I feel it’s time to repeat my refrain: people who fail to vaccinate their children are unpatriotic. They should leave this country if they are not willing to take steps that are necessary to protect fellow citizens, including other children.
I guess the WHO is not a reputable source for anti-vaxxers…
As for polio, it would be great if no country used the live vaccine. I remember preferring it as a parent because it wasn’t a shot and didn’t cause pain, but it’s problematic.
We are so close to eradicating polio, it’s just very frustrating.
Hunt, tell a certain politician, maybe he’ll throw them out with the illegal immigrants. While you’re at it, better throw out all the women whose “personal health choice” never even gave their child a chance at life. Regardless of circumstances, of course. Why should those matter? /sarcasm
People who fail to immunize their children are inpatriotic because they make the country’s population vulnerable to easily accessible biological agents… We are not talking smallpox here. Or anthrax that has been weaponized.
@Albert69, you seriously need to check your sources. Don’t trust some website just because it reports thirdhand that “a study from the 1990’s” or “studies in New Zealand, Germany and Hong Kong” report something to be true. Go back to the original source and assess it for scientific rigor. For instance, I traced back the German study cited in your source and found that in reality it was simply a survey handed out by homeopathist Andreas Bachmair (listed as “Bachair” in the source your source cites). It was not a double blind, or in fact any kind of scientific study. He handed out surveys to people with healthy kids who already believed their kids were healthier for not being vaccinated and who already distrusted traditional medicine (and thus were less likely to show up at the doctor’s office when their kid had an ear infection, mild asthma or other illness). This information was compared to information on disease incidence from the German national health service, so Bachmair was comparing apples to oranges.
I obviously believe in science and support vaccines, being educated (and alive in 2016). 
However, I do think it could be a legitimate topic for discussion: how much bodily integrity should be maintained in the face of a public health “need” or even a direct life savings for someone else. I was thinking about two potentially similar cases:
- Abortion - I'm pro-choice, partly because I believe that the woman's body is her own, and even if another potential human could benefit from parasitically using her body, that should not be mandated. (The other parts of my belief depend on the fact that I don't think an early embryo is actually a human, and then also on other public policy reasons in terms of results of restricting women's health options more broadly and its implications.)
But I find myself wondering, is forcing an injection on someone analogous to forcing a pregnancy on her? I must be making a logical mistake, and I’d welcome more analysis.
- Organ donation - it's certainly the case that a kidney, or even some blood, could potentially be life-saving for someone else, and yet no one seriously thinks that anyone should be legislated into giving up pieces of their body to save someone else just because the other person needs it, or even in a public health way, lots of people need blood.
…Are the differences mostly about the lack of downside for receiving a vaccine? Are they about the upside to the vaccine recipient in terms of his/her own immunity? Is it considered a more legitimate public health demand on citizenry at large, to prevent disease for potentially many people, than to cure it for the few (e.g. with blood/organs)?
Greenwitch, if everyone in those countries used the live oral polio vaccine, there would be no cases of polio. Sadly, there is not enough vaccine or people can’t get it for one or another reason. But that said, this is what WHO says:
Shocker that anti-vaxxers are incredibly disingenuous when quoting “science” to back up their claims. (rolls eyes).
@fretfulmother Organ donation and pregnancy termination are individual benefit/risk scenarios. They are not public health issues. The worldwide vaccination program is for the benefit and betterment of the world. It underlies economic development.
What Brantly said.
Although I could make a good case for all eligible individuals becoming organ donors upon death for the common good, that’s beyond the scope of this thread and we’ve been told to stay on message
I’m so glad that people on this thread are willing to endanger our lives in the name of pseudoscience. Ironically I know one, and I believe two, of those posters call themselves pro life. I guess for some, we only need to protect “life” until birth.
Sue22 covered the polio claim well, but the gist is: VAPP (vaccine associated poliomyelitis) was always seen in a very low endemic level. That’s bc some polio virus is excreted in the stool of vaccinated people (mainly babies). When the general polio incidence became low enough (BECAUSE VACCINES WORK) that the wild-type polio (the kind you can catch) had a lower incidence than VAPP, then it behooved us in the US to use IPV which has no chance of VAPP. In 3rd world countries, the ease of OPV and the higher incidence of endemic wild-type polio made/makes it more efficacious to vaccinate kids with OPV, knowing that the few case of VAPP will persist, but the incidence of polio will decrease and polio will be on its way to being eradicated (Rotary International is one of the prime movers here). You can vaccinate lots of kids easily with Oral vaccine. Once the incidence gets low enough that VAPP is the main cause of polio, then those parts of the world will switch to IPV also. So to say that the vaccine causes more polio than polio omg omg – that is not the whole truth.
@jaylynn is correct. USA switched to IPV (inactivated polio virus) when the incidence of community-acquired polio was next to nothing.
I kind of like that Albert hangs out here learning how to do research properly.
Dr. Steven L. Shafer of Stanford University, editor-in-chief of Anesthesia & Analgesia, comments: “Vaccines work. Failure to get vaccinated results in preventable deaths. All physicians have a responsibility to educate their patients about the role of science in modern medicine,” Shafer adds. “It is critical to counter the pseudoscientific nonsense about vaccines promulgated on the Internet.”
Failing to get vaccinated is unpatriotic in the same way draft-dodging is.
I’m not so sure. If you successfully avoid the draft, (1) you’re not harming yourself, and (2) you’re only harming one other person (the one who is drafted in your place). If you don’t get vaccinated, you harm yourself by increasing your risk of getting a vaccine-preventable disease, and if you do catch that disease, you could harm multiple people by passing it on to them.
Maybe someone can answer this question: How do states justify requiring a tetanus vaccination for school enrollment? Tetanus is not spread from person to person, right?
Well, tetanus is usually given as part of DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis). Pertussis (whooping cough) is highly contagious and can be deadly for babies. The coughing last weeks and people have been known to break ribs due to the severity of the coughing.