Government Vaccines - Bad Policy, Bad Medicine

Junto Society ^ | 12/14/2002 | Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)

[stoney]

Government Vaccines, Bad Policy, Bad Medicine

Rep. Ron Paul (R) Texas 11/18/2002

"Simply put, it is not ethical to give a medicine that will kill and maim persons for no demonstrable benefit. Assuaging fears about vulnerability to a potential disease is not a benefit any physician should accept." Dr. Jeffrey S. Sartin, MD

A controversy over vaccines, specifically the smallpox vaccine, is brewing in Washington. The administration is considering ordering mass inoculations for more than one million military personnel and civilian medical workers, ostensibly to thwart a smallpox outbreak before it occurs. Yet dangerous side-effects from the vaccine- ranging from mild flu symptoms to gangrene, encephalitis, and even death- cause many to question the wisdom and need for such inoculations.

As a medical doctor, I believe mandated smallpox vaccines are bad medicine. The available vaccine poses significant risks, even though

[stoney]

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[RJCogburn]

More to the point, from the full article:

As a legislator, I believe mandated smallpox vaccines are very bad policy.

Right. It might be a public health issue if there were smallpox cases, but before then it is an issue of personal freedom.

[norraad]

Well, as an investor, I think they're great!

Buy Hitachi stock, they make the almost invisible .04mm 128k transparent transponder chip that goes in every shot that, as Tommy Thompson says "...has your name on it".

Wa~hoo , can't wait to get into ancillary biz like accessories.

Door locks programmed to open when you get near them(the Hitachi MU chip has a 2 foot range).

Any other ideas?

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

Smallpox is a particularly horrible disease, with a high mortality rate and lifelong disfigurement for the survivors. While taking the vaccine should be a personal choice for most, the only way to prevent this weapon from being used is to have our military ALREADY IMMUNIZED, and a good plan for stopping any epidemic if the virus is released.

By the way, once there is a single case identified, anti-vaccination zealots will be among the first in line, begging for the vaccine- count on it.

[NautiNurse]

anti-vaccination zealots will be among the first in line, begging for the vaccine

Demanding it--via home delivery--is more likely.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

Simply put, it is not ethical to give a medicine that will kill and maim persons for no demonstrable benefit. Assuaging fears about vulnerability to a potential disease is not a benefit any physician should accept." Dr. Jeffrey S. Sartin, MD

OK Doc. How did we eradicate this horrible disease in the last century? I thought it was through the use of GOVERNMENT administered vaccinations. Why can't you stupid ba$tard$ address the common sense argument when opening your mouths to whine.

[Nick Danger]

Assuaging fears about vulnerability to a potential disease is not a benefit any physician should accept.

Wait a minute. On its face, that is an argument against all vaccines, everywhere, at all times. That is ludicrous. How do people think that smallpox was eradicated? Do they think it just went away by itself? What about polio? When I was a kid, there really were people in machines called "iron lungs." C'mon, this is starting to sound like tin-foil hat stuff.

Our zero-risk culture, where liability lawyers offer to make us rich if we so much as fall off a stepladder, has blinded to one of life's basic truths: getting out of bed in the morning is a risk. Life is risk. You could be bitten tomorrow by a brown recluse spider, and croak before you figure out what went wrong.

It wasn't that long ago that smallpox vaccinations were mandatory for everybody. That is in fact how smallpox was eradicated. It got to the point where the risk of being harmed by the vaccine came to exceed the risk of contracting smallpox. and that's when the mandatory vaccinations ended. But it had never been true that the vaccination program was risk-free; there had been some level of casualties all along. But a plague of smallpox was demonstrably worse, and so people accepted that risk, just as they accept the risk that they could get hit by a bus every time they get behind the wheel of a car.

Until recently it was believed that the only existing samples of smallpox were those held in containers in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and those were only kept around in case smallpox made a reappearance and there was a need to manufacture vaccines. Now we have the issue of whether one of these samples escaped, perhaps into the hands of a madman who would turn it into a weapon. What we know from the days when smallpox was "in the wild" is that it would make one Hell of a weapon.

It's impossible to know what to think here... maybe that's happened, maybe it hasn't. Here's what I find impossible to think: that a fairly large number of government officials and medical practitioners have collectively decided to spend hundreds of millions of dollars either for the Hell of it, or because they think it would be fun to cause needless death among the populace by administering deadly mandatory vaccinations. They might just be mistaken as to the risk; that is certainly possible, and we could argue about that forever.

The problem is, we won't find out who's right until it's too late to act if it turns out that somebody really did weaponize smallpox, and here it is in ten American cities. If that happens and the vaccination program had not been done, all Hell will break loose. Commerce and industry will grind to a halt, because no one will want to be in the same room with anyone else until we get a handle on where this is and who has it, and who doesn't.

The author assures us that any smallpox outbreak could be contained; that there would be time, after the fact, to administer vaccinations and so prevent a plague. He doesn't know that at all. People are much more mobile today than they were the last time smallpox appeared naturally. The business traveler who was in ten cities in two weeks is a commonplace today; that wasn't true in the 1940's.

The management of risk in this society has become almost insane. We have Smoke Nazis worried about a one-in-ten-million chance of getting cancer from second-hand cigarette smoke, who spend their weekends rock climbing. We have lawyers who want to sue Sony and Union Pacific because some yahoo was sitting on the railroad tracks with Motley Crue blasting into his ears and he didn't hear the train coming.

Were smallpox non-communicable like cancer, I could see an argument for letting people go to Hell in their own way. But no one really has the right to become a disease vector and to spread deadly disease to their neighbors in the name of their own freedom.

I don't know how to assess the risk that Saddam Hussein, or anyone else, has weaponized smallpox and could turn it loose in a bunch of our cities as part of an attack. What I do believe is that if I had perfect information, there is indeed some level of such risk at which I would agree that a mandatory vaccination program was in order... that neither I, nor anyone else, has the right to assume the risk of deadly disease not just for myself, but for others around me that I might infect. There are some responsibilties that go with rights, and surely one of them is not to turn oneself into a walking disease vector and spread what is known to be a deadly pestilence.

[xzins]

In the military there should be no vulnerability for those going to war. They can legitimately and legally ordered to prepare in any number of ways....to include vaccinations, innoculations, etc.

Beyond that, we have entire generations that went through smallpox vaccinations with no ill effect. I was one who did. I see no problem with making them available.

Personallly, I never thought it wise that they be stopped. The information should be available, the vaccines should be available, and people should be given the choice of being vaccinated.

The Constitution says, "promote the general welfare." Once the first real case of smallpox (or the 1st smallpox carrying terrorist plot) is identified in this country, it will then become legal for the president to order the vaccinations.

My stubborness should not be an acceptable excuse for me to be a conduit for disease to others.

[Missus]

How did we eradicate them? Well, there's little proof that WE did... if you look at disease incidence charts, you'll see that most major diseases bottomed out or were falling well before the vaccines were introduced, and polio spiked several years after vaccine introduction. The following link is to a site that is decidedly anti-vaccination, but the info coincides with what I've seen from sources such as the CDC:

http://www.vaccinationdebate.com/web1.html

The advent of better nutrition and better sanitation through the 40's and 50's plays into a lot more than vaccines do. You see similar spikes and dips with typhoid and yellow fever epidemics in the 19th century: when people were well-nourished, and living clean to begin with, they weren't as susceptible.

And then there's the flu: all the vaccines in the world won't stop a big pandemic, as they treat the LAST KNOWN variants, not the current batch. And varicella: a vaccine invented for economic reasons, not medical ones.

We don't know for sure that whooping cough and other diseases we vaccinate for HAVE been eradicated... the vast majority of modern doctors have never seen a case outside of textbook examples, and couldn't diagnose it in a patient to begin with.

Mandatory vaccinations are something I'll have to pass on, as a matter of personal liberty... I don't do them now, and I won't later. Not even if they mail it to me. But, since all the rest will be vaccinated like obedient sheep, where will the disease incubate? Guess that means I'm pretty safe, as are others who have been vaccinated safe from me. Right?

Oh--that's right--I'm an unvaccinated threat, because we DON'T know that vaccines do a darn thing to protect the vaccinated against disease.

Regards

[NautiNurse]

Guess that means I'm pretty safe, as are others who have been vaccinated safe from me. Right?

self-centered people with your mindset will never end up in the emergency department or a clinic waiting room expecting treatment, right?

[Nick Danger]

It is not difficult to understand the mechanism by which a vaccine strengthens a person's immune system against a certain pathogen. Claims that vaccines are useless black magic introduced by drug companies to make money, or by doctors to bamboozle a trusting populace, are sort of cruel. They depend for their effectiveness on landing in the brain of someone who is remarkably ignorant of very simple things.

It is a fact that there will always be some number of such people around, so I suppose we will never be rid of those who prey on them. But I admit to being astounded at the number of such efforts on the Internet, not just in medicine but in almost every corner of specialized knowledge. Even Holocaust Denial has thousands of followers, who insist that there's "documented proof" that Auschwitz never happened. Neither did the Moon landing. And a secret cabal of international bankers, who may or not all be Jews depending on which web site one visits, scheme constantly to Rule Ze Vorld and to Enslave Us All. There's every kind of perpetual motion machine out there, and "simple devices to extract the hidden energy in air," suppressed of course by the evil oil companies. And now this... vaccines have nothing to do with curbing disease; it's all a trick. Even the movies of little antibodies glooming onto disease organisms... faked, like the Moon landings.

Yeah, sure, whatever.

[Hila]

That's the crux of the matter, is this vaccine Pres. Bush advocating a sure match for what terrorism would want to unleash. Or is it just an "in the neighborhood" option.

[Hila]

What the public should ask is not what effects the vaccine would carry, rather, is the government sure that this type of vaccine is what will protect from an attack. What if the terror groups are counting on using something that will be totally untouched by the smallpox vaccine.

[Nick Danger]

What if the terror groups are counting on using something that will be totally untouched by the smallpox vaccine.

Well, then there's nothing they could have done anyway until they got a sample of it. This is all one big exercise in Decision-Making Under Uncertainty. I don't envy anybody who has to make these calls. If you have one of these jobs and you guess right, you save a million lives. Guess wrong, and a million die. And no one can tell you for sure what to do. That's one tough job.