The original test case for the idea of individual liberty vs public health is Mary Mallon. Mary Mallon was a carrier for typhoid, without expressing the disease. She would get jobs in kitchens, and end up causing outbreaks all over NY. At what point does the well-being of everybody around Mallon require superseding Mallon's own individual freedoms? Should Mallon have been allowed to continue to work in kitchens and cause outbreaks of typhoid leading to deaths in the name of Mallon's own personal freedom? If anybody thinks so, I'd honestly love to hear the argument.
No doubt. We're going to have to build quarantined colonies for these people. If they want to be medieval, they need a castle and a moat!
Vaccinations are against my religion, or at least that is what I told my colleges. My kids and I are fully vaccinated.
I think the media needs to do a better job of squashing this argument. If it really is a FACT that vaccines and autism are not related, there shouldn't be so many people who don't believe it. That's on the media and/or the medical community. I have a nephew who is autistic and his mom isn't totally convinced that vaccines had nothing to do with it. It's easy to cast aspersions on parents who are just trying to protect their children - how ever misguided they may be. My boys have been vaccinated, but we did stagger them instead of doing them all at once. To me, if there's a 0.00000001% chance of something harming my kids, I'm going to at least think twice about it.
You do a lot of thinking twice, cause I'm guessing just about everything comes with that kind of percentage.
I just heard the story on NPR on the weekend. Their solution with her had been to have her sign an affidavit promising to not work in kitchens and they got her a job as a laundress instead. Ultimately, she went back to cooking and got more people sick, but I think that solution had the right idea, finding the best way to protect the public health with a minimal impact on her liberties. The HIV epidemic faces the same conflict. On the one hand, you don't want to try to control who has sex with whom (and it's probably wouldn't be effective anyway), but people with an active case can spread the disease by doing so. The solution there has been education, propaganda, and research instead of an imposed fiat. I think that's best for the measles too -- just keep teaching people about the disease, propagandizing to debunk the autism link, and keep researching autism to give people real answers about how it does come about. People will get measles and other afflictions in the interim, but it should pale in comparison to HIV considering most people do get their shots.
I'm not having my kids vaccinated because Jenny McCarthy said I shouldn't and I want to be like her. Notice how she says her kid is cured but you never get to actually see him? What a b****.
I recall a story about a girl who got a neurological disorder due to a flu shot. Turned out to be bogus, but my mom still forwards me the video about once a year as proof of why you don't want vaccinations. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcrIqOr9Bsw
I hear you and did not mean (in my 2013 contributions to this old thread) to be so flip. It is similar to an argument I have with (liberal friends here) about GMOs. Yes, there is a 0.00000001% chance that GMOs are doing something to you we don't know about, but that is really a superstition compared to all the things you're eating that we DO know about, like high-fructose corn syrup, plastics, and on and on and on. So sometimes, with good intentions, people get scared over the black cat in the neighbor's yard while a rattle snake sits at their feet.
So then what happens now? I don't know anything about farming or raising animals, but I imagine that when, say, a sheep or cow is poised to contaminate the herd, that potentially dangerous animal is killed? Or at the very least, removed from the herd?
It's an interesting story but I don't think it is a conflict between collective and personal interests. Mallon can want to work in kitchens all she wants just like I can want to work in the NBA all I want but that doesn't mean that either of us should. If Mallon has a condition that is endangering customers then a private business should have the freedom to not hire her. If she is lying about her condition that isn't a matter of personal freedom but of her committing fraud to obtain the job.
Weird. I read a story the other day about a study saying labor induction had ties to higher rates of autism.
Nothing happens, but some communities are considering fines. We just become a more vulnerable population. I personally don't really favor fines but just think education would help. Here's a decent description of herd immunity: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/pages/communityimmunity.aspx But even better, here's a disease outbreak simulator where you can set the four primary variables and let 'er rip. http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih1/diseases/activities/activity4.htm
You want parents to start giving their kids vaccines again, very simple Rename the vaccine to -- The Anti-Gay Vaccine
Kind of off-topic, but here's a great BBC documentary that touches on how much we currently understand about how the common cold virus functions. Just imagine that each an every one of those minuscule details came as a result of scientists working around the clock over many years. My point is this: the scientific and medical community is constantly working to better understand many different bugs from every possible angle. The end result is an easier and more effective method to improve the overall health of the community. <iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Cz7agFqI7iE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> http://youtu.be/Cz7agFqI7iE Regardless, its a pretty awesome documentary and should appeal to everyone!
I do everything possible to avoid GMO's. There are very few long term studies and virtually none that were not financed by those with a vested interest to promote GMO's.
Literally having skin in this game, I'd like to have something to point to as a route cause for my son's autism. Vaccines aren't it. 2 things that make me believe that vaccines are not the route cause My was engaging in stim behavior before he was MMR vaccinated. Why aren't girls affected at the similar rate as boys if MMR vaccines are the culprit?
A good friend of mine is a post-doc researcher in infectious diseases at Duke University. He says that the trend of Americans NOT vaccinating their children is one of the greatest threats to the health of our citizens. He's dead-pan serious when he makes statements about it. He is in Fear of our future as a result of this travesty. He's no quack. Just relaying that I have a personal connection to somebody who is in the field. I didn't get that information from the internet. Carry on. And please...get your kids vaccinated. I did.
