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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."

21 of 699 comments (clear)

  1. Good. by bmo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.

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    BMO

    1. Re:Good. by Mitchell314 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Find me a kid that wants to get shots. Of course they're going to be against it. But yeah, it's sad this very dangerous idea is still floating around, all because somebody wanted to get money from an alternative vaccine and thus fabricated a lie.

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      I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
    2. Re:Good. by ATMAvatar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are more than welcome to publish a paper in a medical journal disproving the health benefits of vaccination and herd immunity. Until such revolutionary change comes about in medicine, choosing not to vaccinate a child *is* particularly evil, as it endangers not only the child but everyone around him or her. Teaching the child not to vaccinate only exacerbates the problem.

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      "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    3. Re:Good. by besalope · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Pregnancy isn't an illness.

      Exactly. It's just a parasitic relationship.

    4. Re:Good. by unitron · · Score: 5, Insightful

      i hated needles as a kid, and STILL hate needles. i almost never get anything with a needle unless i absolutely have to. ill generally take the flu over a vaccine.

      Then you've probably never really had the flu.

      Oh, and before you wound up completely out of action for a week except to grab the trash can near the bed when your stomach tries to turn itself inside out and escape your body via your throat, and you have spasms in abodmen muscles you never knew you had, you've probably helped spread the disease to who knows how many others.

      Do like I do, look the other way and accept that there's going to be some momentary pain.

      --

      I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

    5. Re: Good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That sort of tyranny exists so that idiots like yourself DON'T start killing people.

      Seriously, if you don't like having diseases controlled using the most efficient means (vaccine instead of quarantine) the you get to fuck off and live in your own vaccine free society. The only reason you haven't died yet is because everyone else around you vaccinating has shielded you.

      It should not be a choice sometimes. Because everyone fucking dying because some shithead like you shouted FREEEEEEDDDDUUUUMB is the stupidest idea I have ever heard.

    6. Re:Good. by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You should try giving blood. The needle looks more like a tube, around 2mm diameter. You also get to see your blood flowing down the tube, into the bag that slowly fills up.

      I've given more blood than I currently have in my body.

    7. Re:Good. by YukariHirai · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is about your right to decide what goes into your own body, to keep the government away from it.

      That's all well and good, but what goes into your body does have an effect on other people, not just you. For a wild hypothetical, if there's a choice between getting an injection and 100 people around you dying, you're just plain being an arsehole for refusing the injection, and a good case can be made for it being for the good to force you to get it. If it's a choice between you getting a shot that will kill you and 100 people around you dying, it's rather less clear cut... a generous enough person might accept and be the sacrifice, but while it is rather selfish it's not entirely unreasonable to refuse, and being forced to get the shot would be wrong.

      Vaccines come somewhere between those two extremes. Negative effects of getting vaccines are pretty rare and tend to be relatively minor, but negative effects of not getting them can be devastating for far more people. And even if it is just you that dies if you don't get a shot, that's still a pretty negative effect for the family and friends that care about you and perhaps depend on you.

      As such, I cannot in good conscience oppose certain vaccinations being mandated.

    8. Re:Good. by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This isn't about flu. This is about MMR vaccine. Example: if pregnant woman manages to catch rubella, if she's lucky, child will be stillborn. Unlucky, and it will be born severely disabled.

      These infectious diseases are not a joke. These are diseases that wiped out a good 10-20% of people before they reached adulthood before vaccination was invented and left many survivors with some degree of disability for life.

      The reason why we don't have to worry about having ten kids so that around four make it to adulthood is because we have vaccination against the nastier diseases, and because vaccination and resultant herd immunity effectively wiped many of the most dangerous diseases out of our everyday lives.

    9. Re:Good. by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, OP is correct. Most people who think they've had the flu have actually only had a cold. They're different types of viruses which just share some similar symptoms.

      The flu tends to be much worse. One key difference is that whereas a cold will just stuff up your nose and make your head feel miserable, the flu will make you feel like you just ran a marathon and then a truck ran over you. It also tends to last a lot longer. I was bedridden for 10 days, and it was 3 weeks before I felt normal again. It was so bad that even though I wanted to go back to work, I was afraid to because I didn't want to pass it on to a coworker and make them go through the same misery I had just been through. Totally the opposite of the guy who's only had a cold and thinks you should just tough it out and come to work.

      I get my flu shot every year now.

  2. Re:Finally killed that autism theory? by felixrising · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is because rumours only spread when they are in the affirmation, not a negation, ie.. "someone said 'x' is related to 'y'" will spread word of mouth, whilst "someone said 'x' is NOT related to 'y'" will not spread.

  3. Re:Finally killed that autism theory? by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One side of the story has a spokesidiot who is blond with big tits. Apparently that supersedes scientific study.

    .
    PS. Firefox underlined 'spokesidiot' with a red squiggly line. So I added the word to the dictionary.

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    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  4. Sensible decision by mynamestolen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    work in progress
  5. Re:my wife works as a medical technician by jfdavis668 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think you will find that more people die from the preventable disease than die from the vaccine.

  6. Actually sensable.... by MasseKid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:It's unfortunate. by bunratty · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You may want to read about herd immunity. We need a certain percentage of the population to be vaccinated to protect everyone against the disease, including those who cannot have the vaccination. Leaving it up to everyone to decide for themselves what they want to do won't work. We don't let people decide what side of the road to drive on, now do we?

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    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  8. Kids don't like vaccination?! by Arancaytar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    even though they and their mother do not want it

    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.

  9. Re:Finally killed that autism theory? by bunratty · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The rumor X is not related to Y will spread if there is people get emotional gratification out of it. If people believe they need to change their lifestyle to prevent global warming, then they are very eager to believe that "the warming is not related to burning fossil fuels."

    Ironically, changing our lifestyle is one of the least effective ways to reduce use of fossil fuels. We just need to get our energy from other sources and we can keep our comfy lifestyle.

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    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  10. Re:It's unfortunate. by jhealy1024 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What about the case of public health? Vaccines rely on "herd immunity" to be effective, so letting everyone pick and choose leads to a situation where not enough people are vaccinated to protect the population as a whole (as seen by outbreaks of measles in pockets of the country over the last year). There was an article written on this (which I can't find now) that was a great overview of the tension between one's individual rights to liberty and one's societal obligations not to kill people by willfully refusing something that has been demonstrated to work.

    What if, for example, we found the "typhoid mary" for measles (someone who was asymptomatic, but carried the disease and spread it to others). They could be cured with the vaccine, but refuse to take it. Should the interest of the public health outweigh the individual right to refuse treatment in this case? If not, why should others perish? If so, then why not force vaccines on everyone? Where should the line be drawn?

    Here in the US, we typically coerce vaccination by making it a prerequisite for public school (some states allow "personal" or "religious" exemptions, though). That way, people aren't "forced" to do it; life is just more unpleasant if they insist on skipping vaccines. Not sure if the UK has a similar system to encourage vaccination.

  11. Re:It's unfortunate. by AK+Marc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Herd immunity still doesn't trump individual control of their body (at least IMHO).

    The Father wanted his children immunized. The Mother didn't. The government mediated the dispute with the goal of finding in the girl's best interests.

    I didn't see anything about personal rights in this, unless you are arguing that the age of consent should be under 11 so that the children would be making their own decision independent of their parent's wishes.

  12. Re:It's unfortunate. by Belial6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Herd immunity gets thrown out like a mantra. While it is great, we are now starting to vaccinate against diseases where herd immunity will save fewer lives than the vaccine harms. Herd immunity is not the end all be all answer. To think it is, is to be just as scientifically inclined as Jenny McCarthy.

    OK, to be fair, I only know of one vaccine that poses a real threat, and that is only because it is misused. That would be the chicken pox vaccine. It should not be used on children. The data supplied by virtually every source shows this, even when the sources conclusion recommends the vaccine. The problem is that those who support vaccination rarely if every draw a distinction between a vaccine like the chicken pox vaccine and the polio vaccine. Then the Anti-"Anti-Vaxers" come out and start screaming about how all vaccines are good, and anyone who would question the righteousness of the all mighty vaccine is a murderer who should have their children removed from them.

    When we were fighting polio, there was no question that A vaccine was a good thing. The big killers and maimers are largely gone now. We have had effective vaccines for a long time. Now we are trying to add vaccines that prevent diseases that are less likely to kill or maim than a home cooked meal. That's right. If the chicken pox vaccine were never developed, you would still have a greater chance of being killed or maimed by a home cooked meal than by chicken pox.

    Even worse is that the vaccine is known not to offer life long immunity, so we are very likely just pushing the disease off for a decade or so. This is particularly unfortunate because chicken pox is 10x more deadly for an adult than a child.