Should Vaccinations Be Enforced? Options

[Comptine]

California recently had a huge flux of whooping cough and it's been linked to parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.

Do you think it should be mandated that all children, except those with valid religious beliefs, be vaccinated? Even if the parents do not want their child vaccinated?

This post has been edited by tokyo-rose: Jul 2 2010, 09:40 AM

Reason for edit: Fixed topic title's spelling. :) - Cristy

[Blyat]

I think if it would affect the public's health then maybe. But they can't really force it since the parents have their rights/

[creole]

No it shouldn't be enforced unless it's some type of worldwide epidemic disease. it's just how the Swine flu was. you didn't have to get the shot, but it was more beneficial

[brooklyneast05]

isn't vaccinating already enforced? i wasn't eligible to go to school if i hadn't been vaccinated.

[Tomates]

isn't vaccinating already enforced? i wasn't eligible to go to school if i hadn't been vaccinated.

I was thinking the exact same thing. I believe there are vaccinations that are enforced because Schools wont let children attend unless they've had certain vaccinations.
As for Whooping cough, I know its deadly not just to babies but to anyone.

Whooping cough — or pertussis — is an infection of the respiratory system caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis (or B. pertussis). It's characterized by severe coughing spells that end in a "whooping" sound when the person breathes in. Before a vaccine was available, pertussis killed 5,000 to 10,000 people in the United States each year. Now, the pertussis vaccine has reduced the annual number of deaths to less than 30.

But in recent years, the number of cases has started to rise. By 2004, the number of whooping cough cases spiked past 25,000, the highest level it's been since the 1950s. It's mainly affected infants younger than 6 months old before they're adequately protected by immunizations, and kids 11 to 18 years old whose immunity has faded.

More details here

The reason its for little kids more is because their airways are smaller.

[heyo-captain-jac...]

f*ck no, It's my right to choose.

[none345678]

We are not an endangered species. We don't need laws to protect our well being since there are plenty of us to spare.

If they don't want the shot then they will have to deal with the might be consistences.

[mipadi]

isn't vaccinating already enforced? i wasn't eligible to go to school if i hadn't been vaccinated.

A lot of those rules have been relaxed in the past 5 years or so because Jenny McCarthy went around telling everyone that vaccinations gave her kid autism. (Note that her kid isn't actually autistic, and vaccinations don't cause autism anyway. But people trust models porn stars more than scientists.)

[sixfive]

Well I'm sure she took biology in high school (wait, did she drop out?), making her an expert on the matter. Who am I to ask questions?

[datass]

i think they should be. at least the most important ones such as polio and measles. the fact that some parents are not letting their child get vaccinated can cause tremendous problems to the society if every parent did that.

[brooklyneast05]

would it be considered medical neglect to not vaccinate your kid against something serious

[heyo-captain-jac...]

would it be considered medical neglect to not vaccinate your kid against something serious

no

[Uronacid]

I don't think that you should be forced to vacinate, however I don't have a problem with madated vacinations for public schools.

[Blyat]

would it be considered medical neglect to not vaccinate your kid against something serious

I think only if the kid is already sick and a vaccine would help the child to get better and the parents still did not help treat them.

[datass]

I think only if the kid is already sick and a vaccine would help the child to get better and the parents still did not help treat them.

uhm, a vaccine isn't like a drug, it doesn't treat a kid who's already sick. a vaccine is like a weakened or killed version of a disease that stimulates the body's immune system to destroy and recognize it, so that when the same disease infects the body again the immune system would be able to react faster.

i suggest people have a look at this

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/all/1

Before smallpox was eradicated with a vaccine, it killed an estimated 500 million people. And just 60 years ago, polio paralyzed 16,000 Americans every year, while rubella caused birth defects and mental retardation in as many as 20,000 newborns. Measles infected 4 million children, killing 3,000 annually, and a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type b caused Hib meningitis in more than 15,000 children, leaving many with permanent brain damage. Infant mortality and abbreviated life spans — now regarded as a third world problem — were a first world reality.

Today, because the looming risk of childhood death is out of sight, it is also largely out of mind, leading a growing number of Americans to worry about what is in fact a much lesser risk: the ill effects of vaccines.

And he wants Americans to be fully educated about risk and not hoodwinked into thinking that dropping vaccines keeps their children safe. “The choice not to get a vaccine is not a choice to take no risk,” he says. “It’s just a choice to take a different risk, and we need to be better about saying, ‘Here’s what that different risk looks like.’ Dying of Hib meningitis is a horrible, ugly way to die.”

Getting the measles is no walk in the park, either — not for you or those who come near you. In 2005, a 17-year-old Indiana girl got infected on a trip to Bucharest, Romania. On the return flight home, she was congested, coughing, and feverish but had no rash. The next day, without realizing she was contagious, she went to a church gathering of 500 people. She was there just a few hours. Of the 500 people present, about 450 had either been vaccinated or had developed a natural immunity. Two people in that group had vaccination failure and got measles. Thirty-two people who had not been vaccinated and therefore had no resistance to measles also got sick. Did the girl encounter each of these people face-to-face in her brief visit to the picnic? No. All you have to do to get the measles is to inhabit the airspace of a contagious person within two hours of them being there.

[Blyat]

uhm, a vaccine isn't like a drug, it doesn't treat a kid who's already sick. a vaccine is like a weakened or killed version of a disease that stimulates the body's immune system to destroy and recognize it, so that when the same disease infects the body again the immune system would be able to react faster.

i suggest people have a look at this

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/all/1

Yeah sorry I meant to say that, my bad :p

But couldn't that also be true for a vaccine if the parents know the kid could get seriously ill from i.e swineflu where it could be fatal, and they still won't give him/her the vaccine?

[kryogenix]

No one has the right to force someone to put something into their body that they don't want in their body.

Vaccines are good. But the lack of participation in vaccination programs need to be solved via education, not legislation.