UK Court Orders Two Sisters Must Receive MMR Vaccine 699
rnws writes "The BBC reports that an English High Court judge has ruled that sisters aged 15 and 11 must have the MMR vaccine even though they and their mother do not want it. The High Court decision, made last month, came after the girls' father brought a case seeking vaccination. When outlining her decision in the latest case, Mrs Justice Theis emphasized it was a specific case 'only concerned with the welfare needs of these children', but lawyers say as one of a series it confirms there is no longer any debate about the benefits of the vaccine."
Re:Good. (Score:2, Informative)
Home birth is quite safe in all but high-risk cases, and we know which ones those are.
Being unvaccinated is not.
Re:Good. (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know, man. Pregnancy is listed under "Conditions" [www.nhs.uk], they advice you should NOT have your first child at home [www.nhs.uk], and they provide a mid-wife TO YOUR HOME if you decide to give birth at home.
What are you going on again? Any links?
Re:Good. (Score:4, Informative)
NHS these days, "Pregnancy is not an Illness", ergo, you need almost no medical care to give birth
Do you have any references for that leap? I looked it up and the references I have found to that phrase is in literature like this [rcplondon.ac.uk].
Pregnancy is not an illness and the majority of women remain well throughout their pregnancy. In fact, research shows that most women who work are healthier during their pregnancy than those who do not work.
It is about the ability to work while pregnant and has nothing o do with the level of care during delivery.
you are encouraged to give birth at home.
According to this NHS page [www.nhs.uk] the choice is up to the parent. It looks like they give a pretty balanced picture of the choice between the options.
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:5, Informative)
You missed the part about the father wanting the kids vaccinated.
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:5, Informative)
But that was not the issue here.
Half of their legal guardians wanted them to get the vaccine, and the other half did not want it. The kids had picked a side, but were too young for their opinion to matter.
So, in the end either the court could of just said, "well we cannot decide for you", or it could take the role of a third child guardian, and base their decision on the medical science.
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:4, Informative)
It's unfortunate they made the issue out to be the efficacy of the vaccine and not the moral implications about forcing medication on people against their will. I, like most, believe the autism-MMR link is pure nonsense, but I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines
I agree that there must be some limited right for an individual to refuse a medical treatment that might be harmful to them.
However: the parents have the authority to force their children to undergo medical operations for the benefit of the child; their child not being of sound mind, is deemed incapable of refusing treatment for themself.
The two parents are in disagreement ---- think of this as more a parental rights issue; one of the parents demands their child be vaccinated for their protection and long life; the other parent has decided they object to their child receiving the vaccine based on some bogus hearsay about vaccines causing autism or other bad things.
The parents cannot resolve the matter amongst their selves, therefore: the court has to step in to settle the dispute between the two parents, and ensure the child's welfare is protected.
Re:Finally killed that autism theory? (Score:3, Informative)
s/cognitive dissonance/confirmation bias/
Re:Good. (Score:3, Informative)
But would I let a government make that decision for me/them? Hell no. I'd start killing people long before submitting to that tyranny.
RTFS the government didnt make that decision, the father did. The father just used a court to force the mother to do it, the father brought suit against the mother not the government.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
s/even/only/. You can get shingles only if you have previously had chicken pox. If you haven't, and if you get exposed, you get chicken pox, not shingles. Shingles is just the long-dormant virus becoming active again.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of people don't know what the flu really is like - they get a winter cold and call it "the flu", or they get some gastrointestinal bug and call it "the stomach flu". My ex-boss was notorious for the former... he'd have the sniffles but it was "a touch of the flu". Then when a coworker was out for two weeks with the real thing, ex-boss made a lot of derogatory comments because of course HE always came to work, even with "the flu".
The real flu lays most people out flat - congested lungs, bad sore throat, temps well above 100, a feeling like a truck ran over you. The increased mucus production can make you queasy when it ends up in your stomach, but it's not a stomach bug.
BTW I'm not intending to take sides - just making a comment.
Re: Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, a hospital *ambience* is what's important?! And you get pretty damn close. Most complications are known ahead, in which case a home birth is ill advised.
No. If I must spell it out: the ambiance of home births do not equate to the success of a hospital based birth.
There are plenty of "known complications" that can predict the need for C-section [wikipedia.org]:pre-eclampsia, hypertension, previous (high risk) fetus, HIV infection of the mother, sexually transmitted infections, previous classical Caesarean section, previous uterine rupture, prior problems with the the perineum, bicornuate uterus, to name a few.
The problem lies in the unexpected indications (same reference): prolonged labour or a failure to progress (dystocia), fetal distress, cord prolapse, uterine rupture, hypertension or tachycardia after amniotic rupture, placenta praevia, placental abruption or placenta accreta, breech or transverse presentation, failed labor induction, large baby weighing >4000g (macrosomia), umbilical cord abnormalities (vasa previa, multilobate including bilobate and succenturiate-lobed placentas, velamentous insertion), meconium in the amniotic fluid, fetal acidosis (including lactic acidosis), amniotic fluid embolism, and my personal favorite the wonderfully morbid splenic artery rupture, to name a few. Not to mention the risk to the baby once delivered including aspiration, respiratory distress (including apnea), bronchopulmonary dysplasia, persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn, cardiac abnormalities not seen on screening ultrasounds, necrotizing enterocolitis, sepsis, and cardiac arrest, to name a few more.
Most of the midwives/doula/witchdoctors have little to no training in these conditions. They literally "do not know what they do not know". As a result there is often a significant and life-threatening delay in transfer to a medical center where someone who is versed in all aspects of child birth (the Ob-Gyn), gets to bail the mother and fetus out. Wanna roll the dice with your kid? Go for it, you have every right - most women and fetuses will survive...but for those who have complications, I repeat: Caveat Emptor.
As for me and my wife? I'm not going too risk it, and I personally have the skill, knowledge, experience and license to perform c-sections (albeit emergent ones)....
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Find me a kid that wants to get shots. Of course they're going to be against it. But yeah, it's sad this very dangerous idea is still floating around, all because somebody wanted to get money from an alternative vaccine and thus fabricated a lie.
As far as I know, the MMR controversy was not initially related to an alternative vaccine (at least not one that was ever produced). It originated with Dr. Andrew Wakefield in the UK who claimed there was a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. He produced a flawed paper claiming such a link and had been paid 55k GBP by parties interested in establishing a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#Wakefield_Lancet_paper_controversy [wikipedia.org] The only reason the whole thing blew up as it did was because the press reported his "findings" in an uncritically positive light. (This is the same press who have warned the British public about the dangers of "WiFi radiation in our schools" on the front page of a national broadsheet.) Wakefield's paper was later retracted when evidence of fraud (data fabrication) came to light. Whilst this was reported in the media, it wasn't really made clear that the whole house of cards had collapsed. The media didn't apologise (as far as I know) nor did they embark on a campaign to clear the name of the MMR vaccine, so to speak.
Wakefield had plans to profit from the demise of MMR (testing kits, alternative vaccines, etc) but he never got that far.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
What are you on about? Influenza is a type of virus, not a series of symptoms. You can have a bad flu. You can have not so bad a flu. If they are both caused by the flu virus, then they are both flu.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Please stop spreading nonsense. "Flu" is a disease caused by the influenza virus. You can have bad symptoms from the influenza virus. Or you can have not so bad symptoms from the influenza virus. But both are flu.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:4, Informative)
You mischaracterized the disagreement. In reality, both sides believed themselves scientifically correct.
No I didn't.
I am sure both parents believe themselves to have scientifically correct information.
I am making a value judgement, that one of the parents is off their rocker, and believing bogus hearsay to be scientific fact.
I contend that neither parent disputes that the vaccine has huge benefits and prevents the disease it is intended to prevent.
One parent irrationally deems the vaccine unsafe; they believe their point of view is founded in bonafide science, but that belief is false, and without true foundation.
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:4, Informative)
The government exists to control externalities. Things like the intrinsic social cost of pollution is borne by everyone (and unequally, by those downriver/downwind), but the person "dumping" waste bears no cost, unless it is enforced upon them by the government. In many cases, it is economically cheaper to proceed doing some business or personal activity without adequate pollution controls. However, cleaning up pollution eventually gets paid for by, for example, a municipality who has a vested interest in having clean beaches, or vibrant wildlife. This company/individual who is polluting, is then "externalizing" their costs to this third party, without consequence. In the same vein, if there is no interested party, the pollution may simply cause biosphere collapse, as happened in several river systems in the United States during the 20th century. The Cuyahoga River is a famous example, where, in the early 18th century, the river is being described as one of the richest rivers in the world, where fish can be found by simply dipping a net over the side of a boat. By the mid 20th century, the number of species of living thing in the river numbered.... one... a pollution-eating algae. The river caught fire a number of times between 1950 and the late 1960s, when the EPA was created to enforce pollution controls in such areas.
I mention this particular component, because "outlawing the EPA" is one of the more common rallying cries of libertarian political candidates in the USA. Pollution is one isolated example, but it represents a very obvious and easy to illustrate example.
This is the root of the OPs discussion. So actually, far from being a straw-man, it clearly and accurate criticizes the mainstream view of the majority of libertarians in the USA (at least those associated with the major parties/groups and/or mainstream ideologies.
Re: Good. (Score:2, Informative)
Long post. Good oratory. Emotional appeals. Big words. No evidence.
Some evidence - http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7400?tab=full
Women planning birth in a midwifery unit and multiparous women planning birth at home experience fewer interventions than those planning birth in an obstetric unit with no impact on perinatal outcomes. For nulliparous women, planned home births also have fewer interventions but have poorer perinatal outcomes.
That means that, for uncomplicated pregnancies, there's a statistically higher risk only for first time mothers.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Informative)
If it's a choice between you getting a shot that will kill you and 100 people around you dying, it's rather less clear cut... a generous enough person might accept and be the sacrifice, but while it is rather selfish it's not entirely unreasonable to refuse, and being forced to get the shot would be wrong.
Typhoid Mary.
The only humane solution was commitment for life to a secure psychiatric hospital.