Mandatory vaccinations vs. right to choose
POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Thursday, December 7, 2006 07:56
VIEWED: 21145
PAGE 20 of 21
Quote:I can't say they are mostly OK because I have not seen any good studies that say they are, by my standards. Everyone has to measure this by his or her own standards.
Originally posted by rue:
And I think she could have said - you know, vaccines are probably mostly OK, just not for me and my kids.
And I would LOVE to just say, "No, thanks, not for me" and let it go at that. You think I enjoy spending so much time and money arguing this? I'd rather be watching Battlestar Galactica or Firefly reruns.
But I can't just say no, thanks. It is illegal for my children to go to school in my state. I can't send them to public school, private school, or day care. And if I try, the state can charge me with a misdemeanor and a daily fine for each day they are in school unvaccinated.
If I or my husband dies, and one of us has to be a single working parent, we would no longer have the option of homeschooling. We would be forced by the state to vaccinate our children to comply with compulsory school laws--or move to another state (and those moves ain't cheap). While other states have exemptions, the AMA wants to rescind those exemptions so that moving to another state is not even an option.
And why is that? Why can't I just say, no thanks? Because people are overwhelmed by fear. Fear that if I refuse to make my children wear their magic charm, the disease spirits will punish our village by unleashing epidemics and killing all our children. And it will be all my fault.
I started this thread with a simple question. Mandatory vaccination or right to choose? If everyone had simply said "right to choose" and "We're ok with no, thanks," the thread would have ended. And I'd be on the couch, watching Adama kick cylon ass.
But no. I got the usual comments of being socially irresponsible and culpable if people die, and how my kids shouldn't be allowed to go to school, and how mandatory vaccinations are great, how the right to disagree depends on whether it is reasonable, etc. So sure, I go on to argue why doubt is reasonable.
Quote:All that fear and blaming and need to control people like me rest on one assumption: that vaccines are actually highly effective and safe for the vast majority of recipients. To make an argument for individual choice, I have to point out reasons to question that assumption.
But she goes on to try and paint them as so unproven and so potentially dangerous that the decision is a wash either way for everyone.
I am not making arguments to prove that assumption wrong. I am making arguments to allow for the possibility that it could be wrong. Until people realize that believing in this assumption is a CHOICE and not a factual imperative, people are not going to allow me to make that CHOICE.
Quote:Well, all you have to say is, "I will vote against a mandatory vaccination policy and against any AMA initiative to rescind vaccination exemptions, so that you can choose to vaccinate your children or not without any legal duress." And I'd be happy to stop arguing.
And I think it would have been reasonable and I would have been behind her all the way on that.
Quote:Damn right there is a lot of fear. I am afraid to take my kids to the ER in case something happens, because they have been known to vaccinate without consent once you're there. I am afraid of being stuck in this state without enough financial means to homeschool, and be forced to choose between vaccinating my kids or hitching a ride to another state. I am afraid that the AMA will succeed and hitching a ride to another state won't even help. I am afraid that people who vote for mandatory vaccination policies will just nod in approval if they forcibly take my kids away from me to inject vaccines without my consent.
So what I think I read behind that is a lot of fear.
Quote:Of course. I might make people think before they vaccinate. What if they choose not to after they think?!? Good gri
(added: also, I think some of the things she's trying to say are irresponsible.)
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Quote:My argument is that vaccines and herd immunity do fail in unexpected ways. I found incidences that support this argument. Other facts and assertions were irrelevant to my argument and do not invalidate the fact that failure happens.
CTS- You really do pick and choose your facts, don't you?
Quote:There are two sides to that coin. On one side, it supports vaccination (if you believe vaccines are effective). On the other side, it argues against blaming lower vaccination rates for herd immunity failure. That is a big argument against choice--"you'll lower vaccination coverage and destroy our herd immunity."
But what this is telling me is that UNvaccinated children CANNOT depend on "herd immunity". Kind of argues in favor of vaccination, don't you think?
Quote:To each his own. That's all I want. To each his own.
And people risk disease for a chance to get their temporary immunity the good old-fashioned way.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.
--Bertrand Russell
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Quote:Oh good grief. I never said they were in on it! For crying out loud, Rue! Just stop making shit up about what I say, want to say, or seem to think.
Originally posted by rue:
But what do you think of the academicians who study medicines and vaccines? Do you think they're in on it like CTS seems to think they are?
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
-- Bertrand Russell
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Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you, I've been unwell (well I still am but I've finally taken time off work and sitting up in bed on my laptop keeps my mind off it).
Quote:You might be right.
Originally posted by Frendfirma:
Ok, now I have the mental image of two folk hammering at a wall from different angles... and hitting each other.
Quote:That's not how it came across
And semantics, shemantics - apparently you do not understand my viewpoint, someone elses personal opinion to me is of little consequence, and something, as an anarchist, I do not feel it's my right to mess with or force upon them, my interest is HOW they arrived at that conclusion and WHY, because that information is of value to me in making my own decisions on a subject.
Quote:If the choice isn't informed, and then used as a basis to say or allude that being unvaccinated is safer than being vaccinated then it should be questioned, if for no other reason than saying such could compel others to put themselves at risk unnecessarily. And frankly how someone came to a conclusion should always be questioned, taking it on faith that a conclusion is informed and that the process that led to it was entirely logical is stupid (and actually not what you are doing yourself).
Regardless of what CTS personally believes (and has every right to) he/she stated and holds a position of informed choice - something that has been stated repeatedly here, and instead people take issue with how he/she arrived at that conclusion.
Quote:But you didn't make the same overt statements of application, why should I be brought up on this?
You also did, in fact, make blanket statements, and only after the fact, when it was pointed out that they're not applicable here, then said they applied to your country, which, if they do, more power to ya, but again, I live here.
It's little secret people talk from their own position, why am I constantly expected to talk from a position of living in the US and brought up on it if I don't? How come you get a pass because you live there, but I don't because I live here?
In fact the UK doesn't have mandatory vaccinations, so if I had been supporting mandatory vaccinations I wouldn't be talking from a position of my own context would I.
What I did say is that your system being bad doesn't make vaccinations bad. That problems in the system does not disprove the method or prove that systems are bad in general.
Quote:But then that's also what you want to do to someone who believes vaccinations should be mandatory.
It's when someone wishes to take those personal beliefs and impose them on others, with the full weight of law behind it... that impacts me, personally, and I do see it as a threat.
Quote:What? No such thing as informed/uninformed choice? That's purely ridiculous. If the only information you lend credence to and look at is the information that supports what you already think that's an uninformed choice, what I call it is irrelevant. CTS, for instance, seems to call anything that supports vaccinations "bad science" and anything that supports her current opinion as "good science".
As for informed/uninformed choice - there's no such thing, regardless of what YOU think of the quality of the information, it is NOT your decision, it is that of the person who's choice it is, to decide what information to base their own, personal decision on... so in essence, you only agree with informed choice if you, personally, agree with all the information the other person uses to make that choice ?
Quote:It's a completely different situation. If the government made the choice shouldn't the Government pay for it? And since the government pays for it where does that money come from other tha
As for responsibility, turn that one on it's head - do you think it's fair for me to pay (cause some of it does indeed come out of my tax dollars here in the US) for the lifelong care of people harmed by vaccinations that are legally mandatory ?
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CTS -
Not only do you pick and choose your facts, you try to dominate the discussion. You've failed to respond to every quite reasonable question I've asked. (And I'm still waiting for that treatise on global smallpox.)
You say there is NO GOOD science on vaccination. Then you post a series of scientific studies, a conundrum in itself. If there is no good science, why are you citing the studies to 'prove' your point about effectiveness?
And finally, did you not notice that many of the articles you cited came from university-based research - Oxford, University of Toronto, UCLA and the like? You don't HAVE to say academicians are in on it. All you have to say is 'there is NO good' research because of vested interests, and THEN include university research. Get it?
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CTS: You're making several arguments.
(1) This first, which I do not for one second agree with, is that vaccines are useless. Eradicating smallox and reducing previously massive deadly epidemics to relatively small self-limited outbreaks argues that vaccines - while not 100% effective - ARE effective in eliminating, or significantly limiting and/or reducing disease symptoms.
(2) The second, which I also do not agree with, is that vaccines are more dangerous than the disease itself. If you compare disease complications to vaccine complications, vaccine complications are much milder and less likely.
The question revolves around whether the combination of universal vaccination multiplied by it's percentage of risk creates greater overall consequences than a much smaller incidence disease times IT'S percentage of risk. If we are just looking at the "official" vaccine incidence-rate versus the incidence rate of an unvaccinated population, the answer is no.
But people have thrown a lot of modern-day syndromes at the feet of vaccination, including autism and various immune disorders. This is questionable, given that vaccination and autism don't show any statistical correlation. In addition, a NUMBER of factors have been introduced in the past several decades BESIDES vaccination. Let me give you a couple of alternates:
(a) There is good evidence that body-wide exposure to SUNSHINE is very important for the immune system. Not only is vitamin D more important to the immune system than previously recognized, but BODY-WIDE exposure to sunshine helps pop WBCs off skin capillary walls and put them back into circulation where they can be destroyed. These skin-capillary WBCs serve as a reservior for immune and autoimmune factors.
(b) A number of candidate chemicals have been increasing over the past several decades which are known to intefere with neurodevelopment and immune systems including PCBs, dioxins, flame-retardants etc.
(c) Autism "factors" appears in the bloodstream at birth, suggesting that at least SOME of the problem is genetic and pre-natal.
Still, there are clearly some people with devastating responses to vaccines, and for THOSE people the risk of vaccination is greater than the risk of remaining unvaccinated IN A HIGHLY VACCINATED POPULATION. (It is the high level of vaccination which reduces to verall incidence of disease.) Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing specifically who those people are.
(3) The third argument is that unvaccinated population do not pose a risk to anyone other than themselves. The fact that limited outbreaks occur even in highly vaccinated populations implies that unvaccinated people pose no additional risk to the general population.
Epidemiology says that the number of vectors has a direct relationship to the formation of epidemics. As long as the number of unvaccinated people remains small, they will not pose MUCH of an additional risk. However, if they become 90% of the population, then there is 91/100 chance that I will be exposed to a potential carrier, as opposed to a 10/100 chance (assuming 10% vaccination failure rate). In addition, if an unvaccinated person requires significant medical treatment, then I (as a tax and insurance-payer) am affected.
But as long as the level of unvaccinated remains low, it's prolly a wash.
(4) I guess your last point is that there is no good science on the effectiveness (or safety?) of vaccination. Although there are a lot of confounding factors in the science, the robust obervation remains that vaccines reduce the incidence of disease in even populations that don't share the same level of resources, clean water, attention to hygiene, medical care, or any number of other factors that you might care to propose as the "cause" of epidemic reduction. You can see this most notably in smallpox, which was eliminated from the poorest populations as well as the wealthiest.
There is one other factor you need to consider when looking at whether vaccines are effective. In today's mob
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Amazingly, I just found this today
Ped Med: Autism research shifts to biology
By LIDIA WASOWICZ
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Researchers endeavoring to track autism to its core are shifting more of their attention from psychology to biology. Results trickling in from a number of investigations are implicating genes and abnormalities in brain anatomy and activity in autism, scientists said.... investigators, in turn, said they have detected alterations present at birth in brain-produced, protein-like molecules called neuropeptides in children who went on to develop conditions that fall under the umbrella term of autism spectrum disorders.
... "Immune system behavior, genetics and environment all factor together into this complex disorder," said {Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Lab of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience and director of the Autism Research Center of Excellence at Boston University School of Medicine.}... "We're beginning to put these pieces together, with the latest advances (promising) that at some point in time we'll be able to identify children with autism soon after they're born."
... At a medical meeting last year Amaral upped the ante by reporting on a study of 105 preschoolers that brings within scientific reach the possibility of developing a simple blood test that one day might unmask autism in a newborn.... He and colleagues have found striking differences in disease-fighting immune cells, proteins and certain small molecules in the blood of autistic children that one day just might do the trick, Amaral said.
The idea is if vulnerable youngsters could be pinpointed in the delivery room and the environmental trigger of that susceptibility identified, it would be possible to keep the two apart -- and keep the disorder at bay, researchers explained.
Next: Of autism and heredity
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-2
0061130-12470600-bc-pedmed-autismresearch-4.xml
BTW- I will be the FIRST to say there is a strong link between the immune system and the brain, seeing as my daughter's seizure disorder and regression responded instantaneously and dramatically to steroids. However, saying that vaccines "cause" autism seems weak since critical peptides appear at birth. If there IS a conneciton, it would be between some factor AND vaccines.
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Short post, i'm on a laptop too, rendering some hell onto the deserving, or will be, in a few...
Yeah, all the evidence seems to point to the idea that giving someone with the pre-existing risk factors a vacc containing Thimerosal is bad, BAD idea, the way I see it.
As far as further study would go, I'm not against it, but based on the existing evidence, why keep using it ?
I'd rather pay a bit more, and get something without it, wouldn't you ?
And having that choice isn't possible in a mandatory scheme, which is as good an argument as any.
As for not asking me to slug for someones freedom of choice, I slug for my own, if you think that benefits you, great - if not, well, it's not takin anything from ya, neither, you can still decide to do whatever.
Looks like i'm gonna miss my chance to be lambasted by british perjoratives tho, and I was so looking forward to it, too. 
-Frem
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Rue, I have already answered your questions. It is not all or nothing, black or white, completely trustworthy or completely useless. It seems most of your accusations against me try to pigeonhole me into one extreme or another, or force me to throw out the baby with the bathwater. (e.g. If I find fault with the science, then I can't use them at all.) I will say again, my positions are somewhere in the middle of the continuum. I feel neither extreme has good evidence to support its position.
Quote:For the record, I will say yet again, I do not support the position that vaccines are useless. I don't support that they are highly useful. But that doesn't automatically mean I think they are useless. I see the same pressure to force me into an extremist position as Rue's accusations. If I am not FOR vaccines, then I must be against them. It simply is not true.
Originally posted by SignyM:
CTS: You're making several arguments.
(1) This first, which I do not for one second agree with, is that vaccines are useless
(2) The second, which I also do not agree with, is that vaccines are more dangerous than the disease itself.
Generally, I don't support any categorical positions that claims to be true for everyone all the time. Some vaccines are indeed more dangerous than the disease for some people, in some situations. Some diseases are more dangerous than the vaccines for some people, in some situations. Life is complicated. Vaccines are complicated. That is why it is important for each individual to make his or her own choice for his or her own situation.
Quote:This argument I DID make. Thank you for getting ONE right.
(3) The third argument is that unvaccinated population do not pose a risk to anyone other than themselves.
Quote:That is correct, assuming the vaccine in question is effective. But exemptors has never exceeded 2% of the population in the entire history of exemptions in the USA. The fear that the unvaccinated population may jump up to 90% has no historical support. MOST people are like YOU--they vaccinate. There are VERY VERY VERY few people like me. And that is extremely unlikely to change as long as authority supports vaccinations. We are herd animals--most of us will always follow the leaders.
As long as the number of unvaccinated people remains small, they will not pose MUCH of an additional risk. However, if they become 90% of the population,...
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.
--Edna O'Brien
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Quote:THANK YOU. Thank you for at least acknowledging this. I thought I was talking to brick walls.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Although there are a lot of confounding factors in the science,
Quote:Sig, this is the best argument against mine that I have heard in this entire thread. There does appear to be a correlation between vaccination and disease decline, despite "controls" for other factors. This and other correlations suggest to me that vaccines cannot be totally ineffective, as my anti-vaccination friends might contend. This isn't proof actual, but it makes a good case for considering effectiveness.
the robust obervation remains that vaccines reduce the incidence of disease in even populations that don't share the same level of resources, clean water, attention to hygiene, medical care, or any number of other factors that you might care to propose as the "cause" of epidemic reduction.
I will write about the smallpox issue. I have taken a bit of a break because my husband's been complaining about excessive time spent on RWED.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
--Will Rogers
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