Mandatory vaccinations vs. right to choose
POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Thursday, December 7, 2006 07:56
VIEWED: 21145
PAGE 6 of 21
REAL LIFE EXAMPLE
Whooping cough hits Chicago suburb
CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- For the past two weeks, high school nurse Colleen Kahler (health services coordinator at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, a tony suburb of Chicago) has been on high alert. Her office, which typically treats routine ailments such as sore throats, stomach aches and pulled muscles, has been transformed into a screening center for an unlikely disease with a name that recalls a bygone era -- whooping cough.
Health experts said the New Trier outbreak underscores how whooping cough, a highly contagious respiratory infection, remains a public health threat in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more than 25,600 reported cases in 2005; the true number may top 1 million annually. It killed 13 children, mostly infants, in 2003. Before immunizations became widespread, an average of 147,000 people in the United States developed whooping cough every year and 9,000 died....
An upswing of reported cases in the past decade is a source of debate among health professionals, who attribute it both to waning immunity in teenagers and adults and improved detection. Neither the vaccine, nor infection with the bacteria itself, offer lifelong protection. Beginning at two months of age, babies get vaccinated against whooping cough, also known as pertussis, as part of an early childhood immunization series that includes diphtheria and tetanus. Until last year, with the approval of a new type of vaccine for people aged 11 to 64, adolescents got only a booster shot for diphtheria and tetanus because the vaccine used in recent years was not approved for people over the age of 7 because of concern about possible side effects.
New Trier had 26 confirmed cases of pertussis by November 16, or one-third of all those reported in suburban Cook County. The school's first case was detected in late August when students returned from summer break. There have also been reports of sporadic cases at other high schools in the area. Since early November, New Trier has been operating under directives from local health authorities to treat the situation as an outbreak. Rarely life-threatening in teens or adults, small children are at risk for broken ribs, pneumonia, and sometimes death. They typically get the disease from adults, making containment of an outbreak on the scale of New Trier's critical.
CDC now recommends that adolescents and adults get the new tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis booster instead of the older vaccine that included only tetanus and diphtheria. At New Trier, most of the cases were among older students who had not received the new shot.... But despite the school's best efforts, the outbreak has not been easy on the local community. Many pediatricians were not ready for the onslaught of requests for pertussis vaccine, and parents have had difficulty seeking alternative sources.
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I think this is a perfect example of what you've been discussing.
The disease
Pertussis is a dangerous disease. It used to cause sweeping epidemics that sent parents to steam their children who were being wracked by paroxysms so severe they didn't have time to inhale for 10-15 coughs. That often caused vomitting, aspiration, and pneumonia. The "whoop" (on inhalation) is from a swollen larynx, which at times becomes SO swollen that child dies of asphyxia. In addition, you get all of the fun neurological side effects that you'd get from the vaccine itself- convulsions, and sometimes brain damage- except at a much higher rate than from vaccination. It is rarely fatal in older children and adults because their airways are just so much larger that swelling rarely closes it off entirely. (Like asthma is young children versus asthma in adults.) It is very contagious and begins rather innocuously with a 2-week dry cough, so it has a chance to spread before the first "whoop" is ever heard.
The vaccine
The old vacc
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Quote:There is BAD science on this. I have read dozens of original published research. That is hardly ignoring it. I happen to disagree with their conclusions. And I can back it up. Do I have the right to disagree and follow my own conclusions? Or should I be forced to fall in line with the conclusions of the majority? That is the question.
Originally posted by freeradical42:
I don't mean to sound agitated, but there is science out there on this and it bothers me that you're ignoring it.
Quote:Bring it on. Give me a study that you believe is conclusive proof of effectiveness and I'll tell you what is wrong with that conclusion.
You don't want to go toe-to-toe with a biomedical engineer on this. ;)
Quote:I have absolutely no problem being called "self-interested." My first duty is to my children: to protect them according to the best evidence available. Society comes next. And if there is a conflict between societal interests and those of my kids, guess who wins? I will NOT sacrifice my children to the public good. Self-interested is just fine if you want to call it that.
Either way, we can rewrite the equation to consider how effective the vaccine is and objecting to the vaccine is *still* a self-interested decision in cases where it has more than zero effectiveness.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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People don't start wars, governments do.
--Ronald Reagan
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I'd say it's a fair requirement to have to be vaccinated in order to enter public school, unless there's a medical reason for not being able to. If parents don't want to get the child vaccinated then the child can't go to a public school, I think that's fair.
"Haha, mine is an evil laugh."
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You should look up "Measles transmission and vaccine effectiveness during a large outbreak on a densely populated island: implications for vaccination policy."
It indicates that the MMR vaccination is only 60% effective in the long term, but there's also the result that the epidemic was only stopped when most of the population was re-vaccinated.
"See, morbid and creepifying, I got no problem with, long as she does it quiet-like."
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CTS- Altho vaccines have potential horrific side effects, the full-blown disease is worse. Although I personally know of one vaccine brain-damaged kid, I also know one kid who was born deaf (rubella), another who was brain-dmaged (measles), another (mine) who went neurologically downhill after chickenpox, and two adults who almost died of chicken pox.
I just happened to find this today:
Shadowed by peril as we are, you would think we'd get pretty good at distinguishing the risks likeliest to do us in from the ones that are statistical long shots. But you would be wrong. We agonize over avian flu, which to date has killed precisely no one in the United States, but have to be cajoled into getting vaccinated for the common flu, which contributes to the deaths of 36,000 Americans each year.
We wring our hands over the mad cow pathogen that might be (but almost certainly isn't) in our hamburger and worry far less about the cholesterol that contributes to the heart disease that kills 700,000 of us annually. We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.
www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/26/cover.story.tm/index.html
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:That's only fair if there were no compulsory school laws.
Originally posted by EvilDinosaur:
I'd say it's a fair requirement to have to be vaccinated in order to enter public school, unless there's a medical reason for not being able to. If parents don't want to get the child vaccinated then the child can't go to a public school, I think that's fair.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
--H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
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Quote:And you have every right to that opinion.
Originally posted by SignyM:
CTS- Altho vaccines have potential horrific side effects, the full-blown disease is worse.
Back to the question of this thread, should I be allowed to disagree and act on my own opinion?
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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"When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we, in essence, accept that the state owns our bodies."
--U.S. Representative Ron Paul
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CTS- My "opinion" is based on personal experience, which I cite because you don't "trust" official reports, the news media, or... apparently ... anyone else's personal experience.
Should you be allowed to shoot at someone? Obviously, your right to "disagree" with the majority has limits. The answer is- NO- you do NOT have an unconditional limit to do whatever the heck you want.
If you were a "typhoid Mary" - the quintessential asymptomatic carrier of an infectious serious disease (eg TB) - should you be allowed to work in a cafeteria? If you had AIDS, should you be allowed to have unprotected sex with partners who were not aware of your HIV status?
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:The abstract is useless for evaluating methodology. For example, it says, "MMR vaccine effectiveness was 92% (95% confidence interval [CI], 67%-98%) for 1 dose and 95% (95% CI, 82%-98%) for 2 doses." Where did they get that number? That makes all the difference, doesn't it?
Originally posted by freeradical42:
You should look up "Measles transmission and vaccine effectiveness during a large outbreak on a densely populated island: implications for vaccination policy."
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ucp/WebIntegrationServlet?call=Conten
tWeblet&url=http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CID/journal/issues/v42n3/37212/37212.html?erFrom=1700901065199949638Guest¤t_page=content
Since I don't want to pay $15 for the full text of this article, I will have to go to the library and get it. I'll get back to you on this when I've read it.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking.
-- Arthur Bloch
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Quote:Let me rephrase my question.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Should you be allowed to shoot at someone? ...The answer is- NO- you do NOT have an unconditional limit to do whatever the heck you want.
If my opinion is that the horrific side effects are more probable and worse FOR MY CHILDREN than the full blown disease, do I have a right to disagree with you and act on my own opinion? Or should your opinion that disease is worse than side effects trump mine in the care of MY CHILDREN?
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
--Bertrand Russell
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