Should Immunizations be compulsory?

[[Desolate Divine]]

What are your views on the current issue of measles reappearing due to lack of immunizations? Do you believe immunizations are needed, or that they do more harm than good?

[ray_quazaa]

Clarification: "vaccinations are needed" and "vaccinations should be compulsory" are different.

Yes, vaccinations are needed and that they do much more good than harm. But, no. I don't think they should be mandatory in the way people think.

Mandatory is so hard to achieve in the US. You can't outlaw non vaccination... It just isn't consistent with the way we have viewed the constitution.

In my view, the option for non vaccination should come at extremely high costs. Pay a large, on going, penalty for making it risky for other kids to be near you.

[[Desolate Divine]]

Yeah I will admit I did word that badly.

Vaccinations are one thing that I am all for. I have step family who don't vaccinate their kids. Yet I heard their mum say to one of the kids "Don't drink coke zero, it will give you cancer". I kid you not, she seriously believed that.

Vaccinations are a luxury we are lucky to have in the western world. The fact that diseases like polio have been wiped out because of them should be proof enough that they work. I cannot understand why people are so skeptical of them when the science makes it clear.

The way I see it, they are heavily needed. There are people out there with weakened immune systems, due to disease or other factors that stop the immunization working for them. My friends niece is one of them. The only way for them to be able to live a normal life and not have to worry about these diseases is herd immunity. If everyone else is immune and won't get it, they can't pass it on to the people who are vulnerable.

Then there are some of the arguments against them which make me want to slam my head against a brick wall.
Vaccines can cause autism
The idea of this came from a group of parents. Not doctors, parents. It wasn't a scientific study. It was a group of parents wanting to link two things together. Autism shows itself generally around the time when kids are first vaccinated. That is coincidence. There has been scientific study after study to prove a link and there has been one which found a link. The author of this study was found to have falsified information and that it was not true.

Besides, what is worse, your kid having autism, or dying from a preventable disease?

Aluminum in vaccines is dangerous
There is more aluminum in breast milk than there is in vaccines.

Natural infection is better than vaccination.
No it isn't. Natural infection relies on the victim (because anyone who gets these preventable diseases really is a victim of their parents) surviving the infection. Vaccination doesn't.

I am glad to see doctors are now refusing to treat patients who aren't vaccinated. As much as I feel sorry for the children, it is their parents who are to blame for it. Hopefully it gets people to do the right thing.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

I generally hold the view that people should do as they please as long as they are not impacting other people. Vaccination is a bit on the borderline of that. As long as most people continue to get their kids vaccinated, then the few that don't shouldn't be too much of an issue as it will be hard for the disease to spread. But of course, when whole areas start turning against vaccinations, (and I assume that there probably ARE pockets of non-vaccinators) you start getting problems with diseases re-emerging, causing issues for the unvaccinated children and other children who are not of the right age to be vaccinated yet, as well as older people who didn't have the vaccinations available when they were kids.

Even though I believe everyone should be vaccinated, I don't think it's right to force people to do it. And I think it's very difficult to make anything to do with parents' decisions compulsory. If the trend continues, with more diseases re-emerging then I think it should be made compulsory to vaccinate children before sending them to school, at least. It is that way in Australia, though at the moment people can refuse for various reasons.

Further, I guess you could argue that it is neglectful not to vaccinate a child in an area where they will likely get the disease if not vaccinated, but I'm sure if it was made compulsory those who are already paranoid enough to not want to vaccinate would freak out even more. I agree with Ray that there should be a penalty for choosing not to vaccinate, whether it's monetary or whether it's that your child is not allowed to go into daycare, certain hospitals, schools, playgrounds, etc. etc. Unfortunately, most of those options only punish the child. In the end, it's foolish not to take advantage of decades of scientific research, but I don't think it's feasible to try and make it mandatory for everyone.

[ray_quazaa]

Then there are some of the arguments against them which make me want to slam my head against a brick wall.


Think of it this way: You're asking parents to place increased, perceivable, risks to their kids for the benefit of others. That's how they see it. These things about aluminum and autism is a straw man for the issue of:

Are you willing to sacrifice your kid in any way for the benefit of others?

There's a whole other issues with psychological biases screw with the perception of risk here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzxr9FeZf1g
(side note, if this works, then anti-vaxxers will see this video because of the title! :D)

Kahneman and Tversky have shown that a series of questions that have the form of
"How much X dollars would you be willing to accept to give your child a X [in the study, it was vaccines, but this could be anything] with a risk that goes from 1x10^-5 to 1x10^-4"

The logical answer is ... not much Because those numbers are so small. But a large majority of parents said NO amount could be given to them such that they would accept a higher risk X for their kids.

YET, parents drive their kids to school, even though driving your kid to school has a MUCH HIGHER relative risk than having your kid stand out, alone, for a school bus. People are rational in their own world, not necessarily in the world that we see though.

If anything, I'm strongly against those who go "shun the non believers," which is what we've done in both the climate science community and the vaccination community. THESE METHODS DON"T WORK... they just push people away from science and then they create their own communities... which empowers them! (Oh let me tell you a story at a technical conference about how I called into question their 'conclusive' evidence on climate change -> more hurricanes/tropical storms from the Huffington Post.... which we don't have a clue on what will happen to these tropical storms with climate change...)

If we look like snake oil salesman to someone... well... Telling them their stupid isn't gonna fix it. :) One thing I learned: Telling them that their facts are wrong is akin to 'telling them their stupid.' This is where methods of persuasion come in.

[Corey]

I strongly believe that vaccines should be mandatory for any parents who decide to enter their children in public school/daycares/etc. While I also think they should be just all around mandatory, there's not much you can do for kids who have parents that decide to home school them to avoid vaccination. People who don't vaccinate their kids put a lot of other people at risk. There are people too old or too young, people with weakened immune systems (either from diseases like AIDS, chemotherapy, etc), and people who are allergic to vaccines (egg allergies) that can't receive vaccinations, and unvaccinated people put them at risk when it's preventable.

The negative effects of vaccines are enormously outweighed by their benefit. Like Jacob said, those willy nilly side-effects people claim vaccines cause are nothing more than an attempt to throw shade on vaccines. The whole thing started when a man named Andrew Wakefield in 1998 released a study that concluded that the MMR vaccine caused autism, but in 2010 the study was proven fraudulent and was retracted, and Wakefield was charged on three dozen counts, including charges on dishonesty and abuse of developmentally challenged children. After the charges, he was banned from practicing medicine in the UK. After this, people jumped argument after argument trying to discredit vaccines, and every time an argument is scientifically disproven, they jump straight to another argument with no scientific backing whatsoever.

Like Sarah, I believe people should do whatever as long as they're not hurting anyone else, but in this case, parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids are not only putting their children at great risk, but also a load of other people who can't be vaccinated. Vaccines aren't 100% effective, so the chance for infection increases the more unvaccinated individuals there are. Parents who took their young children to Disneyland bring them back with deadly measles (and the vaccine is 98% effective, the MOST effective vaccine), a disease once eradicated in the US. It's far beyond ridiculous. Vaccinate your kids!

[Dragon Master Mike]

For the longest time I was anti vaccination, but lately I've been shifting my opinion on that. I don't think vaccinations should be forced on anyone, but I am in favor of them. I believe what is mandatory really should depend on how severe the disease is. Of course, there is the argument that if the disease mutates and becomes more severe, there may not be time to get the vaccine mass produced enough, but even then, if it mutates, the vaccine becomes less effective anyway, and a new vaccine would likely be needed.

[[Desolate Divine]]

Dragon Master Mike may I ask why you were anti-vacc? Reason I ask is that usually it is parents against vaccinations. As well as little kids because they don't like needles. A lot of people your age from my experience tend to not have an opinion on it. I'm curious haha.

[Shroomish]

I'm on the fence about vaccinations. No, I don't think they should be mandatory, however I think more awareness and education on the matter needs to be more widely spread.

I get tired of seeing Facebook posts that claim people against vaccinations are stupid. This is not true. Ignorant, maybe, but not stupid.

In fact, we're all ignorant on this matter. No one can be 100% sure that these things are safe. Not a single individual on this planet can say with absolute certainty that no ill effects will be caused by a vaccination. And that doubt is what worries parents.

Especially parents in more uneducated areas who were brought up to distrust science and/or the government. This does not make these individuals dumb - it makes them cautious and untrusting. They may or may not be making a poor decision due to lack of knowledge, but it doesn't mean they are bad parents.

I mean, heck, I don't fully trust them. When I was around four years old I was given a booster shot of some kind (I think it was a measles vaccination, actually XD), and for the following month the muscles in my legs weakened and it became so painful to walk that I refused to do it. I remember laying on the couch crying because it hurt so badly. After that my parents decided I would receive no further vaccinations.

Granted, I received the shot in my hip, so it was probably due to the needle piercing muscles or some kind of nerve or something that actually caused my temporary ailment, but it still scared my parents enough to convince them immunizations were dangerous.

Aside from that, I've had a few relatives who have gotten sick from flu shots and the like. It's commonly believed in the area I live in that vaccinations are bad, and I fully understand why.

Anyhow, if I had a child, I would probably have him or her vaccinated simply because, as someone mentioned earlier, the benefits outweigh the possible risks. But my point is that I can understand and sympathize with those who choose differently.

[Dragon Master Mike]

Dragon Master Mike may I ask why you were anti-vacc? Reason I ask is that usually it is parents against vaccinations. As well as little kids because they don't like needles. A lot of people your age from my experience tend to not have an opinion on it. I'm curious haha.

To be completely honest, I'm not sure. I guess it was just all of the misinformation spreading around. It's a shame there has to be so many potentially false studies/conflicting studies that people can't know what to trust. For this particular issue though, I've heard from quite a few places that like you said earlier, that one study that found a link between vaccines and autism wasn't a legit study. I guess over time I just started weighing the evidence for vaccines and the evidence against vaccines and decided there was more in favor of them.

[Suicune's Fire]

I, for one, am all for vaccinations. I think it's very ignorant that people would prefer their kids to be at risk of potentially fatal diseases over autism. I'm no scientist, but I don't think vaccinations lead to autism... Again, not claiming to know anything. I'm pretty sure autism is decided before even birth.

I've been vaccinated whenever it was necessary at school and such. I KNOW vaccinations are better than no vaccinations. No, I don't believe it should be forced upon people who don't want them, even if I think it's not a good idea not to have any person vaccinated. I mean, if vaccinations have WIPED OUT diseases, then how can they be considered bad? Better to get a tiny dose of the disease than risk getting the full thing and dying/becoming impaired because of it. I mean, if people are so worried about vaccinations causing autism, then how do they think their children are going to go if they actually GET the disease? Wouldn't they get autism PLUS heavier consequences? What about going to other countries, where you HAVE to get immunised? Because of rampant diseases? Are people going to decline the malaria vaccination before going to Malaysia and risk being bitten by an infected mosquito? Mozzies are bad enough without the risk of a disease with them...

So yeah, I'm glad I was immunised, and if I wanted children, then I would definitely get them vaccinated.

[Homura]

Yes.

There is no debate.

But yes, this debate is about "the tribe", an issue of sociology than it is an issue about science.