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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.
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.
My (standard set of )vaccines are up to date, and then some. Still working on getting a few (that are considered 'optional' by our lovely US insurance companies...price of a vaccine is in the hundreds, price of a hospital stay is in the tens of thousands, yet which option do they seem to promote?), some of them will be tricky to get since they aren't available in this country yet (Hepatitis E, etc.), and others you seem to need to know the secret handshake to get (Bubonic Plague, possibly Smallpox).
On the bright side, I've been vaccinated against things like: Hepatitis A &B (as I said, completely caught up), Rabies, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, Human Papillomavirus (HPV), Tetanus, Diphtheria...
The Cholera vaccine, Vaxchora, seems to be a bit of a disappointment, as its potency drops off in months (may be useful for a short trip, but for those of us who want to get at least a year of decent immunity out of it...no). There's another, Dukoral, which appears to improve in immunity over time, so I might go for that, but there's a question of whether it will be easily available.
And then there's the Anthrax vaccine, which Passport Health offers to the general public, which I have on my list of things to get. Multiple shots, I grant you, and realistically, like The Plague (Black Death), chances are you are a goner if you inhale the spores, as opposed to drink something laced with them or touch something covered in them, but some immunity can be better than none.
The Hepatitis E vaccine is made available via the Chinese, but I believe Mexico (and some other Central American countries) may have it available, so it might be worth picking up while on vacation.
The US military has a vaccine for the Adenovirus, through a singular supplier, though I am not sure how to get access to that. Same with The Plague (Bubonic Plague, The Black Death) as the vaccines for these are still being produced, but the manufacturer isn't listed (from what little I've glanced), and nobody is offering it (i.e. you can't walk into a travel clinic and ask for it, nor is it something that you can ask your family doctor to order for you...).
Additional diseases that we have vaccines for, but are not available to the general public in this country (this is not a complete list): Tick-Borne Encephalitis, Q Fever, Dengue Fever, Tuberculosis, Smallpox.
There are also many vaccines being developed, such as the vaccine for Malaria, Zika, etc.
Yeah that autism is caused by vaccines is an already debunked myth mostly spread by the anti vacc crowd. It is more or less proven that Autism is a genetic disorder in the meanwhile children die by the dozens every year in some european countries by measles outbreaks because their shithole parents refused to vaccinate them. Just as a reminder measles were almost extinct in europe in the 80s and 80s due to rigorous vaccination. Now we have a serious outbreak somewhere in Europe every year.
Brain damage can cause autism symptoms in persons with no genetic disposition towards autism.
Oh, and measles can cause encephalitis, which can leave permanent damage, which can result in autism-like symptoms.
You're missing the point. He's equating the denial of vaccines to the denial of life-saving medical care. Do you assert that a parent has a right to deny life-saving medical care? For instance, if your child gashes his arm and is going to bleed out, and you instruct medical personnel not to patch him up because you believe stitches cause cancer, and he then bleeds out and dies, that doesn't harm me or my children. But I still have an interest, because to my mind you harmed your own children. It's the same reason I support laws that criminalize child abuse. We both likely support "imposing our views" on parents who think it's okay to mutilate their daughters' genitals. Parents do not have a right to deny "medically necessary" care to their children when there is no credible reason to do so.
What makes vaccines tricky is that they're preventative and aren't addressing any immediate medical concern. So the question now becomes, do parents have a right to deny preventative care to their children that is designed to prevent conditions that are, in most cases, not life-threatening? Also possibly the question of whether there is any credible reason to opt out of specific vaccinations. In my case, with my first child, we opted not to vaccinate him for Hepatitis B until he was about to enter school. Reasoning: HepB is primarily transmitted by shared needles and sex, not likely modes of transmission for a toddler, and I'd read a peer-reviewed study showing an elevated risk of childhood asthma in children who received the HepB vaccination as infants. Both my wife and I already have asthma, so our children already have an elevated risk due to heredity.
Clean water and not living in filth are certainly important components of healthy living, but are nowhere near the only components.
Remember the Measles outbreak at Disney Land? That occurred in the United States, which has some of the best sanitation and cleanest water on the planet. It occurred because of anti-vax parents who think that life-saving medication is a bad thing.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!