I find the following quote, from the article on vaccines linked to by Jonathan, below, horrifying:
In the wake of last month’s outbreak, Linda Palmer considered sending her son to a measles party to contract the virus. Several years ago, the boy, now 12, contracted chicken pox when Ms. Palmer had him attend a gathering of children with that virus. "It is a very common thing in the natural-health oriented world," Ms. Palmer said of the parties.
I had chicken pox as a kid, and I remember it as a very unpleasant experience, to say the least, and I didn't have an especially severe outbreak. Measles, I take it, is worse and also more dangerous. Parents like Ms. Palmer are not only exposing their own children to horrible illnesses easily preventable by vaccines, but they are putting other children, including my own daughter, at risk, since the measles vaccine is only 95% effective. (And what about adults who either received an ineffective vaccine or immigrated from a country where vaccination was not universal)? A Ms. Carlson says, "I cannot deny that my child can put someone else at risk."
Without the externality of putting other people at risk, I think mandatory vaccination would be a close call. With it, I'd say that unless a parent is going to keep his children at home and not expose them to vaccinated children, make them get vaccines. Too unlibertarian for you? Make them pay a fine equal to the monetary value of the level of risk to others they're creating, to be used perhaps to subsidize vaccination programs for the poor, thus reducing the risks from elsewhere.
Rubella during pregnancy was associated with horrible birth defects.
Chicken pox is unpleasant. Is there a difference in risk between getting chicken pox and getting the vaccine?
I recall when the Salk vaccine came out. It was during a polio epidemic in Detroit. My parents said the reaction to the news was like that on VJ Day. But there were still some who refused it on various grounds. I've never had any sympathy for that view. But when the diseases in question are less horrible and their risks and the risk from the vaccines--more than zero--begin to approach each other, the answer is less obvious.
Setting the argument about autism aside as a red herring, I do wonder if complete vaccinations have other risks and side effects that early exposure and contraction does not?
There's also a point where a disease is so close to eradication that vaccination is riskier. Polio, at least in the United States, is eliminated. At that point, any non-zero risk of side effects from the vaccine is unacceptable.
Unfortunately, it's thinking like yours that's gotten the world into trouble. It's easy to be a free rider, isn't it? NIMBY can quickly become- for your children, not for mine! As more people begin to believe, like you, that the real problem is the vaccines, and not the rather nasty diseases that the vaccines prevent, we will see a resurgence of those nasty diseases.
Selfishness will be the undoing of America. But I guess you have put the 'i' in public health.
As for the question of the original post, yes, immunizations ought to be required for all children.
Still, for the unvaccinated purists: God help your children if they grow to adulthood without catching those diseases, and they have the wonderful experience of an adult case of measles or mumps.
Though I do agree that at some point the possible side effects of vaccination (not the BS about autism, but real side effects) can outweigh the benefits -- I am not vaccinated for smallpox, and probably neither are most of you. I don't believe I'm vaccinated for polio either (I'm 25, live in the US).
Now measles are obviously a completely different case due to the risks and the fact that a vaccine exists. If there is one for chicken pox now too then that changes things.
You and I didn't have severe problems, but a lot of kids do, especially from measles. I am copying a link to a Mayo Clinic site on measles complications:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/measles/DS00331/DSECTION=7
I couldn't find mortality rates with a quick Google search, but I found a reference to overall mortality:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/293/18/2207
I hope these facts convince readers that measles is more than a nuisance.
I am just old enough to have missed the introduction of the measles vaccine. Unfortunately, so was my younger brother. We both contracted measles. I bounced back. My brother, who was a toddler at the time, did not.
A little boy who was meeting all developmental goals early (speech, walking, toilet training, etc.) was left autistic and brain damaged. Had the vaccine been available, I firmly believe that he would be a very different person today--and undoubtedly more productive than what he is now, someone who retrieves abandoned shopping carts in Walmart's parking lot.
The anti-vaccine advocates sicken me. And while I realize anecdotal experiences carry little weight, I do believe it allows me to hold these anti-vaccine zealots in profound contempt.
People who survived polio in the late 40s and early 50s are seeing/have seen delayed health effects in middle age.
There are many advantages to autism, and most people who are in fear of autism and/or making these crazy decisions not to vaccinate their children are doing so based on their ignorance of autism -- not a very solid basis for making such a significant public health decision. Moreover, I don't think the autism-vaccination causal link has been that well established yet. The jury is still out on the issue. And if mercury in vaccines causes autism, well folks, then so does mercury in coal plant emissions, mercury in fish eaten by pregnant mothers, mercury in cavity fillings, etc.
Finally, don't we have a crisis of some 20 million illegals in this Country? What is the vaccination status of all THOSE people? Americans who don't vaccinate their children are exposing their unprotected children to all sorts of diseases from the illegal population every time they touch the handlebar of a grocery shopping cart, handrail on the stairway pof a public building, etc.
Unvaccinated children IS a big public health issue. I never had mumps as a child, so for me these unvaccinated children run the risk of giving me adult mumps -- not something I would want to encounter.
A shingles vaccine was released not long ago from what I have read. Unfortunately, it was too late for me. There have been suggestions that it will be a standard for those over 60.
I bring all this up because we didn't have all those vaccines when I was a kid and I got all the childhood diseases. I still remember my whole town going one Sunday to get the polio vaccine - I think it was the Sabin one as it was on a sugar cube.
IIRC, Mississippi schools require that the kid be vaccinated, or he doesn't come to school.
1. A lot more people died of measles pneumonia. Pregnant women are very susceptable to this complication, and I have seen several deaths during my medical career.
2. Measles encephalitis causes death in 1/1000 people, but leaves neurological impairment in many more.
What you say is true, but markedly underestimates the seriousness of measles.
Either way . . . worst party ever.
Ever been to Jonestown?
Link.
Why not get vaccinated (for mumps)?
I had no idea that such a vaccine existed -- and only a very vague idea of what shingles is -- until I came down with it last summer. Fortunately, a friend of mine recognized the symptoms, I called my doctor, and he put me (over the phone!) on an immediate anti-viral treatment (which is only effective when started immediately after symptoms start).
Trust me -- shingles is (are?) nasty. My case was relatively mild compared to what some friends of mine have gone through (all of which I've learned about after the fact).
One last thing: if you get shingles, you can spread it -- in the form of chickenpox (which is what shingles is: a reawakened chickpox virus) -- to any un-immunized adults or children. ..bruce..
I agree, this is child abuse.
Blue: like I said, stay away from Texas (and apparently 20 other states) where they are not. I guess the whole world is just crazy (at least in 20 states)
JNS405: no, but it protects your right to stay away from those 20 states, for that matter, to lock your child in the house until the whole world is vaccinated
I think the example that few are vaccinated these days against smallpox (I was) any more is apt: the need for various vaccinations waxes and wanes.
I had chicken pox and that was that.
Now we have vaccinations for HPV for children? Give me a break.
Guess what--I also don't always use a child seat or even a seat belt with my 3 year old! Gasp! Call child protective services! How did we ever survive the abuse the prior generation heaped on us? (Yes, I understand there are no additional externatilties to these examples; it just amazes me how vitriolic people can get when it comes to other peoples kid's issues)
Shingles almost never occurs in people who get the vaccine. It's very common in people who've had chicken pox.
Shingles are very painful red lesions. Typically older people get them. There is no really good treatment. Let me repeat: they are very painful. My dad had them and they basically ruined a year of his life.
The parents who think that exposing their kids to chicken pox is acceptable are making a big mistake. Of course, they likely won't be there when their children, now in their 70's are screaming in pain due to shingles.
Unfortunately, I live in Texas so I have to deal with your utter lack of concern for fellow human beings and your horrfic disregard for the safety and security of your children.
Having contracted whooping cough/pertussis as a 23-year old, I feel confident in saying that any parent who fails to get their kid a DPT shot is bordering on child endangerment. Whooping cough made me cough so hard that I nearly cracked a rib, and there were four or five times that the world went a little gray and fuzzy around the edges because I was getting hypoxic from not being able to inhale. It took about four to five months for the damage the bacterial endortoxins did to completely heal. That was as an adult; imagine what could happen to an infant or child.
What better way to make sure the vaccine's administered before exposure to the disease can occur?
Problem with the HPV vaccine isn't that it's given to children. Problem's that they don't make one for male children, which means there's nothing to prevent one of us from contracting it and then spreading it, since there's also not much of a test for it in men.
Anyway... forgoing vaccination isn't a "right", it's a dereliction of duty.
But we did get vaccinations against some other, more likely fatal diseases. Whooping cough was one vaccination I recall.
Richard Aubrey wrote at 3.21.2008 10:37am:I'll second that. I was almost of adult age when the Salk vaccine became widely available. I got the Salk, and a few years later the Sabin.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, a case of polio in any area caused massive public health prevention measures. Swimming pools and other gathering places shut down, even schools, baseball games and the like. People were advised to keep their children as close to home as possible. It was a fairly regular summertime event in those days.
The disease was horrific, and the prospect of contracting it was terrifying. It was fatal or permanently debilitating, depending on chance. I knew some kids who had survived it. And by that time everybody had long known about FDR.
The externality is the kid. Spartcus doesn't increase his own accident risk by not strapping in the kid-- he increases the kid's. The kid doesn't have a choice.
If Spartacus has health insurance, there is another externality, which is that the health care costs of the kid's injuries are shared. If he does not have a kid, it is likely that the public will pick up up those costs.
There is also the cost of special education for children with disabilities and and public maintenance of adults with disabilities.
If the accident is the other person's fault, the expenses of pursuing a law suit comprise another externality.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Smallpox is GONE. There's no reason to vaccinate for it. Measles is still very much around. If we stopped vaccinating people it would make a comeback very soon.
I think people who don't immunize their kids are making poor parenting choices, but if I got the government to intrude on them, someone else could get the government to intrude on me.
If the parents significantly harm their children through their choices, we can punish them. That's freedom, letting people make mistakes.
That will be real funny right up to the point where the kid goes through the windshield.
Next up: why Spartacus thinks condoms are for sissies.
Polio, at least in the United States, is eliminated. At that point, any non-zero risk of side effects from the vaccine is unacceptable.
That might be a nice argument if the US was isolated from the rest of the world. Polio is still endemic in India and other countries in that area. Believe it or not, people have, on occasion, been known to travel from India to the US (and even in the other direction). Stopping vaccinations in the US now or any time soon is a near certain recipe to sooner or later cause polio epidemics to return to the US.
Richard Aubrey: Before the advent of a vaccine for rubella--german measles--mothers would send their daughters to german measles parties so that they'd all get it and be immune later on when pregnant.
I was surprised to learn in the 1990s how common chicken pox parties were in the spring each year. If chicken pox was going around the schools, sooner or later most everyone without immunity would get it. Many parents wanted to get through it as soon as possible so that it would not infect their kids later and ruin summer vacation plans.
I'm curious what, in your opinion, makes forced vaccinations a "close call" if you take away the externalities? I guess for me, I come down the other way. If there were no externalities, it's not even a close call, forced vaccinations are wrong. (I'm assuming here that by externalities you are referring to other people's kids getting sick, the person's own unvaccinated child still has the possibility of getting sick)*. With the extenalities, I think it's a close call, but probably come down on the side of not enforcing vaccinations.
*Obviously, if you take away the chance of anyone getting sick by hypothetically eliminating externalities, then forced vaccinations would be wrong. Hell, recommended vaccinations would be wrong.
Yes there is. An unimmunized population is more vulnerable to a foreign terrorist attack using smallpox.
(a) If there is a risk from a vaccine, you allow everyone else to take the risk, but get most of the benefits (reduced likelihood of getting a bad disease) at no cost to you.
(b) Not all immunizations are 100%, so you risk innocent 3rd parties if your child does get the disease.
Sometimes the comments in here remind me of a guy who has just given up smoking two hours ago.
I'm gonna go put my baby to sleep on his stomach now. And then feed him some non-organic food.
So could it happen? Yes. Anything is possible. Is it likely? No. Is that a reason to mass vaccinate everyone against the threat? I don't think so.
I don't have a problem with you not vaccinating your children. I have a problem with your children being allowed in public.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
It's irrelevant whether it makes sense to have a religious objection to said vaccines; only whether public health risk outweighs freedom of conscience in this situation. I am inclined to favor freedom of conscience, especially since there exists a solution: approve the Kitasato vaccine.
Readers' Digest version of my position: Anyone who doesn't vaccinate their kids is insane and I speak from personal experience about how nasty measles actually can be.
In general, absolute freedom is bad, just like too much of anything is generally bad. That's why we all give up certain freedoms to enter society. Some of those freedoms are beyond discussion- I promise not to exercise my natural right to kill people in exchange for the ability to walk down the street with some degree of safety. Some people might say that I've increased my actual freedom by the exchange, much as we say that being bound by a contract increases our freedom. Personally, I think vaccinations, especially for children who have no self-determination in the matter, are pretty clearly in that realm of freedoms that we should give up to interact in society. The numbers illustrate pretty clearly that the benefits, both for society and the individual, far outweigh the risks. If your kids are going to interact with mine, then you should have to vaccinate your kids. I think this is a fair exchange for living in a society that benefits from the eradication of smallpox and very rare cases of polio et al.
Bruce, if I understand it correctly, any current use of the vaccine in under-60 patients would be considered "off-label" and you might have significant difficulty finding a doctor who would administer it.
Virginian, google "herd immunity" for your answer.
I had measles and chickenpox. Got vaccinated as an immigrant for smallpox and still have the mark on my left arm. Scarred for life.
Adherence to any useful ideology is fine up to a point. But an absolute, unwavering, and mindless adherence is murderous fanaticism and it's sad to see that some libertarians have passed into this dangerous mental state. I like to think it may be due just to an unfamiliarity with the subject about which some are fulminating
Calling child protection is probably the prudent thing to do. When parents fail to protect their children, the larger society recognizes the child as one of them and steps in to protect him from the parent.
Note those of us reading these posts are living. Those three-year-olds who banged around the inside of cars and smashed their brains to bits are not with us. They didn't survive. We did.
Some people probably should not have chldren. I'd suggest that people who will not protect their children from disease or traffic death should simply avoid raising children. There are other paths to very productive and rewardng lives.
You should probably read Freakonomics, especially the chapter on parenting. (One of the authors lost a child due to meningitis so they aren't as cold about this as you might expect.)
Oh, their car seat debate already made an appearance here at Volokh. http://volokh.com/posts/1122383776.shtml
Anyway, here's the opening of their first chapter on parents:
There is an informational issue here, I think, in that the parents of vaccinated children probably don't get to know that one of their child's classmates is unvaccinated. I certainly wouldn't want my kid playing with the unvaccinated classmate, and I definitely wouldn't want the unvaccinated child coming over to my house for play dates, birthday parties, etc.
If parents opt out of vaccination, they and their child should have to bear the social costs of placing others at risk.
The answer is, of course, that not everyone did. Check the traffic accident fatality rates from the 60s and 70s vs. today...
I'm gonna go put my baby to sleep on his stomach now. And then feed him some non-organic food.
Thank you. I might even let mine climb a tree or ride a bicycle without a helmet.
Additionally, that statement needs to be qualified that that only concerns the Smallpox virsus strains that the Russians admit to still having. In 1972 the US and USSR signed a treaty agreeing to destroy bio and chem weapons. When the USSR came apart, documents from it were made public showing that the USSR continued with its bio weapons R &D programs, including developing more virulent strains of smallpox and weaponization of them. There is no dependable information on what else was developed, where it was located, how it has handled, what security measures were used to guard it or if those were effective or followed. Rather, we know that as to what the Russians admit they had there was a loss of accountability for a while (leaving the possibility that there was replication and distribution we don't know of). But, we also know that there was a large bio weapons R &D program, that included smallpox, that we really don't have any dependable information on.
Sorry I can't give you a link on this. A couple of years ago there was an excellent discussion of this in a NPR program, and why at least having a substantial store of smallpox vaccines available appeared prudent.
Calling child protection is probably the prudent thing to do. When parents fail to protect their children, the larger society recognizes the child as one of them and steps in to protect him from the parent.
. . .
Some people probably should not have chldren. I'd suggest that people who will not protect their children from disease or traffic death should simply avoid raising children. There are other paths to very productive and rewardng lives.
What shoudl be the consequence? Have my child taken away from me? A big fine? Are you a parent? Would you tell me how to raise mine? I need to leave this comment thread because the personal attacks are really pissing me off. If you wanted to debate the issue, you could have at least tried instead of simply hurling insults.
So which legal change would you suggest should be done in California – repeal the law that prohibits smoking in a car with a child or make it illegal to intentionally expose your child to the measles or chicken pox?
Some kids cannot get vaccines for medical reasons. You might want to charge them $2 also.
But all these measles cases come from overseas, so it would be better to tax those who come into the USA unvaccinated from a country that has not eradicated measles. Then the tax would be higher, as it would be more focused on those who are actually creating the risk.
I am really surprised at quickly some libertarians here embrace some nanny state ideas, after reading just a minor scare story.
I was at a health law event last week where we had a homeopath as a guest speaker. I have to say that while I was predisposed to disagree with pretty much everything she had to say, to her credit she took the position that “conventional” medicine was terrific and a life-saver but that there were limits to it.
When she was asked about vaccinations, she said that she thought that vaccinations were great for some things like polio but she thought that the problem was that we were overusing vaccinations similar to way that we’re overusing antibiotics and that one of the unintended consequences was that over-vaccinations may lead to the weakening of our natural immune systems. Rather than immunize children against things like chicken pox (she didn’t mention mumps or the measles), she said that in some cases it might be better to just let the kid get it when they’re young and build up a natural immunity rather than try to protect them from it.
Her main message on vaccinations – be smart and be selective about what you do (not) immunize your children against.
I had classmates die of polio, went through the summers when public activities were severely curtailed, saw other kids who were debilitated by diseases we are now routinely vaccinated against. I'm definitely in favor of mandatory vaccinations against these diseases.
I made sure my son received all his vaccinations, too, at the appropriate ages, particularly because as a Foreign Service Officer I knew we would be living in countries were vaccinations were not the norm and where diseases almost extinct in the US were still widespread.
But vaccines are not proof against disease. In most cases, they simply mitigate them, causing fewer or lesser effects. As parents, we were happy to send our fully-vaccinated son to 'disease parties' with the thought that contracting the actual disease would provide better immunity than the vaccines alone, immunities that tend not to wear off, too.
Vaccinated against chickenpox, he never picked up a light case of it. Until he was 17. During one Christmas holiday,he visited me in India. Unfortunately, his boarding school in the UK had just had an outbreak and he brought it with him.
The doctors took his disease very seriously, concerned that high fevers which can accompany chickenpox could have permanent effect. And he was certainly miserable for a couple of weeks.
Childhood diseases are manageable for most kids, at least in the West. They are not so manageable in adults. Little girls who catch measles (or rubella) don't have to worry about miscarriages or birth defects in their children in quite the same way. Little boys who catch mumps don't face the threat of inflammation of the testes with the possibility of later sterility.
And yes, Spartacus should be reported for child endangerment, if not out-and-out abuse. At the least, he should suffer through the mandatory 6-hour seatbelt law course. I won't wish a child's funeral or life-long medical care on him. Maybe a stiff fine, a few months in jail, and being put on the state's child abuse watch list would get his mind around the concepts involved here.
But no, not even his accepting strict financial liability for the disease his kid gives to my kid is satisfactory, especially if my kid dies of that disease. Then, he might wish he lived in another state as TX is rather forgiving of homicides committed in the rage of passion.
It's a serious disease, although the virus has probably declined in virulence. It more than decimated the tropical forest Indians of South America.
The externalities imposed on the public at large by those who refuse vaccination ought to trump the liberty interest in non-religious objections to it.
It's a paltry penalty indeed for perhaps killing someone.
Tell you what, in the event an unvaccinated person passes a disease to someone who, as a result, dies from it--we execute the unvaccinated person?
At the very least, they should be liable for prosecution for negligent homicide.
Or, since you are the guardian of your unvaccinated child, in that case, you should be.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
But no, not even his accepting strict financial liability for the disease his kid gives to my kid is satisfactory, especially if my kid dies of that disease. Then, he might wish he lived in another state as TX is rather forgiving of homicides committed in the rage of passion.
We can now add death threats to the incredible barrage I have been subjected to here.
As best I can tell, you don't put your kid in a car seat to give society a big F--- You for "telling you how to parent," which is cute but doesn't really hurt our feelings and puts your kid at risk. Smart move.
There is a very small but very real risk your actions will lead to the death of a person.
Face up to it.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
My mother still blames herself for my brother's condition ("I should have gotten him to the hospital sooner when his temperature spiked")--and he caught measles before a vaccine was readily available.
Got conscience?
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Denying your children measles vaccination is child abuse. You have no way to know whether they will encounter the virus years later as an adult, especially if they travel. The effects on someone infected as an adult are likely to be much worse than mine.
Let me take a crack at this...
For most diseases as long as the vaccination rate is high there's not going to be a general outbreak. Depending one the disease (and how easily it spreads) the rate needed to protect the population is somewhere in the 90-96% range.
However there is a small risk to any vaccination. Therefore a very viable "free rider" strategy is to not have your kids vaccinated, while making sure that everybody else does vaccinate their kids. Your kids have neither the risk of the vaccination nor the risk of the disease since the ambient vaccination rate is high.
This generally describes my position. I am not anti-vaccine, but I think too many vaccines are being made mandatory. My 7 month old is getting the big ones (polio, DTaP, etc), but not hep B or varicella (chicken pox) (there is one other we refused, but I forget which).
She can get the hep B vaccine when she becomes a healthcare worker or a crack whore, and can get the varicella vaccine if she gets past childhood without getting chicken pox.
What a total and complete load of crap. I've had all I can stand, and I can't stands no more.
Okay, maybe there are "advantages" to whatever brand of "autism" afflicts people who, like you, are apparently capable of going to law school, and are fond of posting comments on blogs talking at great length about their autism. I won't pretend to understand this phenomenon. Since you talk a great deal about your autism, I don't think it's rude of me to ask: What, exactly, is your diagnosis, who made it, and when?
But let me be very clear: there is no advantage whatsoever to the autistic disorder suffered by my two sons. None. Zero. One of them is barely verbal, neither has conversational speech (or likely ever will), and it is almost certain that neither of them will be able to live independently, ever. They likely will never obtain a driver's license, graduate from college, get married, you name it. They are in constant danger because they cannot appreciate the risks presented by their unusual behavior, and by all sorts of things in their environment. And that's just the beginning.
Another total and complete load of crap. Actually, people who know the first damn thing about autistic disorder are quite rationally scared to death of autism. Autism, in the form experienced by my sons and by the children like them, is a very, very bad thing. Any sane person, I dare say you included, would do anything to prevent it from afflicting his or her children. I would do anything -- anything -- if I thought it would cure them.
What jury, where? The evidence against the vaccine-autism link is, currently, overwhelming. Wishful thinking by anti-vaccine zealots doesn't make it otherwise.
Weaken the immune system? That makes no sense whatsoever. It's so stooopid it's not even wrong.
Uh, yeah. Exactly.
If you recite your actions A, B, and C that demonstrate you are unfit for parenting, then don't be surprised that other people say you are unfit for parenting.
Hopefully your children will not only survive into adulthood, but display better care of their own children.
I had chickenpox and a mild form of measles (contracted from the vaccine, we believe) as a kid. I remember both as extremely unpleasant -- particularly the measles, even though I was only 4 at the time.
I think part of what explains behavior like that reported in the Times article is that people forget just how bad these "childhood illnesses" are. My mother had whooping cough as a kid, and she says that every time she went into a coughing fit, she wondered if she was going to survive.
Hear! Hear! There is nothing great about the autism I have witnessed in my family's life. I would not wish it on anyone and I can both totally empathize and totally agree with the points you made. I know you have undoubtedly sacrificed much to care for and protect your children.
Rainman was a great film because it accurately portrayed the life of an autistic savant. My brother has some savant abilities (Gee, it's a great parlor trick to accurately tell people what day of the week they were born on) but I would give anything to have the brother who might have been--had a vaccine been available, since measles indisputably caused his autism.
You have chosen a course of action which may make your children into deadly threats to me. I have no way to evaluate or recognize the level of threat, either.
Your potentially diseased children don't have any externally visible indicators. They don't even have to come within visual range of me to be a threat.
Since I can't avoid your whelps, my only sufficient means of self-defense is to ask that they be vaccinated.
Calmom, that has everything to do with the fact that the unvaccinated folks are my age or older (20s and up), and the vaccinated folks are teenagers and kids. Wow - the vaccinated folks don't get shingles!
True story. I had it, too, when I was 14. I remember coughing and choking on the stuff that I was coughing up. This was not a normal small glob of phelgm; it was fist-sized globs of thick mucus that clogged up my windpipe. Left untreated, it can progress into pneumonia. (If anyone happens to be unlucky enough to get it, I have some non-medical advice: avoid humid environments. I coughed the hardest and the worst when in the shower or on the beach.) Thankfully, the treatment (antibiotic? albuteral sulfate, and a sleeping aid) were very, very effective. Interestingly, I was on the same thing that my grandmother was on for emphysema. We spent the summer puffing away next to each other on the lanai.
I will say that having chicken pox was roughly a million times easier than that. I simply cannot understand lumping varicella in with polio, pertussis, MMR, and the like... and then getting surprised when people rebel at the idea of giving their kids all those vaccines.
How about if she put it like this: By preventing the diseases, you eliminate the opportunity to stress the immune system. That sort of use and activity of the system allows it to grow and develop. So, people who have used their immune systems to successfully fight off diseases may end up with stronger and more capable systems than those whose systems have more or less laid inert.
Kids who are exposed to cats and dogs and dirt end up having fewer allergies than kids who live in pristine environments with HEPA certified vacuums sterilizing everything every day. The thinking on this is that overly clean environments inhibit the immune system from developing the way it should.
That’s actually more or less how she put it. Thanks for the save Duffy. :)
One side effect of the vaccine may be that it increases shingles in adults. There has been a recent study on this. Shingles has increased since the introduction to the vaccine. The natural immunity to chicken pox tends to weaken over time, unless the person gets reexposed to the live virus. With vaccinations, adults are getting exposed to the live virus less and less. Thus, their immunity to the virus decreases. And that in turn increases the risk of the virus reactivating. Thus, the vaccination reduces the risk of chicken pox, but increases the risk of shingles, which is in every way a worse disease.
I think the risks are incredibly low--my children are not in day care, and have not tavelled internationally. If and when either of these changes, we will likely vaccinate. Risks of side effects (even small ones) in infants are greater, to my understanding, than the risk of infection at a very young age, and small side effects are not worth lessening an already very small risk of a greater harm.
Curiously, I never stated that I would never vaccinate, in fact, here I am (for the first time) making it clear that we likely will vaccinate at some point in the future. However, people were so quick to condemn me without asking any questions, I had little chance to respond intelligently. Perhaps you still do not think my responde is intelligent, but neither were the responses to my original post.
As for seat belts, same thing. 99% of the time, my kids are in a car seat, or in the case of the older one, a booster (at 40 inches he is big enough to forgo the car seat) and seat belt. Other times, the risk, though of a very great harm, is sufficiently small IMO that it is not worth the certain negative externatities of acting otherwise: sometimes, for example, when the baby was crying uncontrollably, one of us would sit in the back seat and hold the child rather than strapping him in (anyone who has ever had to restrain a hysterical infant into a car seat knows that it is not a plesant task). Other times, I let my older son lay down in the back seat to take his nap on the drive home, because, duh, he needs a nap, and as many will attest, children love to fall asleep in a moving car--I know, I napped in the back seat of my parents' car as a child, too.
The fact that this apparently makes me "unfit to be a parent" is mind boggling. Or to put it another way, I'm leaving this party. Talk to y'all (or hopefully a different crowd) about something else in another comment thread someday. Bye.
It would still be idiotic. Vaccines are designed to elicit an immune response. If your immune system lies "inert" when you are vaccinated, then the vaccine is useless.
I can play that game too. What if there are 10,000 cases of measles that result from your choice, with 9% suffering permanent disability and 1% dying?
If we do a quick tort lawyer valuation on damages, we're up to a good bit more than $10M on top of the $10M cost of care (at your $1K/case). If there are only 50K objectors after there are real costs, that's $400 you can pony up. Do we still have a deal? How about when the disincentive makes it $4000?
I'm confused.
Do you intend to vaccinate your kids if they go to school (as seems suggested in your later post), or not (as seems suggested in your earlier).
WRT vaccines, the analogous population would be unvaccinated kids who also don't get the disease. They're the ones you would expect to have a weak or undeveloped immune system (if the idea makes any sense at all). Vaccinated children would be equivalent to a kid who got all the diseases and miraculously survived.
Yeah, and by not tossing your kids into the tiger enclosure at the zoo, they are not properly honing their fight or flight skills either. She obviously doesn't know how vaccines (especially live vaccines) work. But what do you expect from a homeopath? They believe all kinds of nonsense that has about as much basis in science as astrology, tarot and phrenology.
When we are ready for school, we will get some vaccines but not others. But I don't want to talk to you boneheads anymore; maybe if you can track my ISP or something you can come burn a cross on my lawn.
Late.
I'd suggest a parent who refuses to buckle up a three-year-old should lose his license. That would probably be the least intrusive way of protecting the chld.
Yes, I would tell you how to raise your child with respect to seat belts. One might ask who benefits from letting the child ride unbelted. Is it for the benefit of the child or the parent?
Debate is not really appropriate with someone who brags about not usng seatbelts for a three-year-old. At that point the parent is no longer a concern, only the welfare of the child is relevant.
Give me a break with the victim routine. You made several rather alarming statements, with little explanation, about how you raise your children. People then pointed out, mostly with serious arguments, that those things are pretty stupid. Then, instead of responding to anyone else's arguments, you started flailing around in shocked outrage that someone had dared to challenge you. I mean, your later clarification aside, doesn't it seems pretty obvious why people might react strongly to your initial, totally unexplained comment that you sometimes don't bother to restrain your 3-year-old at all in the car?
And why isn't there a negligence tort for spreading a disease and causing harm thereby? There should be a duty of care to stay home when you have a potentially deadly or otherwise very harmful communicable disease.
No, it's not pleasant. Welcome to reality - being a parent means doing a LOT of things that are unpleasant because they better for your kid. Listening to my 3yo scream if I don't give him a piece of candy he asked for isn't pleasant either, but what kind of kid would I be raising if I gave in to his tantrums?
Your 3yo is unable to make intelligent choices for him- or herself about things like carseats, so yes, I'm going to call you irresponsible if you refuse to make the intelligent choice for him or her.
My (longtime dead) father smoked when I was in the car, and I got puking ill from that and motion sickness. And we didn't have seatbelts in those days. But I wouldn't even consider prosecuting him for a crime even if I magically could do so.
I got measles and chickenpox from exposure at school, when some kid(s) or other came to school while incubating the viruses. I wouldn't think of prosecuting their parents, or my parents for sending me to school knowing that there was a risk of exposure.
A police state doesn't actually make anybody any safer. It just allows fools to smugly pretend they are safer because they can punish their petty enemy of the day for violating some currently chic, and at best only marginally rational, taboo. The busybodies who seek positions of power enacting and enforcing such laws are more than happy to encourage hysteria just to increase or consolidate their power.
Vaccination is wise, but vaccinating later than the medical establishment wishes is not necessarily foolish. Punishing people for not vaccinating may feel good, but it is more than foolish. Smoking may be unwise, especially around children, but punishing it with criminal sanctions is more than foolish. Such laws are model petards upon which one can only hope their proponents will someday be hoist.
Like several others here, I'm surprised that apparently libertarian thinkers can become so totalitarian, especially by blowing up rare events as if they were everyday outcomes.
My late father in law's sister died in childhood of it. As a child I knew a women who went about on crutches because it had ruined the nerves leading to her legs. In the 1990s I knew two people whose legs were weakened by a childhood bout of it.
I can't see where getting any disease "naturally" beats getting a vaccination for it.
1) What's the difference between a child who was immunized for chicken pox three years ago and a child who had chicken pox three years ago? Because, I'm fairly certain there is no difference as far as passing on the virus.
2) What's the difference between a child who was immunized in the last twenty days and a child who has had chicken pox in the last twenty days? Again, I don't think there is a major difference. Both are capable of passing on the disease to people who are at risk (not having antibodies, or an otherwise compromised immune system.) And neither is likely to put those who have been vaccinated at risk.
I think it's interesting that everyone here is jumping on those who choose not to have their children vaccinated, but I wonder how many of you lock your children in a bubble for six weeks after receiving a chicken pox vaccination or booster.