Is it time to consider compulsory vaccinations?

Heh! There was an old guy in Duncan, Oklahoma who had both feet amputated due to cancer. He had owned the Thom McAn store, and apparently loved to demonstrate to all the little kids and their mommies that, "no, it won't hurt you a bit! See my toes??"Anyway, after the amputations, he told new acquaintances, "I already have both feet in the grave!"Edited by Coragyps, : No reason given.

There's more to it than just contagious diseases ...Shingles (Herpes Zoster): Symptoms, Causes, Contagiousness, Vaccine, Diagnosis, and Treatment

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Shingles is most common in older adults and people who have weak immune systems because of stress, injury, certain medicines, or other reasons. Most people who get shingles will get better and will not get it again.

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Shingles occurs when the virus that causes chickenpox starts up again in your body. After you get better from chickenpox, the virus "sleeps" (is dormant) in your nerve roots. In some people, it stays dormant forever. In others, the virus "wakes up" when disease, stress, or aging weakens the immune system. Some medicines may trigger the virus to wake up and cause a shingles rash. It is not clear why this happens. But after the virus becomes active again, it can only cause shingles, not chickenpox.

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If you had chicken pox as a child, and undergo a weakening of your immune system as an adult you are at risk of getting shingles.There is an immunization to shingles you can get and I strongly advise it.I got shingles because my immune system was replaced by an autogenic transplant of precursor white cells after an intensive chemo treatment designed to basically kill all the white blood cells living in my body (and the follicular lymphoma cancerous white cells).This means that any anti-bodies I had previously had were eradicated (I had all kinds of immunization shots for those "childhood" diseases).It is very very painful.

An opinion which doesn't make the issue go away, does it? That's fine. You have the right to insist on that. However such a thing is not legally required. I also suspect that you don't routinely inspect the medical records of people who come to your house to install cable service, deliver UPS packages or pizza. You likely don't inspect the barber (if you use one) and probably not even your kids doctor nor his/her family members. For what it's worth, I agree with the importance of having every person vaccinated. But that need doesn't trump the constitution. Generally speaking, case law does not support religious objections to current vaccination laws. But that is because they are currently associated with things like entry into public school. States are free to drop the religious exemptions if they choose to do that. But states do not, and probably cannot regulate your ability to go out in public without a measles vaccine.

Correct, States can do that and they should do that. And yes, of course situations can and do trump the Constitution. It is just one of three sources for Laws of the Land.I should not have to check immunization for folk that do work for me although down here it is a real serious concern. Just a few miles south of me diseases seldom seen recently in the US are endemic. The government should already be doing that since it has a duty and obligation for the public weal.We need to expand entry into public schools to include use of public transportation, entry into public buildings, use of public facilities, getting a drivers license or work permit.And I don't think there is any issue of "Body Integrity". It's just a non-issue in this case.

Vaccines check the replication of virus in your system. Your bodily fluids do not anything like the population of virus that a sick person would have. Measles is transmitted by flying droplets of body fluids.A person who does not get vaccinated is largely protected by the fact that there just isn't much of the virus present in the wild because everyone else is essentially virus free. Also the low population reduces the rate of mutations.

I don't trust you enough to let you mess around with the 4th amendment. You are going to richard it up. Why don't you practice on the 2nd amendment and we'll see how that works out .

More irrelevancies.As societies become increasingly mobile we bring in a unending supply of viruses. This is particularly true down here right now. Fortunately many of the current flood of refugees here are getting vaccinated as a condition of them continuing to enter the country.

We could start by reading it: However loosely I interpret it, I can't see how it means that people have a right to deny medical care to their children. And since in extreme cases people have been jailed for doing just that, apparently the courts don't see it that way either.

The issue is directly in the way unless you think you can force vaccinate people without putting foreign substances into their bodies. What you think absent having done your homework does not make a bit of difference. You cannot check the immunization of most folks who do work for you even if you wanted to. You have zero ability, for example, to find out if someone is HIV positive. The best you can do is turn down service. But you don't even do that. I'm the only person on earth you've ever insisted show you his shot record before he provides a service at your house. They don't do that. And in fact the government has very limited power to do that.

Yes that's where we would start. But in common law countries like the US and the UK, the law does not end with the reading of the literal text of the constitution or any statute.Can you show me where the right to an abortion exists in the constitution? Can you show me the exclusionary principle or any of its exceptions in the text of the 4th or 5th amendment? If a government hospital only pretended to treat you for syphilis because they wanted to follow the course of the disease, would such a thing violate any of your constitutional rights? Which ones?Has any person ever been jailed for not vaccinating their child or is the child just not allowed into public school. Yes you can be jailed and punished for not treating your child once they have the measles, but you cannot be punished for not vaccinating a healthy child for the same disease.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I think we agree on all of that.But as far as rights go, children have exactly the same rights as adults and we allow parents to foist their belief systems on children without regard to how stupid those belief systems are.

What little I have done of research into this, very little and not recently but some reading here and there, gave me the impression that it's mostly between parents on the one hand and the scientific establishment on the other. I can't just dismiss a bunch of mothers who are certain the vaccination affected their child, even if they are supposedly the "ignorant" ones. Perhaps some children are especially sensitive to whatever is in them and something should be done to try to identify those.I don't know the names that have been mentioned here as the supposed cause of the fear of vaccinations, McCarthy and Wakefield, it doesn't seem to go back to them from what I've heard, but to a lot of mothers discussing the problem on the internet. Sure, not a very reliable sounding source, but again, it's hard to argue with a mother who knows her child has changed.I've also heard that some would like to see fewer diseases targeted in one shot. I'm not sure what the problem is with that but they connect it with the problems somehow. Like go back to the shots we used to get, target the deadly diseases we were so happy to see ended, and leave the others for later -- the measles and mumps and chicken pox? -- which children normally survive. I don't know if that's a good idea or not but it's what I've heard.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I accept that you cannot dismiss those mothers. But the rational thing to do would be exactly that. Those mothers have no way of knowing what affected their child. Not sure why we need to take that thought any further.

For those who are interested, the following are links to some relevant constitutional law regarding the fourth amendment. I don't want to drag down the rest of the discussion with this stuff.Case regarding retrieving bullets from a living person to use as evidence People v. Browning (1980) :: :: California Court of Appeal Decisions :: California Case Law :: California Law :: US Law :: JustiaMaking Medical Decisions for the Profoundly Mentally Disabled - Norman L. Cantor - Google Booksgeneral discussion of the 4th amendment and bodily intrusion.

That's not much of an argument. If I said that the Eighth Amendment means that Congress should give everyone a pet duck, would you be happy if I argued for it on the basis that people have successfully found constitutional rationales for other things? Well the title of this thread suggests that the answer would be "no" 'cos of us not having compulsory vaccine laws.However, people can be and have been penalized for failing to take purely prophylactic measures against harm: seatbelt laws, for example, and laws requiring motorcycle helmets. A fortiori if they have no right not to protect themselves against harm, they have none to prevent their children from being protected against harm.