There was some discussion on CNN today about this topic. Unfortunately I couldn't follow it since I'm at work and the volume was muted, but I found these online:

Quote :

"Last fall, a school superintendent in Westfield, N.Y., threatened to take a 7th grader into state custody because her mom refused to have her immunized against Hepatitis B – a disease usually spread by drug users and the sexually promiscuous. The girl had a history of bad vaccine reactions, but the superintendent refused to grant a waiver."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24191

Quote :

"Merck & Co. is helping bankroll efforts to pass state laws requiring girls as young as 11 or 12 to receive the drugmaker’s new vaccine against the sexually transmitted cervical-cancer virus."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16891832

Quote :

"By using an executive order that bypassed the Legislature, Republican Gov. Rick Perry _ himself a conservative _ on Friday avoided such opposition, making Texas the first state to mandate that schoolgirls get vaccinated against the virus. Beginning in September 2008, girls entering the sixth grade will have to receive Gardasil, Merck & Co.’s new vaccine against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV. Perry also directed state health authorities to make the vaccine available free to girls 9 to 18 who are uninsured or whose insurance does not cover vaccines. In addition, he ordered that Medicaid offer Gardasil to women ages 19 to 21."

http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2007/02/05/800/

I'm not sure that vaccinating women against STDs will necessarialy promote promiscuity, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am with government mandated vaccination. Has this happened in the past (Polio? Smallpox?) or is the a newer phenomenon?

11/15/2007 12:05:02 PM

And people think liberals are bad...

Conservative - people who are unconditionally for smaller government except when

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 12:10 PM. Reason : ]

11/15/2007 12:10:08 PM

Quote :

"Has this happened in the past (Polio? Smallpox?) or is the a newer phenomenon?"

I think that for some time now it's been mandatory to have certain vaccinations before you could attend public school, and I should think many private schools have similar measures. Could be wrong about all of that, though.

At the very least, that's the sort of measure I'd support -- you still have an opt-out, albeit not a very convenient one. Schools are just too huge a potential disease vector to ignore.

The cervical cancer thing, though, is a slightly different issue, since the cancer-linked virus that the vaccine works on can only be spread through sex.

On the one hand, I favor requiring it at a young age because it's liable to be useless very soon after the girl starts having sex -- I forget the statistic, but supposedly some huge percentage of the population has the disease, and in general it doesn't do anything except give chicks cancer. The whole thing is still relatively obscure enough that requiring it might be the only way to get many people to think of it.

On the other hand, the disease's communicability is limited to intercourse. This ain't smallpox, where you give it to everyone around you merely by your presence. So for this reason I'm inclined to think that it's not a sufficient risk to justify the questionable action of mandating vaccines.

11/15/2007 12:45:33 PM

Here's the thing - why do we mandate vaccines? Because some diseases are highly communicable and pose a public health problem - think, as the previous poster mentions, of smallpox.

But other diseases like Hep-B and HPV aren't highly communicable. They're bodily-fluid-borne diseases that are the direct result of intimate contact. Their spread is directly linked to behavioral choices, not simply due to random exposure. So why force people to get them, other than "for their own good?"

Again, this doesn't mean it's not smart to get them, or that efforts shouldn't be made to encourage people to get them, but where is the compelling logic to force them to get them? It's not like HPV is the equivalent of Typhoid Mary or anything.

11/15/2007 12:54:06 PM

Well put.

11/15/2007 12:55:29 PM

Y'all missed the best one: it's a big controversy here in DC right now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/13/AR2007111301408.html

Quote :

"The parents of more than 2,300 Prince George's County students who failed to get needed vaccinations could face fines of $50 a day and up to 10 days in jail if their children do not meet the state's immunization requirements, county officials said yesterday. The threat of legal action is a last resort after months in which Prince George's has struggled to get its 131,000 students immunized for chicken pox and hepatitis B, as mandated by the state. More than 2,300 students have not been immunized and have been barred from attending schools, almost two months after a Sept. 20 deadline for meeting the requirement. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but it's got to get done," Prince George's State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey (D) said at a news conference in Upper Marlboro. "I'm willing to move forward with legal action.""

11/15/2007 1:19:16 PM

So, I know I'm being picky, but:

Quote :

"They're bodily-fluid-borne diseases "

HPV is transmitted through skin to skin contact. So, even if you're not technically fucking, you may be able to get it... even through something as silly as sharing bathing suits, although it's pretty rare to get it outside of a sexual situation.
/pedantry

11/15/2007 1:48:42 PM

A required chicken pox vaccine? What if you've already had chicken pox? Get the vaccine anyway?

11/15/2007 1:53:06 PM

Quote :

""By using an executive order that bypassed the Legislature, Republican Gov. Rick Perry _ himself a conservative _ on Friday avoided such opposition, making Texas the first state to mandate that schoolgirls get vaccinated against the virus."

FCUK THAT BASTARD.

11/15/2007 2:03:29 PM

i don't see what's so wrong about requiring people to be vaccinated against disease... it makes sense to want the public to be as healthy as possible.

11/15/2007 2:20:49 PM

Quote :

"I favor requiring it at a young age because it's liable to be useless very soon after the girl starts having sex -- I forget the statistic, but supposedly some huge percentage of the population has the disease, and in general it doesn't do anything except give chicks cancer."

The vaccine is called Gardisil (sp?) and it prevents 4 specific types of HPV, the four most dangerous that have been found to cause cervical cancer. Yes, 80% of sexually active women have had HPV at one time in their life, but most of the cases go away. Once a woman has contracted one form of HPV, then she can still get the vaccine to prevent the four worst kinds.

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 2:22 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2007 2:22:33 PM

Part of this is obviously driven my the pharmaceutical companies, who are looking forward and realizing their profits are about to start shrinking in the near future, and we all know that money speaks louder than science.

I just can't see that mandating immunizations and mandating school attendance cannot violate the right to be secure in your person. Yes schools are huge disease vectors, but if everyone who wants to be vaccinated is, then it is up to the unvaccinated to deal with the consequences. On the flip side of the coin, those who accept vaccinations are left to deal with the potential consequences of that as well.

11/15/2007 2:24:11 PM

Quote :

"it is up to the unvaccinated to deal with the consequences."

no. the more common a disease is, the more likely it will mutate into a variety that is harder to control.

11/15/2007 2:46:47 PM

Quote :

"HPV is transmitted through skin to skin contact. So, even if you're not technically fucking, you may be able to get it... even through something as silly as sharing bathing suits, although it's pretty rare to get it outside of a sexual situation. /pedantry"

Fair enough. Still, I mean, outside of situations of intimate contact, including exchanging undergarments (which is really just not a good idea to begin with), it's not in the class of "highly communicable diseases."

Quote :

"i don't see what's so wrong about requiring people to be vaccinated against disease... it makes sense to want the public to be as healthy as possible."

It's one thing to say, "You're a danger to others by hanging around in public without being vaccinated." You're a smallpox vector - a public health threat. But using the logic of making people as healthy as possible - well, what's to prevent the government from using the force of law to force obese folks to shed a few pounds? It's extreme logic, but where do you draw the line, if the government can mandate whatever it wants so long as it meets the very low threshold of making people healthier?

Again - preventing people from causing a public health problem is one thing - we don't need another Polio outbreak. But why should the government force people to be healthy (especially when it's already in their own interest to do it on their own)?

11/15/2007 5:10:01 PM

I refused the anthrax vaccine when I was in the reserves. I told them I wasn't going to be part of this Tuskeegee experiment.

11/15/2007 6:28:21 PM

Just wait until a few kids die or suffer adverse reactions (happens as a tiny fraction normally so it is only a matter of time) who would not have received it otherwise. You'll have national outcry, a lawsuit or two, and then the laws will probably be repealed.

11/15/2007 6:32:41 PM

Quote :

"I just can't see that mandating immunizations and mandating school attendance cannot violate the right to be secure in your person."

well, technically, you don't have to send your kids to public school...

11/15/2007 6:53:51 PM

No, but you have to send them to some schooling in most states. If you can't afford private schooling, you're essentially forced into this program.

Quote :

"I refused the anthrax vaccine"

No longer an option. Its mandatory.

11/15/2007 6:58:10 PM

^ I don't disagree, I was just saying that the "logic" behind such a plan being legal is that no one has to go to public schools, that's all

11/15/2007 7:02:51 PM

Quote :

""Merck & Co. is helping bankroll efforts to pass state laws requiring girls as young as 11 or 12 to receive the drugmaker’s new vaccine against the sexually transmitted cervical-cancer virus.""

Kinda reminds me of Boss Jim Black wanting to require kids to get eye exams before being allowed to attend school. "How can a child learn if he can't see?" cried Black.
The fact that Black was being bank-rolled by the eye-doctor lobby had nothing to do with it... It was for the children.

11/15/2007 10:16:31 PM

it sounds to me like some politicians are going to be buying/bought new summer homes.

In other news, the governor of texas also passed a law requiring all teen boys to buy xbox360 because it keeps them busy and off the streets.

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 10:38 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2007 10:37:45 PM

Quote :

"es, 80% of sexually active women have had HPV at one time in their life"

Sounds like a highly communicative disease to me!

At least no one has beaten the "if you give her the HPV vaccine it'll just encourage her to fuck" dead horse in this thread.

11/15/2007 10:50:57 PM

Look, you're not going to get it by someone just coughing on you, so it's a little different than the class of say, Polio and Smallpox, wouldn't you say?

11/15/2007 11:00:19 PM

i'm in favor of legally mandated vacations

11/16/2007 7:46:00 AM

you can get rid of HPV so pretty much every female has it.

and men dont know they have it they just carry it.

so pretty much everyone has it but only women are have problems with it.

has this already been covered?



[Edited on November 16, 2007 at 8:13 AM. Reason : !!]

11/16/2007 8:10:56 AM

Oh we back!

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/13/thanks-anti-vaxxers-you-just-brought-back-measles-in-nyc.html

Can anyone see legally mandated vaccinations in our lifetime in the US?

3/14/2014 9:49:53 AM

Not that I don't think the who MMR/Autism thing is stupid, but that article is a bunch of hysteria as well. I mean, even with 189 cases last year (per the CDC reference in the article), if you tripled that this year, we'd still be way way way under the ~40 thousand cases in the dark ages of 1990 (http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/graph-us-measles-cases) and even the CDC notes that the median number of annual outbreaks is 4 (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6236a2.htm). The fact is, vaccines are useful, and people avoiding vaccines because OMG TEH AUTISM are not making a smart choice, but pants shitting hysteria like in that article isn't going to solve the issue either.

3/14/2014 10:31:33 AM

^^ they already are, there are just too many exemptions.

I wish there was a better way to stop anti-vaccination misinformation, the press is incapable because they always make it a false equivalence so viewers think there is still a debate about the issue. Most anti-vaccination propaganda is spread via the internet, and imnot sure how you could police that.

3/14/2014 10:53:39 AM

Quote :

"they already are, there are just too many exemptions."

Yeah, but when the mandate boils down to "You're required to be vaccinated before you enroll in public school, unless you don't want to, in which case you don't have to", then it's not really mandatory.

3/14/2014 3:08:44 PM

The key term for this thread is herd immunity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

Basically, if enough of a population gets immunized against an infectious disease, then if a random non-immunized person in the population contracts it (usually by reason of having a bad reaction to vaccines or just not being old enough to get the vaccine yet, increasingly because their parents are fucktards who listen to Jenny McCarthy or the Birchers at WorldNetDaily), that infected person will have a low chance of encountering another non-immunized person to spread the disease to.

This is why we have public vaccination campaigns, something about that "right to life" that the Right likes to bring up in the abortion debate and nowhere else.

3/15/2014 6:50:01 AM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/14/kristin-cavallari-vaccinations_n_4965047.html

3/15/2014 8:26:42 PM

^^ I could make a similar quip about the "right to choose" that democrats trout out in abortion discussions and nowhere else

3/15/2014 11:48:09 PM

Actually they bring out the idea in many other contexts, but anyway, it's not like a woman with an unwanted pregnancy makes it any harder or easier on other women with unwanted pregnancies by terminating or refusing to terminate that pregnancy; there is no analogue to "herd immunity" in the abortion debate.

(However, a similar concept known as "adverse selection" explains why people are generally required to purchase certain types of insurance for their homes, cars, and businesses, and increasingly, health insurance; Democrats generally support this infringement on the general "freedom to choose.")

3/16/2014 12:23:24 AM

hah, I said "trout out"

and I don't care how you rationalize it. The fact is, "right to choose" is a euphemism in that they don't truly want a "right to choose" in every possible situation where a choice is involved. It's merely a way to frame the position in a way that allows ignoring what is actually going on, in the same way that "right to life" does. The point? That bringing up "right to life" and applying it across the board in non-abortion contexts is just as stupid as bringing up "right to choose" and applying it in non-abortion contexts. I'm looking at you, Rand Paul.

3/16/2014 1:02:40 AM

Quote :

"and I don't care how you rationalize it. The fact is, "right to choose" is a euphemism in that they don't truly want a "right to choose" in every possible situation where a choice is involved."

On the flip side of this, "right to life" is a euphemism in that you don't truly want to promote and protect life in every possible situation where life is involved (mandatory vaccinations). You just want a baby to pop out of a woman and that's about it.

3/16/2014 1:05:00 PM

Quote :

"^^ I could make a similar quip about the "right to choose""

but children aren't making the choice, you are saying that infants and children should be allowed to make the decision about their own vaccinations? How does that work?

[Edited on March 16, 2014 at 3:06 PM. Reason : .]

3/16/2014 3:01:45 PM

^^ isn't that what I said?

^ I shouldn't respond to you, cause you're nothing but a troll, but in the case of abortion, the unborn also aren't getting a right to choose, so why are you suddenly changing it to the children in the case of vaccinations? At least it's more logically consistent to consider the choice of the parent in both cases. Either way, it's stupid, because "right to choose" is just a shorthand way of saying "right to slaughter the unborn, usually in barbaric fashion", in the same way that "right to life" only means "right to let an unborn child life". The shorthand statements are only applicable in the context of abortion, so comparing it to anything is stupid.

3/16/2014 3:31:50 PM

I also guess "freedom of speech" is a euphemism because the First Amendment has been held to not be absolute.

3/16/2014 4:34:50 PM

Quote :

"I shouldn't respond to you, cause you're nothing but a troll"

Quote :

""right to choose" is just a shorthand way of saying "right to slaughter the unborn, usually in barbaric fashion""

lol

3/16/2014 4:35:23 PM

Hpv vaccination is more to eliminate that cancer risk (for men and women) than to stop stds.

3/16/2014 10:25:53 PM

Its more than about hpv, what about the MMR vaccine? What about the regular vaccine schedule that has been responsible for the complete recession and almost disappearance of some serious, life threatening diseases in the United States?

3/17/2014 7:27:23 AM

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/03/13/child-vaccine-bill-draws-big-crowd-at-state-capitol/

Colorado looking to tighten the exemption process and make it harder for parents to opt out their crotch fruit.

Kudos.

3/26/2014 3:04:48 PM

good.

3/26/2014 3:21:58 PM

Vaccination rates in some rich parts of L.A. as low as those in South Sudan

(Outbreaks of measles and other good stuff have taken place in those exact parts.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/wealthy-la-schools-vaccination-rates-are-as-low-as-south-sudans/380252/

Oh, and California just passed a law making vaccinations mandatory regardless of personal beliefs.

5/10/2016 6:27:08 PM

If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one time massive shots that a small child cannot take - AUTISM.

---- quick reminder that the GOP candidate for President said this. He either still thinks shots lead to autism or thinks Autism is a person this quote can be attributed to.

5/11/2016 11:22:59 AM

^^Good debate topic regarding personal freedom vs how that freedom affects the world at large.

Same as with the Apple vs the Fed debate, I'm torn. I think parents who don't vaccinate are stupid, but at the same time I feel like they have that right to be stupid. Yet, their stupidity potentially puts my daughter and many others at risk.

How bout this? If you choose not to vaccinate your child, you must homeschool. Or we can create some magnet schools for NoVac kids.

5/11/2016 12:05:48 PM

Even if they homeschool, they'll cause an outbreak at the park. Recall, one of the recent outbreaks happened at Disney Land.

If we're going to use ostracism to increase vaccination, it could need to be a full lockdown. Which is possible, make the unvaccinated banned from all parks, malls, grocery stores, and theme parks. All this is going to do is force the unvaccinated to coalesce into areas where they are tolerated, making those areas breeding grounds for the disease and a bomb just waiting to go off.

So, the issue is herd immunity. If the vaccine causes a low immunity rate plus cannot be taken by everyone, then health officials will crunch the numbers and determine if the community has enough immunity to prevent an outbreak. If not, society needs to clamp down. But at some point, ostracism might not be enough. State governments have the right to mandate vaccination and should.

5/12/2016 11:27:25 AM

Quote :

"Yet, their stupidity potentially puts my daughter and many others at risk."

Not to mention their own children.

5/12/2016 12:26:11 PM

Yes but their children and what they do with them are none of my business. Except when they don't vaccinate, get my child sick, and then it does become my business.

5/12/2016 12:30:26 PM

Quote :

"Vaccination rates in some rich parts of L.A. as low as those in South Sudan "

How are they compared to your home country of Pakistan?

5/12/2016 12:32:53 PM