Slashdot Mirror
California Senate Approves School Vaccine Bill
mpicpp writes: California state senators have passed a controversial bill designed to increase school immunization rates. SB277 would prohibit parents from seeking vaccine exemptions for their children because of religious or personal beliefs. California would join West Virginia and Mississippi as the only states with such requirements if the bill becomes law. "SB 277 is about increasing immunization rates so no one will have to suffer from vaccine-preventable diseases," said Sen. Ben Allen (D- Santa Monica) who coauthored the bill with Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento).
I expect to see a lot of anti vaxx outrage and legal challenges, but this is a good first step.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Infectious diseases don't pay attention to your religion or any of your other crackpot obsessions about autism or mercury or whatever this week's flavor of craziness is.
So the prevention of said diseases shouldn't either.
There's a problem with this: It destroys the concept of law entirely, because for every law there exists a person somewhere who has a religion that demands they disobey the law.
"My religion prohibits the use of electricity, so I can't install a fire alarm in my business to meet state building regulations."
"My religion requires I capture an endangered species for ritual sacrifice."
"I had to kill by baby in the microwave, I sensed he was possessed by a demon."
"My religion prohibits paying taxes, because all my property is just being held on behalf of God."
"My religion requires I kill innocent citizens to defend my people against their country."
"I know my daughter was critically ill, but my religion does not allow me to seek medical treatment, as it shows a lack of faith in God."
All of these are real cases - and those are just in the US. These situations show that freedom of religion cannot be absolute, because absolute freedom of religion renders every area of law effectively meaningless: You would be able to literally get away with murder by claiming you believed it to be a religious mission.
The federal laws passed in the mid-80s that insulate the responsibility of vaccine creating companies to flaws in their products needs to rescinded or heavily revised.
It is the fact that the companies creating these vaccines are largely not culpable for their products that has driven the anti-VAX movement. FIX THAT or this law will be ignored.
No. The anti-vax movement has been largely driven by greed, stupidity, and the parents need to "blame" someone.
What's lost in most discussions of the fraud doctor in Britain is that he was trying to discredit the current vaccination regime so he could push his own = greed. Parents, preferred listening to that jackhole and dipshit blondes who's only claim to fame is stripping for cash instead of medical professionals with actual knowledge = stupidity. The whole blame game is the demented way humans interact with seemingly everything. Their child has autism = it MUST be someones fault.... which in reality is just more stupidity.
The companies that produce these vaccines are shielded from individual lawsuits because individual lawsuits would very quickly bankrupt said companies. The result of that would be no vaccines, which would lead to everyone in society fucking dying of easily treated illnesses = more fucking greed and stupidity ("everyone" being hyperbole, obviously, but given current transportation ease and population, "millions" would be a given) . Complications from vaccines are fairly rare, and very serious complications/death even more-so.... but vaccines are of critical importance to our species in the present day. If the argument is: let millions of people die each year because of diseases that can be easily vaccinated against, or requiring parents to keep their disease ridden kids out of school unless they vaccinate... that's an easy one: fuck the idiot parents.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
We want the government to keep their hands off of our pot and our taxes.
Well, you're not doing a very good job of expressing your wants as reflected by your very high taxes and still-not-legalized pot.