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Vaccines May Soon Be Mandatory For Children In France (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Last week, the French Health Ministry announced plans to make 11 vaccines mandatory for young children by 2018. French law currently mandates three vaccines -- diphtheria, tetanus, and polio -- for children under the age of two. The government's proposal would expand that list to include eight other vaccines -- including those against Hepatitis B, whooping cough, and measles -- that were previously only recommended. The proposal, which is to be presented to lawmakers by the end of this year, comes amid an ongoing measles outbreak across Europe, which the World Health Organization (WHO) attributed to low immunization rates. Italy passed a similar decree in May, requiring children to receive 10 vaccines as a condition for school enrollment. Germany, while stopping short of a mandate, has moved to tighten its laws on child immunization. But some experts question whether a vaccination mandate will sway public opinion in France, where distrust in vaccines has risen alarmingly in recent years. In a survey published last year, 41 percent of respondents in France disagreed with the statement that vaccines are safe -- the highest rate of distrust among the 67 countries that were surveyed, and more than three times higher than the global average.
OMG OMG they're trying to kill children!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
All these measures to encourage (or enforce) vaccines in children are great.
But why not adults too? There are more vaccinated adults than children (most vaccinations lose effectiveness after a period of time).
Are your vaccines up-to-date? If not - why not? Do you consider yourself an anti-vaxxer - or are you just lazy?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
This is really good news for the research community. Full coverage ill mean amazing gains in learning not only how diseases propogate, but also the effect of scheduling, and the real risks involved with vaccinating. This could be a big nail in the lid of the anti-vax movement. Not to mention that France's children will be saved from a lot of nasty diseases.
Do you think that maybe the things you think get modded down due to group think get modded down because they're full of unnecessary insults and add no information to the conversation?
This site's being ruined by the fact that 90% of the commenters have entered troll territory - there's about 3 posts worth a damn each story max these days.
Polio. Measles. Tuberculosis. Influenza. Rubella. Hepatitis. Smallpox.
Sadly, vaccines are a victim of their own success. Vaccines are indisputably the single most lifesaving medical development in the entire course of human history, more than surgery or anesthesia or pharmaceuticals. And perhaps it is the ultimate irony that it is only because they have worked so spectacularly well that humans, in their seemingly infinite capacity for stupidity, have somehow managed to grow to distrust them, because people in industrialized nations have almost entirely forgotten what it was like to live in a time when these diseases were not only common, but pervasive in the general population. Entire communities were decimated by polio. People have forgotten the death and the panic and the fear of these diseases.
The present situation is the result of a failure to educate. Every single child, as soon as they are able to comprehend, must be taught of the history of these pandemics. Not just a recitation of statistics; people need to be SHOWN IN GRAPHIC DETAIL what these diseases did to humanity throughout history.
People built museums to remind ourselves of the Holocaust; of the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. Yet, for the most part, we do not educate younger generations about the horrific scope of deaths these diseases have wrought on society. Why is that? Is it really only because we care when people die at the hands of despots? Dead is dead. A virus doesn't care who you are.
My social Darwin in me says no because these people will be weeded out.
My inner human says finally.
3.) The benefits of the hopefully acquired immunity only affects the person receiving the vaccination, it does not transfer to other people, making this a personal choice.
4.) Health care choices, especially where you have to pay for them, are personal in nature. Much like what food you eat, where much sold as edible has massive amounts of problems, like GMO, carcinogens, pesticides, hormones, "bad" fats, sugars, where good diets are not forced on people against their will. Obesity is probably not contagious.
Wrong on those 2.
Unfortunately you not being vaccinated means you are wandering around infecting others AND making them or society pay the costs for your stupidity.
In such cases government intervention is warranted.
No vaccinations for Muslims.
I agree.
From the point of view of "bodily integrity", which is frequently invoked in defense of legal abortion, I'm not sure how one can support this ruling. That said, France could ban unvaccinnated children from public schools (and/or adults from university) and that wouldn't violate anyone's bodily integrity.
There is a risk of dying in a car accident driving to the doctors office to vaccinate your kid. So in that respect they aren't safe. Is there a chance your kid will have a fever or a sore arm yes. Do I think the doctors at least in Canada have down played the risk of kids having fevers or other adverse side effects based on my very biased sample size of 5 kids, hell yes. And I suspect this is one reason the medical community might not be trusted. Do I think a day of my kids having a fever is worth it to prevent them from just having even chicken pox? Definitely.
On one hand it would make it a bit harder for the religious kooks to
deny life saving vaccines to their kids
OTOH I find it truly frightning having the government basicly able to stick something in (mine or) my kids' bodies against our will.
The ones which Sanofi (a french company) owns the patents?
When the anti-vaccine hysteria was peaking about 15 years ago, the consensus was that it would last until a bunch of children all died from a preventable disease. 35 dead in the current outbreak - we get mandatory vaccines.It's sucks to be right sometimes.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Let me guess, you're a M$ employee and are about to get axed because of redundancy?
Vaccinations are a classic case of internalized pain and externalized benefit. You internalize the pain of the needle, the temporary side-effects (which are imagined to be far worse than they are), and time & financial cost of the vaccine. You externalize most of the benefit of the vaccine to younger children whose bodies are too fragile to take the vaccine, and to people who remain too fragile to get a vaccination.
Once you're old enough to get your vaccination, you've already received the benefit of the vaccine from the children and adults before you because you weren't exposed when you were younger. It's very tempting to say screw everyone after me and rationalize that decision by listening to and citing the anti-vax arguments.
You take a disease like Hepatitis B which if exposed to a baby by its mother, the baby has a 97% chance of becoming a life time carrier. That also means they have a 30% chance of liver problems and/or liver cancer later in life. It also means they may have to spend $10K a year on virus suppression medication. If there was a conspiracy, it would be to suppress the $50 Hepatitis B Vaccine to earn a whole lot more money on medication later.
Much potential for a dark comedy.
Vaccination should be compulsory unless there is an medical reason not to. And parents who do not vaccinate should be charged with anything from child endangerment all the way up to involuntary manslaughter.
'nuff said.
"People built museums to remind ourselves of the Holocaust"
We are talking about vaccines, not the holocaust. Why do some people feel the need to bring up "the holocaust" in every conversation?
Please, go get a life and drop this holocaust nonsense already. Nobody wants to hear it.
...considering the presence of disease ridden immigrants.
The company I work for pays for it.
Don't come across as a whiny knob, and you won't get modded into oblivion every time. Sure, you'll get kicked down from time to time, but there's no way I'm going to mod up a whiny diatribe.
It's kind of like the folks who insist that they should not have to fasten their seatbelt when they drive, because they do not understand how this could impact anyone else. All it takes is a comparatively minor bump/hump in the road to displace someone from their seat, leaving them unable to control the vehicle.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Unless you travel overseas a lot? You're simply not likely to encounter yellow fever.
Rabies is so rare that, unless you are a veterinarian or do certain types of health work, you're much more likely to get struck by lightning. You can get immunized successfully after exposure.
Smallpox has been eradicated.
I thought I was borderline crazy for getting immunized for Hep A, but wow, you take it a long way.
What everyone really needs though, are the old standards, especially pertussis. I know someone that died of pertussis, she was too young to be immunized.
Oh, and I think the tuberculosis vaccine is of limited use. Not very effective and makes screening for TB difficult.
--PeterM
Yeah but that only happens to irresponsible people, not to me. I'm super careful when I drive. I only text if it's really important. Not like other people who are degenerate law breakers. So all this doesn't apply to me.
How with the NWO survive is people can think and have IQ's over 85!!! Must weight them down with autism and lie like lie.
"Rabies is so rare that, unless you are a veterinarian or do certain types of health work, you're much more likely to get struck by lightning. You can get immunized successfully after exposure."
Here's the problem with that approach: by the time the symptoms surface, you are as good as dead. And getting immunized after exposure is great if you know you have been bitten by a rabid animal (hence the focus on capturing animals that have bitten animals, and testing them for Rabies...), but if you are bitten in your sleep (bats, rats, etc.), or don't think much about that squirrel's / dog's / cat's bite (or what have you)...why put yourself in such a precarious position? We live on as planet filled with animals, many that we aren't paying attention to on a daily basis, and yet they are a part of our lives. Why would you play the lottery with such a horrible disease? Look up some YouTube videos of human beings infected with Rabies -> a gun and a bullet would be a blessing.
"Smallpox has been eradicated."
You forgot this: *. It still exists, albeit in labs, where it is being "studied." Also, the US has a giant stockpile of Smallpox vaccine for every US citizen. And yes, healthcare professionals have access to the vaccine. Smallpox can supposedly be brought back from the dead very easily (may be FUD, may not, check your mileage).
"Oh, and I think the tuberculosis vaccine is of limited use. Not very effective and makes screening for TB difficult."
The BCG vaccine is widely used outside the US. As for the false positives it can create using TB skin tests...this is not so much an issue with TB blood tests. But yes, you are right about its variable efficacy: 0%-80% per person. They are trying to fix that with a booster shot (of a different design; MVA85A?), or going with a different primer altogether.
And we are agreed that the standard (or old vaccines as you call it) are a good idea.
Also, a question just for you, Hep A, but no Hep B?
You are mostly correct. I'd even guess that you would have been modded up if you hadn't included "And don't dare fucking criticize the piece of fucking shit that is Linux.".
So, 35 people died from disease. How many died from injecting toxic chemical cocktails together with viruses? No, right, keep forgetting; we're not allowed to do research on that. How is blindly trusting authority working out for you otherwise? Do you feel like they're mostly telling you the truth or more like they don't give a crap about anything but profits. Yet when it comes to pseudo-science like vaccination, that defies any kind of rational analysis; you have no problem just accepting what you're fed from above and disregard all the evidence from ordinary people just like you who have nothing to gain from lying to you. What about that brain between your ears, what are you using it for instead?
Right, I got the Hep B immunization too, but in retrospect, like the Hep A immunization, my risk is so low I don't think I really needed it. Non-standard for me, but one I took anyway, was the chickenpox immunization. I think I could use a booster now. I am also considering taking one of the pneumonia vaccines.
Re: rabies: 1-2 rabies deaths per year in the USA. Lightning: 50-ish deaths per year. That's a low enough risk I won't bother with the shot. And have you heard of the girl who survived rabies by means of being put into a coma? A person need not suffer horribly due to rabies anymore. They can put you out and keep you out.
Smallpox: If smallpox is re-released upon the world, then I'll get the vaccination. Hopefully, if that happens, whomever unleashes that abomination upon the world will not have altered it sufficiently that the old vaccine is useless.
I'll add a remark: I will absolutely take a vaccination even if I am low risk of acquiring disease if it is part of a worldwide eradication effort. Like I'll gladly take a polio booster.
PS: I really, really support increased efforts in developing new vaccines for things like TB, malaria, zika, ebola.
PPS: The standard vaccinations (your term is better) are standard for good reason and the nonstandard aren't standard because the benefit is relatively low.
Look, I know my other post got modded down.
But this is the ultimate "nanny state" move.
Nominally motivated (according to the article, which the moderators apparently did not read) by the recent measles outbreak, the move is intended to protect the population at large, rather than the individuals being vaccinated.
If you understand the mechanism for herd immunity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Then you understand that the minimum R0 for Pertussis ("whooping cough") and Measles is 12, and in modern strains, closer to 17 and 18, respectively.
That means that you have to have 94% and 95% successful vaccination to hit the threshold where you are actually protecting the population from the spread of the disease in the population.
6% of the population is immunocompromised. This doesn't have to mean HIV; it also means hepatitis, organ transplant, organ failure for other reasons, Lupus, Mononucleosis, Epstein-Barr virus, or Helicobacter pylori, and other diseases.
Even if you immunize everyone, and the vaccines are 100% effective, you've already lost on measles, and you're 1% away from losing on pertussis.
And this assumes a homogenous population, in which that 6% is spread throughout the population uniformly -- and that you don't immunize them, you give them an exception -- which the legislation doesn't allow: you get immunized whether you can tolerate the vaccine or not.
Add to the 6% the 2% allergic to the non-vaccine proteins that result from the culture medium, and you have lost on pertussis as well.
Unless you willfully kill off people, vaccination, even with 100% effective vaccines, will never, ever successfully eradicate measles or pertussis: they are here for the long haul, and they will be with humanity until a method other than vaccination us used in order to either eradicate or contain the diseases.
It turns out containment actually works. It's called quarantine, and the U.S., after several outbreaks of Ebola -- resulting in deaths -- on U.S. soil, the U.S. instituted quarantine for doctors returning to the U.S. from hot zones. And there have been no more outbreaks in the U.S..
This is precisely how we dealt with tuberculosis, before we could do anything about it, and it's precisely how we dealt with Hansen's disease (leprosy). and it freaking works. It's just not politically correct to quarantine people from hot zones -- until it is.
---
And the vaccines are still not 100% effective anyway -- unless you get a type 1 IgE reaction because of antibodies. If you only get a type 2 IgE reaction, then you are going to be an asymptomatic carrier, and spread the disease around. You're going to be a Typhoid Mary. Thankfully, only a fraction of people end up type 2 -- but it still happens. It's why the OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine), which is still used in countries like India and Pakistan, who won't buy solar powered refrigerators for rural clinics -- has resulted in secondary live virus vaccine infections that have resulted in 48,000 cases of partial or complete polio myelitis based paralysis so far.
We use recombinant polio vaccine in Western countries -- where we have refrigerators and reliable electricity -- called IPV -- Injectibale Polio Vaccine. It doesn't have these side effects.
Ironically, the recombinant measles vaccine, rather than the attenuated virus version -- is drastically less effective. In other words, some 35% of people who get the measles vaccine will not be immune to measles.
There's a way to fix this, but it's hugely expensive: perform antibody titers, and verify a Type 1 IgE reaction, and if the person doesn't have the antibodies, immunize them again. And again. And again. Until they have the antibodies. This technique is sometimes used on health care workers who will be knowingly going into a hot zone. But it's an expensive procedure, verifying that an immunization worked.
And if you think the 35% number
Thank you, that made sense.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I don't think you're accounting for reduction in active virus across generations. If immunization done properly, the chance of getting infected will continue to decrease each generation until the odds of coming across it are slim to none.
That they don't kill people? Not every company operates like a car company and lives with lawsuits to cut corners. When the government pays for it in volume, you can afford to put the cost of quality control into it.
You gotta feel bad for people with autism since apparently some people think autism so horrific that a 0% chance of contracting it via vaccines is too much of a risk that they would rather their children die of preventable illnesses instead.
This is a request to the editors and owners of slashdot.org, whenever vaccines come in play:
I'd really *really* like to be able to mod someone IGNORANT.
Tetanus also works after the infection. Why take the risk of a vaccination reaction instead of waiting and getting the shot when you need it. I guess it depends on how often or how likely the child is to get rusty puncture wounds to determine if the preventative is worth it.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
News flash, the pertussis vaccine actually makes you more susceptible to the more dangerous version of pertussis.
Rust has absolutely nothing to do with tetanus. It comes from bacteria in shit, primarily that of horses and cows. Also, the infection itself will not hurt you, it is the toxin that the bacteria produce, which there is an anti-toxin for. Besides, the vaccine does not in any way prevent the bacteria from infecting and colonizing a wound, it just has a small chance of protecting you from the toxin, if you've had it very recently.
The refugees are vetted better than the vaccines are.
Immunity conferred by immunization is not heritable.