[ghshephard]

There is relatively good science that demonstrates, in a well vaccinated population, that you are endangering your child's life by having them vaccinated for some diseases.

Vaccinations aren't without risk (though, clearly, autism is not one of those risks)- and, as long as all the other parents get their children vaccinated, your child can take a pass on some vaccines and come out ahead from a mortality perspective.

With that said, from a _societal_ perspective, it's imperative that parent's put their child's life at this (minor) risk so that the overall mortality rate goes down.

Don't be so quick to judge the parent as "unfit", though your comment about being a danger to the community does, in fact, hold.

And, perhaps we should be a little less quick to suggest the solution to other parents not doing what we want them to do is to have "CPS take the kids away after multiple warnings."

There is a cost to freedom, and sometimes it means that we have to let parents makes the call on these grey areas, even if it offends our own personal rational models of how the world should work. Vaccines are clearly not as cut and dry as something like a life-saving blood transfusion or surgery for appendicitis, in which I would suggest that there is an imperative to over-rule the parent should they decline treatment of their children.

[Retric]

Unfortunately, we don't currently bring up the parents of children who die from lack of vaccination on negligent homicide charges in large part because of your line of reasoning. Parents are in no way equipped to make informed decisions about vaccination, and giving them the option is a horribly bad idea.

Globally there is a huge unvaccinated population http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2729_134/ai_n... all it takes is one passenger to bring something back and suddenly you end up with a large number of dead children. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1291987...

PS: Because it's often local doctors that accept this Anti-Vaccination bullshit small locations often lose their herd immunity. It's one thing to randomly replace 1/100,000 vaccinations with an inert substance it's another for 10+% of the children in a small area to avoid vaccination.

[ghshephard]

I think it's important that you realize I agree with you on the fundamental issues of whether we need to have 100% coverage on vaccinations - that is absolutely my belief, and those who don't think that should be the case, should go visit the third world where there isn't 100% coverage, and see how childhood diseases ravage the population. In the first world, we've gotten uses to a standard of living, sometimes not realizing how it came about (Clean Water, Vaccinations, Public Health Systems) - we take it for granted.

I'm just hoping that while you see how we agree on that topic, that we perhaps should have a little bit more consideration or respect for the role of a parent, in determining what is done to their children, from the perspective of vaccination (and by extension, education, religion).

I'd rather we ensure that all parents vaccinate their children through enlightened understanding of why it's important, rather than because some third-party believes they aren't equipped to make informed decisions about vaccination and doesn't give them the choice. (Excepting, of course, unusual circumstances where you have a pandemic underway and there is immediate and significant threat to the populace from unvaccinated individuals - in that scenario, Civil Health overrides personal choice and you get vaccinated (adults and children) whether you like it or not) - but that's a rare scenario, usually the one at risk from a missing vaccination is the one missing the vaccination.

[Opie_taylor]

If vaccination really works, then it's only the unvaccinated that will be affected.

[Retric]

People are not vaccinated at birth, so even with 100% effective vaccination really young children are still at risk. However, the reality is vaccinations while effective are not perfect so there is are range protection. AKA, Some poeple while at lower risk of infection can still get sick with prolonged exposure.

PS: A fire resistant couch save lives dispute the fact they can still burn in a hot enough fire, the benefit is focused on small ignition sources aka a spark or cigarette not a kiln.

[drstrangevibes]

right so we vaccinate even though theres a low chance of contracting a disease, a significant chance that the vaccination will cause side effects and a chance that it might not work anyway. Makes sense to me!

[Retric]

low chance of contracting a disease

EX: Just the M in MMR prevents ~1/2 million people from getting sick each and every year. The benefit of measles vaccination in preventing illness, disability, and death has been well-documented. The first 20 years of licensed measles vaccination in the U.S. prevented an estimated 52 million cases of the disease, 17,400 cases of mental retardation, and 5,200 deaths.[10] During 1999–2004, a strategy led by the World Health Organization and UNICEF led to improvements in measles vaccination coverage that averted an estimated 1.4 million measles deaths worldwide.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Measles_US_1944-2007_inset...

Vaccinations prevent well over 50,000 deaths per year in the US alone along with a large number of vary serious side effects. On an individual basis the lifetime chance of infection is still higher than you might think and only increases as more people avoid vaccination. If we where talking about an adult taking the risks for themselves that's one things, but we are talking about making the choice for someone else as well increasing the overall risk to society.

[JoeAltmaier]

That is probably true, but also a selfish viewpoint. There's something called "enlightened self-interest" where you do something risky to yourself to help the community.

If vaccination were only about your own health, then your conclusion is valid. But its also about those you will infect should you get the disease.

I understand a parent making selfish decisions about their child - in fact that's a defining characteristic of a parent. Just understand that its not always morally defensible. Or scientifically. Or logically.

[davidw]

> in a well vaccinated population, that you are endangering your child's life by having them vaccinated for some diseases.

I wonder what those risks are like compared to, say, driving your child around town on a somewhat regular basis.

[nlogn]

"as long as all the other parents get their children vaccinated, your child can take a pass on some vaccines and come out ahead from a mortality perspective."

This is true, of course, but who decides which kids should get the benefit of reduced risk? If it's not ok for everyone to skip out on vaccines, it should be ok for noone (unless we can figure out ahead of time which kids are vulnerable).

[dhimes]

When things evolve along a bit and the pseudo-science hysteria dies down, we may be faced with the following question: Who gets to decide which children shall be saved because the rest of the herd is vaccinated, and which shall be forced to risk vaccination for the good of the herd? Perhaps we should do it by lottery, like when we decide who must go to fight in wars and who gets to stay home.

[luigi]

Can you please post a link to the "good science" that demonstrates your claim?

[MoreMoschops]

Here's a CDC page on it:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00046738.htm

As you'll see, it discusses various studies and provides links to papers examining various cases in which people have had an adverse side-effect to a vaccine.

Please, everyone, no comments about how that may be true but what about this and that and the other; the poster asked for a link, here it is.

[stonemetal]

It is fairly well known that the flu vaccine uses eggs in its production, and that people allergic to eggs shouldn't get a flu vaccine. Is it really so far fetched to think that something similar might happen with the vaccines given to children?

[anthonyb]

Yep, that's the kicker - as long as everyone else gets their kids vaccinated. Does the "endangering your child's life" part count the risk of a major epidemic due to other parents making the same decision?

If everyone else is refusing to vaccinate, that's exactly when you should vaccinate, because your child is much more likely to catch chickenpox or the measles with a whole bunch of unvaccinated kids running around.

[fat_tony]

I'm new here, but thank your for teaching me a better viewpoint.

[logjam]

To be taken seriously, you are going to have to provide a citation to support your claim that "there is relatively good science that....you are endangering your child's life by having them vaccinated for some diseases." If you are talking about events with a probability of getting hit by lightning, then please say that happens to be the level of "danger" you are talking about. (The risk for an adverse allergic event like anaphylaxis after a hep B injection...regardless of whether the anaphylaxis is causally linked to the vaccination or not...is about the same risk as being struck by lightning, 1:700,000).

Someone posted a link below to a CDC summary of adverse effects from vaccinations. They describe other rare events which are orders of magnitude less likely than your child being killed in traffic on the way to school in the morning. If you want to argue that sending children to school endangers their lives, you can certainly find statistical evidence for children being killed on school buses...and by lightning strikes on the way to school, choking on hot dogs, etc.

In every instance I am aware of, the risks of a serious adverse event from a vaccine is orders of magnitude lower than these other dangers to which parents routinely (and unthinkingly) expose their children.

Please tell us exactly at what level this "good science" you've found somewhere <b>quantifies</b> this "endangering of" our children's lives, and the causal link(s) of this mortality to the vaccine.

At that point, we can compare them to lightning strikes etc, and most importantly, compare them against the well known and demonstrably associated common mortality and morbidity that has accompanied failure to vaccinate.

There may be much longer-term benefits to vaccination. Children vaccinated against polio and hep B, for example, appear to have a lower incidence leukemia (ALL), as well as all cancers combined.

http://www.pediatricsupersite.com/view.aspx?rid=80272