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Ontario Parents Refusing To Vaccinate Their Children Could Be Forced to Take Science Class (qz.com)
Ontario is considering making parents who choose to not vaccinate their children for non-medical reasons take a science class. The health ministry of Canada's most populous province has proposed a bill which would force those parents sit through the education session before applying for a vaccine exemption. In the class, they will be taught about the importance of vaccination for their children. Quartz offers more context: Ontario was the first province in Canada to introduce immunization laws (PDF) in 1982, which required children attending school be vaccinated against certain diseases -- including diphtheria, tetanus, polio, and measles -- unless they have a signed exemption. After routine immunization was introduced, cases of those diseases dramatically reduced.
Parents who apply for an exemption (PDF) for non-medical reasons risk having their child pulled from school if there's an outbreak, or the immediate risk of an outbreak, of a designated disease.
The courts do it for more immediately necessary medical therapies. Coming from a Jehovah's Witness background (an atheist now for over thirty years), I do remember as a kid all the whackos praying and flailing about because a judge forced a little JW kid to have a blood transfusion over the objection of the righteous parents. I suspect in many hospitals, as soon as they found a JW minor was admitted, they had the lawyers on standby.
While immunization doesn't have the urgency of a blood transfusion, it still represents a significant personal and public health risk to have people not vaccinating their kids, so yes, I think, whether it is "helpful" or not, there should be clear limits on the medical interventions that parents can have the power to deny their children. Children are not possessions, they are not slaves, and where any guardian abuses their powers over a child, I see no problem with social workers, doctors and the courts intervening to make sure the child's medical needs are dealt with.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Ya-huh. The anti-vaxxers are usually granola munching morons, who are usually shit-scared of guns.
You're just a garden variety moron, though.
Good thing they didn't make Christopher Columbus sit through science classes explaining how flat the earth was before they let him sail on his voyage of discovery. If they made him sit through 'science' classes explaining what all the smart people of the day thought they knew, it's possible that we'd all still be in Europe.
Actually no one thought the earth was flat for thousands of years before columbus, the ancient Greeks figured it out (along with the approximate circumference of the earth)t back in the BC's. The flat earth non-since was a 19th century revisionism.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
To wrap up your points:
See my post about the layman's-terms video, above (or below).
The "original" thiomersal paper was not a randomized study, and used a mere 12 subjects.
It has been retracted by all 12 authors except for the primary author (well, one was MIA).
An investigative reporter located most of the 12 participants—The reporter found that much of the data had been falsified by the primary author, including even dates of visits!
The primary author no longer possesses a license to practice medicine.
More detail in the video.
My Own Points:
Chelated metals can pass through the body without losing their 'isolating' layer. Ever had an MRI with contrast? They used iodine, or gadolinium, or possibly others. Immunogold is used, at least in in vivo medical studies. I've had thorium injected for a circulatory imaging test—Yes, it was chelated, and only used as a radioactive tracer. That is, the extrapolation from methylated mercury to ethylated was probably not a thermodynamically sound one.
Piston-driven propeller planes that fly over my head all day long still use tetra-ethyl lead as an additive to their aviation fuel. I live in a densely populated area.
What's your stance on red herrings and non sequiturs?
Because being vegan doesn't threaten your life, much less the lives of everyone around you?