To suggest immunisations should be a legal requirement?

[rednailsredheart]

Look at it like this:

Wearing seatbelts it purely a safety issue. It's also a legal requirement in the UK to protect car passengers.

So why is immunisation not a legal requirement?

Likewise, drinking and driving is a criminal offence, due to the danger to the passengers and other drivers/people around you.

But deliberately choosing to let your child become a carrier of a totally preventable disease, infecting people around them (including those too young for immunisations), is totally fine? If someone doesn't vaccinate their child, then the child subsequently becomes gravely ill, why aren't the parents charged with neglect?

Makes me think of this article

ONION

Interesting but I don't like the way it suggests that people who don't vaccinate are all lentil-weaving hippy types.

The whooping cough outbreak is due to waning immunity from the vaccine.

Toomanyexams agreed. It seems to have the same feeling as the Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era (no relation to Jenny). Odd, considering that the Disney measles outbreak was the B3 strain, for which there is no vaccine.

Never let truth get in the way of a good meme I guess.

At what age should the mandatory vaccinations stop? I am ancient so didnt get any vaccines as a child. There are teachers and grandparents more ancient than me. Should we be rounding them up too?

That's a good point you make, thclockstrucktwo. I think assumptions are made that older generations have acquired natural immunity to certain diseases. But it is interesting that there isn't a focus to test immunity or vaccinate older people (unless there is a job related requirement to do so).

Or slightly younger people. I'm 38 and have had no vaccines yet no-one's banning me from being around their children. They only ask if my kids are on schedule.

Or older children/teenagers whose immunity may have waned...

Toobreathless I have discussed my reasons for non vaccinating with my DD, as she is now a teenager and needs to understand the choices I have made for her. I suggested that when she is older and ready for a family she can get her immunity tested and if she is not immune she can then make the decision about vaccination herself. I did not have the Rubella vaccine and am naturally immune, or I had German Measles and it was so mild I did not notice.

Laughing I think the main point of your Law and Order story is that a mother took a child with Measles to a park and exposed other children to the disease. The fact that the child was non vaccinated is irrelevant.

YABVU!

My DW is a neurologist and there are several jabs she will not have and will never give to our DC's as she has seen what can happen to the small minority of people who react badly.
NOT Good believe me!

I disagree re herd immunity. I personally think it is my responsibility to help protect the weak. I find it really that people only consider themselves and their own dc.

Which jabs are those, maninawomqnsworld?

No the point was the vaccinating, the whole court care was based around it. I wish I could remember more but half the episode was in the court and it was all about vaccinations, c. I think the kids parent killed either her or themselves in front of her. Very surprising end.

laughingmyarseoff Very strange storyline, extreme to say the least. Not a programme I know. American?

Tobysmum77 So if you truly believed, as most non vaccinators do, that the vaccine will damage their children, you would still do so to protect the weak?

Yes law and order, I think it was special victims unit.

Aheeemmm! Obsessive SVU fan coming through.

The episode was a mashup of the Caylee Anthony case and the vaccination debate.

A young mother was suspected of murdering her child. (Same as CA...the grandmother of the child called the police and said the car smelled like a body etc). There was a red herring with a babysitter the mother had supposedly.employed.

They found the body of the baby but she was not murdered, she had died from complications of the measles. The mother thought she had killed her because shed spanked the baby for being so fussy (because she was sick :( ) and the next day she was dead. So she'd panicked and buried her.

The police traced the spread of the infection to a mother who'd brought her boy to the park while not vaccinated. So the mother of the dead baby was suing New York City (as the owner of the park).

So then... they try the mother of the unvaccinated boy for murder or reckless endangerment or something. The jury finds her not guilty so the baby's grandpa breaks into her house and commits suicide.

laughing and CheerfulYank: So the park mother knew that her son had measles and was infectious? Out of interest, what was her defence in the case?

tobysmum77
I disagree re herd immunity. I personally think it is my responsibility to help protect the weak.

Would you have chosen not to vaccinate, had it not been for the herd immunity argument? What are your thoughts on the unknowns re: length of immunity conferred by vaccines and implications for herd immunity if protection wanes?

Hakluyt
I have friends who have chosen not to vaccinate because they use homeopathy. Very happy to use herd immunity to bash them.

As per Thclockstrucktwo's comment, what about adults you know? Do you check their immunity status and 'use herd immunity to bash them' if they might be unprotected or don't know?

I was thinking about my comment last night. As I said, I didnt get to have vaccines except rubella at 14 or so but my younger sister was born in time for a measles one. Back then it was one injection at 18 months. There were no follow ups or pre school boosters or anything. Given that the boosters are because of the 10% (?) failure rate who knows if she is still immune or could spread measles at the university she works in (assuming obviously she comes into contact with someone with measles as it wont appear out of the blue).
So we do have lots of unvaccinated adults about yet it's only children that are poined at as 'typhoid mary' plague carriers. I'd bet my knickers there are way more unvaccinated adults around. I cant see any law changing though, to compulsary vaccinate all adults. Especially if they cant remember if they had vaccines or their parents are dead/cant remember 40 years + back.
So what should be done about school staff, Disney staff, nursery staff, shop staff?

I am really curious about which vaccines you are referring to maninawomqnsworld? Can you share with us?

Questioning the case for the measles vaccine makes interesting reading.

Questioning the credentials of the authors of such articles also makes interesting reading. My Ipad's playing up so I can't do links. But Google is your friend.......

anotherday where did the author of that get his medical degree from?

And talk to us about the Intenational Medical Council on Vaccination, while you're about it. And about Roman Bystriqnyk's rather better known collaborator, Suzanne Humphries......

To the above two posters - if you have an issue with the author, why not say what it is rather than making oblique references? Better still, comment on what he's written.

It is customary for the person putting forward information to vouch for it, and to speak to the bona fides of their authorities.

I wondered what people thought of this

"Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, is facing a slew of controversies over its Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine following numerous allegations of wrongdoing from different parties in the medical field, including two former Merck scientists-turned-whistleblowers. "