UK Court Orders Two Sisters Must Receive MMR Vaccine
rnws writes "The BBC reports that an English High Court judge has ruled that sisters aged 15 and 11 must have the MMR vaccine even though they and their mother do not want it. The High Court decision, made last month, came after the girls' father brought a case seeking vaccination. When outlining her decision in the latest case, Mrs Justice Theis emphasized it was a specific case 'only concerned with the welfare needs of these children', but lawyers say as one of a series it confirms there is no longer any debate about the benefits of the vaccine."
"The BBC reports that an English High Court judge has ruled that sisters aged 15 and 11 must have the MMR vaccine even though they and their mother do not want it. "
No, the kids don't know any better, and the mother is practicing child abuse, especially against the 11 year old.
Brainwashing your kids against vaccination is particularly evil.
--
BMO
I hope so, I don't know why so many people heard of one study, which was proved false, and not the others which disproved it.
and she has seen perfectly healthy people die solely as a result of receiving the vaccine.
in this case if adverse effects happen to these girls, the judge needs to be prosecuted.
Aren't they too old to become autistic from a vaccine?
You don't drive through red traffic lights. You don't spread your stupid diseases to innocent Children who for GOOD reasons can't be vaccinated. And you don't waste my taxes trying to treat your sick kids because you're too stupid to understand some basic science.
work in progress
Dad and mom do not agree, kids are minors and thus unable to decide for themselves in the eyes of the law, and thus medical evidence breaks the tie. I really don't see the problem here...
IF mom and dad and kids didn't want it and courts were ordering something, then that would be a different story.
It's unfortunate they made the issue out to be the efficacy of the vaccine and not the moral implications about forcing medication on people against their will. I, like most, believe the autism-MMR link is pure nonsense, but I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines. (In the case of children, parents sometimes need to make decisions on their behalf, of course, but it shouldn't be the government making those decisions.) Of course, an exception to that rule can be made if people want the privilege of traveling to certain foreign countries which are known to harbor specific diseases, but otherwise, it should be up to parents, or adults to make these decisions, wrong though they may be.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Well duh. I didn't want shots either, but luckily for me my parents were sane people and didn't let a ten-year-old make medical decisions.
Outweigh the needs of the few.
"confirms there is no longer any debate about the benefits of the vaccine."
How can anyone be stupid enough to believe that a judge ruling has any effect on medical science?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
This is actually a case about father's rights, RTFA
I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines.
If you've got an infectious disease that has outbreak potential, most legal systems allow doctors to detain you for treatment.
This isn't the same thing, but there's a similar public health factor. It's not a personal decision, given that there are people who CANNOT be vaccinated for whatever reason, and some of these diseases have no "cure" other than prevention.
Most of these outbreaks happen when unvaccinated people travel to other countries where vaccinations aren't commonplace and the diseases are. And they bring it home. That's half the reason your doctor and the Embassy suggest/strongly recommend getting booster shots before traveling to certain places!
Please help metamoderate.
I auction off the right of a nurse that I work with to finally get the chance to inflict pain upon me in retribution for all of the other times I have made life difficult... There is a lineup every year!
Its to late for these kids, stupidity is hereditary.
Often the stated effectiveness of vaccines is often inflated. Also vaccines are not always as safe as "they" claim them to be either. Do you own research, follow the money, look at who is making the claims. It is just as mindless to say all vaccines are bad as it is to force vaccines on people, anyway i guess that goes back to follow the money. Do your own research instead of believing what "they" tell you.
Given the innuendo of the clip, one might think we're expected to feel outrage about this because the daughters AND mom don't want it. But guess what? Dad gets a say too, and no; that is not outrageous. Mom must have thought he would be a pretty spiffy father because she slept with him at least twice.
Just because one or both of the parents changed their minds does not mean dad loses his "father" status. His opinion is equal to mom's, and I'm glad the court decision reflected that.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Nice piece of raving paranoia and utter stupidity, utterly fact free and ludicrous.
It's about time all exemptions were removed. It's idiotic to allow them. Unfortunately Australia has allowed them, and diseases that were almost eliminated are returning, thanks to idiocy.
The age is undefined, but revolves around an ability to UNDERSTAND the issues of the medication, and is largely assumed to be around 13 years old.
Although in some cases people never seem to UNDERSTAND....
How old are you again?
You're doing a wonderful job of talking up New Hampshire as a place to run when you're tired of being sane.
So instead of having to admit that their opt-out is based on irrationality, they can opt out "just because." Brilliant. Do you have a lot of anti-vaxxers up there?
But muh liberties! How can I be free if I'm not free to spread disease!
Any risks whatsoever to the individual who takes them, or is the risk equal to zero?
What this series of cases confirms is simply that people no longer have a right to opt out of vaccination.
No, it does not confirm that. You might have had an argument if both parents were refusing the vaccination and the court ordered them to do so anyway, but that's not what happened here.
Here, one parent agreed with the vaccination and one parent did not. They could not settle the dispute so they turned to the courts to settle it for them. The courts acted in what they believed were in the child's interest and ordered the vaccination. The children get no say because they are children.
Your entire rant is pointless because you have completely and utterly misunderstood what happened.
It's about time all exemptions were removed. It's idiotic to allow them.
Step right this way citizen for your retroviral DNA tagging. Let's see, you're male, so you get this one. The batches are rotated such that if we need to control the population we can release one or more plagues to achieve the desired ratio of males to females or northerners to southerners, etc.
Oh, you want to opt out? Too bad. We got you years ago, this is just a patch for a more efficient marker; Your kids? Oh, you don't get to decide what's best for them. We call that child abuse if you refuse their virus cocktail.
Not saying this shit is going down, but removing exemptions isn't going to limit the spread as much as you think, and the potential cost to freedom is far greater.
Don't want to be around me? Stay the hell indoors then you scared little moron. I accept that Life is a bit Dangerous, and drive my car every day anyway; I even eat at the occasional fast food joint. When the risk to life gets greater than that of auto accidents, then I'll give a fuck about folks opting out of vaccines, or banishing fast food. This blind devotion to prevention of all danger is how PRISM happened, you twit. Live free or die, I say.
Complete and utter bullshit.
Otherwise resistances would be hereditary and we wouldn't need to vaccinate every new generation of kids.
Vaccines force the body to produce specific antibodies. Certain lymphocytes can remember the blueprint for these antibodies. But these are not transferred to a fetus or encrypted into the DNA of normal cells (or egg/sperm).
You fail at biology.
their children are either uninformed or just stupid. Not only are you endangering your own child but you're also endangering those who can't get vaccinated like babies or people with an immune system disorder.
If you don't vaccinate your kids they can stay the fuck away from mine.
Just make the vaccinations mandatory under law. If the parents hide the children or otherwise prevent the vaccinations, fine them. If that doesn't help, fine them severely. If that still doesn't work, remove the children for a period. If the situation happens again with another vaccination, go directly to removing the children again, this time permanently.
It's just like school. It's mandatory and if you try to keep the children at home or otherwise fail to send them to school - you will be punished and the kids will attend school, one way or another.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
The problem there is that the "studies" have been pretty thoroughly discredited. They're in the same category as a "study" that looks at a number of criminals, finds that the majority of them drank coffee within a day or two of committing their crimes, and concludes that drinking coffee causes you to become a criminal. The fallacy becomes obvious when you take a group of people who regularly drink coffee and another similar group who don't, look at how many in each group went on to become criminals and notice that there's no statistical difference between the two.
A more likely explanation is simply that a) most children get the vaccinations so most children who go on to develop autism will have gotten vaccinations, and b) children are likely to be diagnosed with autism shortly after a visit to the doctor (to, for instance, get vaccinated) who notices indications and recommends further testing resulting in the diagnosis.
http://www.whale.to/v/hadwen.html
Still waiting for ANYBODY to refute ANY of Dr Hadwen's talks...
So should we all line up to put our heads on the block in front of Charlie Manson with an axe?
Now do you get how utterly stupid your statement was?
Society is there precisely because a civilised society can only exist if people band together to protect each other from dangerous individuals.
New Hampshire sounds like a haven for antivaccination nutcases. I wonder if it shows up in their epidemiology studies.
The supposed link between autism and vaccination has been exhaustively studied and dismissed. There isn't one.
A group of scientists believe they have stumbled upon something very interesting, which seems to me like the closest idea yet.
http://news.unchealthcare.org/news/2013/august/researchers-discover-a-potential-cause-of-autism
I'll let you read, but basically they found some strong evidence that it's chemicals that inhibit topoisomerase during pregnancy.
Like Genistein which is found predominately in soyabean, and antibacterial drugs (those that are used for resistant strains), and chemotherapy drugs.
All I can say is, GOD I HOPE SO.
Autism is such a difficult challenge to take on as a family and a society, and rates of 1 in 50 children are staggering.
It just so happens that diagnosis follows vaccination, but why blame vaccination when it might so easily (in the absence of evidence to say otherwise) be - second or first hand smoking during development, or alcohol, or perfume / makeup of the mother, or audio frequencies coming from the TV into the womb, or vibrations during driving, or electro magnetic interference from powerlines, or too much / little sunshine, or vitamin / mineral deficiency, or radon gas, or lack of stimulus or over stimulus etc.
Anti vaxxers have latched onto vaccination because of Andrew Wakefield. Ironically Wakefield was fraudulently attempting to discredit MMR because he had his own measles vaccine which he hope to cash-in on in the aftermath. The one good thing to come from it is that the supposed link between Autism and vaccination was exhaustively studied and no link was found. It's safe to say there isn't one and never was. It's far more likely that improved diagnosis, earlier screening and a lack of critical thinking has created the link in some people's minds.
That might be what happens in some cases, but probably not that many. In some cases, it can be due to a bad experience with a needle. That's part of the reason why I still hate needles to this day. When I was a teenager, I had plantar warts. Regular treatments failed to remove or control them, so I had to get them removed by electrolysis. The doctor that did it was "not very skilled" to put it mildly. Having the Novocain putting my feet was the sole most painful thing I've ever had happen. I was literally screaming at the top of my lungs it hurt so much. This is part of the reason why I don't like needles even now. I've never had another experience like that, in fact all my more recent experiences with needles have been incredibly non-painful. However, that still sticks with me and I still hate needles and have to look away.
In other cases it's a simple phobia, something that doesn't really have a logical reason but you're afraid of it anyway. It probably starts with the fact that having something poked into your skin is normally not a good thing, so you have a natural aversion to it. From that you can develop a full-blown phobia. It isn't based on anything logical, it isn't based on anything that happened to you, that's what a phobia is an irrational fear. You even know it's irrational, but that doesn't make you any less afraid of it. It's like other phobias such as fear of spiders, public speaking, that sort of thing.
I'm not saying it's useful to lie to kids about the fact that getting a shot might hurt a little, but I don't think that's where it comes from at least not in most cases.
Also those for whom the vaccination does not work. It turns out that vaccinations are NOT 100% effective. In some people, the vaccination will not provide immunity for whatever reason. Well, there's not really any good way to test this. It's not like we can go in infect people with potentially deadly diseases, just to see if they in fact are immune to those diseases. However, when a large percentage of the population has been vaccinated, the herd immunity acts such that basically nobody gets it since the disease can't find hosts to spread from.
However as the term "herd immunity" implies, it requires a large part of the "herd" to be vaccinated. When too few people are vaccinated, diseases can find enough vectors to spread.
As you note, this isn't just an individual issue this affect society as a whole. There are people who cannot be vaccinated, for various reasons, and there are people who will choose to be vaccinated but the vaccination won't work for, and they don't know. As such is important for as many people as possible to be vaccinated against disease to make sure that it does not spread.
Don't want to be around me? Stay the hell indoors then you scared little moron. I accept that Life is a bit Dangerous
Words to live by.
Seems people like you are scared of the vaccine, and you're the one being antisocial. So it stands to reason you would be the one to be locked indoors.
New Hampshire recognizes a right of conscience to opt out of vaccines.
Yes, except that these children can't give informed consent. Also, does New Hampshire recognize a right of conscience to drive recklessly? Must be a wonderful place (for non-pedestrians).
Ezekiel 23:20
...when I was a kid...
How do you explain that? How did we all survive? Why weren't ANY of our parents concerned? What changed since then?
I have over ten references to popular 1970s and 1980s T.V. programmes which contain references to various characters 'having had the measles', or 'having had mumps', nobody was bothered back then, why are these diseases so 'deadly' now?
The vegan child is against the vaccine due to its production using animal product (eggs).
But admitted they knew nothing about the drugs used to treat the diseases if they contracted them without the vaccine.
So avoiding the vaccine produced with eggs might result in a greater exposure to animal sourced products.
What was asked was who liked getting it?
PS around 1/6 of mortality was due to those three diseases. Of course, those who survived didn't die from it, but that's rather a pointless statement, so why the fuck did you make it.
Don't try to defend your actions, merely own up to them.
"Dad, for all the trouble I gave you when I was a child and never knew who you were, I'm sorry. I was an asshole and have no defence. All I can say is I'm sorry."
I am not an expert when it comes to vaccines, so I cannot say for sure whether there is or isn't a relationship between vaccines and autism. But everything I read so far leads me to believe that if there IS a relationship, it is very very small. And I also know that I would rather choose the very small risk of having an autistic child than the LARGE risk of having my child suffer from the serious consequences of not being vaccinated against nasty diseases. Read about the things measles can do to you and then tell me you would prefer that over autism.
We get all these people who think that vaccines are linked to autism because one discredited scientsts said it was, so we get all this controvercy over vaccines. But what about all the other crap we're putting into our bodies? Hormones in the water supply. Industrial pollutants. Even intentional fluoridation, which has been correlated with lower IQ. But do these people rally against this stuff? No, because it takes too much work. It's easier to go on about government conspiracies and skip going to the doctor.
Now I don't know if it's actually linked to anything in reality, but I can say that Thimerosol contains mercury. That cannot possibly be good for you.
In November 2011, I had a flu shot. The next day, I developed a distilled and horrific form of OCD called Pure-O. I haven't been the same since.
Oh please. If there was anything that could possibly alter DNA in a human being, at the very least we'd have heard about it during a Nobel Prize award.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is what happens when ignorant people make poor decisions:
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/measles-outbreak-tied-texas-megachurch-sickens-21-8C11009315
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
And there is no such thing as 'vaccination', no matter how much you want to BELIEVE there is.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/2013-measles-outbreak-failing-vaccine-not-failure-vaccinate1
So once again we have a story with a vegan angle which seems to be popping up more and more anytime people act stupidly. One of the girls was concerned about 'animal products' in the vaccines.
Let me just leave this little chestnut there for you all. No matter how much you try to avoid using products with animal derived ingredients, or animal tested products, you will have to use them unless you make every single thing that goes in or on your body by hand and never buy a single thing.
Some things which contain animal products:
The color black, used in inks, toners, plastics, is often made from burning animal bones.
Beer and many other products use ground fish swim bladders as a settling agent, which is later filtered back out.
Many pills and capsules are coated in gelatin as well as many food products, beauty products, and it's made from ground animal collagen.
The color red in many products is carmine red, and it's made from ground insects.
Some thing which everyone uses that are tested on animals.
Shampoo
toothpaste
mouth rinse
soap
skin cream
the perfumes in soaps and shampoos and creams
Some things we all benefit from that are based on vivisection, killing lab animals, etc
Most of modern medicine
vaccines
insulin (did you know the head of PETA is a diabetic?)
almost any healthcare you get, medications, treatments, even things like cat scans, are derived from testing and knowledge gained from using animals as human surrogates.
If you want to live a life that does not benefit from animal products or animal testing, you're talking about walking into the wilderness by yourself with no clothes and no tools and not making use of anything from society, no technology, no products, no knowledge.
LIFE MEANS KILLING OTHER THINGS EITHER BY DIRECT ACT OR FOR COMMUNAL BENEFIT. THESE ARE LAWS OF NATURE AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. GET USED TO IT IF YOU WISH TO LIVE.
I would like all vaccine advocates to read all the horror stories about people who had normal kids, then had brain damaged zombies following vaccination.
There are lots of extremely toxic and dangerous things in those shots, including formaldehyde, mercury, aluminum, and genetic material left over from the culture medium. The culture medium that can be diseased monkey kidneys, or fetal tissue. If this sounds like a witch's brew; it is.
Being a computer nerd does qualify you to make decisions regarding other people's health. You are all terrified of nature, and taking the risks inherent in living life.
Now back to your cages!
Some vaccines rely on herd immunity, others (tetanus vaccine comes to mind) don't.
The last serious research about vaccines was a long time ago, and as it showed to be ineffective, no more serious research about vaccination has been done.
"In the 1960s, the Indian Research Council and the World Health Organisation carried out a very large, well designed, double-blind controlled trial of 360,000 people in Madras, South India. The results showed that more of those vaccinated with BCG got tuberculosis than those who had not been vaccinated "
Keep allowing the system to inject toxic stuff to your newborns, sheeps.
Measles and rubella I'll grant you. But a college kid who wants to get into electronic health records might experiment with mumps in order to gain skills needed to land a job at a company deploying what Vista meant before Microsoft tarnished the brand in 2006.
Ok, this is the slashdot croud, so I would expect you all to get two things about this discussion:
1. Vaccines could be used, and indeed have been used, for secret government testing.
2. The girls have a right to their bodies.
Now, I'm actually in favor of getting vaccinated. I really am. BUT, I live in the US, and our government has done secret medical testing on us before. I don't know about the UK, but I'm guessing they have too. But don't worry, they have given us their full assurance that they aren't doing that any more. Just trust them.
See the problem? I don't think the UK or the US is actually up to something with vaccines, but (here's the kicker) - I UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE WOULD WORRY ABOUT THAT. You think the MI5 isn't up to anything similar to our NSA, TSA, IRS, etc etc? Then why are you so defensive of them in other areas?
And to the second point, these girls would have the right in some places in the US (at least the 15 yro would) to give full consent to an abortion without notifying their parents. Why can they not consent to refuse a vaccine? Is it really "My body, my choice"?
.... and if they get Measles, Mumps, or Rubella while under the age of 18, their mother must pay for all doctors bills 100% out of pocket, including hospital stays.
Also it if can be proven they they infect anyone else, they must pay the doctor bills of those that can prove it.
Legal fees alone in the defense will fix that.
If they get these after the age of 18, then they should face the same expenses as their mother would.
It's simple repercussions of one's actions.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Science? Money corrupts "science" easily. Maybe thats why the link hasnt been established? Maybe "scientists" also lie? Like read this please and inform yourself ?before spitting nonsense, or maybe your part of the FRAUD? http://www.naturalnews.com/032216_Thorsen_fraud.html
Or here you can see how mercury kills the brain, this is a good science example, where your actually watching a real experiment taken place, injecting mercury into neurons and seeing how they react? Now thats what i would call SCIENCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85tgwh3HpsM (by University of Calgary, Canada)
You will burn in hell forever for enforcing inocent babys being injected with crap directly to their blood.
The court is not really forcing the girls to get the vaccine. This is a case of the mother not wanting the vaccine for her daughters, and the father wanting the vaccine for them. If the father hadn't wanted the vaccination either, then the girls wouldn't be vaccinated. More of a custody dispute than a vaccination dispute...
I think see the issue here. You absolutely want vaccines to cause autism. Science says there is no link, but that obviously can't be right (in your mind) so you concoct some vast conspiracy to handwave it all away.
who saw dramatic changes in their children right after MMR. My wife works with children with autism every day (lots of them) and their parents. The sheer volume of parents who tell her that their children were fine, then got MMR and 2-3 days later lost all of their speech and started flapping their hands and spinning all of the time is shocking. It's possible that it's getting better, but these parents don't know each other. They don't have anything to gain. Most of them are afraid to talk about it because they don't think anybody will believe them.
The core concern has always been heavy metals, mercury and aluminum. Mercury has been removed. Aluminum hasn't.
What I find more shocking is the level of outrage and general dismissiveness directed toward these parents. People's systems react badly to things all of the time. Some people can't tolerate milk and everybody is supposed to believe that it is 100% impossible for anybody to react negatively to any of the ingredients used in vaccines? Seriously? That's like a Saddam election where he gets 100% of the vote. How does anybody really believe that with a straight face?
We're up to 1/50 boys now in the US affected by autism. Supposedly we know enough about biology to accurately predict the origin of all life on the planet without any ability to observe it or or test it...but with all of that sample data there's NOT A SINGLE PUBLIC THEORY ABOUT THE CAUSE OF AUTISM!?! SERIOUSLY?
At what point do you realize the level of group think and herd fear involved in dismissing that?
But muh liberties! How can I be free if I'm not free to spread disease!
Don't forget, the best vaccines are only 90% effective, meaning that the anti-vaxxers are in the same group as the 10%.
Their numbers are fairly small - it's probably better to fix their misconceptions with education than it is to mount an assault on medical liberties.
Why is it that we make sure students cover the Peloponesian Wars in school, but not basic immunology?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
viruses do. But that is besides the point. Vaccines do not contain elements capable of replication so vaccines do not change your DNA
Haha
You're not doing it right.
Just secretly put it in the water or food supply. Far simpler.
I heard this one story about a guy traveling to another country and had to have a vaccination.
:)
Well his plane crashed killing everyone on board.
We need to stop this vaccination madness now
I'm so glad that the everyday person is so overly qualified to know the benefits / harm of vaccinations. I don't care what your person reasons are for not getting vaccinated, the fact is vaccinations are good and in 99.9999999% of all cases harmless. I keep reading posts on Facebook, ABC News, MSN and etc.... about why parents should be careful about vaccinating there kids. I also read posts about parents who speak to the wealth of incorrect information about the link between vaccinations and autism and other mental disorders. The fact is 99.999% of the parents who decide to not vaccinate are completely and udderly unqualified to make that decision, unqualified from the standpoint of evidence, knowledge, research and intelligence.
I'm extremely glad that a court stepped in and forced this vaccination, I think more courts need to be stepping in and forcing vaccinations. The point is if you are going to decide not to vaccinate a child then please present your research that will clearly show the negative effects, when you can't do that then please stop playing doctor and listen to the real experts. If a child is hurt from the effects of not being vaccinated then it's child abuse and negligence and I don't see why we should hold the parents responsible.
and i've never had Measles, Mumps, or Rubella. Coincidence?
I despise needles to no end, but I recognize the value to vaccination and certainly the value to giving blood. I try to think about other things, like how many dots are on the ceiling.
Immunity is not absolute, it's relative. It reduces the probability that you will catch the disease, but not all the way to zero. Much of the benefit of vaccination comes from herd immunity. If the average number of people who catch the disease for an infected person is reduced to less than one, then the disease cannot spread through the population and instead dies out. Of course, herd immunity depends upon enough of the population being vaccinated.
So yes, if you don't get vaccinated, you are endangering people other than yourself.
Also, there are some people who cannot be vaccinated, due to immune disorders, for example. The same people are more like to be severely harmed or killed by infections, and their only protection is herd immunity.
They are caused by different viruses, both with several subtypes.
The influenza types usually have much more severe symptoms than parainfluenza.
UK just got added to my list of states violating the human rights that thinks it is Ok.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/04/22/head-of-cdc-admits-on-cnn-that-vaccines-can-trigger-autism.aspx
"Recently Julie Gerberding, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), appeared on Dr. Sanjay Gupta's show House Call and explained that vaccines can trigger autism in a vulnerable subset of children. This is the claim that many parents have been making since at least the 1980s, and they have been dismissed and even mocked for making it."
At three minutes in, specifically, she suggests a stress could trigger autism, and such a stress could be a fever resulting from a vaccination injection, the result of which in children who are predisposed by a mitochondrial disorder could thus set off the symptoms of autism...
See also though, along the lines you suggest, for other more likely and more frequent causes of autism though, such as vitamin D deficiency and food additives and so on:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/autism/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
Dr. Julie Gerberding has since left her position as head of the CDC and is now the president of Merck's Vaccine division. As you point out, people against vaccines also may have financial interests at stake (book sales, medical practices, product sales, etc.). Whatever one can say about vaccines, certainly understanding the conflicts of interest and weasel words pervading the whole field seems like a huge job...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Gerberding
To build on some other suggestions in comments to this article, since getting enough vitamin D, eating more vegetables, avoiding dairy, getting exercise, nursing children past age two, and so on have been proven to often improve health and increase disease resistance in humans, it seems like any family which is not doing all of those things is putting the community at risk. So, the question is, should we legally enforce "BlueZones" and "Nutritarianism" on the world in order to protect those with compromised immune systems because they avoid sunlight, eat poorly, don't exercise, were bottle-fed, and so on?
http://www.bluezones.com/
http://www.drfuhrman.com/children/default.aspx
Maybe we should start by cracking down on luncheonmeat consumers? :-)
http://www.ehow.com/info_8360513_luncheon-meat-dangers.html
http://institutefornaturalhealing.com/2012/04/processed-meats-declared-too-dangerous-for-human-consumption/
At the very least, as a deterrent to creating health hazards for themselves and others, perhaps people who admit to having eaten processed meats (or who otherwise can be identified by credit card purchase records) probably should not have any possibly related medical conditions covered by insurance?
The medical literature is very messy, for lots of reasons, such as expressed in quotes I've collected here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
It would help to have better tools to use to wade through all the muck (including for detecting statistical fallacies as the grandparent post by "Todd Knarr" points out). Some suggestion
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.