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Time To Remove 'Philosophical' Exemption From Vaccine Requirements?
An anonymous reader writes: Michigan has a problem. Over the past decade, the number of unvaccinated kindergartners has spiked. "Nearly half of the state's population lives in counties with kindergarten vaccination rates below the level needed for "herd immunity," the public health concept that when at least 93 percent of people are vaccinated, their immunity protects the vulnerable and prevents the most contagious diseases from spreading." Surprise, surprise, the state is now in the midst of a whooping cough outbreak. How do these kids get into public schools without being vaccinated? Well, Michigan is among the 19 U.S. states that allow "philosophical" objections to the vaccine requirements for schoolchildren. (And one of the 46 states allowing religious exemption.) A new editorial is now calling for an end to the "philosophical" exemption.
The article says, "Those who choose not to be vaccinated and who choose not to vaccinate their children allow a breeding ground for diseases to grow and spread to others. They put healthy, vaccinated adults at risk because no vaccine is 100 percent effective. They especially put the most vulnerable at risk — infants too young to be vaccinated, the elderly, people with medical conditions that prevent vaccination, and those undergoing cancer treatments or whose immune systems have been weakened." They also encourage tightening the restrictions on religious and medical waivers so that people don't just check a different box on the exemption form to get the same result. "They are free to continue believing vaccines are harmful, even as the entire medical and scientific communities try in vain to tell them otherwise. But they should not be free to endanger the lives of everyone else with their views."
The article says, "Those who choose not to be vaccinated and who choose not to vaccinate their children allow a breeding ground for diseases to grow and spread to others. They put healthy, vaccinated adults at risk because no vaccine is 100 percent effective. They especially put the most vulnerable at risk — infants too young to be vaccinated, the elderly, people with medical conditions that prevent vaccination, and those undergoing cancer treatments or whose immune systems have been weakened." They also encourage tightening the restrictions on religious and medical waivers so that people don't just check a different box on the exemption form to get the same result. "They are free to continue believing vaccines are harmful, even as the entire medical and scientific communities try in vain to tell them otherwise. But they should not be free to endanger the lives of everyone else with their views."
We don't have that ability.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Mass. Gen Laws ch.76, Â 15:
"In the absence of an emergency or epidemic of disease declared by the department of public health, no child whose parent or guardian states in writing that vaccination or immunization conflicts with his sincere religious beliefs shall be required to present said physicianâ(TM)s certificate in order to be admitted to school."
So there's broad religious exemptions such that anyone willing to claim them can skip the process, but if there is a serious outbreak, then suddenly the exemption goes away. That's not a bad compromise.
I haven't heard of the state ever declaring such an emergency, but I hope they are ready to do so before an outbreak becomes a full epidemic.
You do not have a personal freedom to infect others with Yellow Fever, Tuberculosis, Typhoid, or Cholera. Isolation of infectious or potentially infectious individuals has long been the duty of government pubic health programs. The fact that these and others have largely been controlled through vaccination programs and/or improved public sanitation (also a government program) has let people forget the dangers that exist. I am old enough to remember when public places like swimming pools and libraries were closed in the summer due to polio outbreaks (thank you Jonas Salk.) So, while you have a right to risk your children's lives by not vaccinating them, you do not have a right to risk my grandchildren's lives by sending them to public school.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Often, home schooling is even prohibited.
Citation needed. You need a competent instructor (usually just high school educated or GED). Otherwise it's legal everywhere in the US.
This is what modern westerners fail to understand. Without childhood immunizations we would be facing hundreds of thousands of childhood deaths each year in the US and Europe from preventable diseases. Our immunization programs have been so successful that modern parents don't know what it was like to loose siblings and classmates to measles or to see friends and relatives crippled by polio and have to be placed in an iron lung.
Yes, vaccines have problems. No, companies should not be sheltered from prosecution for producing dangerous medicines, but lets put everything in perspective. I'll gladly trade a few illnesses or deaths caused by vaccines for the mountain of dead caused by diseases.
http://www.unicef.org/immuniza...
The pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine nearly killed me when I was a child.
So you should want everyone else to get it. While hypersensitivity to a vaccine is rare, it does happen and is a valid reason to get get vaccines. But if everyone else does, you are still protected. (Herd immunity) Or, keep your tinfoil hat on and continue denigrating people who have 12 years more training than you do in exactly this. Darwin works, and you will solve yourself soon enough.
Of course it "helped". Its a "theatrical placebo". The more theatrical the placebo, the stronger the effect. Trials have shown that sticking pins in the accepted "acupuncture points" is as effective as sticking them any old place. So all the mumbo-jumbo about "chi" energies is just that.
Surely if it "helped tremendously" you wouldn't be still going after ten years. And TCM was invented by Chairman Mao anyway
As aptly demonstrated around this top thread. People who actually have had severe reactions to vaccines are being modded down, even when their fear is fact-backed and entirely rational. Sure, damage has been done by the media, but people are still trying to do what's right. But they have concerns, and feel those concerns aren't being addressed by those administering the vaccines.
Vaccines work, that's a fact. A low percentage of people have adverse reactions to them - that's also a fact. That is, there is a risk. The risk is perceived as far higher than it really is, but that's human nature so it will have to be dealt with in a human manner. If you want higher vaccination rates, the risk factor shouldn't be swept under the carpet, but addressed:
- by educating people about how big the risks really are;
- by informing them about those risks, BEFORE their jab, rather than merely by handing out a flyer afterwards;
- by doing whatever necessary to ensure jabs aren't administered to people who might have an adverse reaction - don't just shoot up people, but have the necessary bloodwork done in advance;
- by making vaccines ever safer - this is already being done (mercury has been eliminated as preservant, for example) and needs to continue;
- by providing an alternative vaccination schedule for those who worry about the regular one, e.g. by permitting individual M,M,R vaccinations as opposed to one big cocktail (right now people can't, even if they're willing to foot the bill for it).
(Posting as AC because I'm too lazy to log in after writing up this post)
Why? Excluding religion, there is no reason to believe that vaccines cause any harm: literally every study attempting to find otherwise has either failed or been proven fraudulent.
Logically, if the vaccine really does cure the virus, then the only people affected by an outbreak would be the unvaccinated.
You really need a better understanding of how vaccines work. They do not cure shit. That is called a "cure." A vaccine increases resistance to a virus. This results in either not catching it, or having it pass more quickly. The amount of increase can vary with different people, and in very rare cases it does not increase resistance at all.
But that's clearly not the case.
Well, this statement is correct in it's assessment of your original statement.
So we can't really know that it works as intended.
Yes, we can and we do. On an individual level you can have a titer test to see if you have increased immunity. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline... On a global level, we can compare places with high rates of vaccination to low rates and see whooping cough explode in Michigan.
We may have evidence that it sometimes works, but it certainly isn't a slam dunk of a technological advancement (as so many here imply every time it comes up) -- and yet we hear calls to force it on others as if it IS a slam dunk.
It is not digital. It is not "Once in and never again." It causes an increase in immunity in the majority of the population. This results in either immunity or shorter and less sick times. That is known and proven. Also, herd immunity is known and proven, and is a "slam dunk."
What we also don't have is long-term data on the side effects -- only an arrogant display of superiority.
Yes we do. A couple hundred years, actually. The smallpox vaccine was created in 1796. Pertussis in 1927.
You people aren't using logic to support your position.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
You're using intimidation.
Well, the facts are intimidating, but it is not us making them facts.
What I see here is hardly a noble call for the betterment of society.
This is probably totally true. Perhaps you should look a little more.
What I see is an arrogant, selfish display of superiority, and an utter disrespect for the basic human right of free choice.
You really do find what you look for. If you try hard enough you can even believe that fury porn is normal.
Instead of demonizing the innocent, why not make an honest donation to the multi-billion dollar businesses that produce and promote these vaccines?
And what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Or should I just stand on a chair and shout "Strawman! Strawman!"
Put your money where your arrogant mouth is.
I do. I pay for vaccines that are not covered by insurance.
If you've ever consumed a single glass of tap water in the US, then you've taken in far more hazardous -- some outright poisonous -- materials, at far greater concentrations, than you will ever be subjected to over a lifetime of proper vaccination. One of my jobs as a teenager was to skim out the rat carcasses from those water towers you see all over the landscape. Live rats aren't a problem, because arsenic is added to the water supply to kill them off. Don't worry, though... any contaminants from their rotting remains is taken care of by all the chlorine they add. And that bottled water you get? It's just repackaged tap water.
But, yeah, you keep worrying about the microscopic amounts of formaldehyde that can be found in a vaccine you take once every couple of years. That makes perfect sense.
And yes, I still drink tap water, because if it was really dangerous, everybody would be dead. Protip: same thing goes for vaccines.
Your numbers are wrong, and I highly doubt she got 14 shots in one year.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/downloads/parent-ver-sch-0-6yrs.pdf
It looks like 2 year olds are on the hook for 1 yearly shot for the flu.
You might be thinking of between 6 months and 23 months which show 8 shots in a period of 18 months. Some of those aren't required either. You could probably forget about the two HEP vaccines and the chicken pox vaccine if you really wanted to. You could also probably skip the flu vaccine, but I wouldn't risk it. There is also no way that covers "well over 30 vaccines" If you count every single disease that you are protected from on that chart, there are only 14. Therefore either you are pulling numbers out of your rear, in which case knock it off. Or you have some antivaxer lying to you about what caused their child's issue. Which leaves you spreading falsehoods and innuendo. So again, knock that off too.
My son has Autism/Asperger's as do I. Please stop spreading the "vaccines cause Autism" myth as it has been proven false more times than I care to count. The only study linking them was withdrawn, the author (Wakefield) found to have essentially made the whole thing up to sell his own MMR replacement vaccines, and then the author was stripped of his medical license.
To quote Penn and Teller, though, even if vaccines did cause Autism - WHICH THEY DON'T - not vaccinating to avoid autism would still be BS. You're possibly condemning kids to contract fatal diseases to avoid a condition that they can live with.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Not entirely accurate. Aluminum is actually included most of the time because it helps to get a reaction out of your immune system. Doing this allows them to include a smaller amount of virus material because the aluminum will get the immune system moving. This shouldn't be a problem on an individual vaccination basis because the dosage is pretty low per vaccine. The possible problem though is that Pediatricians frequently can't count on seeing a child and administering vaccines on a regular basis, so they usually do a bunch of vaccines all in the same visit, which possibly exposes the child to much more aluminum in their system all at once than is healthy. And certainly more than is necessary because only one of the vaccines would actually need to contain the aluminum in order to get the immune system response. The simplest method to avoid this as a risk is to spread the vaccinations over the same time period with more frequent visits to the Pediatricians office. The disadvantage of course being that it's an inconveince for everyone involved. An aditional advantage though is that if a child has an adverse reaction it is much simpler to determine which vaccine was the problem.
I am by no means Anti-Vac but we have refused one so far, the Chicken Pox. Our reasoning is that the vacine is highly likely to actually cause a case of Chicken Pox, while it does not provide an actual immunity worth the term. What it does do is help make any succesive outbreak to be less severe. It requires 2 boosters or more so far, each of which can cause a fresh outbreak. It doesn't actually do anything to prevent Shingles, which is the real long term threat of Chicken Pox. Typically fatalities from Chicken Pox are limited to bacterial infections when the sores are not cared for. The biggest driver for developing a vaccine was to save working parents the time spent away from work caring for a sick child, which doesn't actually work out because with the vaccine and boosters you will probably have more outbreaks and so more sick time taken. And finally the big kicker is that because the immunity is much weaker from the vaccine than the regular Chicken Pox and requires booster shots as time goes on, we are likely to soon see a generation of young adults who don't actually have an immunity to Chicken Pox, that'll be lots of fun.
Our reasoning is that the vacine is highly likely to actually cause a case of Chicken Pox, while it does not provide an actual immunity worth the term.
What? ahref=http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/vaccination.htmlrel=url2html-1107http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/...> 98% immunity is pretty fucking good. From the same link: "However, the risk of getting shingles from vaccine-strain VZV after chickenpox vaccination is much lower than getting shingles after natural infection with wild-type VZV. " As far as I can tell, you're wrong on pretty much all counts.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'm skeptical that there's actual evidence of severe adverse reactions (aside from the occasional allergic reaction). "I had a vaccine and then this bad thing happened to me," is not an indication that the vaccine caused the bad thing. It might have, but the severe reactions have been so incredibly rare that there's really no evidence of a causal link, as near as I can tell.
But what you are asking for here is a far, far higher barrier to obtaining a vaccination than is asked for for most any other medical procedure or remedy. The real information is, "This will protect your child, and the population as a whole, from serious diseases. It most likely won't cause any issues. Your child may have minor cold symptoms for a bit, which means the vaccine is working."
The CDC's page is informative here: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/va...
Note that under the "severe" reactions is usually the disclaimer that they can't actually be sure this reaction is caused by the vaccine. I'd be willing to bet that disclaimer should really be expanded to encompass every vaccine on the list, aside from the allergic reactions.
You are spreading falsehoods also. Give evidence where the mercury-containing preservative caused any problems. You're probably going to point to the supposed evidence towards autism. There isn't any such evidence. Just because it has mercury, doesn't mean it is necessarily poisonous.
Chlorine can be poisonous, but salt (which contains chlorine) is a necessary nutrient for us.