Tuesday, March 25, 2008
A crisp note on vaccinations and the public health
TigerHawk declaration of the day: Vaccination should not be optional, even if some people think they or their children would be better off without it. We should do it, or not do it, e pluribus unum.
5 Comments:
By 
Biotunes, at
Tue Mar 25, 07:44:00 PM:
Right on. Here's my blog on the topic:
http://www.biotunes.org/bioblog/2007/03/some-of-my-favorite-people.html
By 
, at
Tue Mar 25, 09:03:00 PM:
A woman in my church, healthy, single working gal about 48 years old was "forced" by her employer to get a "FLU" shot. She came down with gillian bar (?)(I'm not sure of the spelling. Anyway, it almost killed her, she was in intensive care for days and she now uses a walker and a wheelchair. It will be many, many months of rehab and the prognosis is not good. It occurs in every 5 to 10 thousand doses. I'll take the flu any day. I would no longer recommend the shots for anyone.
By , at
Tue Mar 25, 09:49:00 PM:
TigerHawk was not referring to the flu vaccination, cervical cancer vaccine, or some other conventionally optional immunization.
Childhood vaccination is part of our social compact. Those parents that withhold their children from this compact ought not reap any benefits from those join. No "free" public schooling, no subsidized day care, no financial support such as WIC.
By , at
Wed Mar 26, 01:06:00 AM:
"Those parents that withhold their children from this compact ought not reap any benefits. No "free" public schooling, no subsidized day care, no financial support such as WIC."
Anything that removes the idea that those government services are a "right" would be a good idea.
My father was a doctor and a very good one. He is sort of famous in our area for saying that he never went wrong listening to the mother. If a parent wants to keep their child out of a vaccination program, they should be able too. If that keeps them out of school, that is not a problem, either. Cut them off from Medicare, if you want but don't force a parent to do something for their child that they think will hurt them. There are hundreds of ways to stop infectious diseases and hundreds of ways to spread them. In the absence of a perfect system we should trust the parents to know what is right. Otherwise, there is no "diversity", biologically speaking and that makes a future diagnosis much more difficult. If every child is vaccinated, where is the control population if something goes wrong? Humans are not lab rats but a wall of lawyers will not stop the next plague, and there will be another one, eventually. I can think of a few cases where medical attention was forced on people and I thought it was a good thing, but such cases are so rare and exceptional, do we really want them codified in law?
By , at
Thu Mar 27, 07:34:00 AM:
Agree. Not do it.
Why should anyone be forced to be vaccinated? If some parent wants to protect their child with vaccinations, its entirely up to them. Isn't it?
Isn't this a lot like forcing people to be placed into wellness programs for the common good? We all would object to that,too.
