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New Jersey Gov. Christie: Parents Should Have Choice In Vaccinations
kwyjibo87 writes: New Jersey Governor and self-appointed public health expert Chris Christie weighed in on the public debate over whether or not parents should have a choice in vaccinating their children, telling reporters in the U.K., "I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that's the balance that the government has to decide." He added, "Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others." These statements from Gov. Christie follow President Obama commenting in an interview with NBC: "There is every reason to get vaccinated — there aren't reasons to not."
Gov. Christie quickly backpedaled on his "vaccine choice" comments, with the Governor's office stating, "The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated," but amending: "At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate."
Gov. Christie quickly backpedaled on his "vaccine choice" comments, with the Governor's office stating, "The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated," but amending: "At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate."
This is what happens when you get extreme partisanship - the other side's knee-jerk reaction to anything is to oppose it. Kind of like a rabid animal will bite anything.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Yet again, we get a GOP primary debate circus solely around Tardisil and the merits of encephalitis over autism. Fuck this party, I'll go Liberta--what's that, Mr. Paul? Oh. You're one of them, too. Shit.
Rand Paul says vaccines cause mental illnesses! I guess that explains libertarianism.
Every parent deserves the choice to make a risk assessment they are incapable of making out the welfare of their child over the return of diseases that kill millions of other people.
How moronic.
He was obviously speaking off the cuff. One can't expect a sitting governor to have given any prior thought to controversial public health issues that have been in the news for fricking ever.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I'm going to bet he's referring to the HPV vaccine. Because obviously if you vaccinate your kids against an STD (even one that causes cancer!), you're just promoting sex. Never mind that the stats don't back that up at all.
If their unvaccinated kid gets an infection, that should not be covered by their insurance, and if their kid infects someone else, then they should have to pay for those costs too (if that other person has a medical reason for not being vaccinated either).
Rand Paul says vaccines cause mental illnesses!
Citation needed.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If only his comments had clarified anything. After his clarifying statement, I still have no idea what he meant. Typical politician.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Does he also believe parents should have a choice in what price to marry their eight year old daughters to old men for?
Not every child-bride is created equal, not every rich old creep is as great a threat to their health as others.
A waffling, opportunistic, two faced, bully - Christie gets caught pandering to the anti-vaxx movement while out looking for new anti-govt fear/panic to sell to right wing retards (Sorry. Redundant)
I finally agree with this fool on something.
Don't freak out at the phrase "vaccine choice". The speaker may not mean what you assume.
Rand Paul said something similar in a TV interview today. The interviewer was shocked and Rand Paul explained that "vaccine choice" does not inherently mean some science denier who does not believe in medicine. What Paul, and probably Christie, mean is that parents can reasonably delay some vaccines. Paul mentioned that children sometimes receive a battery of vaccines at the same time. He said that a small child probably doesn't need to have that Hepatitis vaccination right now since it is a sexually transmitted disease, a parent can reasonably wait many years before such a vaccination.
So if Christie has a similar point of view then there may actually merely be clarification going on and not so much backpedalling.
Vaccinate or GTFO. You don't have to live in my community, state or country if your belief in pseudoscience starts to impact the health and safety of those around you. Just because I'm vaccinated doesn't mean I'm 100% immune (especially as I get older), that we're both vaccinated helps contain contagious disease so that I am less likely to be affected by it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Not all vaccines should be mandatory. For example there is an anthrax vaccine. Does everyone need to have it? As Christie said;
Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.
By the way, parents do have a choice. They can have their children get the required vaccines, they can home school or they can create their own school that does not require vaccines. I predict a non-vaccine school will last until everyone gets sick.
... with no symptoms ... in a tent ... outside ... until we ship you to Maine.
People need to believe in science.
Perhaps, when these kids die, their idiot parents will realize that their off-spring can no longer pass the stupid gene forward.
Sad
Rights are there to make sure that people have freedoms. The very idea of limits is part of the idea of rights. The basic idea is you should be free to do what you want to do with the limit that what you want to do doesn't do harm to others.
A certain segment of society has forgotten this. The most basic and important right is to live. Your rights STOP where you start interfering with others. If you don't want to vaccinate your kids you can do that, but maybe you shouldn't be allowed to send those kids to public school.
Personally, I think a lot of these people should find a desert island somewhere and live there. That way they can have all the unlimited freedoms they want.
"Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others... I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things"
I, for one, proudly agree with the wise governor that some vaccines shouldn't mandatory for children. Like the shingles vaccine -- expensive and marginally effective, and practically useless if you're under the age of 60. I don't know why'd I'd ask my parents to decide on this vaccine call for me when I hit the age of 60 but his point is valid.
But god, I hope he's not referring to Mumps, Measels, Rubella, and the like!
Hey mate, spare a sig?
Your child is not vaccinated due to a belief exemption?
Fine. All unvaccinated children can go to a special school together where all the parents share the same beliefs. Oh, but if there is an outbreak it will be fucking brutal and your child might die. Don't like that? Neither do all the parents who do vaccinate their kids. This is your collective choice, not ours! Maybe you should rethink your decision. If not, after the first few outbreaks take their toll, maybe you will.
Natural selection will weed out the weakest, parents that oppose vaccinations are doing God's work by allowing their children to die of once vanquished diseaases. I, for one, welcome our rubella infected underlords!
Chris Christie weighed in on the public debate over whether or not parents should have a choice in vaccinating their children, telling reporters in the U.K., "I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that's the balance that the government has to decide."
If parents are allowed to choose then that choice should not be without consequences. If these parents decide to not vaccinate their children for diseases like measles for any reason other than a documented medical condition that makes vaccination inadvisable for that specific individual, then those children should not be allowed to attend public school and those parents should be legally liable for that choice. If the child gets the disease then the parents should risk going to jail for child endangerment if there is an unfortunate medical outcome. They have the choice but that choice should not be consequence free because it isn't. They are taking a gamble that their child and those others who cannot get vaccinated will avoid the illness and if that gamble comes up snake-eyes then punishment should follow.
These statements from Gov. Christie follow President Obama commenting in an interview with NBC: "There is every reason to get vaccinated — there aren't reasons to not."
So Christie is endangering public health in order to pander to his political base. Make any decision about whether to vote for Christie an easy one for me.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...
Check out the deep south and mid-west (AKA "Jesusland"); as regions, the have the low vaccination exemption rates compared to more liberal western and northeastern states. 7 of the 8 most vaccinated states when to Romney in '12.
If vaccination is going to be recommended for everyone, their effectiveness should be established using the "gold standard" of evidence used by medical researchers. That is currently considered to be blinded randomized controlled trials. Which vaccines have been tested this way? Any? I know there have been none in the case of measles.
Sure, there are some things that could be advantageous if they were mandatory, but as soon the lobby dollars get the legal right to force folks to inject their kids with stuff, do you think it will stop anywhere reasonable? If so, you've got a lot more faith in the basic humanity of pharma execs than I do. We can justify anything in the name of enhancing shareholder value.
Maybe Christie will catch the measles and go deaf from it. He won't have to pretend to not hear people then.
Never disappoints, this moron. He'll go to the wall for the stoopid. Envy, greed, arrogance, vengeance, ignorance, and a willingness to pander for fools. Happy measles epidemics, everyone.
You yourself may very well be the embodiment of the party of the stupid. Taking your ignorance of what was actually said, applying the arrogance of your political bias and pandering to the like minded ignorant. What Christie, Paul and others disagree with is government being overly aggressive with mandates and schedules. What they object to is a vaccine for a std added to a bundle of vaccines given to small children. What Christie, Paul and others mean by "vaccination choice" is that parents be allowed to postpone some vaccinations, for example the std vaccination until the children are older.
Only politically motivated fools such as yourself assume that "choice" inherently means "no vaccinations at all". Much like other fools believe that "choice" inherently means "everyone gets an abortion". You are all likeminded idiots, coming from opposite political extremes really doesn't change that.
in light of the measles outbreak linked to Disneyland ("The scratchiest place on earth!") so in that sense, he was dumb to say parents have a valid reason to hold off. It's measles. It was fixed through vaccination decades ago. Do we really need to drag a candidate kicking and screaming into the *previous* century let alone this one?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
We have laws about having to wear seat belts and motorcycle helmets, but not vaccines?
Surely, this is political weakness bowing to the religious right.
"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included." --Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Rally, April 21, 2008.
Even the quote Slate cherry-picked to drive their click-bait headline is innocuous. Parents *do* have a right to decide what's best for their children. That right must be balanced with public health concerns, so it makes sense to make vaccination mandatory (or mandatory-for-public-schoolers) in some cases, but surely not *all* cases as you move down the scale of public health impact. In particular there will be cases where the public interest would be served (a little) by forcing everyone to be vaccinated, but that interest doesn't outweigh the additional dilution of parental rights. That seems to be all Christie said here.
I know plenty of kids who have been vaccinated against measles yet still caught it. Something fishy is going on.
One should always have a healthy skepticism when it involves complex biological systems.
Here is a book by an ex board certified nephrologist who saw issues with vaccines in her clinical practice and wrote a convincing book about the subject.
http://www.amazon.com/Dissolvi...
46137
In other words, Paul, like Christie, is courting the Evangelical vote.
Actually another poster points out that according to the CDC vaccination rates are higher in the bible belt.
So maybe they are courting the coastal soccer moms who go to hollywood celebrities for medical advice.
Why does this need a government holding parents hands? I knew most parents were stupid but come on. I sure do hope when my child is born he gets his shots because I learned in biology that viruses are bad, illnesses are bad, and diseases are bad. I really don't need a government to realize that or tell me otherwise. To be honest I think Christie has run out of relevant things to talk about...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I genuinely don't understand how anyone in favour of the Western notion of freedom can be pro compulsory vaccinations. If you want the majority of people vaccinated, it's your job to convince them using the power of rhetoric.
OTOH, if you believe that people should be compelled to do things for the good of others - i.e. from each according to his ability - just come out and say it. But make sure that you acknowledge where your argument is coming from.
I'm glad parents are deciding not to vaccinate their kids, there's too many people on this planet as it is. This is just the invisible hand of nature punishing those who reject its truth.
Are people actually considering putting him on the ballot? Is this any way to run a circus? And then you wonder why the rest don't vote...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
inflicting a compulsory medical procedure on an entire populations is pure evil.
I think many people are idiots but I will always respect their right to be an idiot lest somebody in power decides that I am an idiot, that my opinions are invalid, and that I should be forced to change them.
Christie got savaged, and rightly so. so he pulled the ultimate GOP sin, and flip-flopped.
actually, there is lots of choice... you can get many vaccines from Merck, or GSK, or Pasteur...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
to start experiencing some traffic problems.
I agree with Christie's comments in this case. There are plenty of vaccines that should be mandated, with MMR being at the top of the list.
But read this:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/15/...
The point is that Perry tried to mandate that girls get the HPV vaccine made by Merck, with the implication being that Merck bought the support. HPV is a good vaccine to have but there's no comparison between HPV and measles.
We again have this issue where the soundbite media can't handle nuance and blind partisanship is going to reign. Let's face it, had Christie parroted Obama's exact words there would still be people here who would claim he's an idiot for saying that.
The anti-vax crowd is wrong - deadly wrong - but that doesn't mean that every vaccine out there should be mandated. I mean, how about the flu vaccine? Shingles?
Where's that line?
Do you have ESP?
People in this anti-vaccination "movement" are TERRORISTS trying to kill innocent women and children everyday!
Or, THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Completely preventable diseases, some of which were considered nearly eradicated a short time ago, are harming and threatening the lives of innocent children every day.
There, two trump cards. But for some reason, those only work for every other issue.
I wonder if Gov. Christie could name some of the diseases he thinks we vaccinate for unnecessarily? What are these innocuous infections the government is forcing parents to prevent?
Whether their kid gets the vaccine in the arm or the thigh.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
... the only thing that bothers me is how gleeful some are about the "mandating" part.
And eager to use the same machinery to mandate other things.
what better time to give them "mercury" or whatever through a different means? Shampoo... makeup? Watch the 1989 Batman for the obvious, or...
/. reader) - the joker uses combinations of makeup, deodorant, shampoos, etc to combine and make his "Smiley" condition which renders the subject hilariously dead. Oh that smile!
spoiler (which shouldn't be a spoiler for *any*
Pretty much this
...to cover a waffle that big...
Talking out of both sides of his mouth -- his kids were vaccinated but parents should have the right to put their kids and others at risk -- oh, state's rights and the GOP party line... The only thing that would have made it better was if he was drinking a glass of water at the same time and spinning a plate on the end of a stick. This guy gives buffoons, clowns, and circus performers a bad name.
Every once in a while, rarely, a politician actually speaks his mind (McCain for example), and usually catches hell for it, not keeping to the party line.
I searched your italicized quote there. First result.
Thank you.
It looks like he's talking about Reye's Syndrome, a pathology that can cause substantial brain damage (and/or other things: Liver damage, death, ...) in children - adults generally recover fully after a couple weeks. (I wanted to be sure he hadn't signed on to the immunization/autism claims, which have been thoroughly discredited.)
Reye/Reye's is a reasonably rare side effect of several viral illnesses, including immunizations for them. Risk of it seems to be multiplied by a factor of something like five if aspirin is taken, but aspirin (or other salicylates) is not necessary for its occurrence. It seems also to be associated with pre-existing metabolic disorders, so some families might be at very high risk while others effectively immune.
It's clear from even the soundbite posted: Rand's claim is that the decision to risk a child's health is properly the parents', and the government should not be able to force the child's exposure to a series of these risks over the parents' objections - informed or otherwise.
Immunizations are partly about population immunity - reducing the density of people susceptible to a disease to the point that it peters out in a declining exponential rather than blowing up in an expanding exponential, thus also protecting those not (yet) immunized, for whom the immunization was ineffective, or who were at risk despite the availability of immunization (e.g. AIDS sufferers). So risk/benefit calculations are for populations as well. Accepting the risk of the immunization helps others as well as the immunized person, so being immunized is partly an altruistic act.
Rand's point is that he believes the government shouldn't have the power to FORCE people to risk their lives for the benefit of others, that these life-critical decisions are personal and should be left up to the people in question (or their guardians if they're too young to make the choice themselves).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So if it is survival of the fittest, then all people should be forcibly vaccinated, and those who die are the weak. In a generation there will be nobody with children affected negatively by vaccines. We can and will build the master vaccine tolerant american race.
I'm curious what damage a vaccine will do to a fetus. Lets try vaccinating pregnant women's uteruses and find out. If they have normal kids, then goody. If the babies come out messed up, then we can all stop calling republican doctors bad names.
Diseases are everywhere. Seriously, you are more likely to die from an antibiotic resistant bacteria than these viruses. I do get vaccinated myself, but I always have some shit go wrong after a shot. Developed my first gout flare up after the flu vaccine last fall. Had dizzyness etc. in years past. I know for a fact that the shots hit me hard. But not as hard as the disease they are prepping me to fight in the future.
Cowpox makes everyone sick... but not as bad as smallpox.
The kids who were not vaccinated who are grown now should get their shots. It helps with keeping group immunity high and rubella can cause birth defects if caught during pregnancy.
Who would have thought he was flexible enough to insert his foot into his mouth ?
yeah, let's bring back choice for parents. They should also decide whether they give their children seat-belts, toothbrushes, adult supervision, or even an education. Of course, no-one's saying those things are bad for children. Polio, whooping cough and smallpox are bad for children but children rarely (or never regarding smallpox) catch those childhood diseases: What changed? Vaccinations eradicated those childhood diseases. There's 60 years of proof that vaccinations keep children safe. So the real choice is how much danger children will be exposed to.
Parents claim it's not safe for children to walk home by themselves despite kidnappings being very rare and unlikely. Yet so many of them claim "no-one has measles, so why vaccinate children against a disease that is rare and unlikely". That might be a double standard.
This has only been explained only about a zillion times. Vaccines are not 100%. Society relies on herd immunity to reduce the number of paths a virus can use across a large group.
Good health and hygiene is much more effective than any vaccine.
Remove the vermin which spread disease and teach people to wash their hands.
It was those practices which lead to the decline of infectious disease. not some government voodoo.
That's what this was. I think at the end of the day, Christie is too big-city, East Coast and Joisey to have any chance at GOP run for president, so he takes the opportunities where he can to somehow try to make himself more appealing to the so-called GOP base, probably the "matter of faith" lunatics who don't want gummint "chemicals" given to their kids against their wishes.
And he did it with the worst possible issue. Not vaccinating children is about as libertarian as tellng your children to go play in freeway traffic. Not only does he come down very wrong on the issue, he comes out making himself look like a patsy to the worst possible flavor of the Republican base and not like the "sensible" and "non-partisan" Republican he'd like to style himself as.
It's funny you mention a rabid animal...
We now live in a country where if I choose not to get my dog vaccinated against rabies, not only am I fined, but am legally responsible for the medical care costs of anyone my dog infects.
But if I choose not to vaccinate my child and they get someone else sick, then it's OK, because it was my *choice*.
The inescapable conclusion in my mind is that we care more for the welfare of our dog population than we do our human one.
“I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,” Paul, R-Ky
Does that make sense? A normally functioning healthy child receives a vaccine and not too long after it's administered the child begins to show signs of mental disorder.
Do these facts anger you?
Here's an article entitled "Here's Where 2016 Candidates Stand On Vaccinations".
Chamberpots are back in style like it is 1899!
I hate to break this to you but Batman is fiction.
Christie put a nurse in quarantine who tested negative for Ebola because he thought she might be contagious - against the recommendations of the CDC - but unvaccinated kids - no problem - it's the parents choice - wonder if when the kids might be exposed he will put them in quarantine
If you don't want to vaccinate your kids you can do that, but maybe you shouldn't be allowed to send those kids to public school.
The problem with that is that you really need the kids of idiots who don't vaccinate to get an education to stop the ignorance spreading. If you keep them out of school then they will end up even more ignorant than their parents and things will rapidly spiral downhill from there one they get to vote.
The Demagoguery over this issue is breath taking.
If you recall, Rick Perry mandated HPV vaccinations in 2007.
Lots of people totally lost their shit over this despite the fact that HPV can cause cancer and the vaccine is effective and not just because of donations. The term parental choice was thrown around a lot.
Many people in the news on their high horse about Christie 's comments are the same ones who were shitting bricks about Perry''s mandate. Hell, even Obama was on the fence about vaccinations in 2008.
So file all this under Complete and Utter Presidential Race Bullshit.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Interesting how Obama, Paul, and Christie have the same position yet they are represented so differently in the article (unless of course I'm missing where Obama has suggested making immunizations required by law somewhere.)
I do believe in personal bodily choice regarding medical procedures (especially in regards to the government forcing people to do stuff), but that doesn't mean I don't believe government can offer a carrot-and-stick approach. Anyone not vaccinated won't be allowed to attend a public school/college or work for the government (the military probably already has vaccination programs in place).
No vaccine is 100% effective.
That's very clearly the case. We used to have a really useful and highly effective vaccine that gave protection against the root cause of the problem we are discussing here: ignorance. The vaccine was education. Sadly as this has been watered down it has become less effective with the result that we now see increasing outbreaks of ignorance worldwide resulting in new symptoms such as intelligent design and not having your kids vaccinated as well as some old symptoms, like astrology, re-emerging.
Sadly governments have not responded to this by once again strengthening the vaccine, education, that has protected us for so long. Instead they seem to prefer to treat each individual symptom of the disease by passing laws. This is simply not going to work: already new strains of ignorance, such as intelligent design, have proven remarkably resistant to this treatment and have started to attack the education vaccine directly weakening its effectiveness further.
Yes, taxes absolutely are a socialistic method of distributing costs that seem important to other people. I'm not willing to live in a third-world existence surrounded by people who can't afford to individually bear the costs of school at the time their kids are of school age. If you want your kid to go to private school, that is your choice. But the taxes you pay are not for your kid, it is for everyone regardless of how many kids you have.
And yes you do have the right to elect people making these rules, have a smaller taxable property, or move to a different town.
I find it odd that there seems to be such a high correlation between people that advocate for the choice to abort their pregnancy and those that advocate for mandated vaccinations. I would think that people that advocate for being able to choice to get one potentially life altering medical procedure would advocate for the choice in all such procedures.
The opposite is equally odd, pro-life people (those advocating removing the choice of aborting a pregnancy) also tend to be those that advocate allowing parents to choose whether or not their children get vaccinated. To them "my body, my choice" doesn't have the same meaning. The way I figure that this apparent dichotomy can be resolved is that a parent cannot choose to terminate a pregnancy under the "my body, my choice" mantra because the fetus is a separate body from that of the mother. But also in the case of a child does the parent have the authority to vaccinate the child under that logic? Does the parent "own" the body of the child? I suppose not but then the government cannot claim ownership either and order the child to be vaccinated. If anyone should have authority over the health of a child it should be the parent, not the government.
Liberals want to let people choose to terminate a pregnancy but not to choose to not have their child vaccinated. Liberals claim to be all about people's ability to choose but only if people choose to do what the liberals want them to do. Conservatives seem to believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and also seemingly in that order. Liberty would allow for abortion but that would violate a higher priority of preserving life, therefore conservatives don't believe in abortion.
Does allowing parents the liberty to not have their children vaccinated violate the higher priority of preserving life? Perhaps it does. What seems to be common among conservatives is that while parents should be free to choose to not have their children vaccinated there is also a belief that parents should choose vaccination. I agree that parents should get their children vaccinated unless some medical condition exists that would place the child at risk. I also don't like the idea of the government telling parents how to raise their own children. Let the parents choose, not some unelected government bureaucrat.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You ever wonder how you managed to get so far into loonie-ville that you think taxes are inherently immoral?
Rand Paul reminds me of an argument I once had with someone years ago - I can't even remember where it was now. We were discussing car safety, and a recent study that showed that SUVs were the safest car to be inside in an accident (Excluding rollovers), but the least-safe car to be outside of. Their sturdyness and sheer mass squished anything they hit at high speed into a mangled pancake of flesh and steel, and they had a particular tendency to decapitate pedestrians as their blunt front tended to force people under the car rather than off to the sides. The person I was arguing with said he already knew this, and drove an SUV for precisely that reason - beause it was his duty to protect himself and his family from harm, not everyone else. If he could make his family safer while increasing the risk of death for everyone else in society, then he felt doing so was not only acceptable, for morally obligatory.
Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything.
"Are you feeling all right?" I asked her.
"I feel all sleepy," she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
Read the rest on https://roalddahl.com/roald-da...
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"He said that a small child probably doesn't need to have that Hepatitis vaccination right now since it is a sexually transmitted disease"
This is actually not true, so I'll correct it. Hepatitis A is usually transmitted by food or water, Hepatitis B is the STD, Hepatitis C usually requires blood contact, and also the hepatitis vaccine doesn't protect against it. Vaccine works against A and B variants. So, while the kid might not be in danger of getting hep B it might ge a good idea to get the vaccination if you are going to travel to risk countries. The risk of catching hep A in US or Europe is kinda low.
Submitter selectively edited Christie's statement in the summary, but as of this posting NOBODY IN THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE'S DISCUSSION has indicated knowledge of his (and his wife's) true colors as revealed in literally the same breath and reported in the fucking WT article linked in the summary as well as all over the net:
“Mary Pat and I have had our children vaccinated and we think that it’s an important part of being sure we protect their health and the public health,” Christie told reporters here Monday.
Not that a GOP or anti-vaxxer bash is exactly unwarranted or unproductive, but nobody seems interested in the fact that his actual transgression was making a pandering remark to appease his perceived electoral base, preferring instead to bellyrage about a more extreme version of said pandering remark than he actually made; to wit:
“I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”
is about as far a cry from "the gubberment shouldn't have any influence in the matter" as we're likely to hear from a [plausibly...] viable national candidate from the GOP. When the hopefuls tack hard-right in the spotlight, you'll only wish for the good old days of early 2015 when some of the GOP's national figures were willing to admit that they vaccinate their children because they "think that it’s an important part of being sure we protect their health and the public health".
Are you so incapable of rationally assessing statements made by any member of the party you've identified as Absolute Perfect Evil? There are plenty of reasons to "Fuck this party", but Christie's statements here aren't even in the same league as the anti-scientific, myopically self-destructive claptrap in the media.
http://www.skepticalob.com/2009/10/latest-argument-of-vaccine.html
tl;dr it's unethical to do double-blind randomized controlled trials of vaccines, just as you wouldn't do double-blind randomized controlled trials of infant car seats by crash testing them with some babies not strapped in. Doesn't mean we don't know that infant car seats save lives.
Yes, vaccines aren't 100% effective. Everyone who knew something about vaccines already knew that. Herd immunity would have protected those children.
Rand's point is that he believes the government shouldn't have the power to FORCE people to risk their lives for the benefit of others, that these life-critical decisions are personal and should be left up to the people in question (or their guardians if they're too young to make the choice themselves).
How's he doing at removing the Selective Service System? The existance of a mechanism to enforce a draft must drive him crazy.
As was said many times before: States' Rights. Are they ever not embarrasing?
Sometimes I wish the states had no rights, and everything was controlled centrally. Seems a more efficient way to go. And if you distrust the federal government that much, the state governments won't protect you anyway.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
If he thnks government can force children upon unwanting parents, it's only fair he allows those parents to slowly and painfully kill chose children afterwards.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Or how about the third choice, raise them as we see fit.
What you're really saying is that you wish to impose your worldview on everyone else.
ISIS is calling and would like to talk to you, they are doing just that in the parts of Iraq they control.
You have NO idea, do you, of the insanity that you're actually suggesting?
So see, there are reasons.
New Jersey Gov. Christie: Parents Should Have Choice In Vaccinations
In other words, vaccines against tuberculosis and polio should be optional. File it under #inevitablelogicalconclusion
If a doctor can find no medical reason why a person can't be vaccinated and they still choose not to be vaccinated then deport them. The creepiness of the government strapping you down screaming while they put needles in your arm (excluding executions) will be avoided, as will a bunch of diseased idiots walking around infecting the population like a pack of starving zombies. And you'll still have a choice.
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If we start forcing it, there is no going back. Then these twisted fucks in government will start forcing all sorts in the name of public health safety. Thing is, we get sick regardless of vaccines or not. Its not a question of general immunity in society, its a question of choice. Majority opinion can fuck it self.
I hate to break it to you but the point was that if health company wanted to poison you, then vaccines would be the stupidest way to do it.
he claims there are good reasons to not get vaccinated? like what? what good reasons?
the only good reason if you don't have the money and have to pay for the vaccines.. some cost 200 bucks / 3 years! but that's for some tropical/asian diseases..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Vacination or jail time. Thats a choice for society's sake.
They can pick any doctor they want.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children should be held 100% responsible for anything that happens due to that choice.
Kid gets the measles? Well, hope he doesn't die while at home since they can no longer go out anywhere.
Your kid gets someone else's baby infected with measles (before they get their vaccination) and that baby dies? VOLUNTARY manslaughter charges for the parents in addition to all civil penalties/lawsuits they will face.
Rand Paul says vaccines cause mental illnesses! I guess that explains libertarianism.
What Rand Paul neglected to mention is the fact that lack of vaccines can cause far worse mental disorders. Measles can give your child encephalitis leading to retardation. Measles can give your child pneumonia, (1 in 20 measles cases) leading to death (1 or 2 measles cases in 1000). see http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/meas.html#complications for details.
It is mothers. Have you ever seen a man thundering about how he is not going to have his kids vaccinated come hell or high water? This is just more hidden feminist sociopathological empowerment of women. Now 20-year-old mothers are supposed to have the right to determine how dangerous their kids are to other children and the general community. And who can deny this? Nobody, they are WOMEN (and they need their vote). Expect more of this murderous political pandering to a demographic.
E Proelio Veritas.
I keep seeing articles about research showing that people who gravitate toward right wing politics tend to have a psychology dominated by fear, paranoia, and emotional reactions.
I always thought those articles were smug and just a bit self serving.
I guess I still do.
However, with Christie's obvious pandering ( someone should ask him if his kids are vaccinated ) I have to wonder.
It seems like there are a large chunk of people on the right who are ready to accept any story of government lies, conspiracies, designed to pollute them or take something away from them.
It isn't a new thing either. In 2015 it is vaccines, in the 50s it was communists putting fluoride in the water.
The emotionality of it is so fucking disgusting -- and it matters.
There are serious global climate change issues, the U.S. is in danger of losing/retarding the universal healtcare it wanted for so long, and now we have previously eradicated diseases making a comeback.
All because there is a segment of the population that isn't smart enough to know when NOT to let their emotions do their thinking for them.
Be careful what precedents you suggest.
Govt will use the same logic to eliminate open source software because it "spreads computer viruses".
Huh. The government shouldn't have the power to force people to risk their lives for the benefit of others, eh? That explains why we still have selective service, and why there are places that have drafts and conscription.
What you're really saying is that you wish to impose your worldview on everyone else.
Not exactly. In this case, it's like trying to impose your worldview on people who think the sky is green: they are obviously wrong. They are also harmful to others: people have died because other people didn't have proper vaccinations.
It is as much imposing your worldview on others as would be arresting a man for spreading HIV to everyone, knowingly, without telling them, when he believes HIV is harmless. Would you impose your worldview that it is NOT harmless and that he should NOT spread it to everyone upon him?
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But at the end of the day, I have the freedom to choose my own health care, if I don't want to go to the doctor when I'm sick, that is my right.
If you are an adult you can choose your own health care but there are limits. You can be forcibly quarantined if you present a danger to public health. See Typhoid Mary for an example. You can be arrested (and should be) and charged with assault if you knowingly transmit a serious pathogen to other people. If you choose as an adult to not get vaccinated, that is your choice but that doesn't mean the rest of us should have to suffer because of your choice. If you want to quarantine yourself from society, knock yourself out. But I certainly don't want your measles.
Furthermore we are not talking about adults choosing whether or not to get vaccinated themselves. These are adults choosing for children. The children are granted no voice or advocate in the matter. Personally I'd be pissed in my parents hadn't vaccinated me against stuff like measles. Parents that choose to not have their children vaccinated despite mountains of evidence that vaccines are safe and effective are being reckless.
Why are all of you in such a hurry to hand more power over to a large government that will just use it against you?
If you can explain how you have a right to knowingly transmit a preventable, serious and highly communicable illness to me then I'll concede the point.
Do none of you study history?
I do but I'm guessing you haven't studied medicine.
Well, they're a danger to the community; their medical records should be published. We could do it like we do with pedophiles.
Interesting idea. If someone chooses to be unvaccinated (for themselves or their child) does the public have a right to know that so that they may avoid them? I don't need to know all their medical records, merely whether they have chosen to not vaccinate for select preventable diseases without a legitimate medical condition preventing doing so safely. People who cannot get vaccinated should have some way to know who they ought to avoid. I'll have to think about that one.
too bad they don't have a vaccine against opening your mouth.
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
So at what point does the liability stop?
When we aren't talking about highly communicable, easily preventable transmission of dangerous pathogens. I made no argument for anything further than that.
If I allow my kids to play on sleds or go skiing and they get hurt or killed or maimed ... should I go to jail for child endangerment for allowing them to be in such danger?
If your children are somehow endangering the public health by that choice then sure.
Furthermore, WHAT vaccines? And how often? I got one MMR vaccine I believe, but it's since been raised to two. Ought I to be mandated to get another one? What about the flu vaccine? What about STDs which I highly doubt my 8 month old will be contracting anytime soon?
All these questions are easily answered by medical professionals starting with the CDC. We have a list of common vaccines and administration schedules. Follow it. If your vaccine wears off (they do sometimes) get another one. It's not hard and its very safe for almost everyone. The CDC has guidelines for who should get the flu vaccine. Follow them and listen to your doctor.
And yes vaccines for stuff like HPV which is an STD should require a vaccine. It's widespread, preventable and causes cancer and other problems. Why do you think women get pap smears? Idiots who think it promotes promiscuity invariably miss the point. STDs require TWO people and if you don't protect yourself you are trusting others to do it for you. That's a bad idea. You might be faithful but that doesn't mean your sexual partner will be.
By the same logic.
So far I've seen no mention of the disease-ridden marching across the country from third world countries... If this were truly a problem, wouldn't there be a mandate to vaccinate illegals?
No vaccine is 100% effective. So "herd immunity" still marginally benefits the vaccinated.
And there you have it, folks. Finally, somebody acknowledged that "herd immunity (theory, mind you) only has a marginal benefit to the vaccinated.
Thank you for the reassurance that I can opt out of being vaccinated, with no significant detriment to the rest of humanity.
Now, please do me a favor and try to hide my post by modding me d0wn.
Not sure why you are being a dick. The guy asked a question and nothing more.
Anonymity. You see, I'm only brave enough to be a dick on the internet. I sure as hell wouldn't have said it to his face, because he would have broken my nose and made me cry..
FTFY
When I was a kid everyone had the measles, mumps, and chicken pox and I am not aware of any serious consequences.
Now, I live on a farm by choice, I have a farm job and an off farm job. My farm is now 100% natural and organic.
How many of the people on this site talking about herd immunity have any experience in managing a herd of animals?
I manage several colonies of bee hives. Some bee keepers today use a lot of chemicals and medications to treat their hives. Other bee keepers use natural methods to keep their colonies healthy. Beekeepers who medicate will lose some colonies and bee keepers who don't medicate will lose some colonies. However, after some time the colonies managed with natural methods will be healthier and more resistant to diseases than those colonies that are constantly medicated. Wild colonies of bees are prized because they have adapted to local conditions and they have thrived without medications.
When I started out with poultry I went by the book and I vaccinated and medicated on a regular basis. I lost many animals to disease and it was very frustrating when you followed all of the "professional" recommendations. It was also very expensive.
After a while I decided to see what would happen if I managed the animals naturally without any vaccines or medications. Guess what? Losses started to decline and animals are healthy and happy.
If you follow the advice of "professionals" what often happens is that you end up sending money to those "professionals" and things don't get any better.
The correct answer is that no, the government does not, can not, and should not try to "require" vaccination. By that I mean, they barge into your house, hold you down, and inject you over your protests. That is a patent violation of bodily autonomy; the government can't do that. So, no, America isn't going to "require" vaccination.
What it can and should do is to deny access to some public spaces to the unvaccinated. The primary example is public schools. Yes, public school students should be vaccinated according to the best practices of the medical community.
Furthermore, government should flip the legal protections currently surrounding vaccines. Instead of having laws that protect the unvaccinated from having to disclose their status, or protect them from discrimination, the laws should require disclosure and protect those who wish to discriminate against the unvaccinated. Specifically I mean that places such as Disneyland should be allowed to discriminate against the unvaccinated for hiring.
Finally, the entire concept of "religious/conscience waivers" should be discarded not only for vaccines but for all situations. Why would we have a rule which you are allowed to break if you simply say that you don't like the rule (which is what a religious waiver means)? Such waivers are facially preposterous and would be irrelevant to my policy suggestion.
But strictly speaking Mr. Christie is correct. Nobody should be "required" to receive any injections.
My neighbor's trees have termites. He has an ideological opposition to exterminators or chemicals or something. As long we don't eradicate the termites in the whole neighborhood, nearby neighbors will have to pay an exterminator every 6 months or so. Eradicating the termites from the trees generally throughout the entire neighborhood would be far more efficient and less costly. The exterminator is warning that the pesticides we used to use are becoming less effective since the termites are evolving an immunity. I'm getting pretty tired of paying for his god-given right not to exterminate.
Vaccinations don't provide a 100% guarantee of not getting an illness. They reduce the probability. If you don't get your kid vaccinated and my kid ,despite vaccination, catches measles from your kid, then you'll hear from my lawyer regarding whatever out-of-pocket medical expenses we have to pay. Oh and my kid says there may be "pain and suffering" remuneration involved.
No, Obama wasn't on the fence about vaccinations in 2008 - the right-wing news sources claiming that are disproved by the actual video of the actual talk.
But it's no wonder that people freaked out about Perry mandating the HPV vaccine (one of the few sensible things he's done.) Not only does it cost over $100, but it requires admitting that your precious snowflake teenager might (gasp!) have sex, which you know is Just Not Possible because Abstinence Only Education says they shouldn't (and teaches them not to trust condoms as well.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Most of the allergy issues with vaccines are egg allergies (many vaccines are or were grown on egg media), and they usually do have diagnosis from professionals because (unless they're vegans or Hindus), their kid was getting allergic reactions to something and they tracked it down to being eggs.
There are also kids who have impaired immune systems, typically because of chemotherapy.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Informed stupidity may still be stupidity, but the places that have been requiring that "personal belief exemption" parents discuss the issues with a doctor before being allowed to use that excuse have found it's pretty effective. It doesn't stop all the stupidity, but maybe half. (I'd prefer the requirement to be "discuss with a doctor EVERY year" as opposed to just once, but it's a start.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Rand's point is that he believes the government shouldn't have the power to FORCE people to risk their lives for the benefit of others, that these life-critical decisions are personal and should be left up to the people in question
During a really nasty disease outbreak, like when Ebola showed up in the US last summer, you will quickly find that your "freedom" doesn't mean jack against the threat of you causing a disease outbreak among the general public. Quarantine by definition means you can't go out, no matter what your feelings on the matter are.
This is simply the front end of that principle.
The states in the US with the highest vaccination rates are red states and the states with the lowest vaccination rates are blue states.
If we can't be mandated to pay taxes, then there is no government. Including no army for self defense (and in my view, the army is far less important than education). No roads to get to work except toll roads controlled by corporations, no sewers or clean water systems, no police except for self appointed vigilante gangs, no legal system except for self appointed judges that you have to pay (if you can afford it). And so on.
If you receive benefits from the government then you need to pay your fair share of taxes for that. Sure it's fine to complain that the return on that investment is bad but to insist that eliminating it altogether is naive extremism.
There are also States where "personal belief" is not grounds for exemption. That is the way I think things should. Exemptions based on science are valid. Exemptions based on "belief" are not.
If you refuse to bathe your children, they could be taken from you, worldview be damned.
There is nothing harmful from taking a bath... there are no people running around saying, "don't take baths, you could end up sick or worse!"
If you choose to feed your children raw foods that are full of bacteria, they could be taken from you.
What, like raw milk? That is a sorry state of affairs that the government wants to try and ban stuff like that. While I don't care for it personally, people have been drinking it since the dawn of time.
Ok, something less out there... How about an apple? That is a raw food full of bacteria... or a watermellon, those are loaded with bacteria...
You cannot engage in harmful behavior affecting your own children or behavior that has negative consequences for everyone else, which is what refusing to be vaccinated does.
How about parents who let their kids watch TV 8 hours a day and don't teach them anything? That is harmful to society when they grow up to be unproductive members of society collecting welfare checks.
Perhaps we need government mandates of how long kids can watch TV before they are "made" to go play outside?
You cannot engage in harmful behavior affecting your own children or behavior that has negative consequences for everyone else, which is what refusing to be vaccinated does.
I'm well aware that Jenny McCarthy is an idiot who shouldn't be listened to...
That doesn't invalidate the concerns over all medication that has various side effects...
I have no problem taking medicine when it is needed, but I think we way over medicate people in this county, just look at the liberal use of antibiotics...
Or worse, the use of drugs like Ritalin and Lithium in our kids...
There are 2 sides to the issue and neither the pro-vax or anti-vax side can discuss the issues intelligently as shown by the posts on slashdot. Ignorance abounds.
So to bring you up to speed here are some links to some intelligent discussions of the pros and cons of vaccination.
1) Not all vaccines work. Seasonal influenza is a very bad target for a vaccine, vitamin D3 works better and yet you have companies demanding that people be vaccinated to work there. Despite there being no proof that it actually works.
2) Some like the measles vaccine work but come with serious choices. We get protection but give up things that are very precious like life long immunity and a mother's ability to protect the child for the first year of life when they can't be vaccinated (it just doesn't work below the age of 1, some would say 2 or 3).
3) Some like pertussis (whooping cough) make the vaccinated person into a carrier but with symptoms that are not "whooping cough" symptoms so infants (0-1 years of age) still get infected even when vaccinated because the vaccine at 2 months (I think, depending on what jurisdiction you live in) doesn't work well because the infant's immune system is incompletely formed at that age and may not respond.
4) The number of whistleblower cases about mumps, MMR and blatant fraud on the part of the vaccine company Merck do not inspire confidence. People will throw out the baby with the bathwater if you cover this stuff up.
We need to choose which targets are best for vaccines. It is not the right tool for influenza or HPV. That is just marketing. It is the correct tool for smallpox, measles (genetically stable targets).
There needs to be competition in vaccines for research and manufacturing. A lot of the problems with the mumps vaccine from Merck are due to its laziness brought on by no competition.
The competition should not be restricted to just vaccines. All interventions that achieve the goal should be considered with the safest and most effective getting deployed.
And now as promised here are some links to educate yourselves out of the blatant ignorance I see on both sides:
- Dr Tetyana Obukhanych: PhD in Immunology at the Rockefeller University in New York and did postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. and Stanford University in California.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dr+tetyana
- Quotes from Simpsonwood and Puerto Rico Conferences (vaccines & metal toxicity)
http://www.autismhelpforyou.com/Simpsonwood_And_Puerto%20%20Rico.htm
- Cochrane Review - Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in-healthy-adults-
- Dr Lisa Jackson's out of season influenza vaccine research
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/337.short
You are talking about preventing a known infected individual from infecting others.
That is not the same as preemptively forcing someone to take a risk on the off chance that they may one day get infected.
For that matter, vaccines themelves are not 100% effective.
So, even if you have been vaccinated, you still pose a potential risk of being infected and spreading an infection.
Therefore, by your logic, we should just keep sticking you repeatedly until it magically becomes 100% effective or you die trying, because anything short of absolute certainty is unacceptable.
That is not the same thing.
For one, in the U.S., the draft is supposed to be organized self-defense on a mass scale.
It's your duty as a citizen, but it is also common sense, that everyone work together to fight off an enemy.
Essentially, you are part of that militia the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution talks about.
In times of war, you are supposed to be protecting not only your country, but your loved ones, and yourself from what would otherwise be an unchallenged invasion from outside forces.
That is why the use of the draft during the Vietnam war was met with such protest, while no such controversy was present for the same sort of draft during WWII (hell, people volunteered when they weren't drafted, and were disappointed if they weren't fit for duty).
The misuse of the draft for times when the country itself was not threatened is largely why it hasn't been used since Vietnam, even though the U.S. has been directly attacked since then.
(2) don't get vaccinated and be thrown into a convenient pit (or offshore island) surrounded by automated shoot-to-kill machine gun robots.
Simples!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
My kid's school wanted him to receive vaccinations months before the doctors wanted him too. There were 3 of them. One of them was like the 4th or 5th shot in a series.
Now I've got no problem vaccinating my kids. I'm all for it. But not months ahead of schedule, when the insurance won't cover it, against the advice of all the doctors and pediatric organizations, and when it won't do the job properly, just because some idiots in government decided kids in this grade must have these shots with no thought at all as to what the kids actual ages are and whether they are starting school a year early or late.
So when you look at those charts of kids who are not vaccinated, well my kid is one of them. I took the religious exemption. And, months later, when he was finally due for the shots, I got him vaccinated safely and properly!