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AIBU?

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Original poster

To suggest immunisations should be a legal requirement?

595 replies

rednailsredheart · 29/01/2015 10:44

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

OP posts:
DearTeddyRobinson · 29/01/2015 11:31

Ok, so how many people have been killed by vaccines? And how many by measles etc?
Fwiw, I wasn't vaccinated due to allergies. I've had measles, mumps, rubella or German measles as it was called all those years ago and they were awful. You can choose not to vaccinate your kids but then you risk 'choosing' to put them through a horrendous illness.
Darnitnev, I won't be pissing off as you so rudely suggest. All about being liberal until someone disagrees with you, aren't you?

sliceofsoup · 29/01/2015 11:31

And please do not bring NHS resources into this. You are talking about something that would have far reaching consequences. It would alter society into something unrecognizable to us now.

NHS resources are not relevant because it is one Healthcare system. It is changing. You cannot base such an important argument on something we might not even have in 50 years from now.

Bodily autonomy has nothing to do with money.

dementedpixie · 29/01/2015 11:31

I think it's a terrible idea to link child benefit and pre-school places to whether or not you have been vaccinated. YABVU

Baddz · 29/01/2015 11:32

Btw...I am not saying that vaccine damage does not exist.
Of course it does.
No medical intervention is 100% sage for 100% of the population.
It's something every parent goes through I suppose...weighing up the benefits against the any possible problems, however negligible the risk.
My concerns about vaccinating my children were nothing compared to my worry about them getting a preventable illness which could possibly kill them.

motherofmonkey · 29/01/2015 11:32

I remember once treating a paediatric leukaemia sufferer who had caught chicken pox. She developed gangrene as a complication and lost all her fingers and both feet. Your decision not to vaccinate is a direct choice to inflict pain and suffering on your children and others . YANBU

Lilicat1013 · 29/01/2015 11:32

Vaccines are like all medication, they carry a risk. The vast majority of people will be perfectly fine but a small amount wont. I weighed up the risks for myself and for my children and decided it was important that they be vaccinated. Others have a right to do the same and make their own choices.

You can't force people to be vaccinated. I think education is the key, some of the diseases being vaccinated against people might not be overly familiar with as they have been virtually eradicated in their life time. I think it is easy to assume they are gone and not a worry any more.

It does drive me nuts though, I saw a programme about the MMR vaccine where they interviewed various parents. One family had tragically lost a newborn baby to measles, the baby had gotten it from an older child. The interview with them was cut with the interview of two women in the park with their children saying how they wouldn't be getting their children vaccinated because they of autism (before that researched was found inaccurate). They spoke about autism like it was the most terrible thing ever.

I wanted to shake them, I wanted to introduce them to my sons (one autistic one on the way to being diagnosed). I want to show them my happy, healthy children and point out that autism isn't the worst thing ever, a child dying from a preventable illness is the worst thing ever.

So I can see the frustration but I would still never support forcing people in to vaccinating, it still needs to be their choice.

wobblyweebles · 29/01/2015 11:33

Yanbu.

Messygirl · 29/01/2015 11:34

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Original poster
rednailsredheart · 29/01/2015 11:35

It's also probably cold comfort to parents of children too young to be vaccinated, and damaged by measles when they caught it off of some pillock who "chose" not to get it for no reason other than he didn't think it was important.

OP posts:
peggyundercrackers · 29/01/2015 11:35

rednailsredheart I hope once you have forced children to have these vaccines you are going to also create a program to force adults to have all vaccines released too? like the aids vaccine, HPV vaccine, ebola, shingles, meningitis etc. etc.

maybe people should have their benefits stopped... maybe they should not be allowed to work... not travel on public transport... no further medical treatment until all vaccines have been given...

where do you stop?

KidLorneRoll · 29/01/2015 11:36

Definitely not an unreasonable suggestion.

If there is no medical reason for a child to be vaccinated, then they should be as a matter of course.

LurkingHusband · 29/01/2015 11:36

rednailsredheart

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?

Sorry is this thread specifically about those vaccines, or vaccination in general ? I can't find the rules anywhere ?

The point I was failing to make, is that vaccination as a concept is hardly new. And the issues around herd immunity and risk/reward have been explored in painstaking detail over many years. Centuries really.

But my experience is it's an emotive subject which leads to a suspension of logic on all sides Sad.

dementedpixie · 29/01/2015 11:36

motherofmonkey, the UK doesn't offer chicken pox vaccine as a standard vaccine so the person that gave your patient chicken pox could have had all their vaccinations

leedy · 29/01/2015 11:37

"But those hundreds of people in hospital also chose not to have a vaccine. Which is their right."

Actually, many of them may not have had that choice: immunocompromized people can't be vaccinated, many people with other medical conditions can't be vaccinated, babies who are too young can't be vaccinated (my BIL's nephew got measles from an older child before he'd had a chance to get his MMR).

Basically the people who need to be protected by herd immunity, who could be rightly banjaxed because the small amount of unimmunized "slots" possible in the community while still more or less removing the threat of wild virus have been taken up by people who "just feel a bit uneasy about it - remember that Wakefield guy".

I still think you are probably BU but I'm getting more and more pissed off by the "my only responsibility is to my own children, who cares what happens to little Timmy down the road with leukaemia if they infect him in a measles outbreak, it's sad but it's not my fault if he dies" attitude I've seen in various parent circles. Also I know a couple of people with life-long disabilities from the diseases we routinely vaccinate against (deafness from rubella and a paralyzed hip from polio).

Baddz · 29/01/2015 11:38

In the early 1970s there was a scare about the WC vaccine.
So my mum didn't get me vaccinated.
I got WC at 18 months old.
I nearly died.
My sons asthma paed treated babies and pg mothers during the last
WC outbreak.
Women and children died.
In France a few years ago there was big scare over the diphtheria vaccine.
Didn't register here.

The Lancet and Andrew Wakefield have a LOT to answer for with their scaremongering and poor science.

LurkingHusband · 29/01/2015 11:38

Oh, and just to add, we don't have bodily autonomy now.

sliceofsoup · 29/01/2015 11:38

I remember once treating a paediatric leukaemia sufferer who had caught chicken pox. She developed gangrene as a complication and lost all her fingers and both feet. Your decision not to vaccinate is a direct choice to inflict pain and suffering on your children and others . YANBU

There is no vaccine for chicken pox. Certainly not in the Uk programme anyway.

Original poster
rednailsredheart · 29/01/2015 11:39

I get that making it a LEGAL requirement is probably never going to work.

My main point was that it is a social responsibility to vaccinate yourself and your children, barring genuine medical reasons why this is not possible.

At the moment, mostly probably due to one medical report which has been repeatedly disproven since, the vaccination rate in the UK is woefully, woefully low.

It would be interesting actually if someone decided to sue another parent due to their baby catching measles off of their unvaccinated child.

OP posts:
Baddz · 29/01/2015 11:40

Red nails...I can see that happening in the future tbh :(

LurkingHusband · 29/01/2015 11:40

And fuel to the fire Grin

leedy · 29/01/2015 11:40

"Actually, many of them may not have had that choice: immunocompromized people can't be vaccinated, many people with other medical conditions can't be vaccinated, babies who are too young can't be vaccinated (my BIL's nephew got measles from an older child before he'd had a chance to get his MMR)."

Oh, and also, obviously, no vaccine is 100% effective/some people don't respond well to vaccines so even some vaccinated people may catch the disease in an outbreak - again, these are the people who need to be protected by herd immunity/lack of wild virus going around.

GratefulHead · 29/01/2015 11:41

There IS a vaccination for chickenpox...I've had it.

In some parts of the world it is part of the childhood immunisation programme.

And I once..only once thankfully....saw a three year old die as a result of chicken pox.

Aherdofmims · 29/01/2015 11:42

YANBU. In theory. There would have to be exception of course, and the technicalities sorted out, but in theory it would be good.

leedy · 29/01/2015 11:43

"There is no vaccine for chicken pox."

There is, it's called Varivax, both my children have had it. It's not routine here, no. But I still think the point stands of protecting vulnerable people, rather than going "well, anyone could infect vulnerable people with chicken pox at the moment so that's irrelevant to the issue of unvaccinated people being able to infect them with anything else that's going around".

gotthemoononastick · 29/01/2015 11:43

No child was allowed into the schooling system in the 60/70s in the African country we were living in,without a booklet of proof of vaccinations.(not sure if still the case).

We were so grateful,but then we had seen how the 50's outbreak of poliomyelitis decimated a generation.Whooping cough killed scores and Measles,if not deadly,blinded many.

I would be so afraid of being cavalier and not vaccinating.