Posted on 02/04/2015 11:01:19 AM PST by Kaslin
This week, controversy broke out over whether state governments have the power to require parents to have their children vaccinated. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, no stranger to compelling his citizens to stay off the roads during blizzards, announced that he had some sympathy for the anti-vaccination position: "I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that's the balance the government has to decide." Kentucky Senator Rand Paul doubled down on Christie's remarks, stating, "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental orders after vaccines. ...The state doesn't own your children."
Christie and Paul aren't the only politicians sympathizing with anti-vaccination fanatics; in 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama repeated widely debunked claims of links between autism and vaccination. Skepticism of vaccination crosses party lines, unfortunately -- although the most organized anti-vaccination resistance comes from the New Agey left in places like Santa Monica and Marin County, who worry more about infinitesimal amounts of formaldehyde in vaccines than about death by polio.
Unsurprisingly, older Americans believe that children should be vaccinated against diseases like measles, mumps and whopping cough, by a 73 percent to 21 percent margin. Americans 18-29, by contrast, believe by a 43 percent to 42 percent plurality that government should not mandate such vaccinations.
That's because young people don't remember a time when such diseases claimed lives. They don't remember a time when the vast majority of Americans weren't vaccinated. Older people do. Many of them lost loved ones to polio and measles and mumps and rubella. In 1952, over 3,000 Americans died of polio and well over 21,000 were left with mild or severe paralysis. Thanks to Dr. Jonas Salk's vaccine, there have been zero cases of natural polio in the United States since 1979.
The same is true of measles. According to Dr. Mark Papania of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 90 percent of Americans suffered from the measles by age 15 before widespread vaccination beginning in 1962. From 1956 to 1960, he reports, "an average of 542,000 cases were reported annually." That included 450 deaths per year, as well as 150,000 cases of respiratory complications and 4,000 cases of consequent encephalitis per year, many of which resulted in later death. Then mandatory vaccination kicked in. Until a major upswing in 2014, we averaged less than 100 cases of measles per year in the United States since 2000.
The point of mandatory vaccinations is not merely to protect those who are vaccinated. When it comes to measles, mumps and rubella, for example, children cannot be vaccinated until 1 year of age. The only way to prevent them from getting diseases is to ensure that those who surround them do not have those diseases. The same is true for children with diseases like leukemia, as well as pregnant women. Herd immunity is designed to protect third parties.
But Americans have short memories and enormous confidence in junk science. Parents will ignore vaccinations but ensure that their kids are stocked up with the latest homeopathic remedies, Kabbalah bracelets and crystals. St. John's wort, red string and crystals all existed before 1962. They didn't stop the measles. Vaccination did.
That doesn't mean that all vaccinations should be compulsory, of course. There are certain diseases that can only be transmitted by behavior, like HPV. There are others that are too varied for effective herd vaccination, like the flu shot. But when it comes to measles and mumps and rubella and polio, your right to be free of vaccination -- and your right to be a dope with the health of your child because you believe Jenny McCarthy's idiocy -- ends where my child's right to live begins.
Yes, Mom would not let us go to the public pool and the movies until the threat subsided.
Polio is one horrible disease. As I was vaccinated as a kid, I had no problem changing my kiddos diapers. It was interesting at how long it took for (probably because it was rare as most HERE were vaccinated) cases to occur enough that it was put into the warning pamphlets and appear in Journals and Media articles.
I think that every parent and adult should be informed of the risks of not getting the vaccine and the risks of getting the vaccine. It’s your right to be informed.
Absolutely and the choice should be made by the parent and the doctor.
Yellow Fever in Memphis! Entire family died.
Open borders kill.
Open borders is what is killing Americans today.
So the extent of your argument is that because you use more honest language, you are entitled to harm or kill your children.
Your "argument" is stupid. That's why it wasn't answered.
And before modern sanitation and modern dietetics and before antibiotics... the battle against disease has been multi-pronged. (Who gets a yellow fever vaccination?)
They are attacking Catholics and other Christians.
Avoidance. Typical.
Reyes Syndrome IIRC was linked to aspirin under the age of 18, which was the medicine my parents gave me when sick. Tylenol wasn’t around when I was little. I remember eating the orange flavored kid asprin.
Calling people names doesn’t change the truth of what you support.
It comes down to the definition of neglect and harm. You consider skipping any vaccination to be neglect and harm.
Here is a USA today story debating if exposure to religion is good for kids: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/07/24/eliyahu-federman-kids-religion/13091745/
So why is your stance on what is harmful/neglect superior to theirs... because you say so? Because you know best? Isn’t that the very heart of leftist government is the answer liberals?
My kids got their vaccinations as children, but I don’t want to government making that choice mandentory.
The Republican stance needs to be that Vaccinations should CONTINUE to be a parents decision. There have been no deaths to measles and thus there is no excuse for a government power grab.
If they would be smart enough to answer that way, there would be little room for media to make hay with the answers.
The existence of morons.
More avoidance. I’m detecting a pattern here.
That has been round that long? The history I have read on it was first inoculations were done 30 years ago. Never, and I am a child of the 70’s, okay, 60’s too, was that vaccine ever offered to my parents for me. Not until the 90’s did our Pediatrician offer it. The history of that vacc is interesting. Came from one cell from one person, IIRC. (did they get residuals?)
You really do need to consider why the press is pushing this when no one has died from measles but they barely covered the enterovirus D-68 imported from latin america that is killing children.
Thank you for that graphic. I have never seen that before.
The rabid mischaracterization of the statement that you have no right to harm other people -- especially your children -- doesn't extrapolate into a claim that the government can do anything that it wants, and only an idiot would think that it does.
“Every one here would do well to remember that prior to running for president BOTH obama and hillary (& RFK jr. and pretty much the entire dimocrat army) was anti vaccine and parents choice. NOW they are trying to paint the entire issue as a republican/conservative anti science thing and the media is carrying their water relentlessly. You have to ask yourself what is really going on and what is the endgame. The duplicity on this issue is staggering.”
Very good reminder and worth repeating!
The GOP is falling for the trap once again.
CDC says from it’s own site, that younger than 12 months vaccination does NOT count and is not valid for record. If you are vaccinated at 6 months, it is as if you were not vaccinated at all according to the Fed. Govt. Two more shots needed.
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