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

[cailindana]

I am all in favour of vaccinating but I am absolutely against making any medical procedure enforceable by law. The seatbelt analogy doesn't work - you can choose not to ever get in a car if you don't agree with the laws.

Putting requirements on how people can run their own bodies is an extremely slippery slope that I don't ever want to be at the top of.

[ILovePud]

I've vaccinated all my kids but I wouldn't support this, the state's role should be to educate and provide access to immunisations not to force them on the populous, this would be a dark day for a free society and the thin end of the wedge. Withholding education from those children whose parents had refused vaccinations would be draconian and a breach of their human rights.

[DropYourSword]

You can't say "it's my choice to have an immunisation" in one breath and then "but it's not my fault that hundreds of people have ended up in hospital and two people are now permanently disabled through direct consequence of my selfishness and idiocy".

But those hundreds of people in hospital also chose not to have a vaccine. Which is their right. And they have to deal with the consequences of their decision. Doesn't seem to me that people want (or should expect) it both ways!

[peggyundercrackers]

to the people who say seat belts don't injure - they do - they cause lots of injuries and cause lots of deaths too... don't be fooled into a false sense of security that something will save you because they have told you it will.

[ChoochiWoo]

YABU

[BlandandInsipid]

I hate anti-vaxers with a passion, BUT I also believe it is their choice and not something that the government should make compulsory. That said, I think full vaccinations should be a prerequisite of going to a state school.(unless unable due to genuine medical reasons)

[TheNewStatesman]

I think history has shown that forced vaccination is a bad idea--it creates a reaction in the other direction and increases resistance.

My daughter is fully vaccinated.

[DropYourSword]

peggy Those injuries would be a lot worse if they hadn't been wearing a seatbelt.

[LurkingHusband]

OP

Except that in the 80's vaccination was only just becoming commonplace.


Er, you do realise that the first public vaccination programme started in the 1920s ? And that debate about vaccination is over 150 years old ?

www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/pages/the-history-of-vaccination.aspx

[MasterSplinter]

So how will this prosecution work?

[rednailsredheart]

peggy - Well let's weight it up shall we.

Stupidity - not contagious, and very unlikely to cause the hospitalisation, death or permanent disability of others.

Not being vaccinated for no reason other than blind stubborness - helps to revive a disease that had been previously wiped out, increases the risk of illness and death for thousands of babies too young to be vaccinated, or people too frail to be vaccinated (so already in the highest risk category if they were to contract), puts the general public at risk, has potential to divert huge money and resources from the NHS onto an issue that was pretty much ENTIRELY preventable.

If one infected person comes into contact with 100 unvaccinated people, 90 of those people would become infected themselves, seven of whom would develop complications.

This isn't a cold or something. It's a serious, and highly contagious disease.

If the only consequence of not getting vaccinated is that YOU would catch it and maybe end up in hospital, then I wouldn't give a shit. But when you're selfishness lands other people in hospital, then yes, it becomes a public safety issue.

[Providore]

You seriously think it's okay for the government to decide that all children must have pharmaceutical drugs injected into their bodies with or without their parents' consent? This makes me so angry I'm shaking. Who decides which vaccines would be enforced? Would it be those currently offered on the NHS schedule? Or what about those on the US schedule? The Australian? Where would you draw the line? Would you mandate that every person in the world must receive an influenza vaccination annually? Would all boys be vaccinated against HPV? Would you enforce the BCG? Varicella? Even though these two are not on the schedule here because they've been proven to not be cost effective. I don't think you've fully thought this out. How about enforcing breast feeding until the age of two? You know that breast feeding is beneficial for immune system development so why not make it a legal requirement? More children with healthy immune systems would mean less circulating disease in general, so what about haranguing those selfish patents who choose to put their own children and others at risk by idiotically not breast feeding until two? See how ill thought out your argument is?

[WD41]

Agree with PP who said child benefit should also be dependent on having children vaccinated.

So yeah you can't force people but they shouldn't have access to state education or child benefit either.

I bet people would manage to properly educate themselves and ignore conspiracy theories then.

[sliceofsoup]

So Joe Bloggs gets prosecuted because disease exists?

Thats not how it works. Life is a risk. Getting out of bed is a bloody risk. It is up to each individual to weigh up the risks.

For my children, the risk of disease was larger than the risk of complications. For people with allergies/medical issues, the risk of complications is greater than the risk of disease. Thats no ones fault.

Yes we have to think of others, but not by agreeing to medical procedures we don't want or agree with.

[BreakingDad77]

I don't think other countries are a fair comparison as they don't have same record keeping, health care system etc.

Its pretty clear that the false scare mongering around MMR based on a doctor being paid by a law firm to create an autism link, led to us going backwards and the measles 'hangover' we have now.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22277186

[TheChandler]

Such a law (to make vaccination compulsory) would be prevented by the human right to bodily autonomy.

In general, I suspect the tendency to favour government compulsion in some areas is more harmful in the long run.

[calmexterior]

I'm very pro vax but you are probably BU

I think more needs to be done to educate those that think the flu vac gives you flu etc, also importance of herd immunity, social responsibility and protecting the vulnerable but really we've got to maintain some sort of free choice too.

[rednailsredheart]

Lurking Husband - you do realise that the vast majority of the examples given upthread on outbreaks were from the USA, and the measles vaccine was first licensed for use in 1963, with subsequent updates to the vaccine in 1967 and 1975?

[Shakirasma]

Talk of conspiracy theories in this context is nothing but an insult to parents of vaccine damaged children.

[INickedAName]

Yabvvu.

My dd had has all the vaccines btw and I think I'm lucky to live in a country where this was an option. I do understand the worry of parents who are unable to vaccinate their dc and them becoming Ill but that shouldn't mean vaccines should be forced on children

I mean what would come next? Forced contraceptive injections on women or young girls for mental health problems, disability, or even just being vulnerable? Once you make it law for medical acts to be forced on one section of society, it absolutely won't stop there. It's wrong on so many levels.

What would be better is for more clear non biased information surrounding vaccines and their pros and cons, so parents can make an informed choice.

[Baddz]

The irony is of course the all the rabid anti vaxers rely on the rest of us vaccinating our children to provide herd immunity.
I do think that children should be denied a place at pre school/school if they are bit vaccinated - unless they have a very good reasons not to be vaccinated (severe allergies, family history of severe reaction to vaccines etc)
There is an epidemic of whooping cough (pertussis) in California ATM.
Children have died.
More will die.
It's madness.

[DropYourSword]

Road traffic accidents would also be ENTIRELY preventable if we banned everyone from driving. Do you propose we do that too OP?

[INickedAName]

Calmexterior said it better than me.

[lavendersun]

IAmAllImportant - I had to have an MMR as part of the medical screening for my green card for the US. I had had all my childhood vaccinations but they insisted it was re-done - I insisted on a blood test to check immunity but it was negative so I had to have it again.