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

The suggestion that is became a legal requirement was just that - a suggestion to see what people's views were.

I have no personal investment in vaccines becoming a legal requirement, but it's interesting to see how many people go down the "dystopia" path, when as other have pointed out, mandatory vaccination policies aren't unheard of in other areas of the world. Yes, democratic areas.

It's like how in Belgium, voting is a legal requirement. Everyone just gets on with it. You can obviously vote with a spoiled paper, but you are legally obliged to do it. If you were to make the same suggestion for the UK no doubt people would make similar arguments.

My personal view is that vaccines should remain optional, but that anyone with half a brain cell should vaccinate their child in a heartbeat, providing there are no genuine medical reasons why they couldn't.

However, I also think that whilst people have choice, they also have to accept consequences. If they don't wish to vaccinate their child, then the child cannot enter into public child care facilities. You can choose what you do with your child, but you don't get carte blanche to infect other people's children.

NaiveMaverick those are completely outdated statistics. But then you have to use those outdated figures didn't you, because all the recent figures show that the US has miniscule rates of measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox compared to countries like the UK.

And BTW I don't particularly support making it a legal requirement that children are vaccinated but I have no problem with the current program in the US where children must be vaccinated to be allowed to attend schools, daycares, camps, etc.

rednailsredheart

The problem is the UK is (apparently - see below) a liberal democracy. The reality of that means you can do whatever you want, unless it is prohibited by law.

incidentally, if vaccinations were to be legally required, what happens to the people who choose to no participate ? Jail ? Removal of their children ? Enforced vaccination ?

(I say apparently, because NuLab devised ASBOs as a back door way of criminalising behaviour that isn't criminal)

Dreaming yes, yes, a dangerous path, a slippery slope. I guess that explains those fascist dictatorships in Australia and Slovenia.

Australia isn't a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights. Nor is it a member of the EU. Slovenia is, and I would be surprised it wouldn't be subject to enforcement action if it does indeed have a such a law and it became a subject of investigation.

To make vaccination compulsory would require alteration of the specific human right that preserves bodily autonomy. Generally its an anti-torture right, but also a right to refuse medical treatment deemed by the authorities to be "beneficial", such as forced sterilisation for example.

It is indeed a very slippery slope. There are plenty of examples where enforcement actions have been taken to stop countries putting in excessive bans on animal movement (free movement of goods) for example, way in excess of what is actually required to control a virus.

And Scotland is making it compulsory by law that every child born there will have a "State Guardian" appointed at birth (no-one really seems to know what this involves, why it is necessary or to have properly researched into the benefits versus detriments of it).

Rednails, why would an unvaccinated child be automatically infecting all other children? How does that work?

I have one unvaccinated dc at school today, where she is not merrily spreading anything about, nor infecting anyone. And one unvaccinated dc at home with me, and generally popping out to shops/mooching around, and he isn't infecting anyone either.

They aren't unusual, they just aren't ill, and so cannot infect anyone with anything.

YABU for a number of reasons, not least those made by Lamu, Dropyoursword, pandasrock &co. We have the right to decline medical treatment in the UK and that includes preventative treatment. That should never change; anything else is a backward step for human rights and a potentially slippery slope.

Don't talk to me about social responsibility either. My responsibility is to my child and myself first and foremost.

YABVU

We have the right to decide what happens to our own bodies, that's why rape is illegal and why we allow abortion.

The state does not have the right to force parents into injecting their child with vaccines. It's really that simple.

facts and figures for all diseases like measles should be online for your area - they are for my area. its not hard to find out how many people had the disease and how many fatalities the dieseases caused.

After growing up with someone who's baby brother was left severely physically disabled after his MMR, I was reluctant to let my children have it. As it is, they did have the vaccines in singular form.

My son then caught mumps - from a vaccinated child.

Quick google states that vaccination is not mandatory in Australia.

Off to read about Slovenia...

Voting not an invasive medical procedure OP.

op I agree that those who can vaccinate should. I don't know how that can be provided for though.

Yes, figures are generally available for how many incidences of a notifiable disease have been recorded. Of course, that does entirely depend on those figures being recorded accurately in the first place...

Rather interestingly, I was preached at when I took toddler ds for a developmental check. Lots of clutching pearls, and smelling salts required when it was discovered he is unvaccinated (this by professionals, not other parents), and I was smugly told I should stop being so cavalier with his health as my area was currently in the midst of the worst outbreak of measles seen for decades.

Being a diligent and caring (yes, really, despite his unvaccinated status) parent, I came home and checked the recorded figures for my area. Not a single recorded case of measles for the last 3 years. So that really helped me trust what the healthcare professionals tell me, didn't it?

Oh my god.
Children that are vaccinated can still be carriers but are protected from the illness.

I'm leaving this thread it's too much

So vaccination levels are ???? 95% (I know its regional and varies depending on the vaccine)

What would happen to the children exempt from school in your world OP?

Chillyegg your vaccinated child is at much less risk of getting the illness but not totally immune. The efficacy varies from vaccine to vaccine.

Yes, there's no such thing as a 100% effective vaccine. A vaccinated child getting an illness doesn't mean "they don't work".

Wanttosqueezeyou I know that's why I said protected not immune. There's always variety of reasons why "protection" may vary.

My husbands' a PhD in immunology and our DCs have been vaccinated. But looking at it purely from a jurisprudential point of view, I really don't think it's a good idea to legislate that people have to have a medical procedure they don't consent to. It opens the floodgates and sets a dangerous legal precedent.

So YABU to suggest it should be mandatory. But YANBU to think people who don't vaccinate their children without good reason are idiots.

Google shows in Australia vaccination is mandatory if you want to get child benefit or use childcare. I think this is the kind of mandatory most people are talking about, not literally making every single person get vaccinated.

Plenty of democracies have some form of mandatory vaccination for kids, even if just for one or two vaccines, like polio (which hopefully should soon be eliminated from the planet, how amazing is that?)

If you want to worry about dystopian fascist dictatorships then worry about government surveillance, police impunity and the banks dictating our affairs. Those are all far more dangerous because they are about powerful interest groups holding on to their power and keeping us exploited -- there are no benefits for the average person. Public health actually does benefit the general population.

I have MS. Never had measles. When someone doesnâ??t vaccinate their child they are putting ME at risk. Non - vaccination is not a private matter unless there are very rare medical reasons not to vaccinate. Mess with herd immunity, as has happened in my area, and you are potentially harming me. It shouldn't need to be a legal requirement but ...

Well, other countries do it so what's the problem eh? No other country has gotten anything wrong ever.

If there's no valid medical reason not to vaccinate then why wouldn't you?

I know a couple who've not vaccinated their DC because they believe in chemtrails and think the queen is a lizard and other such batshit nonsense. But surely that's not the case for every non-vaxer?

sparky, one cannot put the onus on a parent to potentially harm their child in order to potentially reduce the harm which might be caused to another person. It would, imho, be a very peculiar parent who would be quite that altruistic.

Speaking purely for myself if it comes down to the choice between a place in state education or vaccinating my child as it does in some US states there's no contest.

one cannot put the onus on a parent to potentially harm their child in order to potentially reduce the harm which might be caused to another person. It would, imho, be a very peculiar parent who would be quite that altruistic

Except that 90-95% of children in the UK ARE vaccinated, so clearly it's not that peculiar at all.

"If there's no valid medical reason not to vaccinate then why wouldn't you?

I know a couple who've not vaccinated their DC because they believe in chemtrails and think the queen is a lizard and other such batshit nonsense. But surely that's not the case for every non-vaxer?"

Hadley, I mean this in a most genuine way. Is that a rhetorical question or can you not think of reasons other than "batshit nonsense" why a parent would choose not to vaccinate their child or, for that matter, why an adult would opt not to request vaccination upon themselves?

There's much focus upon parents vaccinating children. It's rare that unvaccinated adults are brought into the equation but is it not possible that there are more over 18's (or more especially over 40's) in the UK who are without a raft of innoculations?