Is it time to consider compulsory vaccinations?

I'm glad to hear you can get unbundled vaccines since that has been one of the objections. I'll pass that on, thanks.

Oh come on, Faith, you got it in ya. All you got to do is caps lock your voice by YELLING INSTEAD OF TALKING. Which is puzzling, because there's no way they can be sure that not-vaccinating their kids is 100% safe. And yet that's the standard they're holding the vaccine to...Edited by Cat Sci, : No reason given.

Yes, I still have the bad habit of all caps. The thing is they don't suggest yelling to me, but I guess I have to remember that they do to others.I don't know if they can have any feeling for the real danger of the diseases, they must think that since they aren't all around us any more that they aren't a threat, and they do think the anecdotes about vaccination are convincing, what can I say. I guess I'll be reading a lot more of those anecdotes but to judge an anecdote really requires having independent information, such as Omni got from his brother about his nephew, and where am I going to get that?

From an epidemiological standpoint, why are you focusing on just the vaccine? Why not ask if the boys room was painted recently, or if the family bought a new car just before the coma? There are so many other things that happened other than vaccinations, so why focus on that? The question I would have is why any connection was made in the first place. What spurned the idea that vaccines cause autism, and is there anything to that claim?

Your story reminds me of an episode our family had with my grandmother. She had been using Afrin nosespray on a daily basis for decades. She was hooked on the stuff. Over time, she developed a heart rhythm condition where her heart would race uncontrollably and her blood pressure would spike. We kept telling her that the nosespray was probably part of the problem, and she assured us that she had brought it up with the doctor, and the doctor said it was fine.Ends up, she lied to us. We had to go behind her back and talk to her doctor. That doctor gave her one of the best tongue lashings of all time. She got off the Afrin, and much of her heart problems went with it. That might be something you could do. Talk to their family doc and have him deliver the tongue lashing.

As Omni pointed out, the obvious connection is with the viral disease that required putting the boy into an induced coma.My problem is that it looks like I'm going to have to slog through a bunch of anecdotes without a compass, and end up with no way to be any more convinced or convincing about vaccinations than those anecdotes to those who are convinced by them.Here's one argument I just got: Another website linked is thinktwice.com.So I'll read those and see if there's really any way to answer them, but the problem with anecdotes as I say above is that there usually isn't because that would take independent information that's not available. I'm not looking forward to this project.

And at this point, we part company because you finally get to the point of pretending that the issues you stated tentatively up till now have all been resolved. The state may well find that the measures required before getting around to compelling people to be vaccinated make the compulsion completely unnecessary and thus not allowable as the compelling interest will have vanished. Or the state might just have to take a different approach entirely.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

What these parents are ignoring is just how bad the disease is compared to the vaccine. The rate of encephalitis (i.e. an infection that affects the brain) for measles is 1 in 1,000. The rate of encephalitis caused by the vaccine is 1 in several million. We are talking at least 3 or 4 orders of magnitude difference between the risks of the disease and the risks related to the vaccine that prevents the disease. It really is a no brainer.CDC - Page Not Found The Page You Request Does Not Exist | The Encephalitis Society That is just one example. Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Stories are powerful.Keep in mind that of course these stories warranted investigation; every clinician relies on parents' observations. There have been many, many investigations: why are the folks who oppose vaccines still left with nothing but anecdotes?They often resort (and by "they" I mean the organized resistance to vaccines, the web site organizers, etc.) to conspiracy theories because they must: thousands of researchers, along with governments and corporations, in different countries, have joined this conspiracy because...well, Big Pharma money, I guess. None of them cared enough about children to blow the whistle--that's why they studied for many years to join a profession that at best will give them a decent middle-class life.It just doesn't hold water.The irony here is that modern vaccine paranoia came from a scientist in England who falsified data to attack bundled vaccines because he had a business interest in the development of unbundled vaccines.As for this:

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The people who say it's emotional have not bothered to look into why so many people are against vaccinations. Most pro vaccine people have never bothered to understand the other side, so they just think it's because of Jenny McCarthy etc. they don't know what the vaccine schedule looks like today, vs 20 years ago. They have never read any of the parents' personal stories of what happened to their kid(s) right after getting shot(s).

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Really? That's pretty offensive. I'm a father and grandfather, soon to be a great-grandfather. I poured over this material--all the things I supposedly don't know or never bothered to look at, I know, and I looked at--years ago. So have thousands of doctors and scientists who also have children and grandchildren.I feel the tremendous pathos of parents with autistic children. We want so much to find who is responsible for the terrible things that happen to our children in this world.All I ask of them is evidence. I respect their stories and their anguish, but those are not evidence.Without vaccines, many children will sicken or die. That's a fact. As I showed in the OP, we are now reaching low enough rates of vaccination to expose our children nationwide to an increased threat.As I said, I understand their pain and pathos, but it's going to take more than stories--especially stories contradicted by extensive research by skilled, caring scientists and doctors--to persuade me to expose my imminent great-grandchildren (or anyone's) to the diseases that haunted us for centuries. Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

There is actually a bit more going on than that. A quick perusal of the opinion shows the court repeatedly discussing a final recognizing a right of privacy that defeats bodily intrusion.Before pointing to language in the case, consider the following questions.What if the bullets had instead been embedded in the defendant? What obstacle would the state had encountered in trying to get the bullets? What if the bullets had instead been embedded in the a building wall of the victim's or some innocent, not involved person's house rather than in the defendant's body.I think it rather clear that in the latter case at least that the state could obtain the bullets with a warrant. If the defendant believed that the bullets were exculpatory and provided a proper basis to the court, the defendant would be equally successful in getting the bullets.So clearly there is something else going on here other treating a person's body as they would a wall . The defendant was unable to get a court order to retrieve the bullets. It's clear that there is something peculiar about the bullets being embedded in a body rather than a wall that makes a substantial difference. In what sense is such an examination a literal search and seizure? If it is not such a thing, why would the court use it for a comparison? Perhaps because search and seizure is not so literally interpreted.And as for whether the court was actually ruling on whether there was a right of privacy that protected against government intrusion into the body, perhaps this statement would be helpful if it could be found in the opinion:

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So, for guidance on the limitations on governmental intrusion into the privacy of the human body, we turn to those cases which have protected the bodies of criminal defendants from such intrusion.

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And if you follow the courts ruling to it's conclusion, the court provided a non-defendant with rights of the same scope as those accorded to a criminal defendant.Reinforced by the following:

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Therefore, since Mr. Killen has been charged with nothing his due process rights are those of a witness--whatever those may be. Therefore, this line of cases affords him a rather shaky ground on which to protect himself from the surgical onslaught proposed by the defendant.

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And most importantly, the court cited a California supreme court case thusly:

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The court noted that while some minor routine tests such as a blood test (People v. Superior Court (Hawkins) (1972) 6 Cal. 3d 757 [100 Cal.Rptr. 281, 493 P.2d 1145]) were acceptable, the Fourth Amendment's "particular solicitude" for "'personal dignity and privacy'" preclude any intrusion such as the prostate massage "nvolving as it did the most intimate of bodily functions, traditionally and universally regarded as private ...."

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Throughout the case, the court explicitly distinguishes the right it is recognizing from the right literally afforded by the fourth amendment. Edited by NoNukes, : add closing italics tag to fix quote box

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The court noted that while some minor routine tests such as a blood test (People v. Superior Court (Hawkins) (1972) 6 Cal. 3d 757 [100 Cal.Rptr. 281, 493 P.2d 1145]) were acceptable, the Fourth Amendment's "particular solicitude" for "'personal dignity and privacy'" preclude any intrusion such as the prostate massage "nvolving as it did the most intimate of bodily functions, traditionally and universally regarded as private ...."

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Unless you're arrested

I've been reading through those sites and my opinion at the moment is that the most deadly diseases are the ones to focus on to persuade in favor of vaccinations, but I'm having a little trouble deciding which those are. My first guess was diphtheria, whooping cough, smallpox and polio but the DPT shot is one of those identified as most dangerous. Need to do more reading about smallpox and polio shots. I do know of people who got the disease FROM those vaccinations but I think that was in the early years. Still, I need to read up more on them.The great majority of the horror stories about immunizations seem to be about those done in infancy or the first couple of years. Maybe this is an argument for waiting until later?Since I and all my siblings and everybody else I know from my generation survived measles, mumps and chicken pox without any ill effects, I don't really see a need for most people to be vaccinated against those. Am I wrong about that? And having the disease does confer solid immunity too. That's also one of the shots that is blamed for bad effects.I don't know of anyone who was immunized against encephalitis so I'm wondering how important that one is. One in a thousand with measles? Maybe something to think about there.

I've read a lot of the stories, so now I need to read the research, wherever it is.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Grrrr. duplicate. I meant to edit this.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Another way to do that is by limiting access to infected people. It actually turns out to be impossible to exclude unvaccinated people from every public place. Many vaccines cannot be administered at birth.