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

Hakluyt
Questioning the credentials of the authors of such articles also makes interesting reading.

Duellingfanjo-I would probably say "Yep, Ben Goldacre was right about that too"

I don't think asking where the author of the article got their medical degree from is oblique at all, I have tried looking for his credentials but I can't find them, maybe the poster knows? That's all.

I mean, writing an article like that, with such strong 'facts' must mean the author has a medical background? No?

He's not a doctor at all as far and I know- and doesn't claim to be one- except perhaps by omission. He has a degree, I think, in engineering. He collaborates with Suzanne Humphries, who is a doctor, but gave up conventional practice some time ago to focus on alternative therapies. She is particularly involved in homeopathy. She is also, IIRC, convinced that vaccination is anti biblical.

Hakluyt

She is particularly involved in homeopathy

So no scientific background at all then ?

She is actually a properly qualified doctor, lurkinghusband, and practised conventional medicine for some years. Then she went over to the dark side.............

This is more disturbing than the homepathy stuff:
convinced that vaccination is anti biblical.

I wonder if people who are anti vax, vaccinate pets against disease?

Yes, because otherwise it's difficult to get pet insurance, healthcare for pets is expensive and you can't put them into kennels / daycare if they're not vaccinated ....

Same as the human world in most countries I have lived in (if you don't vaccinate, it's harder to get health insurance, healthcare for humans is expensive and you can't put kids into school / summer camp if they're not vaccinated).

I wonder if this argument is particular to the UK.....

Longdistance - I haven't looked into this guy yet so I'm not talking about him specifically but I just wanted to say - not all scientists have medical degrees. Don't assume that you have to have an MD to write about science.

"Same as the human world in most countries I have lived in (if you don't vaccinate, it's harder to get health insurance, healthcare for humans is expensive and you can't put kids into school / summer camp if they're not vaccinated). "

In the UK you can get your kids into school without vaccinating them can't you? Is your point that because we have the NHS we don't have expensive insurance companies insisting that we vaccinate before they insure us?

Yes. The NHS is willing to pay for vaccinations and then pay for treatment if you decide not to vaccinate. Where I have lived for the past 20 years, you pay for insurance that then covers the cost of vaccinations. No vaccinations, try finding an insurance company..... Seems like the UK population has it easy....

I would say that it seems that people living in your country have it hard!

I have private health care for my kids and the insurers have never asked about vaccinations.

ditto Calico.

Im in the USA and it was the same when I lived in Singapore. In Singapore the docs have to report vaccinations to the Ministry of Health. Once, one of dd's records went astray and I received a very strong letter from MoH asking me to supply evidence of vaccination.

There is a journalist currently in my local newspaper (Houston) asking for parents who have requested exemption from vax to contact him for a story. The vitriol pouring from screen about anti-vaxers is shocking. It's definitely a very small minority here.....

YABU - parents must be prosecuted for ANY choices they make which put their child at increased risk of illness except formula feeding as this is socially acceptable and ubiquitous

http://www.analyticalarmadillo.co.uk/2015/02/lock-up-all-parents-who-formula-feed.html lockupallparents

www.analyticalarmadillo.co.uk/2015/02/lock-up-all-parents-who-formula-feed.html

Vaccination is like insurance - you hope you never get the disease but the vaccine will provide protection in the event that you do. I think you need to have a vaccine coverage rate of about 70% of the population to have societal protection through herd immunity. So some can always opt out of vaccination on the assumption that others will vaccinate. However the risk of damage due to catching the disease itself must then be considered.

There may be anecdotal evidence of individual vaccine-related damage but I am not aware of any proper clinical studies (involving 10s of 1000s of patients) that have proven a link between modern vaccines and widespread side-effects. In fact all the recent studies have shown the opposite. There may always be some side effects as everyone is different but these are highly regulated products - if the side effect profile is not good enough, the product is not approved for sale or withdrawn.

Vaccination has saved millions and millions of lives and eradicated so many diseases it is one of healthcare's unsung heroes. I know I'm not addressing the OPs question, and probably adding fuel to the fire, but an interesting debate...

Only one disease has been eradicated due to vaccination.... smallpox.

Polio is close to being eradicated and they are making progress with vaccination programmes and reduced numbers of cases in west Africa. Pakistan has the most cases but unrest and geography make it difficult. Thank goodness we can protect ourselves from this disease, having seen Dh's aunt suffer her whole life.

Has anyone opted out of the polio vaccination? Why / why not?

" you hope you never get the disease but the vaccine will provide protection in the event that you do"

The idea of the vaccine is to prevent you from getting the disease - not protect you if you do get it.

Vaccine damage is not anecdotal - there is a government compensation scheme for it. If only it were the case that highly regulated products with terrible side effects didn't make it to market - too many examples!

The eradication of smallpox wasn't entirely due to vaccination.

I had been thinking about how to respond when's saw the Analytical Armadillo post suggesting outlawing formula feeding and (my addition!) forcing people to donate milk to those who can't feed because it would have a greater impact on infant mortality than enforcing vaccination.

Quickly followed by..

I stand partially corrected regarding the prevention/protection comment, you are right with respect to some infectious diseases but not others where you may already be infected but not displaying symptoms of disease i.e. you can't prevent infection (as its already happened) but you can protect against further development. Or maybe just semantics.

Compensation schemes are there for those who unfortunately have a bad reaction - but if everyone has such a reaction then the vaccine wouldn't be used. Given that vaccines are typically given to healthy people, as opposed to those already suffering from a disease, I assume that their safety profile must be pretty clean? As for any product, I guess it all depends on whether you think the benefits outweigh the risks...