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.
I want you to point out to me how the claim that you have a "right" to be infected by a disease which you might spread to other people is any different from the selfish claim [implicitly] made by a symptomatic doctor returning to the US after treating Ebola patients in West Africa that he had a "right" to go bowling in one of the most densely populated places on Earth.
I want you to tell me where you think this supposed "liberty" ends? Do you have the right to genitally mutilate your daughter because your religion says so, and the state may not be allowed to interfere in that?
Given what we know, choosing not to vaccinate is child abuse. There's no "conflation."
To decline to administer a vaccination is not tantamount to doing "whatever you want with your children".
And trying to bring the abortion issue into the discussion is pure emotionalism.
Given what we know, choosing not to vaccinate is child abuse. There's no "conflation."
False. There is conflation. If there's even the slightest possibility that a vaccination could cause a problem (and there is such a possibility), then making it mandatory is outright criminal, IMHO.
I'm sure you're a very well-meaning statist (aren't they all), but I, for one, hope that nanny-staters, with all their smug self-assurance, and their confident convictions regarding what's best for everybody else, never gain ascendancy in this society.
Because I'd rather have true freedom, with all of its warts and challenges, than the authoritarian utopia which science-worshippers invariably seem to envision.
I imagine you believe that smoking tobacco in the same house as one's children also constitutes child abuse. Or at least that becomes the case the moment science deems it to be so.
Science is a useful tool, but I would never want to see it be used as an excuse for advancing the nanny-state Tyranny of the forced vaccination crowd. Education, not legislation, is invariably more effective, and social engineering via the use of force is the purview of socialists.
Congratulations, though, for managing to respond to a post without engaging in the juvenile name-calling which has characterized so many of your other responses.
Congratulations on your Award for Clueless Irony For The Entire Internet awarded for your closing paragraph, in a post riddled with emotional name calling [statist, nanny-stater, criminal] to say nothing of the adolescent dig itself. It's is typical of you antivaxxers, who casually sling names at people, then get terribly sanctimonious when I respond in kind.
[I know. I know. You're not an antivaxxer. You're like Mario Cuomo: "I'm personally opposed to abortion, but I think other people should have the right to murder their children."]
The abortion analogy is real and not pure emotionalism. You are claiming the Constitution is a warrant to do EXACTLY what abortionists do. You simply don't want to admit that's where your absolutist concept of "liberty " takes you. Your kids must be "forever out of reach of THE STATE; amen." In that case, you have to accept that it applies to your body a fortiori. Then, you have no excuse for calling abortionists baby killers and murderers. They're just "exercising their liberties."
Your smoking strawman is amusing. As a 25+ year and [now 20+ year former] tobacco addict, I would hope smokers wouldn't smoke in the same room with non-smokers, but the science concerning the risk indicates that the danger is minimal. [Unlike the dangers of childhood diseases.] But since your emotionalism raised this Red Herring, let's get down to a more direct analogy which actually is comparable: do parents have an "absolute" right to smoke marijuana in the same room with their children in venues where marijuana is legal? Or do only "nanny-staters" and "criminals" advocate sensible conduct? What if you REALLY REALLY REALLY believe that marijuana is good for your kids, and to use the favorite tactic of the antivaxxers on this thread "there's a wealth of stuff on the Internet that proves that it is!"
Finally, I notice that you do not answer the question about whether a Muslim can or should be denied the right to perform a clitorectomy on his daughter. Is that OK, but infibulation isn't? At what point do you allow us "nanny staters" to step in? The reason you won't answer that is because -- like your feeble smoking analogy -- once taken to its correct conclusion the "right" to do whatever your prejudices dictate blows up your phony "liberty" arguments in your face.
PS: I don't care if you call me names. I'm not a sissy, and my mother, who got me and my siblings all the vaccinations available in our day, taught me a little ditty about sticks and stones. I advise you and the other Neanderthals to toughen up and learn it.
But I suspect what really bothers you is that you know that you don't have a leg to stand on. The Founders did not agree with your definition of "liberty." I've posted evidence of that elsewhere on this thread. I'd happily live in their "nanny-state" in which, just for example, there was enforced quarantine without recourse to the judicial system, any day.
You're a brazen liar, Fred, and that comment alone proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. You've sold out, and your shill techniques are simple and crude - big lies and big insults to shut down vaccine discussions.
"People" like you don't deserve words. History has always shown that to be an utter waste of time. How did Jesus put it? "Pearls to swine."
Because, Fred, abortionists do not do anything for their children. They kill them, on purpose. Whereas parents making choices about vaccination are making those choices in order to protect the lives of their children. That's called a completely different, totally opposite, set of conditions - as of course you well know. Because otherwise how could your slander enrage people and trash the thread?
In addition, you've paid scrupulous attention to merging all of the different types of vaccination together, from early puss scratches to simple single vaccines without adjuvant, to vaccines containing adjuvants, to ignoring the many different kinds of poisons in adjuvants, to equating blood injected adjuvant poisons to smaller dosages of similar poisons outside of the blood barrier, to multiple vaccines given simultaneously, to multiple vaccines given simultaneously in short sequence, to multiple vaccines given simultaneously in shirt sequence to babies and children without developed immune systems.
Yes indeed, in the Monsanto Boot-Sucking FredWorld, ALL of those completely different things are called the same ONE thing: "vaccines." And you're either for it or against it, and if you're against it you're a communist abortionist moron who needs to GTFO of civilisation.
LOL, you're a clown, Fred. No wonder your tagline is "O, Reason not the need" - people who reason just piss you off!
It's a quote from Shakespeare, genius.
And it has nothing to do with ratiocination. It's about questioning human motivations.
If I were wrong, you would only need to point to one study, and all your diatribes would be unnecessary.
As your posts clearly show, you're the one spouting diatribes. And many studies exist and have been referenced - you simply choose to reject them in favor of your own unacknowledged biases.
And of course, to hide that, you spew endless insults and lies.
Wow, how unique.
Cite a study.
To someone who considers the concept of any vaccines being more harmful than the disease against which they are used as fundamental quackery, fraud, communism, abortionism, idiocy, and deserving of exile?
Why should I waste my time?
LOL, you're outta innings, Fred. GTFO.
Cite a study.
Enough juvenile crap, Fred. Are you saying that if I don't cite a study, none exist? That's your point? Then what are you railing against, if no studies exist for people to prefer over yours?
No, Fred, you left something out - you want me to cite a study TO YOU. And that's what I won't do, because you're abusive. Specifically, you're a shameless liar with enough anger issues to pay for a therapist's new yacht.
So no, Fred, I will not cite a study to you. And if you want to conclude from that, that no studies exist, you go right ahead.
Goodnight, Fred.
Cite a study.
Comparing the absence of getting a vaccination (a non-act) to the act of genital mutilation is comparing apples and oranges, IMHO.
Many nanny-staters believe that male circumcision is a barbaric act. I tend to agree, but not to the point where I think myself entitled to make the parents' choice for them using the law.
The same goes for physical discipline of children. I think it's entirely appropriate in the vast majority of cases, although it can obviously be abusive in others. That doesn't mean it should be banned altogether.
Thus, my concept of Liberty is far from absolutist.
As for the smoking analogy, it's undoubtedly a fact that many parents smoke (tobacco or whatever) in the presence of, or near enough to, their children. While this may not be good for the children anymore than feeding them happy meals from McDonald's, it does not rise to the compelling level of what would constitute actionable child abuse.
The same is true, IMHO, for vaccinations, or home-schooling, for that matter. Parents should enjoy significant leeway when making such choices on behalf of their children, even if their choices go against the grain of what society thinks is proper.
As for the name-calling accusation, I am simply calling a spade a spade. Calling you a nanny-stater was based on your apparent position with respect to mandatory vaccinations. That is entirely different than branding someone an idiot or moron simply because they disagree with you on a political issue, or because they fail to give almighty science its due reverence.
Finally, as for the Muslim act of clitorectomy, there are many such things prevalent in various cultures, whether it be putting metal rings around children's necks, or bone plates in their lips, and so on, all of which result in permanent disfigurement of one kind or another. As distasteful as I may find such practices, I'm not at all sure they should be criminalized. Why? Because the state doesn't own people's children, and permitting the state to usurp parental sovereignty is an extremely perilous and slippery slope.
One aspect of true freedom is the realization of the principle that your vision of it will not always coincide with somebody else's, and, therefore, the greatest Liberty should be recognized with respect to parental prerogative, because the alternative solution of putting that power in the state's hands can be even more dangerous, as history has shown.
Freedom should not be based on the "least common denominator" of what everybody agrees on. That's a formula for minimal freedom, and is antithetical to the expansive view of Liberty which should prevail. People's pursuit of happiness, including on behalf of their children, is not subject to your narrow vision, or even society's, but rather their own.
Since declining to vaccinate one's child does not infringe on that child's rights, I don't think the state can legitimately mandate such a thing without a compelling, overwhelming reason. Parental choice should be the default, and if you want 100% of parents to vaccinate their children, try educating them instead of coercing them.
The purpose of vaccines is to reduce risk. If it makes it riskier for a segment of the population, then it is not beneficial. I am not willing to accept the risk.
Neither do parents. I do not "own" my children. Parent's who believe they do are uncivilized savages.
and permitting the state to usurp parental sovereignty is an extremely perilous and slippery slope.
Protection of the life, liberty and property of its citizens is not a "usurpation." Slippery slope arguments are, in general, invalid. I won't accept yours.
We have Constitutions, legislatures, judiciaries, and the plaintiff's bar to assure that won't happen. I could just as easily claim that taking an absolutist position with regards to the lives of children winds up with dead kids. And it does.
The same goes for physical discipline of children. I think it's entirely appropriate in the vast majority of cases, although it can obviously be abusive in others. That doesn't mean it should be banned altogether.
So, you admit there are circumstances where parents are not sovereign? My God man! if parents aren't allowed to shoot or stab their children, we'd be on an incredibly slippery slope!
many parents smoke (tobacco or whatever) it does not rise to the compelling level of what would constitute actionable child abuse.
OK. This conversation is over: you are a complete fool.
Smoking marijuana in the same room with a child is actionable child abuse. I've got nothing more to say to you. It's clear that you really do believe that children are chattel. Not interested in carrying on a "debate" with such a person.
The "benefit" you cite, of allowing children to get chicken pox is just such a "remedy." First, and most obviously because kids will get a disease they don't need to have: chickenpox. This can be a serious disease with serious consequences, including death. Second, because this will lead to shingles in 2/3 of those children later life; this is also a disease with potentially serious consequences, including permanent paralysis. Third, the medical science you're citing is conjectural. There is no long term study that actually establishes that exposure to infected children boost immunity. These are interesting, but purely conjectural observations by a handful of doctors. Even in the article from the NYT the doctor concedes that the loss of booster immunity is not really going to be a problem -- and he's one of the people who believes the effect exists.
The position that you've taken, is that the risk to children is OK, as long as old geezers are protected [from a disease they can, themselves, get a vaccine or other treatments for.] That is a MUCH greater risk than simply vaccinating children in the first place.
And you are the reason we need mandatory vaccination.
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