Remember getting chickenpox as a kid? The parties that mom’s would have where kids would all go to someone’s house that had contracted it so they could get the virus and work it out into immunity? Nowadays they have vaccinations for everything – even the chickenpox. As these advancements continue to surface, the concerns about the potential side-effects of these vaccinations surface along with them, and the result is the requirements for vaccinated children are becoming a hot topic. Matt and I struggled at first with the different choices regarding the vaccinations of our daughters. We agonized through each one because of the frightening things we heard about vaccinations and their potential effects on children. As a side note, both Sydney and Maddox are being vaccinated and have done well with them.
So anyways, in another thread on Alas, vaccination discussions have surfaced due to the controversial HPV vaccine. What was interesting to me was that instead of the debate being about whether or not trace amounts of mercury are going to cause reactions, or whether by immunizing against anything we are weakening ourselves against everything, the theme is whether forced immunizations are similar to forced pregnancies. Gee wiz, I’d never even considered it that way, but I can see how the comparison could be made. So it got me to thinking, and here is how I feel the two are different, and how they are the same.
Herd Immunity v. Individual Choice: The most interesting idea to me that first grabbed my attention was the notion of ‘herd immunity’. Barbara made a good post explaining herd immunity this way:
Someone made the point that when it is forced on someone for the sake of others, how is that different from forcing someone to bear a pregnancy. For pro-choice people, we argue that we should after all have the right to decide what goes in and comes out of our body, full stop, right?
M had a pretty good response to this, that as a parent of a five month old infant I can certainly understand:
Even so, after some time thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that I don’t agree with forced vaccination, but I don’t agree that it’s like a forced pregnancy either. This is why; a forced vaccination is intended to protect and secure the health of the individual it is forced on, as well as others around them that are fully endowed with all rights given to a born person. A forced pregnancy on the other hand is to protect and secure the health of a potential person that is not fully or even partially endowed with the same rights at the expense or health of a fully endowed person. That to me seems like a pretty big difference, regardless of which end of the forced or suggested spectrum you fall within regarding vaccinations.
Forced versus Pressured: Is ‘forced’ used in the same context or does it have the same meaning in these two cases. When we look at what forced means in the context of vaccinations, the force is of a bureaucratic nature. It occurs by schools refusing to teach children that have not been inoculated, or refusing to allow them to come to school if they have gotten a waiver when outbreaks occur. That doesn’t really seem like ‘force’ to me, but instead precaution. I’m hard pressed to think of what a legitimate argument would be to this being a form of discrimination or undue force. It has options that are reasonable for the people who choose to forego on vaccinations. Forced pregnancy, on the other hand, has the very real potential of compromising and altering the health and physical make-up of the woman hosting the pregnancy. Forced pregnancy doesn’t offer choice, other than adoption, which isn’t really what I’d consider reasonable after making a woman go through the entirety of a pregnancy.
So at the end of the day, while I don’t agree forcing vaccinations on others (though I do strongly recommend that people research and consider vaccinations for the sake of their children and others), I’m going to have to give a thumbs-down on the argument that forcing vaccinations and forcing pregnancy are like arguments.
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Thanks Daran – fixed! – Kim
I see it as being along the lines of rights and duties. Think back to Civics class… We live in a country where we have certain protected rights, but those rights don’t come for free. As citizens, we are obligated to vote, serve jury duty, pay taxes, register for selective service, and so forth. Some of those, such as voting, bear no major consequences to the people who opt out. Fail to pay your taxes, on the other hand, and you are likely to go to jail.
Similarly, we live in a society where we are free from having to worry about many infectious diseases… but that freedom only exists because people are duty-bound to engage in sanitary practices including vaccination. Should that duty be forced? I think an argument could be made in either direction, but you raise an important point that the negative consequences of failing to immunize one child can result in harm befalling many others with whom that child comes in contact. Furthermore, there is a very real public interest in keeping the level of immunization above a certain level. With those two things in mind, I feel that vaccinations, like paying your taxes, should be manditory in all but the most extreme circumstances.
Another thing the two issues have in common is that the anti-vaccination movement’s appeals are rife with misinformation and bad science. I suppose I’m in favor of leaving some discretion to parents, but when I hear them talking about how scared they are of the mercury in vaccines that don’t even have mercury in them any more (and that were never shown to have dangerous amounts of it) it pains me. Orac is the go-to guy on this.
It’s a fair question: To what extent may government punish someone for failing to sacrifice bodily integrity for the benefit of others? Does the rationale authorizing government to sanction someone who refusing to be inoculated against a contagious disease apply to sanction someone who refuses to bear a child, and what sanctions are warranted?
Kim identifies some relevant distinctions between inoculations laws and abortion laws.
1. Protecting people vs. protecting potential people. Punishing people who refuse inoculations sacrifices a person’s bodily integrity for the benefit of people. Punishing people who have abortions sacrifices a person’s bodily integrity for the benefit of fetuses/potential people. Arguably the interests of people should not be sacrificed for the benefit of fetuses/potential people.
2. Small vs. big sanctions. The punishment prescribed for people who refuse inoculations is less than the punishment for people who refuse to bear a child.
Other distinctions include:
3. Sanctions on person whose autonomy is at stake vs. sanctions on third parties. Abortion laws often are designed to punish people who support a person’s choice not to bear a child (e.g., physicians and people providing transportation across state lines). I am not aware of any inoculation laws that punish a physician for refusing to inoculate a patient who declines to be inoculated.
4. Protecting individuals vs. protecting society. For better or worse, law provides for compelling someone to sacrifice his or her bodily integrity for the sake of society at large; consider the draft. I am not aware of instances where someone is compelled to sacrifice his or her bodily integrity for the sake of specific individuals. For example, the law recognizes that parents own a greater duty to their children than do members of the public at large. But I am not aware of any instance where a parent is punished for failing to put him- or herself at risk to save a child. (In contrast, a parent MAY be sanctioned for failing to remedy a situation wherein the parent failed to keep a child out of harm’s way.) Nor am I aware of any instance when a parent was compelled to contribute so much as a pint of blood for a child’s well-being. Individuals – even very sympathetic individuals – do not receive the same protections as society at large.
Free and legal abortions after Roe v. Wade seem to coincide with a drop in violent crimes nationwide. It’s a controversial finding because it shows a benefit of abortions: That is, allowing abortions reduces unloved and unwanted children, which then reduces dysfunctional adults who commit violent crimes. Alternately, forcing people to have unwanted pregnancies will potentially have a negative effect on public health by raising the crime rate.
your unvaccinated kid can give my infant (who is too young for that vaccination) whooping cough, which can easily kill her. Your unvaccinated kid can spread it to any and all of his classmates who haven’t been vaccinated (or are among those for whom vaccinations are ineffective)
Whoa, back up here. As a 2-year veteran of parenting who fully vaxxed one child, partially vaxxed another, and chose, for medical reasons, not to vax the rest, I’ve been through two whooping cough “epidemics” and can tell you, if your kid is vaxxed, he/she will never get a pertussis diagnosis, even though it is known the vax only provides, at most, 10 years’ protection. Your vaxxed kid with the terrible cough will get a diagnosis of “virus that’s going around” and he/she and all their vaxxed classmates will continue going to school, spreading the disease. The unvaxxed kid who gets pertussis, otoh, will be diagnosed, given abx to reduce transmission, and quarantined by the health department. The largest pool of pertussis transmitters in the US is adults, in whom the disease is innocuous. After what seems like a “bad cold”, the adult starts feeling better and returns to work, even though a nasty-sounding cough lingers for month, spreading pertussis germs wherever they go.
Why are we using the word “forced” at all? No one anywhere is advocating “forcing” vaccinations on people. No one is ever required to have a vaccination, or to vaccinate their children. (The exception being those in the armed forces in certain instances, but that’s a separate matter.) I mean, if there’s an outbreak of polio in a school, and your kid hasn’t been vaccinated for polio, no, your kid can’t come to school: that’s as much for the benefit of your child as for the benefit of the other children. Is this really a controversial issue?
The most feared “dangers” of vaccines are completely imaginary, based on anecdotal evidence and have actually been proven false in controlled experiments. If too many people are drawn in by these paranoid fantasies then a lot of people will die. In any discussion of whether or not vaccination should be forced, these scientific facts need to be repeated again and again so that people don’t lose sight of them. Ideally we would like to encourage vaccination through non-coercive means, like education. Unfortunately, in a lot of places too many people are opting out. In cases where there is a danger of the vaccination rate dropping to below an effective level of about 80% requiring that children be vaccinated before going to school is perfectly reasonable. Having too many unvaccinated children together is a serious public health hazard. For those who have objections, home schooling is legal. Fighting over this is a luxury that our grandparents didn’t have. They all knew people – siblings, childhood friends, neighbors – who died of diseases like whooping cough and polio. How many people do you know have died as the result of vaccinations?
You know, Matt, I’d say there’d be a huge debate about on which side of the fence the largest quantity of bad science would appear to be.
We’re told as a society that vaccination has saved us from the horrors of smallpox, polio and whooping cough, but I’d have to say that honestly, the science isn’t there to prove that. It’s a theory that drives an incredibly lucrative sector of the pharmaceutical industry, but it’s not a fact.
Here’s a very well researched and annotated site regarding many of the myths about vaccination:
Dispelling Vaccination Myths
Please question your assumptions. There’s more to the anti-vacc position than the issue of mercury content.
For the record, the flu vaccine released for 2005-2006 in Canada (I’m assuming the U.S. as well, but don’t know for sure) contained mercury and this was a new vaccine. They haven’t stopped making vaccines with mercury in yet.
Kim, you said this:
I don’t think there’s general agreement on this. I’m for abortion on demand without apology but I wouldn’t buy the broadest statement of bodily autonomy. The length and extent of the demands of pregnancy on the body are invasive in a way that makes it sui generis or very nearly so. If one can think of another circumstance that involves parasitic use one multiple organ systems for a period of months, that would be analogous. Even forced hosting of a colony of tapeworms would be less burdensome, and therefore more palatable. One could, for example, embrace both forced vaccination and compulsory blood donation without seriously undercutting the argument that bodily autonomy requires safe and accessible abortion.
Please note that some who debate vaccinations – especially those who do so on an individual basis – are doing so not out of bad science, but a lack of accurate information.
I am VERY reluctant to have my soon to be school age kid vaccinated against chicken pox, because every member of my family who has contracted it ended up with a case so severe that it was necessary to be hopsitalized for several weeks, and in my case, ended up on a respirator.
Why would I then be reluctant? The vaccine has not been around for a very long time, and no one knows how long it is effective for, nor is there a booster available for adults. The chicken pox virus is by far more dangerous to contract as an adult. Given these facts, I personally feel that I would be putting my son in serious danger if I have him vaccinated without some knowledge of the future repercussions. I wish that I had some accurate information so that I could make a more reasonable assessment, but I have to do the best I can given a complete lack of attention.
In many cases, especially with diseases considered “minor” like chicken pox, people often don’t realize the severe lethality such illnesses can have among people whose immune systems are susceptible, in our case thanks to my Native American genes. It is completely possible that my son may have avoided this problem, and I could be worried about nothing. But short of having a complete genetic profile done, I have to assume the worst.
Also, as far as the vaccines go, the mercury problem is still present, especially for those of us who rely upon government provided vaccines. They stopped using thimerosal in production awhile ago, but these vaccines remain in circulation, especially among groups that generally purchase vaccines in large lots. While thimerosal has never been proven to be harmful, it has also never proven to be safe in the amounts and concentrations that would be provided by following the recommended schedule of childhood vaccinations. It is little wonder that many parents may fear that it could be dangerous, especially when their fears are either affirmed or pooh-poohed, but never taken seriously by someone through a real and thorough investigation.
I took a look at that site. It fails logical thinking 101. Here are some of the problems with the first paragraph of the first “myth.”
“In New York, only one out of 40 doctor’s offices [2.5%] confirmed that they report a death or injury following vaccination,” — 97.5% of vaccine related deaths and disabilities go unreported there.”
1.) All this means is that most doctors didn’t take the time to answer the survey.
2.) It doesn’t take into consideration that offices with no death or injuries following vaccinations would have nothing to report.
3.) The sample is not large enough to be statistically significant anyway.
“…these findings suggest that vaccine deaths actually occurring each year may be well over 1,000.”
If we take the FDA estimate that only 10% of adverse reactions were reported, that would yield a result of 1000 deaths (about 100 deaths actually being reported). However, that makes sense only if severe reactions and deaths were as likely to go unreported as minor adverse reactions. That is unlikely.
But, even if we accept that grossly inflated number, whooping cough (pertussis) alone killed five to ten times that number of people in the United States each year before the vaccine was introduced. http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/whooping_cough.html
The only reason why it is possible that more people die from the vaccine today than from the illness is because people are vaccinated against the disease.
The remainder of this site is on no firmer ground. The most ubiquitous problem is the confusion of correlation with causation. Choose any paragraph you want – I can rip it to shreds.
If “forced” vaccinations aren’t a good idea, what other “forced” public-health measures should we consider abandoning? All of those “Employees must wash hands” signs are exposing food-service workers to cracked skin, chapping and blistering, and may even increase their odds of serious bacterial infection off the job. Chlorine in the water — well, we all know what that does to skin and hair and eyes…
OK, maybe that response is over the top. Could it be, at least in part, that resistance to vaccination is another sign of social-contract breakdown? The idea that kids or adults should take on some risk and inconvenience to protect themselves and the community breaks down somewhat in the face of herd immunity (as long as enough other people do it, your kids don’t have to get stuck) and even more in the face of inadequate compensation for adverse affects that may (or may not) be associated with vaccination. Until you get down to that herd-immunity threshhold, all the incentives seem to be against vaccination.
(Oh, and probably another area where the lack of decent comprehensive health care in the US makes people more averse to tiny-but-potentially-devastating risks than they ought to be.)
I have nothing but contempt for the anti-vaccination crowd. If a rubella vaccination had been available when I was born, I would not be deaf. Those nitwits who refuse vaccinations and will not have their children vaccinated risk hurting everyone around them including their own children.
At least with the anti-choice crowd I can understand why abortion is disturbing.
Paul, I was just thinking how it would make so much more sense in general to encourage people to seek medical treatment, and honor them for protecting public health.
Wow, I’m surprised at the tone of the pro-vax posters here. I started reading through the comments planning to write about my own mostly non-vax choice for my kids, but now seeing that I must have based that decision on data “rife with misinformation”, that my fears are “completely imaginary”, and that I am deserving of “contempt” in some eyes, I think that maybe this is not the place for my participation…
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When I decided to have a child I entered the debate about vaccination with an open mind – in fact I’m more willing to suspect the pharmaceutical industry of profiteering than your average person. However, the science is simply on the pro-vaccination side and the anit-vaccination side is “rife with misinformation” and fuzzy reasoning (as on the site suggested by one commenter above). If you can link to something with solid data, I’d be willing to take a look at it. I haven’t found anything that stands up to scrutiny.
So, I don’t want to run you off (although I would like to convert you).
Baseline- if everyone chose not to vaccinate their children then thousands upon thousands would die each year of preventable illnesses (as I noted above, whooping cough alone killed 5000-10000 people each year before vaccinations – significantly more than even extreme estimates of total vaccine-related deaths in the US each year). It is true that there are some risks involved in vaccination. However, these risks have been hugely overblown and some – like the suggested link between the MMR vaccine and autism persist even though they have been firmly debunked. What it comes down to is that your kids are reaping huge benefits from the risks (albeit, relatively minor) that I and millions of others put our children though. I’d like to know how you justify that.
On the one hand, statements like this are absolutely correct, on the other hand, you can see how someone with doubts about vaccinations could be put off by what looks like unshakeable self-righteousness. I have a very inconsistent position, because I don’t feel I can really object to any single parent who decides not to vaccinate, and at the same time I believe anyone who advocates mass avoidance of vaccination is a positive danger to us all.
(And yes, more than a bit affected by having a kid who had to get five months of artificial antibodies because one of the viruses that kill preemies dead can’t be vaccinated against.)
No kids, but definately on the vax side. The need some people have to believe that they know more about medicine than doctors do astonishes me at times. The same folks who go on about “corporate” medicine completely ignore the even more direct financial interest alt med folks have in the products they are pushing.
A good surgeon/cancer researcher/anti-alt medicine/anti-holocaust denier blog is Respectful Insolence by Orac – http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/
two kids, never doubted that i would vaccinate them. i know that there is a small risk involved, and if it happens to your child, then it doesn’t seem small. but… the risk of not vaccinating them is huge. i remember getting measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, “german” measles, chronic ear infections, strep throat, etc. etc. in retrospect, i think i spent a big part of my early childhood sick with some now-preventable disease. if i could prevent my children from going through the same thing, even with a risk, i would do it.
life is risk. my mom’s always getting on me for letting the girls climb and run and play rough… they might get hurt, break a bone, get a cut, whatever. yep, they might. in fact, during the evacuation, one of them got a cut on her forehead & needed 5 stitches (that’s what comes of trying to keep 2 toddlers occupied while stuck in a tiny hotel room.) so according to my mom, the kids should be physically coddled to avoid common childhood injuries. sure, i’d love it if they never got hurt, but at what risk to their development of physical self-confidence and fun?
so yes, i risk my kids. with both rough play and with vaccines. but i think the benefits of both outweigh the risks. and if something dreadful happened, i know it would be devistating to me, but there’s no way i’d blame the vaccine or the rollerskates.
There may be some similarity but it is a different issue. For one thing, in order to come to the conclusion you have I would need to be convicned that vaccines are truly given out of public health/altruistic interest. This is not entirely the case. Vaccines are a profitable thing, and have not necessarily reduced disease – fir instance, a few years after the polio vaccine was introduced, there was one of the biggest breakouts of polio in the country – 70,000 infected – from the vaccine. Right now the only source of polio is the vaccine and thousands of kids are infected every year. Mercury has alwways been in, and continues to be in vaccines. It is a necessary preservative – without it the killed virus cannot stay stable. I stronly recommend people look to nonCDC sources for vaccine information. This is serious business. Non-vaccinated kids pose NO danger to other people, please don’t spread this rumor. If vaccinations worked (and they often don’t) then non-vaxed people shouldn’t be a problem. There was a whooping cough breakout in my own home in 2002 – I was fully vaccinated and caught it, my unvaxed 5 month old never did – and now probably has lifelong immunity. That is just an example.
Paul,
I am sorry about my tone. There are so many variables in individual situations (such as a child with particularly delicate health) that decisions about vaccinations must be left up to parents. Nonetheless, in the current climate I see nothing wrong with creating a series of hoops to jump through to get an unvaccinated child enrolled in school. In particular, we’ve started having measles outbreaks because so many people believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism – a claim that has been firmly debunked in scientific studies. If people wanting to enroll an unvaccinated child had to meet with a nurse to discuss their concerns first, imunization rates might be increased considerably without coersion. And there are others out there scaring parents with groundless claims about vaccination causing SIDS and cancer and even claiming that polio would have essentailly gone away all on its own (I am still in part reacting to the link cited earlier in this thread which is full of outrageous claims). These are dangerous lies that need to be strenuously opposed. I’m not sure how to do that without sounding self-righteous. Did I do better this time?
Michelle – it is true that most vaccines are not 100% effective, that is why it is so important that most of the population get the vaccinations. Once we have a significant pool of unvaccinated people (which, despite your anectdotal evidence, is generally where these problems start) then a certain percentage of unvaccinated people will get the diseases too (although usually more minor cases). For example, when my archaeological expedition got typhoid, it was a person who hadn’t gotten the vaccine who got the first and most intense case (it almost killed him). The rest of us had vaccinations, and although some of us got minor cases, no one was anywhere near as bad as the unvaccinated guy.
Also, if you’re going to reject the CDC numbers then you need to provide links to other reliable sources to convince the unconverted.
I’m with ADS@7, here. I’ve got two kids, both well out of elementary school. When I’ve been behind on their vaccinations, I’ve received a letter in the mail as a reminder–with a note to come into the health office if we’re planning to opt out of vaccinations.
Granted I don’t have exposure out of my school district, but I’ve never heard of people being forced to vaccinate their kids.
These seems like a tempest in search of a teapot.
Michelle, do you have a cite or link for this?
Vaccines are a profitable thing, and have not necessarily reduced disease – fir instance, a few years after the polio vaccine was introduced, there was one of the biggest breakouts of polio in the country – 70,000 infected – from the vaccine. Right now the only source of polio is the vaccine and thousands of kids are infected every year.
70,000 infected from the vaccine? There was a problem with the Salk vaccine when it was first massively distributed in 1955: there were about 260 infected from the vaccine and 10 deaths. Where are you getting your numbers?
As for 1000’s of kids every year infected by the vaccine, is that world wide? Because in the US, 8 kids on average get polio from the vaccine per year.
And as for vaccines not reducing disease: in 1988 there were 350,000 cases of polio world wide, in 2004 there were less than 1300.
To an extent I understand that Carla, however the wording is what also struck me when I initially made the post. Drawing the comparison of forced pregnancy to forced vaccination seemed like dangerous ground to me, and that is why I went on to address that as one of the issues I had with the comparison.
Obviously when you sit down and consider it, understanding the differences between being forced or required is pretty easy, despite the nuances. But that is exactly why the terms and the way we distinguish these things are worth talking about.
To expect everyone to immediately move from absorbing the impact of a fairly stunning and outwardly persuasive claim is either to be extremely over-confident in the average academic dilligence of all individuals, or is incredibly naive to the fact that a lot of people read and take arguments at face value without considering the devil in the details behind the arguments.
(Ranting ensues)
Personally I don’t think that comparing forced vaccinations with right to abortion is accurate as both are somewhat misrepresented by the opposition: there are no “babies” killed in abortion and neither is there any mandatory force to vaccinate your children as others have pointed out.
Yet there ethical problems in vaccinations because of the anti-vaccination information (usually more like propaganda) and the natural tendency of parent to fear for the safety of his/her children even to the point of irrationality. It is a cruel thing to exploit this by false information and exaggerations. (such as everything in Dispelling vaccination myths -site.)
While there are some real risks they are outnumbered by benefits in the absence of any legimate contraindications.
So in perfect world there would be no “controversy” or “huge debate”. Not when virtually all pediatrians, scientists and most importantly facts support vaccinations and the opposition is largely if not exclusively quasi-religious new age-people, snake oil peddlers of the “alternative” medicine, people with vast conspiracy theories etc.
Yet there is and people have died unnecessarily because of it.
And about the DISPELLING VACCINATION MYTHS: No need to rip it to shreds again since my favorite online pathology instructor has already done that.
(Internet seems so small sometimes…)
I believe that most people are fundamentally good, and the old adage “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence”.
Still, that site is pure evil.
The author has clearly done a lot of research, so there is no doubt that he really knows what those studies that he mispresents with great skill and intelligence really did say. And by looking for all the studies to lie about he must have seen what would really happen in the absence of vaccinations.
Seriously, you can almost feel the abyss gazing back into you in that site.
I’m definitely not meaning to insult anyone here, not vaccinating your children in isolated cases in the middle of modern society is no very big deal. But if it was not what your doctor suggested it was not the correct choice. And spreading false information is never a good thing regardless of intentions. Finally, intentional lies that harm people are evil in my opinion.
This is such an important issue that adults should be able to discuss it bluntly and honestly without being overly sensitive. I for one could have “right” to be insulted by implied suggestion of pushing needles in infants to administer poisonous substances as mindless or malicious pawn of pharmaceutical industry.
The idea is so absurd that I can’t really pretend to be.
In short: The problem of vaccinating or not vaccinating has already been solved. If you are still worried, good, it shows that you care about your children. Talk about those with your MD and he/she will take you seriously and convince you to have the vaccinations, or fail as a professional (unless of course there are real reasons not to). Don’t give medical advice to your friends or neighbors who are about to have their children vaccinated if you are not qualified.
Part of the problem is that there is a risk, however small, to vaccinations. There is also little *individual* benefit if everyone else vaccinates their kids because then there is a herd immunity and disease is unlikely. The problem is that a lot of people tend to make choices based on what is best for them as individuals. While I dont agree that anyone should be forced to vaccinate their kids, I do think it is appropriate to have strong encouragements. A requirement to be vaccinated before attending public school seems reasonable. Ads that appeal to people’s sense of community might go a long way too.
Vaccines are in some cases mandatory and I have been booted from college twice for not getting boosters. I was re-registered as soon as I got the shots. I have a college degree and I researched this issue for a full 9 years before even conceiving my first child. I went into this research with the intention of proving to people that vaccination was a *smart choice* and what I found completely changed my mind. The 70,000 figure is the 70,000 who were infected (received the contaminated batch) with the polio from the vaccine – the reason only 10 died is because *most* people infected with the virus recover/ are not damaged. It is, like many diseases, only a serious threat to those already comprimised. IIRC this came from the book “What Your Doctor May Not Tell you about Vaccines”, available from amazon. There are many other ways to prevent disease and outside of unusual situations, I believe vaccination should be selective, later, and in single doses without preservatives. I also think most of the vaccinations are uneccessary. I don’t see why I have to provide citations but pro arguments do not. Nearly every book on the shelf about vaccines is loaded with citations, I suggest everyone thoroughly read at least one book not by a pharmaceutical company or anyone else who *profits* from vaccine use (nor anyone who profits from the fact that vaccine injuries are deliberately hidden, as we know in america it is easy to only let the news you want hit the media). A person would have to have complete faith in the western medical system, and belief that doctors truly wish to avoid harm to women and children in order to believe that vaccines truly have benefit that outweighs the risks. One stroll through an obstetric ward will show the fallacy of this belief. Medical evidence (or rather, evidence based research) is only counted when it is profitable and meets with traditions that the medical community is already comfortable with and which will not expose it as having made an error in the past. There really are cover-ups and conspiracies in the world; we aren’t wearing tin foil hats.
I love how anti-vaccine science is just “bad” science, but research supprting vaccines (even the most ardent supporters of vaccines admit some children are injured and killed each year) is the “good science”. Easy way to dismiss the other side without a real discussion. My daughter’s pediatrician, and my GP will not even administer vaccines in their offices so not all doctors support them anymore, and the numbers are growing. I have personally known a healthy baby that died the night after getting routine vaccinations. How do you tell her parents “ok there is some risk but it is for the greater good”. I know another young man who is completely disabled, unable even to swallow well by the polio vaccine. His family was quietly paid off and he lives quite comfortably financially – is it worth it? Yet, parents are routinely scared into the other direction as they sit in the pediatricians office. No one really hears about the vaccine injuries, only the “possiblity” of getting sick with something most of our parents had and survived.
I love how anti-vaccine science is just “bad” science
I love how you characterize paranoia, misinformation and fuzzy thinking as ‘science’.
I’m about the last person to trust Big Pharma, but I also don’t trust the ‘western medicine is eeevil’ hand-waving, especially when it goes along with an arrogant First World view that if we just eat right and wash our hands and think positive-energy kinds of thoughts, we won’t get sick–and besides, we can leech off the herd immunity from all those tools of Big Pharma who did get vaccinated. Suckers!
The parties that mom’s would have where kids would all go to someone’s house that had contracted it so they could get the virus and work it out into immunity?
Uh, no, I don’t remember those parties. I do remember a lot of kids being very, very sick and miserable with chicken pox. My mother-in-law remembers summers of living in fear that children would catch polio.
Hmm, interesting that you’ve never heard of chickenpox parties, Mythago. Here’s a link that gives a small explanation:
Before vaccine became available, “chickenpox parties” were considered a way to get a child protected from serious chickenpox at an age when the infection is ordinarily less severe. Since varicella disease (a.k.a. chickenpox) is generally thought to provide lifelong immunity, prior to an available vaccine, ‘chickenpox parties’ were a strategy to reduce the risk of acquiring chickenpox as an adolescent or adult when the disease is much more severe.
However, after the varicella vaccine was licensed in 1995, children could obtain immunity against varicella without the risks of natural infection and its potential complications. While chickenpox is generally milder in children, severe disease with serious complications does occur. Indeed, most serious disease occurs in previously well children.
Interestingly enough, chickenpox is the only thing we didn’t vaccinate Sydney for, but that was due to her contracting them a week before she was due to get her shots. The vaccinations were held off for two weeks and she got through a relatively mild case without the vaccination.
Michelle said:
The 70,000 figure is the 70,000 who were infected (received the contaminated batch) with the polio from the vaccine – the reason only 10 died is because *most* people infected with the virus recover/ are not damaged.
Please provide a cite for this? Not some book at amazon I need to buy.
I don’t see why I have to provide citations but pro arguments do not.
Fair enough. The numbers I used came from Rotary International. and the National Health Museam
I love how anti-vaccine science is just “bad” science, but research supprting vaccines (even the most ardent supporters of vaccines admit some children are injured and killed each year) is the “good science”
Virtually eradicating polio is good science. Do vaccines infect or harm some children? Yes. But polio is almost a thing of the past now. Do you remember what it was like? Do you have any clue? Before polio vaccine was available, 13,000 to 20,000 cases of paralytic polio were reported each year in the United States. These annual epidemics of polio often left thousands of victims–mostly children–in braces, crutches, wheelchairs, and iron lungs. The effects were life-long. Now an average of 8 kids get polio. Yes those 8 are from the vaccine, but 8 is better than 13000 isn’t it?
I asked my mom about this, she is 80. She remembers being kept home from school because it was rumored a child was ill. She remembers kids she went to school with who got sick and never came back. She remembers when polio was epidemic, panic in communities when it was certain that someone had been diagnosed with polio I told her there were people who thought that vaccines were bad now because some children had reactions or got polio from the vaccine. Her reaction was disbelief. She did not understand why anyone would want to go back to the bad times.
While I can understand a parents fear that their child might have a reaction to a vaccine, I do not understand your ascertain that vaccination does not work to eliminate or diminish the threat of contagious disease.
I always thought the goal of chickenpox parties was to expose all of the children in the family simultaneously, to avoid sequential cases.
Vaccine issues have improved since my first child was born in 1991. I asked for one dose of the killed (Salk) polio vaccine before starting with the oral (Sabin) and was told that I was nuts and that I would have to pay for it out of pocket, despite the fact that the Sabin vaccine is the leading cause of polio in the US. Soon after, the CDC switched to my crazy lunatic scheme, and now you won’t find an oral vaccine anywhere.
Similarly, it was acknowledged that the whole cell pertussis vaccine is allergenic and that kids who have a mild reaction to the second shot shouldn’t be given the third shot. And eventually the acellular vaccine became available.
They don’t give the Hepatitis B at birth now unless the mother is known to be infected.
Personally, I started my kids’ vaccination much later than the “schedule,” but eventually completed everything except HiB (and of course the new rotavirus). Thus my children are contributing to herd immunity but weren’t as much at risk for SIDS, autism, etc. Of course I didn’t know about the cumulative mercury dose per body weight issue at the time that I made those decisions.
I went ahead with the varicella last year when my oldest turned 14, after several failed attempts at intentional exposure. I expect that, like measles, it won’t provide lifetime immunity and they’ll need new shots regularly.
Kim, I brought up this issue on the other thread.
But my point wasn’t that mandatory vaccination and forced pregnancy were the same, or even that they’re similar. That’s obviously stupid. It was that people object to coercive measures that would increase the number of forced pregnancies by asserting a right to bodily autonomy (a position I’d support). But some of those same people seem to abandon that principle when it comes to mandatory vaccination, saying it’s justified to protect others, and I’m not sure you can consistantly hold both opinions. If people have a right to bodily autonomy in pregancy they have the same right with regard to vaccination.
Regarding your two points:
(1) “[Paraphrasing] A forced pregnancy is done to secure the health of a potential person, while mandatory vaccination is done to secure the health of a fully endowed person.” I’m not going to argue with that, because it demonstrates my point. You’re not supporting abortion here because of a right to bodily autonomy, your grounds is personhood. If a personhood detector was invented tomorrow and the fetus registered positive, then your argument would fall and the justfication based upon bodily autonomy would still stand.
(2) “Forced versus Pressured” All I will say is that if girls who had had an abortion were denied a publicly funded education then you would be up in arms, and rightly so. Similarly you would presumably be against bureaucratic hurdles being placed in the way of pregnant women being allowed to exercise their autonomy. I think what I’m getting at is that having a theoretical right to bodily autonomy isn’t worth much if undue influence can be brought to bear regarding your exercise of it, which is something pro-abortion campaigners have recognised for a long time.
Nik, I just get the sense that you’re comparing apples and oranges here though. Bodily autonomy is a good reason to support pro-choice positions, yes. Similarly, it is the reason that I don’t support forced vaccinations (though am in favor of required vaccinations). The difference in what I’m saying is that these issues don’t support each other because they are so very different.
As for the forced v. pressured, what would the reason be behind denying schooling to someone who poses no potential physical threat to other students? The better analogy (to me at least) of vaccination would be a weapon being brought to school.
At best, in the case of pregnancy, the girls are bringing back with them a bad or sad attitude, and (hopefully) a bit of wisdom about why contraceptive use is so important.
Unless I missed it, this discussion hasn’t yet touched on the question of whether requiring vaccinations for diseases not communicable from person to person is justifiable. Is it more difficult to make the case for parental choice when the possible consequences of not vaccinating are significantly greater?
As far as vaccinations being required, if I’m not mistaken in order for a child to start school in SD, they have to show proof of certain vaccines. My little sister was in the age group that the test polio vaccine was being tried on, when it came out and my Mother about went crazy trying to decide if she should have the vaccine or not, and eventually decided to go ahead and have my sister injected. There were no side effects or anything. I can remember not being allowed to do things or go places that other kids were allowed to do, because my Mother and her whole family were extremely paranoid about polio, every summer.
I think that part of the problem with vaccination is that it is not risk-free. It is one of the few treatments everybody encounters where there are pretty good statistics on the risks AND the decision affects more than just a few people. It is kinda scary to look at the adverse effects stats of, say, the MMR and realize that allowing your child to receive that vaccination is putting him or her at some risk. My daughter was one of the 1 in 3,000 children receiving the MMR who got rubella from it, and it was a pretty scary 5 days until her fever broke. But you know, if she had caught rubella the “natural” way, without having any prior immunity, she probably would have died, considering how sick she was from the vaccine.
I also think I was looking at the “herd immunity” thing, because that is one of the strongest protections we have for the people who cannot be vaccinated. And I know I was thinking, “If there’s going to be a resurgence of, say, rubella because too many people are opting out of the vaccination, then by golly my kids are going to be protected.” After having grown up listening to my grandparents and my parents and aunts and uncles talking about epidemics at various times, I definitely wanted to do my bit to prevent that kind of stuff happening to my kids if I could. The story of my mother’s high school boyfriend, who died of polio three weeks before prom, I would definitely say influenced me strongly toward a pro-vaccination stance, as well.
IMO, I think the comparison of forced pregnancy with forced vaccination is striking but false. Forced pregnancy is passive – the government is requiring that no action be taken to change a process (a fetus becoming a baby) already underway. Forced vaccination, on the other hand, is active – the government is requiring an action (the introduction of an injected or orally administered agent) that prevents or changes a process that hasn’t happened yet.
Anti-vaxers fascinate me, as they are such a strange blend of intelligent and foolish. Their education turns on them and (sadly) on their children and communities.
Ask the elders in your family what life was like before vaccines if you ever are made nervous about them. Look at your family tree and notice how many children used to die-all of my grandparents lost very young siblings to communicable disease, and two adult siblings died in the influenza epidemic of the early twentieth century. In my husbands’ country, where polio and measles still kill unimmunized children- along with hep B, typhoid, malaria, dengue, etc-choosing not to vaccinate is a luxury people don’t have. My daughter was vaccinated against TB even- a disease most Americans don’t get vaccinated against anymore. I’d like to see how long anti-vaxers stick to their guns when they travel to foreign countries such as my husbands’.
Vaccinations should not be forced, but very strongly encouraged. This debate, if you can call discourse with such misguided people a debate, be settled once and for all with the bird flu. No atheists in foxholes and all that.
Ah yes, the greater good argument…
Suppose (for the sake of argument) that we come up with scientific proof that women who have abortions are more likely spread disease, or otherwise compromise public health.
Would the government then be justified in outlawing abortions for the “greater good”?
Sure, it’s a contrived example. Perhaps the science on vaccines is bulletproof. But once the principle of coercion by the state in personal health matters is established, it is not that difficult to extend.
For the record, there are places in the US where it’s difficult to get by without the full complement of vaccines. Public schools won’t let you in if you don’t have ’em. If you’re not in school, you can be taken away from your parents, etc.
I was thinking of this thread when I read This NY Times article today.
The Sacred Pond of Ogi, Nigeria, was contaminated with the water fleas that were infected with the Guinea worm larvae. Villagers, holding to traditional beliefs, initially tried to dissuade health officials from treating the water
Food for thought.
The problem with exposing children to chickenpox isn’t just that the child can get a serious illness; adults can catch the illness unwittingly, and anyone who gets chickenpox can later get shingles, an *extremely* painful flare-up of the virus (human herpes 3, or HHV-3) that lies dormant in your nerves.
My grandfather and my wife had attacks of shingles, and it’s a nasty, painful condition. You don’t want it, and you don’t want your children to have it later in life. Get them vaccinated.
The even bigger problem with chicken pox is that there are now many children in school who take medicines for asthma and allergies that deplete the immune system for whom chicken pox is not a mild disease. Any person who is immunologically compromised can easily die from chicken pox. That said, the vaccine is clearly imperfect.
I would first like to mention to the person or persons who say that parents who are concerned about vaccine safety are pushing some kind of panic button unnecessarily that the party line that vaccines no longer contain mercury is a LIE.
My daughters’ FORMER pediatrician once declared to me with absolute certainty and confidence in her stride that vaccines no longer contain mercury in this country. With confidence, I vaccinated my older daughter who developed PDD-NOS, a form of autism. Eventually, when it came time to make the choices for my younger child, I did what should have been done in the first place: I asked for the package inserts and read them. Two of the vaccines, Hep-B, I believe, and one other contained “trace” Thimerosal. In addition to those, every vaccine, every single one, uses other heavy metals as adjuvants. These are substances designed to irritate the immune system so that simultaneously with the presence of the disease microbes, the system responds aggressively to build up antibodies to the foreign bodies thus requiring about a fifth of the amount of injections. I read it and said no to the vaccines. Perhaps it is a coincidence, perhaps it is not, but my older vaccinated child is autistic, and my younger, unvaccinated child is not.
There is something going on with Congress’s desire to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits that I do not think it is melodramatic to call a conspiracy hiding in plain sight. Here is a link from just one story I have seen on this subject:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/doctors-against-research_b_17726.html
In this particular story, the mainstream medical community is the culprit more than Congress, which surprises me not a whit. Doctors get a great deal of benefits from pharmaceutical companies, and besides, they tend to believe rather myopically in the gospel of what they learned in medical school.
Another I saw said that in May of last year, a bill in Congress sought to give vaccine manufacturers even more protections from lawsuits than they already have under the Homeland Security Act.
Before I go on, here is that link:
http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/vaccine_policy.htm#dragon
Did you hear about that whole shebang? Bush pushed for the vaccine lawsuit unidemnity provision over and over, the Democrats in Congress fought it repeatedly, the Republicans put it into the Homeland Security Act, and when the Democrats refused to sign the Act because of THAT provision, the Republicans called them Un-American and weak on defending the country. Then, the Republicans took that amendment out, the Democrats signed the Act, and in the dead of night, someone took the signed bill, put the amendment back in, and handed it to the president. Rumor has had it that it was Bill Frist.
Honest to Heaven, I’m wrapping this up as fast as possible. I want to move back to New York from Louisiana and I am finding myself facing obstacles trying to find out how to not have to vaccinate my children that might make the author of the blog want to rethink her position that forced pregnancy and forced vaccinations are not similar.
1) There are no exemptions for reasons of philosophy or conscience in New York. There are only exemptions for medical reasons or religious reasons. This is the tip of the iceberg.
2) The Department of Health has the right, at least they think they do, to make an applicant detail what religion they’re part of and exactly what provision of their faith excludes vaccinations. Not to mention, isn’t it discrimination against people who are atheists or agnostics but who hold the convictions that they do about what to put in their bodies that are just as morally or ethically based? That seems to me to be an unreasonable intrusion into matters of faith. Geez, if I need a letter from my mom too, I’m SOL because she died in 1993.
A medical exemption must be signed by a doctor. I cannot just explain my concerns; a doctor has to say my reasons are valid as if I’m an idiot. I have contacted several medical doctors who are also naturopaths or who specialize in environmental medicine and every one of them claims to have no knowledge whatsoever of these letters or what to say in one. I can’t really ask the DOH what constitutes a legit medical reason because they’ll just say, “Well, tell us what your reason is and we’ll tell you if we like it or not,” which may ruin other explanations I might use later. I cannot get a doctor to tell me what the DOH’s legit medical reasons are because nobody knows. I cannot even be sure which religious reasons they’ll accept. For example, both Judaism and Catholicism have religious reasons for objections (Leviticus and mixing human with animal blood, and, some vaccines made from materials found in human aborted fetuses, respectively), but who knows if they’re going to say, “Well we have 50 Jews and 40 Catholics in this department and all but one of those have vaccinated children, so, sorry.” One parent in upstate New York claimed a religious exemption and under force faced state DOH LAWYERS (!) to answer an inquisition about her faith. They grilled her mercilessly and turned her down.
So, in short, in the state of New York this is made so incredibly, impossibly difficult, that I am basically wondering if I will have any ability to move back home…to MY HOME…where I was born and lived for 30 years.
Unfortunately, because there is such organized suppression against research into vaccines as a cause of autism, the bill from 2005 meant to PROHIBIT ANY FURTHER RESEARCH INTO THE CONNECTION by the way, we parents and our children are quite trapped. The most important thing we don’t know is whether or not there are some children who because of a variety of biological factors do NOT have the ability to respond well to vaccines. If they’d allow the question out of the closet, and could discover a connection (if one exists), they could develop a test that would let us know which kids can and cannot have them, and we can all forever retire from this debate.
(P.U.I.D.S, who apologizes for the length of this post and the blog space I’ve occupied)
One quick thought I had while scanning these posts… 2 gross assumptions are made:
1) An unvaccinated kid is contagious! Remember, the *risk* of getting a disease is relative to the *risk* of exposure.
2)The vaccine will provide your kid w/absolute immunity! Let me ask you this: assuming you’ve had the polio vaccine, would you swap spit with a known infected-with-polio person???
I guess it all comes down to this, at the end of the day can you and your spouse live with injecting, really, who knows what because the government is not telling, into your child purposely and possibly watching changes occur in your child that will affect him the rest of his life. Or, catch a sickness that is soooo rare now just by living and that there is medicine for.
As parents, we all have to make heart decisions each day on behalf of our children. If they decide at an older age to be vaccinated that is their decision. There is autism in our family and we decided the risk was too high to vaccinate. We choose to risk chickenpox the old fashioned way. Today, as parents, we still have a say as to what doctors can do to our children. I fear when my children are old enough to be parents that will not be the case.
It also comes down to parents’ responsibility to society–and children–in general. There is very little evidence that vaccines harm children, and a lot of evidence that they have massive public health benefits. In fact, vaccines are the reason that your child has a low individual chance of contracting mumps or measles or polio at all.
Which is not to say that vaccines don’t have risks; they do. We may not know what they all are. But the individual risk of vaccination has to be weighed not only against the individual risk of remaining vaccinated, but against the collective risk of lower population resistance to disease.
“The need some people have to believe that they know more about medicine than doctors do astonishes me at times.”
I know a lot more than 75% of doctors about hormones, and I know that from reading the internet and talking to people. I mean wow. That surprised me, too. I thought docs would know their stuff, research if they didn’t, but I had way too high expectations for doctors.
Same thing for psychiatrists, who have done medicine then an added specialization afterwards, yet they’re sometimes extremely clueless as well (about things in general, not even just hormones).
Mythago writes:
They might have been regional, you might not have needed to catch chickenpox from one, or they might have happened before your time. I remember in the late 1960’s, probably 1969, my neighbor’s daughter had chickenpox. All the uninfected kids went there, including my kid brother, as I recall. I don’t remember when I had chickenpox (which puts it before about 1966), but I know that I did.
I’m also old enough to remember when Smallpox vaccinations still took place. There were major concerns about smallpox because it hadn’t been eradicated yet. Likewise, there were other serious outbreaks when I was a kid and getting vaccinated, for things where vaccination was possible, was very important.
Speaking of MMR, I knew people who were affected by their mother’s contracting one of those illnesses before they were born and I’m grateful those vaccinations exist today.
It’s like everyone forgets how crazy things were before vaccinations for many of those illnesses were commonplace, and because they’ve forgotten the reasons they were so important are forgotten as well.
I’m with the posters who’ve said the being vaccinated is a social obligation. You want to be a part of society where those of us who are “pro-vaxx” live and work? Well, get your vaccinations, otherwise I support the government keeping your kids out of schools. I don’t want to find out that the MMR shots my son has had were the rare “ineffective” ones when your kid with some preventable disease shows up.
I wonder if maybe it was a regional thing. I think I was probably the last person in the US vaccinated for smallpox, too. :)
DO YOUR RESEARCH!!! start with an open mind like I did. Consider a few things and use some intellect to figure it out: ask yourself this: who’s profiting by making these vaccines mandatory? Patents carry a time limit (hmmm how convenient). As of 2008, the U.S. Court of Claims has paid out $2 billion to vaccine victims. Why would they do such a thing. Mercury isn’t toxic. Really? Then why did they remove it from the long-used Thimerosal? Even better, why is it that the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) won’t even allow a human being to fish from and consume fish from a 10-acre lake where 1/2 a gram of mercury is detected yet in the US the FDA allows dentists to put dental amalgam fillings in your mouth that can contain one gram each and are proven to leach out over time. Thanks FDA glad you have my back! Moral is, if you’re going to try to convince me that these powerhouse pharmaceutical companies and the big bad polly’s have my little girl’s best interest at heart you’d better get started; because with all the reading I’ve done I’ve yet to be convinced. And I really did want to be.