation than adverse reaction. Of course, it is not impossible that your immune system over-reacts to the vaccine and you feel ill, but it is still probably better than actually getting the flu. Also, if you have any contact with the very old, very young, or immunocompromised, you should definitely get vaccinated.
Oh no, believe me the last time I got sick from the reactions I was really ill. Bedridden for a week and throwing up. I almost went to the hospital! This happened both years I got the shot (dead virus).
There still might be other options, such as giving you a series of smaller doses instead of a single full-strength one.
Hope it works out….
b&
Would you mind telling us the other vaccines that you decided not to give your children? I’m particularly interested in this subject and am an anti anti-vaccination person (just to be upfront).
BTW, I worked (many decades ago) in a microbiology/virology/parasitology lab at a major children’s hospital. I remember one case where a high school student (who did not have the vaccine or contract chicken pox when younger) got exposed to VZV. I was there when they brought him in, saw him eventually bloat up to twice his size, turn black and basically rot. I was with him when he died. I also assisted the pathologist in the autopsy. It wasn’t a pleasant experience for anyone involved. It was the only case where I had nightmares (for years) and I often watched the pathologist saw-open newborn’s skulls. Chicken pox can kill older kids and adults. Vaccines can prevent those deaths. I’m very pro vaccination.
Im sorry it was a long time ago and I cannot with certainty list precisely which vaccines we got and which we declined without looking up the records.
Please understand that I am not saying there is no benefit to vaccinations. I am saying that there are also costs and they must be accounted for. What you experienced must have been horrific. By all means continue to advocate for vaccinations. But please recognize arguments from personal painful experience as what they are. It is not necessarily rational to impose society wide measures to mitigate the personal pain of a few people. And I am not saying either that it is wrong to do so—I am saying that it is a matter of judgment, open to honest (not woo) disagreement.
I do not mean to minimize your pain. Stories like yours can be very persuasive and certainly need to be in the mix when weighing costs and benefits. But when I go to the doctor, I might want to know the worst case scenario, but I also want to know the probabilities. For instance, my daughter recently went for an evaluation for wisdom teeth extraction. It is not enough for the doctor to frighten us with horror stories of all the horrible possible results from not having the teeth extracted. We also want to know the percent of cases where these horrible outcomes actually occur. When the doctor says “sometimes X (some bad result) follows the extraction” I want to know more than “sometimes” I want to know what percent of cases, and what percent in his practice particularly. We don’t say, well, sometimes this bad thing can happen so we aren’t going to get the teeth extracted. And we don’t say, well this bad thing could happen if we don’t get them extracted so we have to do it right away! We weigh the risks and potential benefits. And sometimes we get it wrong. My mother-in-law went in for an elective heart valve replacement, sufferd a stroke in surgery; was two years in rehab and never was the same again. My brother went in for esophageal surgery; they nicked his artery and he is sitting at home unemployable, half blind, weak as a kitten and barely able to slur enough words out to get his most basic needs attended to over a year later. There’s plenty of painful emotion to go around. I don’t argue because of these experiences that doctors can’t be trusted or surgery ought to be avoided. But I do recognize that every medical procedure is a calculated risk. The risk pays off more often than not, and that is the glory of medical science. We don’t make public policy decisions based solely on painful personal experience.
Those stories are repeated millions of times a year, just amongst babies under the age of five.
Anything further I can think of to add to that simple statement would be a gross violation of Da Roolz — though, I admit, I do think this would most emphatically be a case where such a violation would be justified.
b&
When it comes to infectious diseases, especially those under discussion, the only civilized options are vaccination, special dispensation for those ineligible, or quarantine. And quarantine being impractical and damned expensive, I fully support involuntary vaccination instead.
Your right to swing your fist ends not only at the tip of my nose, but well before. Your right to risk infection ends the moment you wish to step out in public and place others at risk.
Sorry, but humanity has suffered enough plagues. You’re not important enough to be granted the choice to play Typhoid Mary. Nobody is.
Cheers,
b&
I thought America was supposed to be the land of the free.
Are you seriously suggesting that people who choose not to be vaccinated – for any reason – should be restrained by the state and forcibly injected against their will? How totalitarian!
If it sounds as though I am supporting the anti-vaxers, I am not. Education and persuasion can be powerful tools but if they fail what more can be done? What kind of country forcibly medicates its citizens en masse?
Opinions here tend to be left liberal in nature. Could it be that some of the people who support the legalisation of recreational drugs on the basis that it is for the individual to decide what they put into their own bodies might be the very same people who would deny others that choice where vaccination is concerned?
Harm to others is the key issue. Think on it.
You don’t have the freedom to run a latrine along your sidewalk. You don’t have the freedom to butcher diseased livestock on your driveway.
And you especially don’t have the freedom to spray aerosolized biowarfare agents into a crowded room.
Yet, if you’re not vaccinated, and you get infected and sneeze, the latter is exactly what you’re doing.
Until recently, this hasn’t been a problem. People have understood the horrors of infectious diseases and the benefits of vaccination.
But, ironically, thanks to vaccination, too many people fail to appreciate just how healthy they are, and what little holds plague at bay.
If you object to an invasion of your precious bodily fluids with mandatory vaccination, I’ll consent to an alternative. You may be locked in an isolation ward for a period of one month. You will be provided with good food, hotel-like accommodations, and the like. On the first day, you will be exposed through typical vectors to every infectious agent for which you refuse vaccination. For example, aerosolized microbes will be released into the room for diseases that spread by sneezing. You will only be provided with palliative care for any infections you develop — analgesics or narcotics or the like. If you test negative for the infectious agents at the end of the month, you will be permitted to rejoin the population.
Of course, only a very small minority will survive such a regimen at all, and few of the remainder will be disease-free.
Now, you’re probably horrified by my proposed alternative. But the horror I have just suggested as an alternative to vaccination for you is the exact horror that you insist you have the right to inflict upon the rest of the population rather than submit to a simple vaccination.
So, yeah. Call me a vaccination totalitarian if that makes you feel happy.
But civilization cannot tolerate Typhoid Mary running amok — and especially not when a quick jab is all that it takes to make her safe.
Cheers,
b&
If you and your family and friends have all been vaccinated against the aerosol I am spraying into the room when I sneeze, what harm am I doing to you?
You have quite rightly stated that until recently it has not been a problem because people have understood the horrors of infectious disease and the benefits of vaccination. If that is no longer the case then there is clearly an urgent need for education. I am sure we can agree on that.
Where we differ is on the forceful violation of someone’s body with intent to introduce a foreign substance against their will. Even if it is for the benefit of the individual or society that is a step too far in all but the most exceptional of circumstances. Routine vaccination is not an exceptional circumstance that can justify this sort of personal invasion. It is frightening to think that there are educated, intelligent, free people who think otherwise.
I suggest such people spend a moment thinking about what freedom actually means and whether there might be a need for education about its benefits too.
Seriously?
First, not everybody is a candidate for vaccination, with those most vulnerable to infection being the ones most likely to suffer an adverse reaction.
Second, not everybody who receives a vaccination gains immunity from it.
That’s why what’s most important about vaccinations is not the benefit to the individual, but the herd immunity that creates firewalls everywhere to prevent the spread.
When a high enough percentage of the population — the overwhelming majority — is vaccinated, there aren’t any more outbreaks and, in short order, the pathogen goes extinct. See smallpox for the textbook example. We were almost there with polio, too, until the anti-civilization campaigns started interfering.
Without herd immunity, though, the diseases still extract an heavy toll, just not quite so heavy.
I really am utterly confounded as to how anybody could possibly be so antisocial, so uniformed, so lacking in empathy, or just so plain pig-headed as to think that their fear of needles is more important than the eradication of infectious diseases. I really just don’t get it.
b&
Everyone has the right to do whatever they want with their own bodies as long as they don’t harm anyone else. That is why it’s OK with me if you smoke a joint in your room, but not if you drive a car on a public street while high, nor if you are not vaccinated, since in the last two cases you put other people at risk.
Arguments like yours are exactly what some satirist would write in a caricature of the libertarian position, but, sadly, I think you are serious.
I agree with your first sentence but I would add “or anything else” to explicitly include harm to animals.
The trouble is, who defines harm? You seem to think taking illegal drugs is harm free and refusing vaccinations is harmful because it suits your case.
Few things we do have no impact on those around us so it is far from black and white. Each action must be judged on its merits.
But that requires some thought. Much safer to stick to your fashionable leftist views and ignore anything which might upset them.
“I agree with your first sentence but I would add “or anything else” to explicitly include harm to animals.”
Maybe I am so morally advanced that I see animals as “anyone” and not “anything”. 🙂
“The trouble is, who defines harm? You seem to think taking illegal drugs is harm free and refusing vaccinations is harmful because it suits your case.”
Read what I wrote. You are becoming your own caricature. I obviously think taking illegal drugs is harmful, which I said it is OK if you do it in your room and not where you can harm someone else as a result. Yes, I think people have the right to harm themselves. Refusing vaccinations kills babies (and other people who cannot get vaccinated). Just a bit of research shows that the evidence that this is the case is overwhelming, and also that harm from vaccines is much less than harm from refusing them. If you think that it morally responsible to aid and abet the killing of innocent people, please do the world a favour and overdose on illegal drugs.
“You’re not important enough to be granted the choice to play Typhoid Mary.”
I agree, and I would never ask for the “right” to harm other people in this way. But there are a spate of posts here since yesterday that assert their author’s personal stand on vaccinations that maximize the benefits and minimize the costs arbitrarily. If you look only at the case of typhoid (or smallpox—the worst cases) and think of the cost as nothing “quick jab is all that it takes”, then conclude that vaccination is, in every case, an unmitigated social good about which there is no room for disagreement, you end up arguing for public policy on an unsound basis. You have not done an honest evaluation of costs and benefits on a case by case.
Like it or not, we live in a society that wages war with a concept of “acceptable losses” and assigns dollar amounts to the value of human lives. We have a medical system that is driven by profit motive. We have a political tradition that emphasizes personal liberty. I submit that, in this context, it is not trivial to do a rational analysis of the costs and benefits of various mandatory vaccination programs.
I have already stipulated that in cases of virulent deadly diseases, my opinion is we ought to vaccinate as a matter of public policy, not personal predilection. My position is simply that a rational approach to vaccination policy does not arbitrarily maximize the harms of disease (not every disease is virulent and deadly) and the benefits of vaccination (actual health benefits may shrink compared to opportunities for profit taking) while minimizing (or discounting altogether) the costs (costs nothing but a moments discomfort).
In my opinion, a rational approach looks at the actual costs and benefits (not arbitrary extremes), some of which are empirical (the dollar amounts spent and saved) and some of which are intangible (social and political costs that are matters of judgment, not easily quantifiable). Because those intangibles exist, no matter what your personal stand is, there is room for rational disagreement on the matter. You may assert your preference with all the passion you can muster and tear your hair out over the unbelievable stupidity of those who don’t concur, but you can’t claim to have the only rational position, or even the most rational one, until you start making distinctions between the various diseases and accounting for as many of the costs as it is possible to identify. The fact that your most visible opposition, the anti-vaxxers, are clearly off the deep end irrational, does not automatically make your position rational. The costs/benefits for smallpox is not the same as for varicella and will not be the same for vacines that may yet be developed for even milder diseases. It is a leap of blind faith to take the model of smallpox and assume that model applies to every conceivable infectious disease and that the benefits of vaccination necessarily outweigh the costs in every conceivable case (especially when the complete costs are difficult to assess). And it is something else again to assume that your own assignment of costs and benefits is the only possible rational one.
Now it is quite possible that I have underestimated the harms of varicella, and I may be over estimating the costs of a mandatory varicella vaccination program. I don’t think so, but if I did, the proper argument to make, I think, would be to emphasize the harms of the disease and the affordability of vaccination for the particular case, not to make sweeping statements about the benefits of vaccination in general (exaggerated by focusing on worst case diseases) out weighting the costs (minimized by discounting costs you are willing to pay, as if everyone ought to be equally willing, just because… or in your case above, by comparing them to more costly measures such as quarantine—when has anyone ever been quarantined for varicella?). There is no need to argue the state’s right to impose measures for the public good, which is not under dispute (at least not by me).
An illness which may be mild in one person, could be deadly in someone else. The pediatricians and family doctors who recommend and administer vaccinations do not profit from them. The whole “big pharma profit motive” argument is anti-vax propaganda. You keep mentioning the non-montary “costs,” but you have not given any examples. I don’t think they exist. Can you give us an example? I don’t think anyone here has made the argument that our position is “rational” because the anti-vaxxers are irrational. We have given good, compelling arguments based on personal and public health. Your argument is that there are mysterious social “costs” that we are ignoring. What are these costs?
From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
The average hospital stay costs about $10,000. Just in terms of hospital expenses averted, that’s a hundred million dollars. If we assume three days of lost pay at $10 / hour per person, times four million people, that’s a billion dollars. We’re up to $1.3 billion per year and we haven’t even considered the dollar figure to assign to the hundreds dead.
The CDC pays about $6.00 per adult dose of Varicella vaccine. (Or $10 for the pediatric MMR/Varicella vaccine.) There are about 300 million Americans. It would cost just about $1.3 billion to vaccinate every American.
For less than a single year’s toll from chickenpox, we can eradicate the disease.
…and you have the nerve to suggest we can’t afford it!
The same basic math applies to basically every vaccine on the market. There is no more cost effective medical treatment on the face of the earth, period. Even at ten times the price, it’d still be a bargain.
b&
That’s fine, and thank you for looking up the statistics. But as far as what we can afford, tell it to the GOP who don’t think we can afford food stamps for the 45 millions currently living below the poverty line. I didn’t say we can’t afford a varicella vaccination program, I said, when deciding to support a particular program one has to weigh the costs and benefits. One of the political costs is getting the GOP to sign on and fund the thing, preferably without robbing Peter to pay Paul. When you figure out how to do that (and what it costs us politically), let me know.
There are over 300 million people in this country. So is it your judgment that 100% should be forcibly injected to save ~.00000033….%/year? If so I wouldn’t say you are wrong, but I would say that’s your opinion. Notice that we already have a varicella vaccination program that seems to be working quite well by your own citations. And someone else might think of other things to do with 1.3 billion or focus their energies on bringing down those ridiculously high hospital fees. I’m not asking you to adopt my stance. I’m just asking that you acknowledge that rational people might disagree on this.
I don’t think forcing everyone into a mandatory program is the best way to deal with the problem of anti-science religious holdouts.
Eliminating varicella is a worthy goal that I wholeheartedly endorse, but it is far from my highest priority and I would not pursue it with no regard to costs. Mandating health measures is a powerful tool that can easily be abused and represents to me a considerable cost. The benefits of eliminating varicella, while significant for a very small proportion of society, are small overall.
“The CDC pays about $6.00 per adult dose of Varicella vaccine.” But it will cost me $100.00 minimum for an office visit to my family physician, plus the $6.00 cost to manufacture, plus whatever the physician (or insurer) decides to markup… If you think the vaccine should be made available at cost (or for free!), I will readily agree with you. If you think that $6.00 cost is what people will actually pay for it, I have to disagree. A cost benefit analysis has to be a true accounting, not a fantasy. If the CDC distributes the vaccine for free, then that $6.00 per dose represents a social cost (it is paid from the public till). If the CDC sells doses, then the social cost (of production) diminishes, but the personal cost to consumers rises. In either case one has to account separately for the social and personal costs, but both have to be accounted for. And there are distribution costs. The figures you offer are a good start, but they are only a start.
You asked for a financial accounting. I showed how a very conservative estimate of the financial harms in one year equals the wholesale cost of the vaccine. Increase those wholesale costs tenfold and it’s still a runaway financial success.
That we have a fucked-up healthcare system such that you think have a $100 minimum fee to receive $10 in services has about as much bearing on the “debate” over the financial benefits from vaccination as your other attempt to derail this into a debate on abortion.
And, if you’re really shelling out $100 for each vaccination, you’re seriously letting yourself get ripped off. Pharmacies offer vaccinations at reasonable costs. I had to pay out-of-pocket and then submit paperwork this year for my flu shot. Cost me $18 cash at the pharmacy counter of the nearest supermarket. The CDC says the private sector cost / dose is in the $10 range. That’s hardly a tenfold profit margin.
Cheers,
b&
Oh, and do you conclude that if the economic argument fails in the case of varicella that it must necessarily fail in every case? Even if your argument on the economics of varicella holds up, that does not justify your conclusion that “There are no good arguments against mandatory vaccinations”. It would not even justify a conclusion that there are no good economic arguments against vaccinations. In fact, I am at a loss in trying to imagine how one would justify that statement. The fact that it seems unjustifiable to me is what led me to post in the first place.
I read the article you linked to. It’s just a news report, not the actual study (too bad—I will look for it this weekend at a medical library I know of). In the meantime, I will just point out the following from the article: “the yearly hospital cost savings alone are enough to pay for a large portion of the total cost of vaccinating all American kids”. Now I’m sure you didn’t mean to mislead, but your post rather implied that the 100 millions “savings” was a final tally of a cost/benefits analysis. But here we see that the 100 millions in hospitalizations savings did not even fully cover the material costs of a full vaccination program (never mind the social costs which are left out of the account entirely).
This is the sort of thing that leads me to conclude that your bold pronouncements are dogmatic and emotive. I’m sure your heart is in the right place, but your argument is unpersuasive. The information on the economics of varicella, however, is most welcome and very valuable. I thank you for the link.
What are these “social costs” that you harp on? You seem to feel you’re losing your personal liberty unless you can deny your child medical care. That’s a “social cost” I can live with.
“You seem to feel you’re losing your personal liberty unless you can deny your child medical care. That’s a ‘social cost’ I can live with.”
This is exactly the point. Absolute freedom is anarchy. If you feel that strongly that you want/need the freedom to harm your (and others’) children by withholding medical care, then you look seriously into relocating to another country.
This is part of the social contract. You do not have the freedom to drive drunk. You do not have the freedom to walk down the street shooting guns. You do not have the freedom to withhold insulin from your diabetic child. And you do not (should not) have the freedom to withhold appropriate vaccinations.
The fact that so many otherwise rational people can’t see that there is no substantial difference between the four examples I just gave is a testament to power of anti-vax propaganda.
We have a scientifically driven, but open to democratic comment, process for determining what vaccines go on the mandatory vaccination schedule. That completely addresses the concerns you are raising here.
I believe the chicken pox vaccine is not on the mandatory schedule yet in most places, that discussion is ongoing.
If anything, the process is too democratic and open to idiot objections, as the HPV vaccine fiasco demonstrates.
I don’t see how the democratic process we use to determine mandatory vaccine schedules “completely addresses” my concern that the anti-anti-vaxxer crowd seems overly dogmatic and closed minded. I expressed no concern with our democratic process that I’m aware of. And clearly the whole thrust of Jerry’s article is that personal freedom is still widely protected and exemptions to mandatory vaccination relatively easy to get. I don’t think you have grasped what my concern is.
“But as a policy matter, there are, I think, valid questions of cost versus benefit. Certainly there are cases (think smallpox, where the disease is deadly and potentially widespread) where a mandatory vaccination program is entirely justified. But there are just as certainly other cases where the disease tends to be either very rare or generally mild (think chicken pox), where the efficacy of vaccination has to be measured against the costs to implement the program; costs both tangible and intangible.”
You seem to think the current system does not take cost/benefit analysis in to account. I disagree. I think the way the mandatory schedule is determined is an open, empirical and democratic one that takes safety, efficacy, and cost/benefit into account.
If you disagree, then what vaccines on the schedule would you see removed?
Further, since the process is open, emprical, cautious, and subject to public criticism, mandatory vaccination is not the huge threat to personal liberty you make it out to be but rather just another part of the social contract, like paying taxes or jury duty. We’re all in this together, and we can determine common requirements for every citizen in a fair, careful, and democratic way.
The concerns you raised are already adequately addressed by the current system. The reason everyone else sounds like a pro-vaccination absolutist to you is they are interested in real problems with the US vaccination system, not phantoms.
This is a very sensible post that deserves a better answer than I can give it. I’m sorry but I didn’t mean to open this can of worms and I can’t spend all my time fending off every objection raised in response to what I have already posted. I’ve been doing nothing else all day.
But I think the reason everyone else sounds like a pro-vaccination absolutist to me is that they have a single stereotype of an ignorant faithiest in mind whenever they hear any hint that mandatory vaccination might not be the best way to deal with all infectious diseases. There are a number of posts here that I didn’t even consider answering because they make such obviously wrong assumptions about me and clearly didn’t read what I wrote with any care or discrimination. I very much appreciate those of you who did consider what I’ve said, and made decent attempts to persuade me. I promise I will give everything I read here serious thought.
I am not unhappy with our current democratic process. I sense a great unhappiness and impatience in the push for mandatory vaccination as a reaction to religious non participation. It seems to me that many posters here (not me) are the ones unhappy with our democratic system as it stands. I do not think vaccinations are evil. To those who couldn’t be bothered to discern my line of reasoning, I have nothing more to say. To the rest, I expect the subject will come up again, and perhaps I will be better informed about the actual state of public health and less concerned with theoreticals.
I can’t recall from reading your comments whether you yourself have had the chickenpox. Have you? Mumps?
I had both by the second grade during the early 60’s. Between the two of them I was out for approximately three weeks. Thank goodness I had such a wonderful grandmother to take up the slack, what with my widowed mother not being able to take off from work. Not all children are fortunate to have such a safety net.
Having had to put up with the ordeal of these infections, I confess that I would have liked to have been vaccinated for – and thereby avoided – both, had vaccines been available.
Suppose a parent declines to get his/her offspring immunized for these two particular diseases, and the offspring gets them, and some years later as an adult lambasts the parent for that decision. What reasonable and appropriate response do you recommend the parent make to the child?
Just curious – what is your position on the socialization of costs (which if I corectly recall you referenced in a previous posting) and the exploitation of the results by privatization of profit by science know-nothing venture capitalists when it comes to, for example, Big Pharma and Biotech?
There wasn’t any chickenpox vaccine when I was young. When the neighbor girl got it, my parents encouraged me to spend time with her so I’d catch it and thus gain immunity.
I only got one pock from it, on my outer left shoulder. Still have the scar.
But I do believe that was the most miserable case of flu-like symptoms I’ve ever had, at least as bad as a likely case of valley fever when I was at university. And it’s one of the less fuzzy memories I have from when I was grade-school-aged.
My parents did the right thing; that was the least worst course of action available at the time.
But, today, now that we have the vaccine, merely putting a vaccine-eligible child at risk for such torture and misery by failing to vaccinate on schedule is, unquestionably, child abuse and endangerment every bit as bad as a severe beating.
How parents can even think to do such horrible things to their children — and then later to brag about it in public! — is utterly beyond me.
b&
This could come back to bite the parents, since mumps, at least, can affect a boy’s testicles and cause testicular atrophy (in about 15% of cases) and, though rarely, sterility. A failure to vaccinate could lead to a lack of grandchildren.
Whatever the position of much of the Muslim World relative to vaccination, the powers that be in Syria have instituted a program of vaccination against polio after several cases of the disease were diagnosed.
http://goo.gl/c1uYeD
Sec. 113. a. Child has no rights.
Sec. 113. b. Child has rights but child must know enough to speak up about it unless someone else is following the situation. What an unconscionable farce.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) or ObamaCare if you will, provides for free vaccinations and free preventative care. So hopefully, more people will be vaccinated.
The news blog Raw Story has reported on a related story.
It’s good to see that most people commenting on that site have a negative view of the parents who refused to vaccinate that child. There’s still hope.
The Center for American Progress posted an item titled The Effect of Childhood Vaccine Exemptions on Disease Outbreaks, which features a link to a report on the subject.
The summary of the report is this:
The report contains sections titled, Current vaccination and exemption policies, The growth of nonmedical vaccine exemptions, The impact of nonmedical exemptions on disease outbreaks and Potential state and federal responses
I shall re-post this on the related WEIT pages.