Ontario Parents Refusing To Vaccinate Their Children Could Be Forced to Take Science Class (qz.com) 499
Ontario is considering making parents who choose to not vaccinate their children for non-medical reasons take a science class. The health ministry of Canada's most populous province has proposed a bill which would force those parents sit through the education session before applying for a vaccine exemption. In the class, they will be taught about the importance of vaccination for their children. Quartz offers more context: Ontario was the first province in Canada to introduce immunization laws (PDF) in 1982, which required children attending school be vaccinated against certain diseases -- including diphtheria, tetanus, polio, and measles -- unless they have a signed exemption. After routine immunization was introduced, cases of those diseases dramatically reduced.
Parents who apply for an exemption (PDF) for non-medical reasons risk having their child pulled from school if there's an outbreak, or the immediate risk of an outbreak, of a designated disease.
Should Be... (Score:5, Insightful)
They should be forced to take a mental fitness test, an IQ test, and while they're doing that, their children are jabbed. Fuck "parental rights". Those should stop the very second a child's health is put at risk. Children are wards of their parents, not possessions, and if we're going to force the children of Jehovah's Witnesses to have blood transfusions to save their lives, why would we give some idiot parents the option of endangering their children's lives by allowing them to deprive their children of vaccinations.
Re:Should Be... (Score:5, Insightful)
IQ != knowledge
You would be surprised how high people are tested in IQ tests that have completely bollocks attitudes to certain things.
Antivaxing in particular (Score:5, Insightful)
While there is some of it everywhere, a big bastion of antivaxing is in techy areas of California. The people in to it are generally above average in an academic sense. So what is going on? It is something you see all too often with geeks: Smartest Motherfucker in the Universe Syndrome. They get the idea that they are much smarter than everyone else, since they often are, and thus are good at everything. They are convinced they've found out a truth those stupid doctors don't know or are covering up. Their intelligence leads to a hubris which leads to them doing dumb shit.
Being intelligent doesn't make one informed.
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More in Marin County. Affluent yuppie types, probably think that they're hi tech because they know how to use their phone.
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"Just because you're a genius doesn't mean you're a smart guy."
More to the point, being intelligent and informed doesn't mean you can't also be delusional.
Re: Antivaxing in particular (Score:3)
Google does not control world knowledge. Vaccinces have been established as far more good than bad well before google came around. And even now we not only have other search engines we also have other means of spreading information including for example traditional peer reviewed journals.
And just to ice it off even if google tried doing such a thing, whixh is futile in the first place, it probably would be discovered. Just like much more benign manipulations were made public.
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Do you realize that nearly every modern study on the safety of vaccinations is invalid?
Nearly every study conducted uses the VAERS data - this data is scientifically worthless.... blah blah blah blah
In lieu of every modern study of vaccinations, which are supposedly flawed, please answer these questions:
Do you or anyone in your extended family have or ever had smallpox?
Do you or anyone in your extended family 50 years old or younger have or ever had polio?
Do you or anyone in your extended family 50 years old or younger have or ever had diptheria?
Do you or anyone in your extended family 50 years old or younger have or ever had rubella?
If the answer to these questions are all "NO" then vaccines work. No
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I think that MightyMartian was simply looking to 'distract' the parents long enough to vaccinate the kids anyways.
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IQ != knowledge
You would be surprised how high people are tested in IQ tests that have completely bollocks attitudes to certain things.
Yes. Because IQ is a test of mental potential. Some people choose not to make use of it.
Re:Should Be... (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue with stopping parents rights the second a child's health is put at risk, is that it invites over officious idiocy from child services, like "oh my god, I saw some snot dribbling from their nose once, therefore you're not cleaning them regularly enough, and their health is at risk!"
As with all politics, it's about scale. In this case, it's pretty clear that depriving children of vaccines is a pretty ridiculous risk to expose a child to without very good reason, and a ridiculous risk to expose other people who can't be vaccinated to as well, but blanket statements about "if it affects the child's health it should be done forcefully" are not helpful.
Re:Should Be... (Score:5, Informative)
The courts do it for more immediately necessary medical therapies. Coming from a Jehovah's Witness background (an atheist now for over thirty years), I do remember as a kid all the whackos praying and flailing about because a judge forced a little JW kid to have a blood transfusion over the objection of the righteous parents. I suspect in many hospitals, as soon as they found a JW minor was admitted, they had the lawyers on standby.
While immunization doesn't have the urgency of a blood transfusion, it still represents a significant personal and public health risk to have people not vaccinating their kids, so yes, I think, whether it is "helpful" or not, there should be clear limits on the medical interventions that parents can have the power to deny their children. Children are not possessions, they are not slaves, and where any guardian abuses their powers over a child, I see no problem with social workers, doctors and the courts intervening to make sure the child's medical needs are dealt with.
Re:Should Be... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I'm not assuming that. As with any power, there will be abuses, and the redress for those abuses is the courts. But I think any parent wanting to deprive their child of medically necessary treatments is going to have a steep hill to climb claiming that their child's rights have been infringed.
It's either that or children really are just chattel, to be used by parents in any way the parent sees fit.
Live Free and Die? (Score:3)
I'm okay with this. Being part of a society is a compact of violence, so the only proper way of rejecting that compact is with violence. As far as vaccinations go, that horse done left the barn a while ago, but feel free to die for it.
Re:Should Be... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's fine as long as you are willing to accept the consequences.
We should allow your children to be shunned in order to protect others. If you insist on turning your children into pestilence reservoirs, then the rest of us should get to quarantine them. If you willingly break that quarantine, you should get prison time. You should also be on the hook for assault and manslaughter.
If you really want to turn your back on the modern world then at least have the balls to do it all the way (like the Amish do). No half measures.
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And if you're the one they need to be defended from?
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Some kids can't be immunised for genuine (non-nutter) reasons.
Pay attention, here comes the science (Score:3)
No, because if most other people are vaccinated they're extremely unlikely to encounter an active carrier, and even less likely to pass it on to another vulnerable person.
It's called herd immunity.
Re: Should Be... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like the case of CPS investigating a mother for letting her 3 kids play alone in the fenced in back yard ? (Kids aged 10, 8, 4.. in that range)
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You mean like the case of CPS investigating a mother for letting her 3 kids play alone in the fenced in back yard ?
Different states have very different standards. In Illinois it is illegal to leave a 15 year old alone overnight. In many other states, not only is that legal, but the 15 year old can legally supervise much younger kids overnight. In some states, 15 year olds can marry and have their own kids.
I have never been reported to CPS, but some neighbors have told me that I should not let my 9 year old son ride his bike home from school (about 1 mile) because he might get kidnapped. I politely explain that kidna
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If they offer opt out for something other than religious or legitimate medical reasons, that's the government's problem for doing that.
They have no business with reedumication camps. A pamphlet, optionally accepted, is all.
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The issue with stopping parents rights the second a child's health is put at risk, is that it invites over officious idiocy from child services, like "oh my god, I saw some snot dribbling from their nose once, therefore you're not cleaning them regularly enough, and their health is at risk!"
As with all politics, it's about scale. In this case, it's pretty clear that depriving children of vaccines is a pretty ridiculous risk to expose a child to without very good reason, and a ridiculous risk to expose other people who can't be vaccinated to as well, but blanket statements about "if it affects the child's health it should be done forcefully" are not helpful.
Good point. Both of them.
And speaking of "dribbling noses", there is the oft-cited legal axiom: "Your freedom ends where my nose begins."
The tone of any government action should be one of preventing their un-vaccinated kids from infecting your children (that may not have reached the age for their next MMR or other shot).
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The issue with stopping parents rights the second a child's health is put at risk, is that it invites over officious idiocy from child services
Because all laws are an all or nothing approach and none of them are written with limitations and context?
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> Because all laws are an all or nothing approach and none of them are written with limitations and context?
What planet are you from? Laws are generally written to be as broad as possible to allow the most abuse possible. They are seldom written in very targeted or limited terms. It is inevitable that they will be abused and spread far beyond the "intended victim".
RICO is a wonderful example.
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So you think marijuana should be illegal for the same reasons I assume? Whatever the state deems in a persons best interest should be law, right? What about when the state is wrong? Like perhaps when they told us to change our diets to try and avoid heart disease and made the problem worse? Randomness in society performs an important function. Without it we can create some genetic messes that are beyond our current understanding. For that reason, people should be left to live their lives however they want.
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That is the same argument I use when saying I shouldn't be forced to hand over my money to a private company yet I'm told I MUST do so even if I never become sick or never need medical care. I'm supposed to pour my money down a black hole until the day I die.
I've done the calculations and am willing to take the risk but nope, I have no choice. "Hand over your money to t
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> They should be forced to take a mental fitness test, an IQ test,
You immediately assume that they're stupid or mentally ill. Good ad hominem. Many of these people aren't. They've done some research and know they're taking a very controversial stance.
Your attitude is what drives people further that direction.
You also cannot cluster all vaccines together. Several people in the anti-vaccine movement are not anti-MMR, but are against flu vaccines. There are reasons I won't go into (I personally get all my v
Re: Should Be... (Score:2)
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And having witnessed someone die as a result of a vaccination, I think hospitals should be held liable if such event happens.
No they should not. If individual doctors and hospitals are liable for every side reaction, that will raise the cost of vaccines, and many providers will refuse to administer them. We already have a National Vaccine Compensation System [hrsa.gov] to deal with this issue.
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Oh, I am fairly confident that the "witness" is just making up bullshit.
On the other extreme, I know someone that's allergic to many things some to the point of being deadly. She never turned down a vaccine because everyone around her understood the math. Also, she lived in somewhat of a 3rd world country where these diseases weren't quite wiped out yet.
These precious suburban snowflakes really have no clue and no perspective. They have no respect for what these diseases can do to a person and how many peop
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> I find it hard to see how a woman can kill a child
It sounds like you had a really deprived childhood where you never had a sex education class and never went to a decent science museum.
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The thing with people who make arguments like this is they rarely have children and usually state a desire to never have children. But they sure are concerned about what our children are doing. Being a parent is incredibly complex compared to what I expected. Even as a biomedical scientist, I can't bring myself to get on the case of parents who choose different paths. For those that think its such a big deal, they should have kids and get them vaccinated or whatever thing they will be bitching about what parents do next week.
As an actual parent of a child, ans as an actual person who managed to get whooping cough after herd immunity went away and after almost dying from it, perhaps I have a little different of a viewpoint. It's kinda interesting, did you know your vision kinda goes brownish as you near expiration? And the crazy ass thing is the spasms always seemed to come on when I was by myself.
Anyone who would willingly expose a child to That sort of thing is an abuser.
That little babies were not dying from whooping cou
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And, bluntly, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the idiots.
It would never happen in the US (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh ya...u jus try to lern me them ther science and I'll lern you 'bout my rifle.
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Wow.
A radical centrist.
Never thought I'd see one of those out in the wild.
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Maybe we just have to see people in iron lungs again to regain our sanity.
The whole shit only started when people didn't know real diseases anymore first hand. I mean, fuck, the first smallpox vaccinations had a mortality rate that was not THAT much under that of a real infection and you did almost invariably get really sick from it (after all, it WAS pretty much a deliberate exposure to the pathogen) and STILL people considered this to be a great step ahead and were pretty much begging for it.
Maybe a few m
Won't Work (Score:2)
Re:Won't Work - seconded! (Score:2)
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These people already distrust anything science. They likely didn't get the point in high school and have been training their resistance to critical thinking and evidence based reasoning ever since. All that this will do is start a bunch of human rights complaints. The government would probably have better luck forcing all non-vaccinated kids into one school for the parentally challenged.
Not necessarily. I used to have an anti-vaxxer neighbour. At one point he did biological research at a university (although I don't know how much he really absorbed) and he seemed in general to have a respect for science. Certainly wasn't obviously hostile to it. However, he didn't believe in vaccinations. He just didn't, I don't know why. At one point he gave me the low-down on "the facts". It was all fiction, of course. I just nodded and said "ah, right". No point engaging in a battle that can't be won.
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Then they should take another course which shows them all the good that science has done for them. As part of that course, remove everything they have which was made using the results of science. So no cell phones, no computers, nothing made of plastic, no modern medicines, and on and on. Probably simpler to say they have to give up pretty much everything they have except for a few things like animal skins, home made bows and spears.
Really they should be much
Re:Won't Work (Score:4, Insightful)
These people already distrust anything science.
Then they should take another course which shows them all the good that science has done for them.
It's not an issue of knowing or trusting science, or knowing "all the good that science has done". It's an issue of not believing that life needs to lived as a technocracy, or using rigid scientific principles as the only guide.
If people understood the risk of skydiving, for example, and lived their lives "scientifically", nobody would ever skydive. Nobody would ever eat fugu. There are lots of activities that carry a lot more risk than not vaccinating their child that occur every day.
Having a government that punishes people for exercising freedom is not reasonable. And being forced to take time off work to take an indoctrination class ("look at all the good things science does for you, shouldn't you obey science?") is a punishment.
Probably simpler to say they have to give up pretty much everything they have except for a few things like animal skins, home made bows and spears.
Yes, let's make people who don't live the way we want them to do things the way we want them to in the most severe way possible.
Freedom means that people can do things that we don't personally agree with, and that don't always obey strict scientific principles, and even sometimes don't produce the maximum benefit for other people.
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If people understood the risk of skydiving, for example, and lived their lives "scientifically", nobody would ever skydive.
Skydiving does not lead to public health emergencies.
Not completely baseless (Score:5, Interesting)
These people already distrust anything science. They likely didn't get the point in high school and have been training their resistance to critical thinking and evidence based reasoning ever since. All that this will do is start a bunch of human rights complaints. The government would probably have better luck forcing all non-vaccinated kids into one school for the parentally challenged.
It's hard to see this from the parents' point of view, but keep in mind that their fears are not *completely* without merit.
The original polio vaccine was a weakened strain, and it was possible to get the disease from the vaccine.
This meant that there was a time when getting polio from the wild was less likely than getting it from the vaccine, so it's completely reasonable from the *individual* point of view that the best course is the one that minimizes risk.
Factor in the general devotion parents have to their child's well-being, and it 'kinda makes sense.
Then it was thiomersal. Thiomersal is a mercury compound mixed with vaccines to suppress fungi growth and such.
At the time, there was a large body of indirect evidence that suggested Tiomersal was safe. There was a lot of evidence, but it was all indirect(*).
Then one researcher published a study that directly linked thiomersal to autism and suddenly, the emperor has no clothes!
You see, direct evidence trumps indirect evidence every time. Indirect evidence makes assumptions about similarity that may or may not be true.
When the autism study came out, everyone realized that the evidence was indirect, and everyone freaked. It took medical science another decade to show that they were right.
In my opinion, I think science got lucky. Scientists relied on indirect evidence for something that was an emotional powderkeg, and it *could* have gone the other way. This sort of thing has certainly happened before(**), and still happens (***).
And also in my opinion, I'm not 100% certain that the science was right about this. Thiomersal was removed from most vaccines "out of an abundance of caution", and the political pressure on "being right" and "showing the researcher was a fraud" was so high that I'm not sure either question was fairly settled.
I'm not an anti-vaxer at all, just looking at the history.
The position against vaccines is incorrect, but not *completely* baseless.
(*) For example, Thiomersal is ethyl mercury, and risk was extrapolated from known exposure to methyl mercury.
(**) Tetra ethyl lead, for instance.
(***) Science now says that SSRI's are ineffective [anxietycentre.com], despite being the go-to prescription medication for depression.
Re:Not completely baseless (Score:4, Informative)
To wrap up your points:
See my post about the layman's-terms video, above (or below).
The "original" thiomersal paper was not a randomized study, and used a mere 12 subjects.
It has been retracted by all 12 authors except for the primary author (well, one was MIA).
An investigative reporter located most of the 12 participants—The reporter found that much of the data had been falsified by the primary author, including even dates of visits!
The primary author no longer possesses a license to practice medicine.
More detail in the video.
My Own Points:
Chelated metals can pass through the body without losing their 'isolating' layer. Ever had an MRI with contrast? They used iodine, or gadolinium, or possibly others. Immunogold is used, at least in in vivo medical studies. I've had thorium injected for a circulatory imaging test—Yes, it was chelated, and only used as a radioactive tracer. That is, the extrapolation from methylated mercury to ethylated was probably not a thermodynamically sound one.
Piston-driven propeller planes that fly over my head all day long still use tetra-ethyl lead as an additive to their aviation fuel. I live in a densely populated area.
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That is, the extrapolation from methylated mercury to ethylated was probably not a thermodynamically sound one.
The difference between methymercury and ethylmercury is tiny, thermodynamically. The extra CH2 doesn't change things that much. The extrapolation is quite valid; it turns out there is a difference when testing is actually done.
Piston-driven propeller planes that fly over my head all day long still use tetra-ethyl lead as an additive to their aviation fuel. I live in a densely populated area.
You do realize that leaded aviation fuel IS a health issue, don't you? It's just not a glaringly obvious one because few people know it still exists. Work is being done trying to find a replacement, but the problem of finding something that doesn't cause problems for existing engines
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You see, direct evidence trumps indirect evidence every time.
If only this were what happened. The way I remember it wasn't actually direct evidence that trumped anything but rather fraudulent science and shock media fuelled by someone with a huge set of boobs, and clearly that's the best source of information because how could you trust a medical professional when they've not stripped for a playboy shoot.
If I didn't say something... (Score:2)
This is absolutely incorrect. Time and time again it has been shown that Andrew Wakefield (the scumbag piece of shit who published the fraudulent report linking vaccines to autism) is a incorrect. Britain yanked his medical license. The very simplest evidence that thiomersal doesn't lead to autism is that it was taken out of vaccines, yet the rates of autism didn't go down.Case closed.
So... you're saying that the evidence of the time *wasn't* indirect?
Further, just because the element mercury is in something doesn't mean it is dangerous. An example analogy is sodium. Elemental sodium reacts violently with water, yet sodium chloride (table salt) doesn't react violently with water.
So... you're saying that the evidence of the time *wasn't* indirect?
You're putting words in my mouth - words I didn't say.
Reread the post and try again.
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Further, just because the element mercury is in something doesn't mean it is dangerous. An example analogy is sodium.
It isn't the reaction of mercury as an element when it is ingested that is the danger, so your "example analogy" is flawed. It is the presence of mercury compounds that causes trouble. You know, the element that has already reacted with something to form an ionic species. Whether sodium reacts with water or not is irrelevant.
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Re:Won't Work (Score:5, Informative)
Good thing they didn't make Christopher Columbus sit through science classes explaining how flat the earth was before they let him sail on his voyage of discovery. If they made him sit through 'science' classes explaining what all the smart people of the day thought they knew, it's possible that we'd all still be in Europe.
Actually no one thought the earth was flat for thousands of years before columbus, the ancient Greeks figured it out (along with the approximate circumference of the earth)t back in the BC's. The flat earth non-since was a 19th century revisionism.
Oh goodie (Score:3, Insightful)
Re-education camps. These always work out great.
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I support this (Score:2, Insightful)
An educational class would be helpful in dispelling many myths surrounding vaccinations.
Topics should include: Iron lungs and polio. Deafness and rubella (and the subsequent dramatic drop-off in deaf children after the vaccination was created). Thimerosal is not the same as methyl mercury. There is no proven link between vaccinations and autism. Autism is better than death. Autism is better than the iron lung. Autism is better than Meningitis. Jenny McCarthy is not a doctor or scientist. Herd immunity is im
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Take a class? Or be forced to pass it? (Score:3)
Do you remember when you had polio? (Score:2)
Not far enough (Score:5, Insightful)
This anti-vaxxer movement needs to be culled ruthlessly.
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It was not by any wrong action of theirs that they become contaminated. It was by wrong action of the state, acting out of ravenous greed, importing countless people from all over the world to drive down the cost of labor, and it's failure to screen for disease.
Uh... Most of the disease outbreaks are from remaining pockets within the country. After that most of it is importations from our own citizens who were traveling for whatever reason. Screening for disease is tough, unless you want to put everybody coming back from overseas into quarantine for several weeks?
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What's your stance on red herrings and non sequiturs?
Because being vegan doesn't threaten your life, much less the lives of everyone around you?
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Because being vegan doesn't threaten your life, much less the lives of everyone around you?
Yes it does. On average vegans lives much shorter lives than non-vegans, and this gets worse the earlier they start. Putting a small child on a vegan diet is already illegal as it is manslaughter. A child that is off milk can survive a vegan diet, but is extremely difficult to balance, and they have less reserves to make up for short-falls in essential vitamins and nutrients.
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he very clearly said "exemptions for non-medical reasons"
certification (Score:3)
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1. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Ben Franklin
2. You do realize that the courts have ruled a citizen has the right to travel [wearechange.org], right?
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1. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Ben Franklin
2. You do realize that the courts have ruled a citizen has the right to travel [wearechange.org], right?
So, you're against knowledge and skills-based testing to be allowed to operate a motorcycle or car?
Your Red Herring is the "...essential Liberty..." bit. You are begging the question.
It is not "essential" to drive a motorcycle, for example.
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You need to re-read your Black's Law Dictionary. At one point it was before freedom got hijacked.
Why that won't be very effective (Score:2)
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Reeducation (Score:2)
Mandating Vaccination is Tyranny (Score:5, Insightful)
First, I want to be clear that I am pro-vaccination.
Any vaccine has a certain number of people that are permanently injured by that vaccine (that's why there is a vaccine injury fund in the US), but, the overall number of people it saves (including immune compromised individuals) outweighs that very, very small risk that you could be hurt or killed by that vaccine.
However:
Certain specific vaccines likely killed more people than they saved because the threat of the illness was overestimated (deaths due to specific outbreaks of certain flu strains vs. deaths/injuries due to the vaccine.)
Other vaccines have had safety issues with certain batches and were recalled after injuring/killing various people.
Again, it's very, very rare. But that brings me to my next point:
I see no reason to not vaccinate myself and my children. I support herd immunity, and that it helps the greater good. However, I want the choice to be able to vaccinate as there could be a case where I don't feel a particular vaccine is safe. Simply being told to "trust" someone else that something is safe and being forced to have something put into my body and my children's body is not OK. Certain jobs or institutions can mandate vaccinations before being part of them - that's my choice for using them. However, there is a big difference between making a conscious decision to do something vs. being told you must do it.
When you're told that you must put something in your body, no matter if it is for the "greater good", then you are not truly free. Mandating general vaccination is tyranny.
Not to mention it, once the precedent is set, what is to stop mandatory gene therapy, genetic modification techniques, etc to "prevent" potential problems? Just because you approve of the situation today for mandatory vaccinations, would you be OK with how things are tomorrow? What if there are unintended consequences?
The only way to solve the "anti-vaxxer" problem is by education, so I don't disagree with having people attending a science class before opting out, but, I don't think it will resolve the issues. The problem is greater than one science class can resolve.
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Certain specific vaccines likely killed more people than they saved because the threat of the illness was overestimated (deaths due to specific outbreaks of certain flu strains vs. deaths/injuries due to the vaccine.)
Given the number of people that the flu kills every year, can you really say this? Also, the average number of deaths from any given version of the flu vaccine rounds to zero.
Then there's the 'prevention' meme. You could have a situation where NOT vaccinating might cost 100k lives, but vaccinating might cost 100. However, because you vaccinated and it was so effective, only 50 died from the disease itself. But it meets your criteria of 'deaths from outbreak lower than deaths from vaccination'.
The only way to solve the "anti-vaxxer" problem is by education, so I don't disagree with having people attending a science class before opting out, but, I don't think it will resolve the issues. The problem is greater than one science class can resolve.
Much like
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Certain specific vaccines likely killed more people than they saved because the threat of the illness was overestimated
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yes people die from vaccines, but even in some of the worst case the number of people who suffer negative effects are tiny compared to the potential disease outbreak. I hope you haven't made the mistake of comparing two scenarios when one is causal to the other. After all, how do you know if the threat of illness was overestimated? The only way to truly know that is to not vaccinate and see what happens. Let's see an ethics committee sign off on that stud
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> I see no reason to not vaccinate myself and my children... However, I want
> the choice to be able to vaccinate as there could be a case where I don't
> feel a particular vaccine is safe.
And your opinion on when a vaccine is safe or not is different from all the other anti-vaxxers because....? I mean, it may the the case that you're right in any particular case, but that's what we're talking about here -- people who agree that X is true in general but in THIS case they KNOW they're right about Y.
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And your opinion on when a vaccine is safe or not is different from all the other anti-vaxxers because....? I mean, it may the the case that you're right in any particular case, but that's what we're talking about here -- people who agree that X is true in general but in THIS case they KNOW they're right about Y.
But isn't that partially his point? You and I may differ. The government may differ. They may get it wrong. They may get paid by vaccine companies (what? corruption and money changing hands? impossible :) ).
Considering all that, isn't it rather tyrannical, to use the OP's term, to have the government mandate vaccinations? To force you and your family to take a specific medical treatment even if you disagree or even question whether it's safe?
Like the parent, I'm not anti-vaccine, either. But I am defi
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That's a bad example, because virtually nobody gets the plague these days, and that's without a vaccine.
On the other hand, when you have populations where the immunization rates have dropped, you do see a resurgence of the diseases.
The Perfect Video to show Anti-vaxxers (Score:2)
This 8-minute video [youtube.com] uses layman's terms, especially in the second half. Just tell your anti-vaxxer friends that the "scientific journals" the guy mentions are basically the top four in medicine (meaning most influential).
Save your explanation of how scientific journals and study-replication actually work for some other conversation. Remember, you will be talking to an anti-vaxxer. Keep it simple.
Rededucation Courses (Score:2)
Have them buy insurance... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, if they're going to opt to not vaccinate their kids, they should be obligated assume liability for every child their unimmunized kid gets sick.
As such, they should also be obligated to take out an insurance plan to actually PAY for the medical bills of children made ill because of their decision.
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And let's not forget the old folks and people with compromised immune systems they might kill.
Next step... (Score:2)
I think this is bulshit (Score:3)
Of course my sample is not representative, but of the people who I know who are, let's say it, are selective on vaccination are biochemical science PhD's (in major pharmaceutical companies), creators of biological medications and medical doctors. There is no denial about benefits of the vaccines, however only selected vaccines are taken and at the age that is ordinarily much later than "recommended" vaccination schedule. Also, vaccines are never mixed.
I will give an example. Right now 6 month infants are "recommended" hepatitis B vaccine. Usually and ordinarily people have Hepatitis B risk, if they are sex workers, prisoners, police and similar.
Who exactly needs to take classes? And what exactly we are going to learn in these classes?
Put your money where your mouth is (Score:3)
When we had to rush my son to the hospital after a bad reactions his vaccination (MMR), the doctors just said, "this is so rare, like one in a million". He had to have an inhaler for years after that. So when it came time to vaccinate our daughter, I asked for insurance. A million to one chance of bad reaction they say, so I figured give the vaccine manufacturer 2:1 to make money, I offered to buy insurance for $1000, so that if my daughter has any complications , $500,000,000 goes into her healthcare fund. Guess what, no takers. So we declined. It seems when they tell you bad reactions are so rare, they are obviously lying, or they could make good money selling insurance. No class will convince me how low risk this is until you can find an insurance company willing to back those stats up by selling insurance - make them sit through a class and see if their actuaries are convinced.
I doubt a class would help (Score:3)
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My view as well. As I say above, children are wards of their parents, they are not slaves of their parents, and in other cases where parents refuse to provide the basic necessities or where they try to block necessary treatments (like blood transfusions or chemo) courts do step in to insure that the child's life is protected, whatever religious or pseudo-scientific crapola the parents may believe.
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My view as well. As I say above, children are wards of their parents, they are not slaves of their parents, and in other cases where parents refuse to provide the basic necessities or where they try to block necessary treatments (like blood transfusions or chemo) courts do step in to insure that the child's life is protected, whatever religious or pseudo-scientific crapola the parents may believe.
The above assumes that you are the arbiter of all things in the world.
That is the sort of thing ISIS would do. Yes, I went there, because you don't get it. You don't understand how completely dangerous your viewpoint really is.
People are entitled to their religious beliefs, even if they disagree with yours. If you want to take away people's rights, prepare for a war... because plenty of people are happy to kill you to stop your stupidity...
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It's a matter of social contract. (Score:4, Interesting)
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The point is it is the responsibility of the state to keep these diseases out of its borders, it is not the responsibility of the masses to compensate for this failure in policy and be complicit in a failure of justice and freedom also.
How the hell is keeping infectious disease out of the country solely a policy issue? People will get sick. They will carry it across the borders. It will not always be detectable at that point. The best weapon we have to combat the 'one that gets through' is by vaccinating the masses. When a growing fraction of the population refuse to get vaccinated, it puts the nation as a whole at risk. If you want to treat this as a policy issue, the policy must be "Vaccinate or get the fuck out of our country". Don't p
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the fact that such medication is necessary
You might as well rage against the presence of the tide, dude.
My grandfather is going to throw a party once polio is officially eliminated. After all, it nearly killed him at least 3 times. He spent time in an iron lung, had his last rights done several times.
The more vaccinations, the better.
Any evidence to any immediate benefit is irrelevant in whole.
Immediate benefit? Irrelevant? Do you have any idea of how many people died to diseases like smallpox? Smallpox is gone. That's a benefit that's going to keep giving, and we don't even have to vaccinate for it an
Re: Horrifying (Score:2)
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Okay, that one was lack of editing/proofing, not autocorrect being weird.
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There are a subset of children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.
There's also a subset for whom the vaccination isn't effective. For most diseases the immunity rate after the course is 95-99%.
Between these people and those who can't have it for medical reasons, there just isn't much slack - because the risk to the vulnerable members of the population rises exponentially as the vulnerable population increases. This effect is called "herd immunity", as you mentioned.
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Compare these two scenarios, and you have your answer,
Which is worse, when one child gets sick when everything that was possible to do based on knowledge that they had at the time was done, or when 50 children get sick because of something that could have been done, but was not?
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What about an average US household and something like the flu or chicken pox?
I suggest you look up how many people the flu ends up killing, and the actual effects a bad case of chicken pox can have. It's far less likely to kill you than smallpox was, for example, but it still can, and can cause lifetime disability in rare cases. Also, look up 'shingles'. For example, while I'll never get the chicken-pox vaccine, having had the disease, they're going to have to vaccinate me when I'm older against shingles, which is basically the chicken pox vaccine, because I have the virus living [wikipedia.org]
Re: Roughly science (Score:2)
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If a blood test shows the first 2 shots were successful and the 3rd isn't necessary - then hey, why chance anything with an unnecessary injection?
Drawing blood has it's own risks, and a antibody assay costs more than the shot. It's kind of like oil changes. There are tests out there that can tell you if you need to change your oil or not. Problem is, their cost exceeds that of just changing the oil for most normal vehicles, and if they come back lacking, you have to pay to change your oil anyways. They only make sense for big trucks and such.
Roughly speaking, the number of shots, booster intervals, and everything are worked out using statistical
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So what about infants and children who can't be vaccinated for various reasons? The whole point of herd immunity is that the very young and children with immune disorders that prevent vaccination are protected.
How about this. Any parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated must be pony up $10,000 per child, which will be put in a fund to pay for any children who couldn't be vaccinated due to age or health reasons and then gets sick from one of these preventable diseases. If you can't fork over $10,
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Vaccines make the human species as a whole healthier. They shouldn't be optional unless there are legitimate medical reasons signed off by a real doctor.
Not optional? Or else what, you'll shoot me? Strap me to a table and try and stick me with a needle? Which one of you idiots gets to get shot trying?
The problem with your viewpoint is you ignore the "or else what" part...