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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."
"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
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.
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
I think you will find that more people die from the preventable disease than die from the vaccine.
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.
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?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
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.
You missed the part about the father wanting the kids vaccinated.
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
But that was not the issue here.
Half of their legal guardians wanted them to get the vaccine, and the other half did not want it. The kids had picked a side, but were too young for their opinion to matter.
So, in the end either the court could of just said, "well we cannot decide for you", or it could take the role of a third child guardian, and base their decision on the medical science.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
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.