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."
Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
"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. "
No, the kids don't know any better, and the mother is practicing child abuse, especially against the 11 year old.
Brainwashing your kids against vaccination is particularly evil.
--
BMO
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
Both of my kids, when they were in the age range 4-7. Neither were scared of needles, and the doctor gives you a jelly bean.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
i hated needles as a kid, and STILL hate needles. i almost never get anything with a needle unless i absolutely have to. ill generally take the flu over a vaccine.
Then you've probably never really had the flu.
Oh, and before you wound up completely out of action for a week except to grab the trash can near the bed when your stomach tries to turn itself inside out and escape your body via your throat, and you have spasms in abodmen muscles you never knew you had, you've probably helped spread the disease to who knows how many others.
Do like I do, look the other way and accept that there's going to be some momentary pain.
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, Insightful)
The flu tends to be much worse. One key difference is that whereas a cold will just stuff up your nose and make your head feel miserable, the flu will make you feel like you just ran a marathon and then a truck ran over you. It also tends to last a lot longer. I was bedridden for 10 days, and it was 3 weeks before I felt normal again. It was so bad that even though I wanted to go back to work, I was afraid to because I didn't want to pass it on to a coworker and make them go through the same misery I had just been through. Totally the opposite of the guy who's only had a cold and thinks you should just tough it out and come to work.
I get my flu shot every year now.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
No actually you're both correct. A virus is a virus. The body's immune response determines how much you're knocked about. I had influenza too. I caught it from my sister who was hospitalised because of it. For me it felt like a common cold. It wasn't worth the trip to the doctor except for the whole sister going to hospital bit so I went and had a blood test done which gave the same results as my sister.
For me it was like a cold that took longer than normal to shake. I also get my flu shot every year now (because my company sponsors it).
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Then you've probably never really had the flu.
Im assuming youve never had a vasovagal reaction; its no picnic either. Fainting in a public clinic is not up there with one of my top hobbies, and its usually more trouble than its worth convincing the clinic aid that youre not going to die, you just need somewhere to lie down, and please dont call the ambulance.
Not that Im saying the flu is preferable, I just think you underestimate the degree to which needles can be a problem for some people. And do spare me the "get over it" thing; this isnt something
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i hated needles as a kid, and STILL hate needles. i almost never get anything with a needle unless i absolutely have to. ill generally take the flu over a vaccine.
Then you've probably never really had the flu.
Oh, and before you wound up completely out of action for a week except to grab the trash can near the bed when your stomach tries to turn itself inside out and escape your body via your throat, and you have spasms in abodmen muscles you never knew you had, you've probably helped spread the disease to who knows how many others.
Do like I do, look the other way and accept that there's going to be some momentary pain.
I've slept on the floor next to the toilet. And I still don't want the shot.
Re: Good. (Score:3)
I've had 3 cavities filled and a quarter a toenail removed (infected ingrown, big toe, right quarter of right toenail) all without anesthesia because I couldn't stand getting the shot. Even refused the painkiller drip the ER offered when I was passing a kidney stone (4mm, painful but passable).
The cavities weren't that bad, just railroad spikes of ice through the brain. But the toenail is every bit a torture as you can imagine. I snapped the bed railing when he started digging under the nail with the surgic
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)
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.
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Indeed, people call the common cold flu to make themselves sound iller than they really are, but this diminishes the very real impact of genuine flu, which is very unpleasant indeed. Round here, those sorts of exaggeration are rightly dismissed as "man-flu" (as men are the ones that tend to exaggerate a cold, because "I have a cold" supposedly sounds a bit wimpish, which is also pretty silly).
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason that most kids and later adults who are afraid of needles is because they were lied to when they got their first injection/venipuncture. If they're told "Don't worry, this won't hurt." in the misguided belief that they'll relax so it'll hurt less, then the surprise becomes a lifelong aversion. If however the provider was honest and says "This will hurt, but only for a little bit" and ideally bribes them with candy after, then you're golden.
I have absolutely no proof for this theory, it's purely anecdotal, but it seems sound, and at any rate, I always tell a kid something will hurt if it MIGHT, let alone will. I never lie to a pediatric patient.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. I remember one kid who kept asking, "Will it hurt? Will it hurt?" and his mother kept saying, "No, not a bit, honey" and the like, and the kid clearly wasn't buying it. So I looked him in the eye and said, "This is going to hurt worse than anything you've ever felt in your life. It's going to hurt worse than anything you've ever imagined in your life. It's terrible. You'll be screaming. It will feel like your arm is getting chewed off by a wolf ..." While he was giggling, I gave him the shot and he barely even noticed it. I'm willing to bet he was a lot less fearful the next time he went in.
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That can certainly be part of it, but it's much more. IV injection violates the integrity of the body itself, which is a really powerful psychological issue for anyone, at any age, but especially children.
It's one thing if you agree to it, if you do agree that you need it, it's another entirely when it is a matter of adults who are larger and more powerful deciding to do it and giving you no choice.
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Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
You should try giving blood. The needle looks more like a tube, around 2mm diameter. You also get to see your blood flowing down the tube, into the bag that slowly fills up.
I've given more blood than I currently have in my body.
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That's funny, I'd rather someone remove my blood marrow than have the flu.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about flu. This is about MMR vaccine. Example: if pregnant woman manages to catch rubella, if she's lucky, child will be stillborn. Unlucky, and it will be born severely disabled.
These infectious diseases are not a joke. These are diseases that wiped out a good 10-20% of people before they reached adulthood before vaccination was invented and left many survivors with some degree of disability for life.
The reason why we don't have to worry about having ten kids so that around four make it to adulthood is because we have vaccination against the nastier diseases, and because vaccination and resultant herd immunity effectively wiped many of the most dangerous diseases out of our everyday lives.
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On the plus side, not getting flu means I don't feel like shit for a week, I don't take days off for illness, I don't pass on the disease to my family or colleagues and I don't leave myself at a higher risk of a worse repository infection or even die. On the minus side, I must spend 20 euros and 15 minutes of my lunch time for a tiny pinprick injection.
I tell you, it's a huge dilemma .
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
So just because a vaccine is not 100% effective doesn't mean that the alternative of having no protection at all is in any way sane or rational. Hundreds of thousands of people die from flu or complications from flu related illnesses every single year. Many more suffer a really shitty week and continue to infect others while they do so. I wonder how many of those deaths would be avoidable if the person had received a vaccine (providing they were capable of receiving it), or if the people in their vicinity had received theirs.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
I went through a weird stage between the ages of roughly 7 and say, 16 where I was extremely uncomfortable with needles. Then I had to get a lot of blood drawn for some tests, and something just clicked, and I was like "this is no big deal. Sure, its uncomfortable, but its not really scary". It was a good time for it to happen to, because the nurse that was taking my blood was semi-incompitant or something, and had to stab me about 30 times to get a vein.
The best trick with kids, especially boys, is to take a friend of theirs when it's time to get a shot. They'll want to look tough in front of the friend, so no freaking out, no crying. Once they've been through it once without acting like the world is going to end they have that something click which you're describing. From that point on, you don't the friend anymore, it won't be a big deal.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Find me a kid that wants to get measles, mumps and/or rubella.
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.
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He's not "Dr" Wakefield. He's just Andrew Wakefield, fraudster and disgrace to science. From the article: "On 24 May 2010, the GMC panel found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct on four counts of dishonesty and 12 involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children, and ordered that he be struck off the medical register."
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Technically, being "struck off" the medical register means the loss of your license to practice medicine. It does not mean the loss of your medical degree.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
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Pregnancy isn't an illness.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pregnancy isn't an illness.
Exactly. It's just a parasitic relationship.
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Pregnancy isn't an illness.
Exactly. It's just a parasitic relationship.
Its symbiotic; the mother draws quite a bit from the fetus. I remember reading about mothers who were experiencing a lot of stress during pregnancy. After delivery the mothers had some hormone balance issues. Turned out their body was drawing hormones from the fetus during the pregnancy to help them along. Once the baby was delivered they weren't getting this 'top up' and had issues with this. It could be contributory to post-partum depression.
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Not all. Nothing containing different DNA grows inside a fish.
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:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well statistically you would expect the deaths to go way down, as modern hospitals have far higher rates of child and mother mortality than non hospital deliveries.
Apples and oranges.
With a few unfortunate exceptions, home births are low risk births which are really pretty safe with routine medical care (that can be delivered at home). So you don't expect any deaths / bad outcomes (but they happen).
Hospital births include low risk and high risk deliveries. Some of the latter don't do well even with the best medical care. So, no you cannot statistically compare the two unless you are very careful to tell us just what exactly you are comparing.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes and no. You do not have to include the high risk patients, and we do have a good reason to rule them out of that data.
Just compare the patents that a competent midwife would of warned away from a home-birth.
"A competent midwife" is a loaded statement. In the UK most midwives have at least a 3-year degree or an additional set of courses on top of a nursing degree. In the US, many midwives are "self-taught" or taught by apprenticeship by others and there is little oversight. And, of course, the US does not have universal health care so many more pregnancies are higher risk with reduced prenatal care of the mother or child. I'm not sure where the study the parent poster was quoting was done, but it should certainly control for health care systems as well.
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Home birth is quite safe in all but high-risk cases, and we know which ones those are.
Several Ob-Gyns I know are fond of noting:
You can't expect 21st century outcomes with 18th century ambiance.
Caveat Emptor.
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)....
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Not surprisingly, a good percentage of that was due to horrible sanitary conditions.
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No. The reason why no one wanted to go to the hospital in 18th century was because that was the time when scientific medicine didn't really exist yet, and hospital mortality was actually higher than going without treatment.
It was the age when stuff like homeopathic hospitals had lower mortality rates than medical hospitals, not because homeopathy worked but because it didn't do anything - which was better than harmful procedures that religion and belief based medicine of the time did.
Re: Good. (Score:3)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Funny)
Do you get a refund on you fir insurance is there is no fire?
I personally have never insured my Christmas tree, I wasn't aware of such a policy.
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99% of neonates will not require resuscitation.
The flip side of that is, of course, that 1 out of every 100 births will require extraordinary measures. So let's just go ahead and say that we're 99% accurate in spotting the high risk OB pts (which is qu
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your calculations assume that there are no risks that are associated with hospital births (and not present with home births). I don't know the numbers, but it must be more than zero.
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Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
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To be fair, the contagious period and the visible symptoms period don't necessarily overlap enough for it to matter - by the time you're symptomatic enough to realize you should stay home, you might have already infected your coworkers.
I blame workplaces that are stingy with sick-time and work-from-home time. (especially work-from-home time. Lots of things you could be sick with that you don't want to spread, but you're not impaired enough where you want to sit around doing nothing and getting behind. (an
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Vaccination is a matter of public safety, because even if you don't get sick you can infect other children or adults, causing deaths. So if you want to exercise your liberty then stay in your home your entire life.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is about your right to decide what goes into your own body, to keep the government away from it.
That's all well and good, but what goes into your body does have an effect on other people, not just you. For a wild hypothetical, if there's a choice between getting an injection and 100 people around you dying, you're just plain being an arsehole for refusing the injection, and a good case can be made for it being for the good to force you to get it. 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.
Vaccines come somewhere between those two extremes. Negative effects of getting vaccines are pretty rare and tend to be relatively minor, but negative effects of not getting them can be devastating for far more people. And even if it is just you that dies if you don't get a shot, that's still a pretty negative effect for the family and friends that care about you and perhaps depend on you.
As such, I cannot in good conscience oppose certain vaccinations being mandated.
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.
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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, Insightful)
That sort of tyranny exists so that idiots like yourself DON'T start killing people.
Seriously, if you don't like having diseases controlled using the most efficient means (vaccine instead of quarantine) the you get to fuck off and live in your own vaccine free society. The only reason you haven't died yet is because everyone else around you vaccinating has shielded you.
It should not be a choice sometimes. Because everyone fucking dying because some shithead like you shouted FREEEEEEDDDDUUUUMB is the stupidest idea I have ever heard.
Re: Good. (Score:5, Funny)
You and people like you are a disease. I wish there was a vaccination for /that/.
It wouldn't help you.
You don't take vaccinations remember...
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Who the hell do you think you are to demand a right to adversely affect the health of everyone around you?
If you don't want to vaccinate then fine, go live out in the desert far away from civilization.
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.
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Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is that there is little societal benefit to NOT having your chicken pox vaccine but there is a huge benefit to people being able to eat.
We put up with 30,000 + deaths a year so that people can easily get around using cars. Simply lowering the maximum speed on highways to 30 mph and in the city to 10 mph would be a huge win WRT to deaths. But the tremendous cost to society mitigates against that.
When there is a small cost against a small but incremental benefit it is still a good idea to do it. If you can conclusively demonstrate that the cost to society from 100% use of any vaccination is higher than the cost of not vaccination we can (and should) have a discussion. Be prepared however to defend against the "but one child saved" groups.
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While I don't think that
Finally killed that autism theory? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Finally killed that autism theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally killed that autism theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
The rumor X is not related to Y will spread if there is people get emotional gratification out of it. If people believe they need to change their lifestyle to prevent global warming, then they are very eager to believe that "the warming is not related to burning fossil fuels."
Ironically, changing our lifestyle is one of the least effective ways to reduce use of fossil fuels. We just need to get our energy from other sources and we can keep our comfy lifestyle.
Re:Finally killed that autism theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
One side of the story has a spokesidiot who is blond with big tits. Apparently that supersedes scientific study.
.
PS. Firefox underlined 'spokesidiot' with a red squiggly line. So I added the word to the dictionary.
Re:Finally killed that autism theory? (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.foxnews.com/images/385241/3_21_ape450.jpg [foxnews.com]
NSFW: Shows nipplage.
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I hope so, I don't know why so many people heard of one study, which was proved false, and not the others which disproved it.
Welcome to Planet Earth, you must be new here.
Extravagant simplistic lies make for a better (more memorable and interesting) story than a boring or complex truth.
This truth is amplified by the echo chamber of the media (fear sells because it is more 'interesting' than mundane realities).
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s/cognitive dissonance/confirmation bias/
Sensible decision (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually sensable.... (Score:5, Insightful)
IF mom and dad and kids didn't want it and courts were ordering something, then that would be a different story.
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It's unfortunate. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, to be fair, I only know of one vaccine that poses a real threat, and that is only because it is misused. That would be the chicken pox vaccine. It should not be used on children. The data supplied by virtually every source shows this, even when the sources conclusion recommends the vaccine. The problem is that those who support vaccination rarely if every draw a distinction between a vaccine like the chicken pox vaccine and the polio vaccine. Then the Anti-"Anti-Vaxers" come out and start screaming about how all vaccines are good, and anyone who would question the righteousness of the all mighty vaccine is a murderer who should have their children removed from them.
When we were fighting polio, there was no question that A vaccine was a good thing. The big killers and maimers are largely gone now. We have had effective vaccines for a long time. Now we are trying to add vaccines that prevent diseases that are less likely to kill or maim than a home cooked meal. That's right. If the chicken pox vaccine were never developed, you would still have a greater chance of being killed or maimed by a home cooked meal than by chicken pox.
Even worse is that the vaccine is known not to offer life long immunity, so we are very likely just pushing the disease off for a decade or so. This is particularly unfortunate because chicken pox is 10x more deadly for an adult than a child.
Not just those that can't (Score:3)
Also those for whom the vaccination does not work. It turns out that vaccinations are NOT 100% effective. In some people, the vaccination will not provide immunity for whatever reason. Well, there's not really any good way to test this. It's not like we can go in infect people with potentially deadly diseases, just to see if they in fact are immune to those diseases. However, when a large percentage of the population has been vaccinated, the herd immunity acts such that basically nobody gets it since the di
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:5, Insightful)
Herd immunity still doesn't trump individual control of their body (at least IMHO).
The Father wanted his children immunized. The Mother didn't. The government mediated the dispute with the goal of finding in the girl's best interests.
I didn't see anything about personal rights in this, unless you are arguing that the age of consent should be under 11 so that the children would be making their own decision independent of their parent's wishes.
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The
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Parents do not have absolute rights over their children's treatment. I imagine every court in the industrialized world has had to deal with Jehovah's Witnesses who don't meant their child to have blood transfusions. A strong argument can similarily made for vaccines, in that the child's wellbeing overrides the parents' wishes our beliefs.
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:5, Informative)
You missed the part about the father wanting the kids vaccinated.
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You missed the part about the father wanting the kids vaccinated.
You missed the part where most people don't give a shit about the wants of fathers.
Re:It's unfortunate. (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the case of public health? Vaccines rely on "herd immunity" to be effective, so letting everyone pick and choose leads to a situation where not enough people are vaccinated to protect the population as a whole (as seen by outbreaks of measles in pockets of the country over the last year). There was an article written on this (which I can't find now) that was a great overview of the tension between one's individual rights to liberty and one's societal obligations not to kill people by willfully refusing something that has been demonstrated to work.
What if, for example, we found the "typhoid mary" for measles (someone who was asymptomatic, but carried the disease and spread it to others). They could be cured with the vaccine, but refuse to take it. Should the interest of the public health outweigh the individual right to refuse treatment in this case? If not, why should others perish? If so, then why not force vaccines on everyone? Where should the line be drawn?
Here in the US, we typically coerce vaccination by making it a prerequisite for public school (some states allow "personal" or "religious" exemptions, though). That way, people aren't "forced" to do it; life is just more unpleasant if they insist on skipping vaccines. Not sure if the UK has a similar system to encourage vaccination.
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: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: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.
Pubic health (Score:3)
I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines.
If you've got an infectious disease that has outbreak potential, most legal systems allow doctors to detain you for treatment.
This isn't the same thing, but there's a similar public health factor. It's not a personal decision, given that there are people who CANNOT be vaccinated for whatever reason, and some of these diseases have no "cure" other than prevention.
Most of these outbreaks happen when unvaccinate
Kids don't like vaccination?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well duh. I didn't want shots either, but luckily for me my parents were sane people and didn't let a ten-year-old make medical decisions.
Re: (Score:3)
Generally true, though the tricky part is that in disagreements between divorced parents, courts sometimes try to take the kids' wishes into account in ways that wouldn't have legal standing outside the divorce context.
Usually the courts are tasked with acting in the "best interests" of the children, regardless of the wishes of the children. When the children are old enough to make an informed decision, their wishes are generally listened to, but that's not the requirement.
confirms there is no longer any debate (Score:3)
"confirms there is no longer any debate about the benefits of the vaccine."
How can anyone be stupid enough to believe that a judge ruling has any effect on medical science?
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Outrage? (Score:3)
Given the innuendo of the clip, one might think we're expected to feel outrage about this because the daughters AND mom don't want it. But guess what? Dad gets a say too, and no; that is not outrageous. Mom must have thought he would be a pretty spiffy father because she slept with him at least twice.
Just because one or both of the parents changed their minds does not mean dad loses his "father" status. His opinion is equal to mom's, and I'm glad the court decision reflected that.
Anti-vaccine is intellectual laziness (Score:4, Interesting)
We get all these people who think that vaccines are linked to autism because one discredited scientsts said it was, so we get all this controvercy over vaccines. But what about all the other crap we're putting into our bodies? Hormones in the water supply. Industrial pollutants. Even intentional fluoridation, which has been correlated with lower IQ. But do these people rally against this stuff? No, because it takes too much work. It's easier to go on about government conspiracies and skip going to the doctor.
Let them not get vaccinated (Score:3)
.... and if they get Measles, Mumps, or Rubella while under the age of 18, their mother must pay for all doctors bills 100% out of pocket, including hospital stays.
Also it if can be proven they they infect anyone else, they must pay the doctor bills of those that can prove it.
Legal fees alone in the defense will fix that.
If they get these after the age of 18, then they should face the same expenses as their mother would.
It's simple repercussions of one's actions.
Re: (Score:3)
and if a child dies from allergic reaction to say the egg the virus was grown, we can have you and people who think as you do stung to death by bees?
Title is a bit missleading... (Score:3)
Re:my wife works as a medical technician (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:my wife works as a medical technician (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about time all exemptions were removed. It's idiotic to allow them.
Step right this way citizen for your retroviral DNA tagging. Let's see, you're male, so you get this one. The batches are rotated such that if we need to control the population we can release one or more plagues to achieve the desired ratio of males to females or northerners to southerners, etc.
Oh, you want to opt out? Too bad. We got you years ago, this is just a patch for a more efficient marker; Your kids? Oh, you don't get to decide what's best for them. We call that child abuse if you refuse thei
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Re:Let's take a moment to check the science here.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It just so happens that diagnosis follows vaccination, but why blame vaccination when it might so easily (in the absence of evidence to say otherwise) be - second or first hand smoking during development, or alcohol, or perfume / makeup of the mother, or audio frequencies coming from the TV into the womb, or vibrations during driving, or electro magnetic interference from powerlines, or too much / little sunshine, or vitamin / mineral deficiency, or radon gas, or lack of stimulus or over stimulus etc.
Anti vaxxers have latched onto vaccination because of Andrew Wakefield. Ironically Wakefield was fraudulently attempting to discredit MMR because he had his own measles vaccine which he hope to cash-in on in the aftermath. The one good thing to come from it is that the supposed link between Autism and vaccination was exhaustively studied and no link was found. It's safe to say there isn't one and never was. It's far more likely that improved diagnosis, earlier screening and a lack of critical thinking has created the link in some people's minds.