In the age of Donald Trump, vaccine policy is becoming politicized, with potentially deadly consequences

It strikes me that a good way to boost vaccination rates in Canada will be to point out that Donald Trump is antivacince.

I'm afraid that we're going to have to deal with some huge disease epidemics before those numbnuts come to their senses. Unlike them, I see no reason for my children and any potential grandchildren to suffer from an preventable illness. There are far too many things out there still that *can* hurt them. Why on earth wouldn't a good parent want to keep their child(ren) from things that are preventable???

In essence, Empower Texans is using antivaccine conspiracy theorists like those running Texans for Vaccine Choice as cannon fodder in a larger battle to decrease government regulation and promote far right wing causes.

My brain spontaneously coined "loose cannon fodder" (which, come to think of it, would be a decent band name).

@MI Dawn

I have made that exact comment on several occasions in discussing the matter. Antivaxxers will not realize the harm they are doing until a flu or mumps wipes out a couple thousand people.

The libertarian support ticks me off. I can't imagine a single sane libertarian who would suggest decriminalizing violence, and that's what not vaccinating is: placing your own freedom of choice over the safety of others. If that's the world these Texas anti-government groups want, then decriminalize drunk driving too. That's a choice, too.

Canada is no better off, and we can't even blame it on Trump. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/teacher-vaccines-hearing-1.3992640 A science teacher at a high school ranting about the evils of vaccination under the cover of "informed consent"
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/pincher-creek-fort-macleod-vaccin… - Probably religious wackaloons figuring prayer is as effective as vaccines. SPOILER ALERT - Invisible sky fairies do shit.

I hope this is just the media starting to publicize something that is in the public interest, vice their normal human interest crap. Maybe the new President is empowering people to be more overt with this idiocy, but I don't see any real change between this one and the last one in the prevalence of anti-vaccine morons.

Some good news on the political front: lawmakers standing up for vaccination:

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/320452-top-lawmakers-vaccines-save…

I think you make a mistake in relegating the issue of parental rights and personal freedom as an 'anti-vaccine dog whistle'. While I have no doubt that anti-vaccine advocates are more than willing to treat it as such, there is a large contingent of people, especially in Texas, who will happily vaccinate their kids whilst maintaining that other parents get to make that choice as well. If you want to convince more parents to vaccinate, you have to address the arguments they are actually basing that choice on.

This article is over a year old, but I just read it yesterday. It covers this aspect

"Scientists keep insisting that this is a question of parents rejecting science and ignoring facts. But that’s not what the parents are saying. The debate they are broaching is a much more complex one, and one that can’t be solved with the recitation of objective facts. Here is what they are asking: if the preservation of herd immunity is a trade-off, who has the right to make you accept the trade? Why should the government have that power?"

https://aeon.co/essays/anti-vaccination-might-be-rational-but-is-it-rea…

@Beth - yes, the government does have the power & they've had it since the country was founded.

The first inoculation requirements were passed by the Virginia Commonwealth, all the way back in 1792.

And, if parents refuse to get their kids vaccinated (which is a choice), then they need to accept the consequences of their choice.

"Promote the General Welfare" is part of the preamble to our Constitution. I believe that says it all.

Barbara Loe Fisher is the guest today on Crosstalk, a nationally syndicated right wing Christian talk show, where she will undoubtedly be covering all the talking points of "choice" and "informed consent" discussed above. It is broadcast at 2 PM CST, and can be listened to live on the VCY website. Please consider calling in to call her out on the misinformation she will be spreading.

@Beth Clarkson: Parents accept many other trade-offs with MUCH higher risk of danger. And, no one is forced to be vaccinated. If you don't vaccinate, however, you have to accept the consequences of your action - either be kept home from school during disease epidemics or not be allowed to attend public/private school.

And we don't always think parents should have all the rights. Would you say parental rights should allow parents to starve their child as punishment? How about locking them in a room for days? How about refusing to let them sleep? The state has a say in what children deserve to have - food, shelter, safety. What's different about vaccines?

@Lawrence - the government was only established to have that right during an outbreak of a contagious disease. Rights of individuals and governments are constantly being discussed and adjusted to fit our current needs. For example, abortion was completely illegal throughout the U.S. Not anymore but we're still debating it today.

@MI Dawn - yes, that is true. Parental rights are not absolute. The discussion is about what those consequences should be not that there are no limits - that is a strawman argument. We decide, as a society, what we are willing to allow parents to do and what is illegal. Mothers can kill the child pre-birth. Parents can cut off the skin covering the tip of an infant boy's penis, but not his entire penis and, at least in my state, they cannot get an infant girls ears pierced. They can spank their children but not beat them although there's a great deal of debate about when a 'spanking' should be considered a beating and therefore 'abuse' with legal consequences.

I personally think that if we simply provided parents with adequate resources to feed, clothe and shelter their children, neglect charges would drop to manageable levels, but that seems unlikely to happen in our current culture where poverty is treated as a personal character flaw. Where should vaccinations fit into this scheme? I'm don't think it's appropriate to consider a parent who has gone to the trouble of getting a vaccine exemption for their child to attend school as 'negligent'. They've just made a decision you don't approve of. If you want to convince them otherwise, convince them otherwise. Taking away their choice by holding their child's education hostage is not a policy I can support.

Zach: I can’t imagine a single sane libertarian who would suggest decriminalizing violence.

You can't? I totally can. There's a strong wing of MRAs in the libertarian movement, and a lot of other libertarians just don't have a problem with domestic violence, rape, having sexual relationships with minors or shooting people. That's kind of the whole point of libertarianism: to have government get out of their way so they can be the awful people they always wanted to be.

MIDawn: Would you say parental rights should allow parents to starve their child as punishment? How about locking them in a room for days? How about refusing to let them sleep?

Sadly, that's usually exactly what 'parental rights' advocates want. A lot of them are fundamentalists who believe children and babies need to be trained out of being evil.

I'm kinda surprised that Orac is surprised by this. Texans don't even want clean drinking water, why would they want to be healthy?

Actually, thanks to religious exemptions to child endangerment and abuse laws, some states do, in essence, say that parental rights allow them to withhold life-saving medical care and treat their children with magic incantations (prayer) and, in essence, do what they will with their children.

And Beth, what about those children in school, who, for legitimate medical reasons, cannot be vaccinated?

What choice do they have?

Is it okay for other parents to put that child at risk?

There is also a boy in San Francisco who will die soon from SSPE - because he got measles at an age, too young to be vaccinated, from another child who was intentionally unvaccinated....what would you do in that case, Beth?

"We decide, as a society, what we are willing to allow parents to do and what is illegal." And we can do so for public heath issues.

From the Washington Post article referenced for today's blog:

But now immunization advocates are realizing that they can’t let vaccine critics go unchallenged, saying they need voices other than scientists and experts to make the case.
This is where I state the scientists and experts who matter most have not made the case. I refer explicity to the American Academy of Pediatrics and its state AAP chapters--all of whom have been extremely remiss in making the case for vaccines. The Texas AAP chapter has not spoken out about (1) skyrocketing vaccine exemptions, (2) showings of Vaxxed in Texas (3) that lunatic DA in San Antonio (Nico LaHood) who used his office to spew anti-vax nonsense and (4) push back against Wakefield and Texas anti-vaccine groups including the one mentioned here. I find this especially disturbing given that the current President of the AAP, Dr. Fernando Stein, is a Texas PICU doctor who should know firsthand the death and disability of vaccine-preventable diseases. Now, while it is true the AAP recently wrote a letter to Trump about the importance of vaccines, that's simply more of the same type of passive on-the-sidelines vaccine advocacy that has let anti-vaccinationists scare so many parents into not vaccinating this last 10-15 years. You can be sure President Trump threw that letter in the waste basket if it even made it to his desk, and this "write a letter"-and-cheer-from-the-sidelines approach to combatting anti-vaccinationism is failing us badly.

Just as the national AAP refuses to go after anti-vaccine pediatricians and also denounce publicly anti-vaccine groups, most if not all state AAP chapters also appear similarly lackadaisical. I've yet to see any evidence that anyone from the California AAP chapters has ever come out against Bob Sears, MD FAAP or Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP (and thanks to that we've had to endure Gordon's ridiculous screed here these last 2 days with him FAAPing his monicker on every lame post). Same for the Oregon AAP chapter which apparently is just hunky dory with Paul Thomas, MD, FAAP, whose new anti-vaccine book with his own untested vaccine-skipping schedule has shot to a top-selling status on Amazon. Oregon, FYI has one of if not the worst non-medical vaccine exemption rates in the US. Here where I live in Arizona in 2015, when "paleo cardiologist" Jack Wolfson stated "We should be getting measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, these are the rights of our children to get it," during the "Disneyland" measles outbreak, he received 38 medical board complaints (one of them mine). However, the Arizona Chapter of the AAP stayed mum on Wolfson. I don't get this. I am profoundly disappointed in my fellow pediatricians and their inability/unwillingness to realize that we are about to see some serious VPD outbreaks if we can't convince more parents to vaccinate ASAP. While individual physicians like you, Paul Offit, Peter Lipson, John Snyder and Zubin Damania (aka ZDoggMD) have gone to bat against the anti-vaccine movement, the largest group of pediatricians in the world--the AAP, at 60,000 strong--continues to passively do next to nothing. The AAP needs to take the helm and call out anti-vaccinationists by name, expel anti-vaccine FAAP pediatricians (Sears/Gordon/Thomas) and publicly file medical board complaints against all anti-vaccine physicians--all of whom are violating their states' medical practice laws. Right now parents need to know that pediatricians truly believe in vaccination not just by words, but by actions and deeds.

@Lawrence #14: I think the parents of that child will have to way the risk of whether allowing their unvaccinated child to be in public spaces, such as public schools, is worth the benefit of being in those public spaces. There child is not endangered by children who are unvaccinated, but by children who carry disease. While it's more likely that a child who carries a VPD is unvaccinated, the risk is not zero even if they are. I simply don't feel that vaccination status, in the absence of an outbreak of a contagious VPD, to be a sufficient reason to exclude unvaccinated children from attending school. You can disagree, but it is a value judgement, not a scientific assessment, just as the original quote I put up described.

#15 It's sad whenever a child dies, whether from measles, or complications of measles or being vaccinated for measles. I'd like to see all such deaths minimized but I don't feel that insisting on mandatory vaccination for all schoolchildren is an appropriate way to achieve the combined minimum for all such deaths.

Then we can agree to disagree.

I, for one, don't believe that allowing the spread of epidemics in our schools to be in the public interest.

Orac: My state's one of those, and I don't think the laws will change any time soon. I guess what Jesus really meant was 'let the little children suffer.'

Beth Clarkson: the government was only established to have that right during an outbreak of a contagious disease.

Do you really trust Trump's administration to know how long an outbreak could last? He'd totally seize the chance to shut down a city he disliked.
Even in the past quarantines could last a while. Minneapolis, for instance, had rolling quarantines through 1918 and 1919. One of the quarantines lasted for three months. That's three months of no travel, almost complete shutdown of the city, almost no commerce and no gatherings or parades. You know what that would mean today?

No flights, anywhere. Housing would have to be found for all those unfortunates stuck at the airports. The city would miss out on important deals, or unintentionally annoy cities or countries we have ties to. (Getting an ambassador sick would certainly have repercussions.) No school. No shopping and probably the dow would dip from having a few cities sidelined. No work. And if we had an outbreak at the same time as the Superbowl, or some other important athletic event? Millions of stranded travelers, easily, and most of them would never visit again. Some of them might never be able to come home.
But of course, you don't care about that. All you care about is being a good mommy where the neighbors can see. Dead kids, stranded travelers.. don't matter to you.

Beth Clarkson: I personally think that if we simply provided parents with adequate resources to feed, clothe and shelter their children, neglect charges would drop to manageable levels.

Hah. France and England provide both of those, and many other European countries allow generous maternal leaves- a few have child-raising allowances- and socialized health care, yet neglect still happens and kids still get beaten to death. Again, what do you care about evil Europeans?

Beth: mothers can't "kill a child pre-birth". They can have a legal medical procedure, known as abortion, up to a certain gestational age; beyond that there are conditions. So drop that rhetoric, please. It's not part of the conversation.

Second, again, parents who make a decision that most of society doesn't approve of have to suffer the consequences. They make the decision not to vaccinate. A medically fragile child who can't be vaccinated has not, nor has his/her parents. That child deserves protection in public.

@Lawrence, we can agree to disagree

@PGP - what do you care about evil Europeans? Why do you presume that European parents are evil? I may be mistaken, but I believe the levels of children suffering from neglect due to poverty are lower in countries with a strong social safely net. That either means that European parents are less evil than their American counterparts or a strong social safety nets help parents provide for their children adequately.

@MI DAWN,

I'm sorry, but no, I am not required to adjust my phrasing to meet your standards. BTW I completely support legal abortion up to birth. The circumstances that force women to seek late term abortions are horrific and should be left up to the pregnant women. But I won't pretend a fetus is NOT a human child.

My point was that parental rights exist for a reason. They are not absolute, but they are also not something to be dismissed as an silly argument unworthy of respect.

No, I don't agree that we can insist that everyone else be vaccinated to protect those who are unable to vaccinate. I don't think our government policy should dictate what medical decisions individuals make for themselves and their families whether it be abortion or vaccination. If you want other people make different choices, you should have to persuade them individually to make different choices, not force your preference on them via legal methods.

And, Beth: It’s sad whenever a child dies, whether from measles, or complications of measles or being vaccinated for measles. I’d like to see all such deaths minimized but I don’t feel that insisting on mandatory vaccination for all schoolchildren is an appropriate way to achieve the combined minimum for all such deaths.

Considering that millions of doses of MMR have been given since the 1970s and only 152 reports of death in VAERS (note that this does NOT mean the vaccine caused the death - only that it was reported to VAERS that way) compared to the 123 deaths in 3 years (1989-1991), the vaccine is MUCH safer than the disease.

Except, Beth, the vaccination decision again is not ONLY a decision that affects that child. It also affects other people around him or her. When a parent chooses not to vaccinate, they are increasing the odds of someone else catching a disease. When your choice puts others in harm's way, and there is zero legitimate argument that said choice offers any benefit that has to be weighed against that risk, then your choice is wrong.

I don't want to get measles because some idiot in Texas is too arrogant to accept what a doctor says. That's what a lot of this is - arrogance.

I'm not saying the government should force people to be vaccinated. They don't, except in very rare outbreaks of diseases. Don't put words in my mouth. I'm simply saying that if you don't vaccinate, you need to accept the consequences of that decision.

@MI Dawn # 24

In this century, I think there have been something like 8 deaths reported in VAERS for MMR and only 1 or 2 deaths due to measles. This computation is dynamic, not static.

@Beth Clarkson

The reason no-one dies of measles is because so few people catch measles. And do you know why so few people catch measles these days, in the USA? Go on - have a guess...

@MI Dawn

Then we are in agreement about parents accepting the consequences. We disagree about whether or not one of those consequences is whether a child should be excluded from public school based on the reasons their parents chose not to vaccinate.

@Beth Clarkson:

[A child who can't be vaccinated or is immuno suppressed] is not endangered by children who are unvaccinated, but by children who carry disease. While it’s more likely that a child who carries a VPD is unvaccinated, the risk is not zero even if they are.

A half-truth is ever the blackest of lies. In every single recent outbreak, a disproportionate number of victims were intentionally un- or under- vaccinated. Others were too young to be vaccinated.
As to your response to Lawrence:

I’d like to see all such deaths minimized but I don’t feel that insisting on mandatory vaccination for all schoolchildren is an appropriate way to achieve the combined minimum for all such deaths.

First, what would you recommend to "achieve the combined minimum for all such deaths"? Quarantine, perhaps?
Secondly, it doesn't matter what you feel. The evidence shows that when everyone who can be vaccinated is vaccinated according to the schedule, infection rates fall to close to 0% or even to 0%. It's how we got rid of smallpox.
I subscribe to the principle that with rights come responsibilities. If someone wants his or her children to not be vaccinated, then that person will have to accept constraints during any actual or suspected outbreak, to protect the children and anyone vulnerable to infection..

Nope, he's draining the swamp of you scum.

@Beth #18:

I’d like to see all such deaths minimized but I don’t feel that insisting on mandatory vaccination for all schoolchildren is an appropriate way to achieve the combined minimum for all such deaths.

But it's pretty much the only way to minimize such deaths. Mandatory vaccination isn't about making sure your kid doesn't get sick; it reduces the risk, but doesn't eliminate it. It's about making sure that enough of the population is immunized so that a disease can't establish itself and spread. Vaccination only works when as many people are immunized as possible. That means it has to be mandatory.

Otherwise, we accept a major jump in childhood mortality and morbidity and rationalize it as the price of freedom. I don't have kids, so you'd think I wouldn't have an opinion either way, but I do. As a Texan, I think we should follow Mississippi's lead and disallow all non-medical exemptions.

My foks grew up in the '30s and '40s, before there were vaccinations for most diseases; they knew (or at least knew of) kids who wound up in an iron lung, or deafened, or killed outright by polio and measles and scarlet fever. They'd regard this "but freedom" attitude as pathological. But that's the problem - today's parents are far enough removed from the reality of pre-vaccination days that they really don't understand what's at stake.

People are being actively misinformed about vaccines, and appeals are being made on an inappropriate level. And when (not if) a major measles or pertussis or whatever outbreak hits Texas, the results are going to be ugly.

@Zach #25

I'm aware that our personal decisions affect others. Everytime I drive somewhere, I increase pollution in my community and put others at risk of accidents that they would not incur if I just stayed home. That are decisions impact others is not in question. Whether or not the decision to not vaccine impacts others sufficiently to justify imposing requirements to vaccinate is what is under discussion.

@Rebecca #28. I think the reason we have so few cases is because most parents vaccinate their kids for measles. I did. In fact, measles is so contagious that I think making it a default for school attendance is a good plan as long as exemptions are allowed. What I object to is holding a child's education hostage in order to force their parents to vaccinate them.

In this century, I think there have been something like 8 deaths reported in VAERS for MMR and only 1 or 2 deaths due to measles. This computation is dynamic, not static.

You think?? Well you're wrong. Firstly, just because a death has been reported to VAERS doesn't mean that the vaccine caused it. Secondly, Measles kills thousands every year. Thirdly, did you consider the possibility that maybe the death rate from Measles is as low as it is because we VACCINATE for it?

@Mi Dawn #26

Apparently, Beth believes that the consequences of not getting her child vaccinated is that some other child, who made the poor decision to get Leukemia, should be kept home from school.

@Beth Clarkson #33:

What I object to is holding a child’s education hostage in order to force their parents to vaccinate them.

So you would allow the unvaccinated to jeopardise the health and safety of children at school who are immunosuppressed or have genuine contraindications to vaccination? Nope, sorry. That's not how it works.
In addition, parents who wish to not vaccinate can homeschool or send their children to Waldorf schools.
Like I said in my earlier comments, with rights come responsibilities.

@Julian Frost #34

Measles may kill thousands every year, but not in the U.S. VAERS is only for the U.S.

Yes, I agree that the reason the death rate from measles is low is because we vaccinate for it. Vaccines work to protect the vaccinated individual and I consider the protection the measles vaccine provides to be well worth the small risk - at least for my children.

What I don't agree on is that the public health risk of not being vaccinated for measles is sufficient to justify not allowing a child to attend a public school. Further, if the public health risk due to not being vaccinated was a sufficient justification for keeping a child from attending school, then the reason for the choice not to vaccinate is immaterial. Children who are medically unable to receive the vaccine pose the same risk to their classmates as those who are unvaccinated for religious reasons.

Do I hear The Gnat buzzing again?

Young Mr. Crosby is just pissed off that his Grad School Crush is a flameout.....

@Orac: he's buzzing but, as usual, not saying anything of importance. It's sad, really, all that time spent in education and it didn't make a dent in the depth of his ignorance.

@Beth Clarkson: While VAERs is supposed to be only for the US, in that 152 reports of death there were 4 or so of the handful I looked at marked as "Foreign", meaning that the report did not come from within the US (where a state is indicated).

Why should a child who is medically fragile or unable to vaccinated be excluded from school, due to the parents who simply refuse to vaccinate? Their child is not more important. Yes, the child suffers for the decision of the parents. If they are allowed in school, the parents have to deal with the quarantines during periods of infectious disease, so the child *still* is excluded. That's the way it goes. Let them vaccinate so their child doesn't have to suffer for the parents' bad decisions.

Beth, you really have a fundamental misunderstanding of public health policies.

For instance, the government is well within its right to prohibit open sewers.

In the case of schools, it is recognized that students can be especially vulnerable to the spread of disease - therefore, it is good public health policy to require vaccination to protect everyone.

You may be more libertarian in your views, but luckily for all of us, at least today, public health is still viewed as a public responsibility.

Beth, I'm just going to repeat NJK's comment here, as it's totally on point.

Apparently, Beth believes that the consequences of not getting her child vaccinated is that some other child, who made the poor decision to get Leukemia, should be kept home from school.

The difference is that parents who intentionally leave their children unvaccinated can homeschool or send them to Waldorf schools.

@Zach #25 -

When a parent chooses not to vaccinate, they are increasing the odds of someone else catching a disease. When your choice puts others in harm’s way, and there is zero legitimate argument that said choice offers any benefit that has to be weighed against that risk, then your choice is wrong.

Personal choices put others in harms ways every day - see my example with pollution. The fact that there is some risk to others by not-vaccinating is not sufficient to justify forcing a medical treatment - which has it's own attendant risks - on others. You are welcome to argue that they are wrong about their choice and persuade them otherwise. If you are unable to persuade them and lobby instead to force them submit to the risks of medical procedures in order to benefit public health, you will need better argument to convince people like me to support such policies.

Perhaps Beth should crack open a history book & learn a bit about what it was like in this country before vaccination.

And she should also do some research on where the hundreds of schools for the deaf and blind that we used to have, all over the country went, as well.....

@Julian #30

First, what would you recommend to “achieve the combined minimum for all such deaths”? Quarantine, perhaps?

I recommend allowing parents to listen to the experts and others and make their own decisions. Since the vast majority of parents want their children to live long and healthy lives, I think the optimum solution is too trust their choices.

Secondly, it doesn’t matter what you feel. The evidence shows that when everyone who can be vaccinated is vaccinated according to the schedule, infection rates fall to close to 0% or even to 0%. It’s how we got rid of smallpox.
I subscribe to the principle that with rights come responsibilities. If someone wants his or her children to not be vaccinated, then that person will have to accept constraints during any actual or suspected outbreak, to protect the children and anyone vulnerable to infection..

I agree with this. What I disagree with is the idea that holding a child's right to a public education hostage is a reasonable 'consequence' of choosing not to vaccinate.

And lastly, public schools are just that, public. Hence, they set public health policies to protect all students.

If you don't like it - then go to a Waldorf School.....though they tend to close for weeks at a time, due to disease outbreaks.

Beth - do you agree that all choices have consequences?

@Beth Clarkson:

What I disagree with is the idea that holding a child’s right to a public education hostage is a reasonable ‘consequence’ of choosing not to vaccinate.

It is a reasonable consequence. A deliberately unvaccinated child puts immunosuppressed and allergic children at risk. Also, many schools have kindergartens attached. Kindergartens with children too young to be vaccinated.
The bottom line is, not vaccinating endangers others, and it is thus not unreasonable to exclude unvaccinated children from public education.

" you will need better argument to convince people like me to support such policies."
Reducing mortality and morbidity are not trivial goals for me. Perhaps your views about other people's wellbeing are different. Saving money is a nice bonus too.

Apparently, Beth believes that the consequences of not getting her child vaccinated is that some other child, who made the poor decision to get Leukemia, should be kept home from school.

This isn't what I believe, it's just a snarky comment. Do you really think I'm advocating that children with Leukemia not be allowed to attend school? I don't think so. You just assume that if unvaccinated-by-choice children are also allowed to attend, it creates an environment too risky for that child to attend. I'm not willing to make that assumption. I think it should be left to the child's parents to determine what public spaces are appropriate for their child. If they want to consider the % non-vaccinated children in a school as part of that assessment, that would be wise. I wouldn't consider it a automatic make or break criterion though but weigh it in relation to other needs and goals the child might have.

While allowing non-vaccinated children to attend school may increase the risk slightly, but we could decrease the risk considerably more by forcing all children and public school employees to wear masks every day all day long and thus, reduce the risk of ANY contagious diseases from spreading. I wouldn't find that appropriate either. Does you think lack of support for that measure implies I feel that "some other child, who made the poor decision to get Leukemia, should be kept home from school"?

@Lawrence: # 41

Beth, you really have a fundamental misunderstanding of public health policies.

Just because we disagree on this issue does not imply I have a fundamental misunderstanding of public health polices. To assume ignorance when that is not the case does not persuade.

For instance, the government is well within its right to prohibit open sewers.

Yes. This is true.

In the case of schools, it is recognized that students can be especially vulnerable to the spread of disease – therefore, it is good public health policy to require vaccination to protect everyone.

Yes, this is true. The question is whether the benefit of making it a requirement without the option to decline for religious or other personal reasons is worth the cost of holding a child's education hostage. I disagree with your assessment of the cost/benefit of doing so.

IYou may be more libertarian in your views, but luckily for all of us, at least today, public health is still viewed as a public responsibility.

In only 3 out of 50 U.S. states currently. It's not exactly an outlier POV which is why I think ORAC is wrong to dismiss this argument as a 'dog whistle' rather than a legitimate concern of many people who disagree with his stance.

"Nope, he’s draining the swamp of you scum."
Jake Crosby, I would go against my principles and support bringing back smallpox just for you.
Watch out who you're calling scum, you waste of protein.

@Lawrence #47. Yes, all decisions have consequences. The question is what are appropriate consequences for society to impose in this situation. I disagree that taking away the a child's right to a public education is an appropriate consequence for choosing not to vaccinate.

Beth Clarkson: Why do you presume that European parents are evil? I may be mistaken, but I believe the levels of children suffering from neglect due to poverty are lower in countries with a strong social safely net.

I was being facetious. You're trying very hard not to let your fundamentalism show, but most American Christians believe that Europe is basically an evil uncivilized backwater. Why are you pretending to be all these things that you aren't? In the space of five different posts, you have pretended to be pro-choice, pro-vaccine and liberal. Just own your views already; you're almost at the Norma McCarvey/Roe level of quisling.

And, again, as far as quarantines go, are you willing to accept all the inconveniences I listed above? Because that's what can happen when a disease gets out of hand.

@rork #49 "Reducing mortality and morbidity are not trivial goals for me. Perhaps your views about other people’s wellbeing are different. Saving money is a nice bonus too."

All good reasons for parents to choose to vaccinate, but not sufficient to mandate vaccines IMO. We could also reduce mortality in our country considerably by outlawing all gasoline engines, but that's not currently considered an appropriate price to pay for the benefits obtained.

Likewise, I can support the same goals you value, but disagree that the costs of a vaccine mandate for school children is worth the benefits obtained.

re the gnat

His blog features an article about his bros ( RFK jr, De Niro, Del, Roger Stone) being on Info Wars- which - he says- provides "excellent coverage " about vaccines.

Talk about 'draining the swamp'!

Seriously, I've used swamp/ bog/ biofilm/ detritus metaphors to refer to woo and alt med for AGES!

I'd like to see THAT swamp drained but I suspect under Trump & Co, we'll see much more 'freedom from regulation' and praise for non-experts. To them, regulation, expertise and education are features of a swamp.

Which of course means that the nature of the metaphorical swamp is in the eye of the beholder

I like mine better.

The simple fact is that vaccination has been so successful in the developed world that most people have no awareness of the devastation wrought by the diseases that have had their incidence reduced by vaccination.
The ever-trenchant Prof, Steve Dutch put it nicely: "Prince George’s County, Maryland decided to crack down on parents who failed to get their children vaccinated. This shocking example of nanny-state bullying has been duly hyped on various libertarian and anti-vaccination sites.
So, I can expose myself and my kids to the (minuscule) risks of vaccination, then we create a disease free society and you and your kids enjoy the benefits without that nasty needle. Or, horror of horrors, having somebody tell you what to do.
There are all sorts of dark corners of the world we could send these people where they will never, ever have to face a needle. The not having somebody tell you what to do part, not so much. I'm sure the folks we bring here to replace them would eagerly line up at dawn to get their kids immunized."
(http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/ModestProp.HTM)
Personally, I wish that the polio vaccines had come a little earlier. While I was not as badly affected as others, the sequelae have dogged me all my life, and sometimes have had unpleasant consequences, to say the least.
Antivaxers, come tell me all about the evils of vaccine so I can show you the contempt you deserve.

Funny thing Beth - we have a very robust homeschooling community in this country....if you don't like public school health policies, then by all means, homeschool.

Excellent long article on the threats to US immunization and public health.

Quick summary:

It is foreseeable that in the coming weeks, challenges to our vaccination system will come from 3 directions at once.

First, there will likely be greater attention to theories that vaccines cause harm.

The second foreseeable challenge to vaccination is the elimination of laws requiring vaccination for school entry.

A third coming challenge to vaccination targets the critical role of government agencies and scientific organizations in ensuring the safety of vaccines. The goal is to undermine trust in our nation’s system that generates and evaluates evidence.

https://newsatjama.jama.com/2017/02/22/jama-forum-vaccines-and-the-trum…

re the cartoon

I love that the icky goo dripping takes the form of a skull at right as well as the mom's ironic haircut and dress/ tights combo. Fashion tells us much.

@Lawrence #44 - You seem to be under the impression that I am arguing that vacations should not be allowed. That is not the case. I'm more than willing to accept that vaccinations work and have helped to reduce disease incidence considerably over the years. In fact, I think they should be delivered free of charge to every person who wants to get them. It's making them mandatory by imposing severe and unnecessary (wrt public health) consequences to those who decide against them that I object to.

If you want to see just how deeply some libertarians are embedded in Bizarro World, read this:
http://volokh.com/2011/02/15/asteroid-defense-and-libertarianism/

You are arguing that States shouldn't have the right to set public health policies...

Lucky for all of us, it is a Constitutionally recognized right for the States to do so.

Lawrence: In a public health emergency, cities and counties can also set public health policies.

The question is whether the benefit of making it a requirement without the option to decline for religious or other personal reasons...

Beth, can you name a couple of those religions that teach 'thou shall not vaccinate'?

D'oh!

Can a brother get a preview button up in this place?

@MI Dawn #40

Why should a child who is medically fragile or unable to vaccinated be excluded from school, due to the parents who simply refuse to vaccinate?

I'm not arguing for this. Who is?

Their child is not more important.

I agree. We shouldn't base our policies on the needs of a few based on the needs of some other few. We should provide access to a public education for all. Vaccinated or not, immune-deficient or not, all these children should be allowed to attend public school. When the risk of disease is high, as when there are outbreaks of contagious disease, it's appropriate to keep them out. Otherwise, it's not.

Yes, the child suffers for the decision of the parents. If they are allowed in school, the parents have to deal with the quarantines during periods of infectious disease, so the child *still* is excluded. That’s the way it goes. Let them vaccinate so their child doesn’t have to suffer for the parents’ bad decisions.

I agree that yes, quarantines during periods of actively infectious diseases is a reasonable consequence of choosing not to vaccinate. I'm more than willing to agree that they can vaccinate their child. I don't agree that excluding their children from attending public school at all is a reasonable consequence.

@Julian #48 - We'll simply have to disagree on this point. I don't feel the risk posed just because they are not vaccinated isn't a sufficient public health danger that we should forfeit their right to attend a public school.

@Lawrence #63 - NO. I am not arguing that the state has no right to set public policy on the matter. Clearly that's false. I am arguing that this particular policy is not justified in the name of public health. Currently, only 3 out of 50 states have laws that don't allow exemptions, so it's not exactly an out-of-the-mainstream view to support the use of exemptions.

@PGP

I was being facetious.

So was I.

You’re trying very hard not to let your fundamentalism show, but most American Christians believe that Europe is basically an evil uncivilized backwater. Why are you pretending to be all these things that you aren’t? In the space of five different posts, you have pretended to be pro-choice, pro-vaccine and liberal.

I'm not pretending to be anything I'm not. You are making unwarranted assumptions about my views and then accusing me of being dishonest when I turn out to fit those assumptions you made.

And, again, as far as quarantines go, are you willing to accept all the inconveniences I listed above? Because that’s what can happen when a disease gets out of hand.

Yes, I'm willing to accept quarantines as a consequence of not being vaccinated when a disease gets out of hand. It's not exactly a new thing.

@Lawrence #39: You know her? Oh, you mean Milo. lol

Let's see - almost 2 million Facebook likes and counting. Yep, that's quite a flameout... *smh*

Correction to #70
I’m not pretending to be anything I’m not. You are making unwarranted assumptions about my views and then accusing me of being dishonest when I turn out NOT to fit those assumptions you made.

And, again, as far as quarantines go, are you willing to accept all the inconveniences I listed above? Because that’s what can happen when a disease gets out of hand.

Yes, I’m willing to accept quarantines as a consequence of not being vaccinated when a disease gets out of hand. It’s not exactly a new thing.

Oh poor little Jake - outed for the hate-filled bigot that he appears to have turned into.....prospective employers are going to love Google searching his name, that's for sure.

@Beth - unfortunately, anti-vaxers aren't big fans of quarantines either....just look at how many complained when their kids were sent home from school because of an outbreak of disease.

Sorry, but you're on the wrong side of public health on this one. Sure, most states have exemptions, but that is relatively new - in the old days, there were barely any exemptions.

And I seriously doubt that these "crunchy" mommies would be in favor of strict, mandatory quarantines today.

Do I hear The Gnat buzzing again?

Yup, legitimacy he crave, legitimacy he'll never get :)

Al

@Lawrence #63: I think the argument is that states have the right to set policy, just that they shouldn't be able to force compliance with those policies. Which is a poor argument IMO.

To me, barring unvaccinated kids from attending public school is probably the least invasive or restrictive option available. Parents aren't being fined, they aren't being thrown in jail, they aren't having their children taken away to be forcibly vaccinated, etc. Keeping unvaccinated kids out of public schools is quite literally the least the state can do. It places all the responsibility squarely on the parents' shoulders - you are free to not vaccinate your kid, but be prepared to home-school until they're 18.

If Beth and others are arguing that the state shouldn't even be allowed to do that, then they are effectively saying that the state should not be allowed to enforce public health policy at all. That any compliance should be strictly voluntary.

The state has a compelling interest in setting and enforcing health policy; epidemics are expensive to deal with, and the best way to prevent them is with widespread vaccinations. The only way to guarantee widespread vaccination is to make it mandatory, and the state has to have the power to enforce the mandate.

There are times when individual liberty must give way to the common welfare; this is one of those times.

@jfb - I agree. It seems like Beth would prefer that the state cede all responsibility for enforcing public health measures.

Yes, anti-vaxers have managed to create quite a bit of noise around the use of vaccines...but at the end of the day, the State has the legal responsibility to enforce applicable vaccine mandates, with whatever exemptions happen to be part of the law, and if parents don't happen to like it, then they are free to choose an alternative form of education for their children - as long as it conforms to the standards set forth by the state.

Beth: "I can support the same goals you value, but disagree that the costs of a vaccine mandate for school children is worth the benefits obtained."

I cannot concur in your disagreement. Moreover, in our democratic form of government, most people agree that the needs of the many outweigh the libertarian stylings of the few, when it comes to a highly effective and valuable public health initiative like vaccination.

I would make the same argument for mandatory seat belt, car seat* and motorcycle helmet laws, which also distress the "my rights trump everything" crowd.

*those who are into the argument that "the state doesn't own my children, I do" may well be indignant about infant car seats too. Too bad.

Beth Clarkson: Yes, I’m willing to accept quarantines as a consequence of not being vaccinated when a disease gets out of hand.

Ok, but are you willing to accept quarantines that stretch on for months on end? That shut down an entire city? I'm not talking about a quarantine that only affects one household at a time here.
'Cause that's happened, and thanks to you and your friends, it will happen again.

Beth Clarkson: You are making unwarranted assumptions about my views and then accusing me of being dishonest.

Look, I know your views and I know who you are- a suburban Republican momma who homeschools and has never had a problem in her primrose path of a life, and looks smugly down on lesser people who failed to follow Christianity/the gluten free diet/paleo properly and should die off as Nature intended. Kids or adults with leukemia or other immune problems who can't go to school or even outside because of your snowflakes? Not your problem and they probably all did something wrong.

I'm beginning to think the fourth commandment was changed when I wasn't looking. Christians these days seem to be under the impression that they should give false witness-incessantly.

I would like to suggest a new theory: anti-vaxxers are also against women in the workforce.
Vaccines are created and used to prevent serious diseases.
Children who are not vaccinated are at substantially greater risk of contracting one or more of these diseases.
Sick children require care (and are bared from school), which means that a parent must stay home from work and care for said sick child.
Because of the culture of the US, the parent that stays home with sick kids is almost always the mother.
Because of the sick leave/FMLA set ups common in the US it is possible that caring for a sick child will use up all of a parent's sick leave/FMLA. This parent then either has to leave their job or stop caring for the child.

End result being that non-vaccinating mothers are unable to maintain a career because they are obligated to spend so much time caring for their sick children. This reduces the number of women in the work force. Therefore anti-vax is anti-woman.

Beth @ 72 "Yes, I’m willing to accept quarantines as a consequence of not being vaccinated when a disease gets out of hand. It’s not exactly a new thing."
So you would choose that the economy of an entire city, county or possibly state, be decimated because some parents didn't want to vaccinate their children or keep them home?

also, you said that we should trust people's decisions. I can't do that on things that matter this much because, quite frankly, people make terrible decisions every single day. Choose to drive drunk. Choose to not lock guns away from kids. Choose to drive too fast for the conditions.Choose to blow their life savings on the lottery. Choose to join a cult. Choose to look the other way about sub-standard supplies.

Here's a thought: the US didn't used to have these laws and regulations. Now we do. Why is that?

JustaTech,

Aren't the TMR stay-at-home moms after all?

Alain

The "I own my children" trope is invalid in any and every way.
Human beings cannot morally or legally own other human beings. In the US, this became settled law just after the War of Southern Sedition. Children aren't livestock either. I own my dog. I don't own humans.
I have two grown children. They are not, and were not ever, my property. I never considered them as anyone except people in my trust, whose wellbeing came before mine, and now that they are grown, it still does and will until their children's wellbeing comes before theirs in my concerns.
"I own my children" is an ignorant, immoral, and plain stupid attitude. I wince every time I encounter it.

Old Rockin' Dave says (~#82),

“I own my children” is an ignorant, immoral, and plain stupid attitude. I wince every time I encounter it.

MJD says,

I agree, that's why parents are not responsible if a child has a vaccine-related injury.

Is an abortion really murder in that the mother does not have "ownership" of the unborn child?

@Lawrence #8, the welfare of the populace was so important to the founders of this nation that it was not only included in the preamble of the Constitution, but also included in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

@Beth, let's say one thing. If that kid in SF that is dying of SSPE were my grandkid, the one that infected my grandkid and her parents would no longer be alive to infect anyone else.
Freedom and all, I'm free to do as I please, just as those parents were.

We do have to admit that "think of the children" is responsible for a lot of bad law in this country. It's a direct line into the lizard brain and gets people to agree to some really dodgy stuff without thinking about it too much.

But it's also how the anti-vax movement got to be so strong so quickly, because it convinced people that their children were at risk from vaccination. Then a bunch of libertarians decided to tack on a bunch of blather about "The Government" and individual freedoms as a post-hoc rationalization because they saw an exploitable wedge issue.

Ultimately, the kids will pay the price. If we're exceedingly lucky, it won't be more than a few dozen before people get a clue.

I don't think we're going to be lucky. I think we're going to see a major (and entirely avoidable) bump in child mortality.

Beth wrote:

Likewise, I can support the same goals you value, but disagree that the costs of a vaccine mandate for school children is worth the benefits obtained.

This discusses the 1989 -1991 outbreak that resulted in the 123 U.S. deaths MI Dawn mentioned in comment #24.

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/189/Supplement_1/S1/820569/Measles…

As mentioned, the 123 deaths resulted from an outbreak involving some 55,000 people.

I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that if 55,000 people in the U,S, contracted measles in 2017-2019, the death toll would be about the same.

Or unreasonable to assume that were the epidemic figure to rise over time, e.g., 550,000, the death rate would rise accordingly..

But, I'm not an expert in the area. Maybe there's been significant advances in care between 1991 and now that might substantially decrease the above-mentioned deaths.

However, death rate not the only concern and the study goes on to say:

The measles resurgence also demonstrated the high financial cost of measles in a developed country. Mason et al. [8]. found that the average expense for a measles hospitalization at Los Angeles Children's Hospital during the resurgence was $9264 [8]. Hatziandreu et al. [9].estimated that the average cost (direct and indirect) of a measles case in 1994 was $1000. The same study estimated total annual costs of measles in the absence of a vaccination program of $3.8 billion with 1859 deaths. The United States spends ∼$45 million annually for the measles component of measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, to avoid this burden [9].

My view is that in the big picture the human and financial cost savings from vaccination more than justify the "mandate" mentioned in your comment.

I do recognize that if one's personal definition of "individual liberty" trumps, so to speak, everything else, the human and financial costs associated with preventable disease outbreaks could just be chalked up as one of the costs paid for "freedom".

I believe that we should simply call the refuse to properly vaccinate one children what it truly is, selfish. The world no longer has small pox due to vaccination. The world only has polio due to people whom refuse to vaccinate. This horrific disease should be extinct. Measles could be extinct as well with full vaccination. The fact that another child develops polio in the world is only because of vaccine refusal. The fact that anyone gets measles is due to vaccine refusal. https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/204/suppl_1/S47/2192303/Biological…
It may not be your child, but that attitude condemns children to suffer and die with measles and to suffer and be maimed by polio. This is nothing but pure selfishness.

@jfb #75 - Yes, I agree making them mandatory for public schools is probably the least invasive way of making them mandatory. I don't even object to requiring that parents who have thought about and decided against one or more vaccines of contagious diseases require filing extra paperwork to opt out.

Unvaccinated children are NOT a health hazard to others. If they were, then ALL unvaccinated children would need to be excluded, just they ALL are during an outbreak of a VPD. If they aren't a health hazard to others, they should be allowed to attend school.

@Lawrence #77 - I can't speak for people you termed “crunchy” mommies, but it's not at issue in this conversation. I was asked how I felt about and I don't object to them. There is a clear and present danger presented by people who are infectious that warrants a larger intrusion into an individual's personal freedom.

@D.B. #77 Yes, clearly there are situations where the government can and does sacrifice personal freedom for the greater good. Whether vaccines should be mandatory is basically a boundary line for our culture which is why it's so contentious and I'm willing to spend hours arguing for my POV.

Regarding seat belt laws, car seats, helmets, etc. I objected to those laws when they came up and voted against them when I was given the chance. And I always wear my seatbelt, even back when it wasn't required by law. That something is a good idea does NOT mean that requiring everyone to do that something is also a good idea. These were all boundary line discussions in the past. The direction is obvious. When and where it will stop is not. I like to argue against the prevailing direction. Always have.

@pgp #78 - Lawrence was closer with "crunchy", but neither are a good fit. You are making unwarranted assumptions about me and then you call me a liar if I say you are wrong. That's always a winning argument for you isn't it?

@Justatech #80

So you would choose that the economy of an entire city, county or possibly state, be decimated because some parents didn’t want to vaccinate their children or keep them home?

Wow, that's some impressive fearmongering there. I don't consider that a likely outcome in the US at this time. Far more likely to occur for something like Ebola that there is no vaccine for.

also, you said that we should trust people’s decisions. I can’t do that on things that matter this much because, quite frankly, people make terrible decisions every single day. Choose to drive drunk. Choose to not lock guns away from kids. Choose to drive too fast for the conditions.Choose to blow their life savings on the lottery. Choose to join a cult. Choose to look the other way about sub-standard supplies.
Here’s a thought: the US didn’t used to have these laws and regulations. Now we do. Why is that?

Yes, people make terrible decisions every day. They live their lives all wrong. If only the government were to step in and force them to do things right. At least for the sake of their kids. Protect the kids. As jfb point out "We do have to admit that “think of the children” is responsible for a lot of bad law in this country.

So there are some things we make laws about and we force people to behave in certain ways under certain circumstances. This discussion is about whether it's appropriate to have laws that force parents to vaccinate their kids or school them without help from the government. We have different opinions about that issue. It's not that we have different opinions about whether it is right or just for the government to EVER step in and force compliance to laws on citizens. It's about whether this is an appropriate law with an appropriate penalty.

There [sic] child is not endangered by children who are unvaccinated, but by children who carry disease.

This is just about as logical as "No one is ever endangered by fire hazards, only by actual fires."

Somewhat tangential
Summarizing research on how to increase immunization rates:

"These findings are important for at least two reasons. The first is that even small changes in vaccination rates, of just a few percentage points, can substantially reduce the chances of an outbreak. For example, Louisiana has a pertussis vaccination rate of 98.5%, which seems only slightly higher than Montana’s 95%. But there are four times as many cases of whooping cough per capita in Montana than in Louisiana.

The second is that immediate, large-scale “promotion” of specific disease outbreaks seems to be effective where many other strategies have failed. Previous research suggests educational campaigns that debunk myths about vaccines generally don’t increase vaccination rates. And sharing dramatic images or stories of children with preventable diseases, without connecting them to actual outbreaks, may even strengthen skeptical parents’ belief in the negative side effects of vaccines."

https://hbr.org/2017/02/to-increase-vaccination-rates-share-information…

Wzrd1 # 84 - Vengence is an understandable reaction to someone you feel caused tragedy in your life. I'm sure that you can totally understand how people who watched their child die as a result of a vaccination might feel about what caused their child's death. Rare, but it happens. Which is why I favor a process of trying to minimize the combined number of death from both causes. Currently, it's the vaccine.

@dz - You can call it selfish if you want. Community disparagement - i.e. shame - is a long used method of forcing conformity of behavior. It's a valid point for some definitions of selfishness. It is putting their own children ahead of the rest of the herd. I think most people naturally put the safety and well-being of their own child ahead of other children in making choices for themselves and their family.

@ #90 Wzrd1 the problem is, you disparage the risk of an unvaccinated child as a non-extant threat.
The problem is, a child can be infectious before symptoms are apparent, spreading disease as he or she travels, potentially exposing hundreds of people along the way.

@Antaeus Feldspar #91 - The difference in both cases is the difference between - how do they say it legally - a real and immanent threat of harm - and therefore something that does not require the sorts of invasive government actions that real and immanent threats do. Not being vaccinated is no more of a harm to others than a pile of greasy rags in my basement is. The threat of fire is mainly posed to me. It doesn't justify the government getting access to inspect my home, but it does justify the government passing out flyers and giving fire-safely lectures in schools.

I'm not saying its a non-extant threat any more than you are denying the rare side effects of vaccinations. Yes, a child or an adult, vaccinated or not, will be infections for a few days prior to showing symptoms. In fact, many people, vaccinated and non-vaccinated, may show no signs of infection at all, successfully fighting the disease off and be infectious. It's only that people who are vaccinated have a far lower probability of ever becoming infectious. Why does this justify not allowing a non-vaccinated child to attend a public school? The difference in actual risk between them and their vaccinated schoolmates is negligible unless there is an active outbreak in their community. Then they can be excluded for reasons of public health.

What sort of consequence for starting an outbreak would be acceptable, if the simplest prevention measures are unacceptable?

Given that measles carries a measurable death risk....

@NumberWang

Prevention measures are fine. I'm not suggesting we stop using or allowing parents to use vaccines. I'm not sure any consequence is required beyond the getting-sick-and-possibly-dying consequence. Unless you're talking about deliberately infecting others like giving them small pox infected blankets or ruining their water supply - then legal consequences like prison terms do seem appropriate.

What consequence seems appropriate to you? And why should that consequence hinge on the reason for their vaccination status, itself a private piece of information that shouldn't be available to the public?

@Beth Clarkson, #95

The difference in both cases is the difference between – how do they say it legally – a real and immanent [sic] threat of harm – and therefore something that does not require the sorts of invasive government actions that real and immanent [sic] threats do.

That's not how "they say it legally"--or in English.

There's a simple, common sense solution.

Admit vaccine safety problems (helps build trust too).
Fix the vaccine safety problems.

@Beth #88:

Unvaccinated children are NOT a health hazard to others.

They can be when they provide a reservoir for a disease to establish itself within a population. With high vaccination rates, one or two kids may get sick, but it won't spread through the population in general. Once vaccination rates fall low enough, you get large-scale outbreaks that put everybody at risk, even people who have been vaccinated (because again, vaccination greatly reduces risk of infection, but doesn't eliminate it completely).

And once that happens, the only way to contain the outbreak is quarantine, which is hugely disruptive. And given how mobile most of us are today, not even effective. By the time you realize an outbreak is happening, enough infected people have traveled elsewhere to launch multiple outbreaks.

We know that herd immunity is real - we can look at inection rates before and after the introduction of widespread vaccination programs. We went from over 500 thousand cases of measles a year (on average) to 55. We went from over 30 thousand cases of polio a year (on average) to none.

But it only works when immunization rates are high enough. Once you fall below a threshold, you get large-scale outbreaks. It's already happened several times in the last couple of decades, and it's going to get worse.

The state has a compelling interest in minimizing the chance of disease outbreaks; they cost money, they strain public health resources, they shut down whole communities. Mandatory vaccination programs are the most effective means of preventing those disease outbreaks. Again, this is the one thing Mississippi does right - no non-medical exemptions.

@Beth Clarkson:

Do you really think I’m advocating that children with Leukemia not be allowed to attend school?

It may not have been your intention, but yes actually. The risks of a child with leukemia catching a disease are heightened by having unvaccinated and under-vaccinated children alongside them in school, so for their own safety such patients would have to be withdrawn from school if there were students with vaccine "sceptical" parents.

Unvaccinated children are NOT a health hazard to others.

Yes they are, no matter how much you deny it.
Here's an analogy: drunk driving. Most trips taken by drunk drivers don't end in an accident. Nonetheless, the authorities will arrest anyone they catch driving drunk because (and this is key) the RISK that a deadly accident will occur is regarded as too high.
The bottom line is, not excluding the deliberately unvaccinated from public schooling raises the risk that outbreaks that will infect the immunosuppressed and those too young to be vaccinated. No amount of your handwaving will change that simple truth.

Prevention measures are fine. I’m not suggesting we stop using or allowing parents to use vaccines.

I've read this from you more than one time, and on each of them, it has seemed apropos of nothing. Allow me to back up to another part of the script:

We shouldn’t base our policies on the needs of a few based on the needs of some other few. We should provide access to a public education for all.

OK. It should be stipulated that there is no right to a public education in the Constitution to start with (thanks to Texas, as it happens). So, what is with this vague hortatory blab? Why shouldn't "we" also do the same tthing, but with separate schools?

Thought-blobs do not tend to improve with repetition, in my experience (at least Tim Leary changed the presentation of the core blobovianism every once in a while). Your perseveration catastrophically fails any rational cost–benefit analysis on the down side, so where's the boundary on the up side?

I hope the bipartisan letter would help some. http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/320452-top-lawmakers-vaccines-save…

We went from over 500 thousand cases of measles a year (on average)

No, it was an entire birth cohort on average. That's how one gets nearly universal disease-based immunity by age 20, as I recall the time point. The usual tallies of reported cases are another thing.

#92
"For example, Louisiana has a pertussis vaccination rate of 98.5%, which seems only slightly higher than Montana’s 95%. But there are four times as many cases of whooping cough per capita in Montana than in Louisiana."

But the pertussis vaccine does NOT prevent transmission.
So it may have more to do with the temperature/humidity ...

" Thus
modern day understanding of hypersensitivity mechanisms
and manifestations of anaphylaxis begins
with an account of circumstances and events related
to that milestone of 1902."

http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(02)70118-8/pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312125211_Professional_Miscond…

Before I forget,
Definition of "Hazard".
1. a danger or risk.
"the hazards of childbirth"
synonyms: danger, risk, peril, threat, menace.
By the very definition of the word, deliberately unvaccinated children ARE a health hazard to others.

@Vinu:

But the pertussis vaccine does NOT prevent transmission.

One study done on primates (not humans) suggested this. Bring some better evidence.

Oh, I'm sure I'm going to regret this, since I have to work today and won't be able to respond a lot...but...

@Vinu: you said So when are the states going to calculate the cost of vaccine induced food allergies, asthma and autism?

Well, when it can be proven through studies that vaccines actually *cause* food allergies, asthma and autism, would be a start. So far, no large group of reproducible studies done by scientists have shown any of those things. I do realize you have a bee in your bonnet about this. But, your proof is bad.

Remember, we don't have to prove the negative - vaccines don't cause these things - it's up to you to prove the positive. So far, you've failed to do so.

@jfb #100 While you gave a brief and accurate lecture on vaccinations rates and herd immunity, I’m not disagreeing with those points. I disagree that unvaccinated children are a health hazard to others for this reason because I find the risk engendered by their being unvaccinated sufficiently small to round it to zero. I will grant it is actually a very tiny but non-zero risk. Can you quantify it? I can’t, but I estimate the risk to others posed by an unvaccinated but otherwise seemingly healthy child to be less than the risk posed to any individual child by the vaccine, which is very small.

With regard to quarantines of entire cities, I just don’t see that happening. Did they do that for diseases like measles prior to the vaccine being available? Small pox yes, but measles, whooping cough, chicken pox? That scenario comes across as blatant fearmongering rather than a reasonable expectation for the future if vaccine exemptions continue to be allowed.

With regard to the compelling interest you claim the State has in minimizing outbreaks, you might want to take another look at the link and quote I posted in #7.

Scientists keep insisting that this is a question of parents rejecting science and ignoring facts. But that’s not what the parents are saying. The debate they are broaching is a much more complex one, and one that can’t be solved with the recitation of objective facts. Here is what they are asking: if the preservation of herd immunity is a trade-off, who has the right to make you accept the trade? Why should the government have that power?”

@Julian Frost – Your attempt to couch my position as one of advocating that children with Leukemia should not attend public school is ludicrous. You are basing it on an assumption I don’t share. You provide no evidence for this assumption.

I think the drunk driver analogy would better fit a child who is actually infectious. They can be kept out of school for reasons of public health. An unvaccinated but otherwise healthy child would be analogous to a driver who drinks but isn’t currently drunk. Doesn’t mean they won’t have an accident, but the probability of harm to others is sufficiently low that we don’t need to prevent people who drink, but are currently sober, from driving.

@Beth - measles is extremely contagious, perhaps the most contagious disease currently circulating actively on the planet.

The reason we don't have to worry about mass quarantines is precisely because we have a very successful vaccine.

All you need to do is look at the last major measles epidemic, in the early 1990s, where more than 95,000 cases were reported, along with a number of deaths.

In our modern world, with mass transportation being ubiquitous, it is likely that without a large percentage of the population vaccinated, we would see requirements for large-scale quarantines.

In fact, it is quite likely that sometime in the near future, with the outbreak of new, emerging diseases (SARS, MERS, Avian Flu, and a host of other bat-borne diseases which are only now crossing over into humans), that we will experience a new Pandemic - it isn't a fantasy, this is what diseases do & have done for millions of years.

Let's not add to the misery by backing away from what have been very successful vaccine policies - policies which allowed us to go from 95,000 measles cases to zero (domestic) in less than 10 years.

You don't accept the fact the government has a compelling interest in protecting public health, that much is obvious.

And you are also fairly ignorant of the fact that these diseases are extremely contagious - and if exemptions continue to rise, it is a fact that outbreaks will increase in both intensity and overall size.

@julian #113

You can't convince someone that they are wrong by telling them they are ignorant and then spouting off facts they are aware of as if knowledge of the facts is all that is needed to sway their opinion. That isn't persuasive because that's not where the disagreement lies.

I do accept the fact the government has a compelling interest in protecting public health, I disagree that the government has a more compelling interest in making sure every school child is vaccinated than they have in making sure every child has access to public schools.

Yes, measles is likely the most contagious disease around. I am aware of how contagious it is. Yes, mass quarantines might occur due to new diseases we don't have vaccines for. It is the idea that allowing exemptions for unvaccinated children to attend public schools will end up with the measles vaccine dropping to near nothing and leading to mass quarantines that I find ludicrous. Measles didn't warrant that sort of reaction prior to vaccines being available.

Yes, our vaccine policy has been extremely successful as it is - allowing exemptions. You are one claiming it is not sufficient and exemptions should be eliminated despite all the success we have had with it.

Just a little more about Texans For Vaccine Choice being a decidedly right wing group allied with The Tea Party,and working to get antivax friendly state legislators elected.

Non-sequitur there Beth - no one here, certainly not me, has advocated for eliminating exemptions.

I happen to feel that medical exemptions are perfectly fine.

@Lawrence #116 My apologies. I should have said included the adjective "non-medical" in my previous post. If I could edit it and include it, I would.

@ Roger #115

That Texas group as well as a similar one in OK would not exist if the elimination of non-medical exemptions were not being pushed in their states. When you try to force people to do something they have chosen not to do, you bring a great many people, such as myself, into the debate and arguing against you. Plenty of parents vaccinate their own kids, would like to see their neighbors vaccinate as well, but don't want to see an personal choice about medical treatments and their inherent albeit tiny risks treated as unimportant. As I said in my first post, this issue isn't accurately termed a dog whistle for anti-vaxxers. It's more like clarion call to people with libertarians leanings on the issue to stand up and defend the right to choose regardless of their personal opinion about the risk/benefit of vaccines.

@Julian Frost – Your attempt to couch my position as one of advocating that children with Leukemia should not attend public school is ludicrous.

Unintended consequences are STILL consequences. If enough children are unvaccinated, the risk of an outbreak rises to the level where it is too risky for a child with leukemia to attend public school. You may not have advocated that, but that would be the ultimate result.

I think the drunk driver analogy would better fit a child who is actually infectious. They can be kept out of school for reasons of public health. An unvaccinated but otherwise healthy child would be analogous to a driver who drinks but isn’t currently drunk.

I disagree. As others have pointed out, it is possible to be infectious and asymptomatic. A better analogy would be people who can "hold their liquor". That is, people who can act sober even when drunk.
The bottom line is, deliberately unvaccinated children pose a risk to others and are themselves at risk for various diseases. That is why they have restrictions placed on them.

@Beth - irony is the head of the local "anti-helmet" law group dying in a motorcycle accident, because he wouldn't wear a helmet.

Just because people are stupid, doesn't mean we should dumb down our laws.

@Julian #119 - You are still assigning ignorance to me when it is a disagreement about the implications of the facts rather than actual facts. Yes, I'm aware that unintended consequences are still consequences. But you have yet to provide any evidence that your assumed consequence would would be a worse outcome for society overall than the alternative of allowing non-medical exemptions.

The bottom line is, I don't agree that deliberately unvaccinated children pose a sufficient risk to others to justify not allowing them to attend public school. If they did, then it wouldn't matter what the reason for not-being vaccinated was medical or otherwise. The risk to others is unaffected by the reason for not vaccinating the child.

@Lawrence #120 Yes, people are stupid and often make dumb choices. That doesn't mean that every dumb choice should be prohibited by law. The arguments against non-medical exemptions are IMO not sufficient to justify not allowing unvaccinated children to attend public school.

@Beth Clarkson #121:

You have yet to provide any evidence that your assumed consequence would would be a worse outcome for society overall than the alternative of allowing non-medical exemptions

Yes I have. Here it is again:
In every single recent outbreak, a disproportionate number of victims were intentionally un- or under- vaccinated. Others were too young to be vaccinated.
Allowing non-medical exemptions endangers those too young to be vaccinated, the immunosuppressed and the genuinely allergic, as well as the intentionally unvaccinated. Not allowing them endangers...who, exactly?
The fact is that if parents genuinely want their children to not be vaccinated, they can homeschool or enroll their children in Waldorf Schools.
"I don't wanna!" is not a justification.

Yes, Beth - people make dumb choices - but we also legislate when someone's "dumb" choice has the potential consequence to harm others.

As has been noted above, in all recent cases, the majority of those who suffer are the unvaccinated, whether intentionally or who were too young.

Sorry, but you have yet to provide any evidence that allowing "more" exemptions is better.

Beth @114: You said " I disagree that the government has a more compelling interest in making sure every school child is vaccinated than they have in making sure every child has access to public schools."

You know who doesn't have access to any schooling? Children who are home sick with a serious illness. Unvaccinated children are excluded from schools during outbreaks so that *they* do not become sick. So now the sick kids are missing school and the kids they're trying to keep from being sick are missing school and the whole class gets held back because the teacher has to go back and re-explain the material all these kids missed. Before the vaccine era it was not uncommon for an entire grade of children to be gone from school due to illness and miss a month or more of instruction

How is that in the public interest?

Vinu @101: Are food allergies contagious? Are there sudden outbreaks of food allergies that affect hundreds of people in a single location and overwhelm the hospital systems?

Beth@#118:

That Texas group as well as a similar one in OK would not exist if the elimination of non-medical exemptions were not being pushed in their states. When you try to force people to do something they have chosen not to do, you bring a great many people, such as myself, into the debate and arguing against you.

That is straight up abuser logic right there. "Why did you make me hit you?!"

@julian #122 - Of course when outbreaks occur the unvaccinated are disproportionately affected. Because vaccines are effect at reducing the probability of an individual getting the disease. Well just have to disagree whether "I choose not to vaccinate my kids" is enough to justify punishing them with a consequence of "Then they don't get to attend public schools".

@Justatech #124

You seem to have me confused with someone who arguing against the use of vaccines. I'm arguing against the use of mandates for school attendance in order for force greater compliance in the population at large.

@Jenora Feuer #126 - Are you saying that arguing against a political position is an abusive act and thus, deciding to verbally push back against a position as a reaction to their political policy endorsements is "abuser logic"? Or am I misunderstanding your analogy?

This "classic",from Murray Rothbard,the famous Austrian school economist belongs here.Alex Jones,and the and the gang at Info Wars have all expressed their deep admiration for Austrian economics,and the Mises Institute/Lew Rockwell now seems to be tied to Alex Jones.It carries the whole silly "freedom" and "choice" argument of the libertarian leaning right to its logical (?) conclusion.Not just about vaccines,but about parenting in general.

...a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)? The answer is of course yes, following a fortiori from the larger right to allow any baby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such "neglect" down to a minimum.)

A little further down,we read about this "baby market".

Now if a parent may own his child (within the framework of non-aggression and runaway freedom), then he may also transfer that ownership to someone else. He may give the child out for adoption, or he may sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract. In short, we must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children. Superficially, this sounds monstrous and inhuman. But closer thought will reveal the superior humanism of such a market. For we must realize that there is a market for children now, but that since the government prohibits sale of children at a price, the parents may now only give their children away to a licensed adoption agency free of charge.10 This means that we now indeed have a child-market, but that the government enforces a maximum price control of zero, and restricts the market to a few privileged and therefore monopolistic agencies. The result has been a typical market where the price of the commodity is held by government far below the free-market price: an enormous "shortage" of the good. The demand for babies and children is usually far greater than the supply, and hence we see daily tragedies of adults denied the joys of adopting children by prying and tyrannical adoption agencies. In fact, we find a large unsatisfied demand by adults and couples for children, along with a large number of surplus and unwanted babies neglected or maltreated by their parents. Allowing a free market in children would eliminate this imbalance, and would allow for an allocation of babies and children away from parents who dislike or do not care for their children, and toward foster parents who deeply desire such children.

So, Beth - if vaccine mandates didn't exist or we just allowed everyone to have an exemption, if they feel like it - then outbreaks happen & kids get sick (and some of them will probably die), then what?

How about kids who are too young to be vaccinated - what about them?

There are plenty of school health policies that I know parents don't like - for example, if my child has a fever of 100 or more, I'm not allowed to bring them back to school until they have been fever free for 24 hours.

You seem to believe that schools should have no health policies at all - or at least make sure that parents are the sole determiners if those rules should be followed.

Schools, on the other hand, have to put policies in place to ensure the safety and health of all of their students.

I'm sorry that you don't agree - that you believe that parents should have carte blanche to put not only their own children at risk, but everyone else's child as well.

Because those parents don't ever get held responsible if it is their child who happens to start an outbreak & other students fall ill (or perhaps suffer life-long consequences).

I really don't get people like you. I vaccinate my children to protect them & also protect others. That there are parents, who, out of willful ignorance, are happy to put their children and others in harms way, just baffles me.

Beth @127: What I was trying to say (and maybe I was unclear) is that a large part of the reason for vaccine mandates for school attendance is so that the children are healthy enough to actually attend and learn. Children who are vaccinated against he mumps, and go to a school where the other children are also vaccinated against the mumps do not get the mumps, and therefore do not spend a week or more in a dark room while their parents hope they don't go blind, but rather stay in school and learn.

How about this. Your children have been vaccinated. But if they came home from school and told you that their teacher was having to go over the same material for a third or fourth time because too many of their classmates had been out sick with a VPD, you would be upset at the waste of your children's educational time, right?

MJD: "I agree, that’s why parents are not responsible if a child has a vaccine-related injury."
What this has to do with anything under discussion here, let alone anything else actually going on in the real world, escapes me. You are just looking for some way to ride your hobby horse to the scene of action.
"Is an abortion really murder in that the mother does not have “ownership” of the unborn child?" Irrelevant also to matters under discussion, but in any case, a woman owns her own uterus and has the right to decide what goes on inside it, and no one else has the moral or ethical right to override her choice. Please do not take this any further. I have no intention of launching this topic here, and will ignore any attempt to draw me into further discussion of it.

MJD @83: Off topic *and* inappropriate! Have a balloon.

vinu: "There’s a simple, common sense solution.
Admit vaccine safety problems (helps build trust too).
Fix the vaccine safety problems."
There is a simple, common-sense solution to your continual droning on about alleged vaccine danger.
Admit that no science at all supports your contentions about vaccines.
Fix your ignorance of the science regarding vaccines.

@Lawrence #129

You seem to believe that schools should have no health policies at all – or at least make sure that parents are the sole determiners if those rules should be followed....I’m sorry that you don’t agree – that you believe that parents should have carte blanche to put not only their own children at risk, but everyone else’s child as well.

You keep attributing beliefs to me that I do not hold. I have previously stated my support for other school health policies, such as keeping sick children at home and unvaccinated children home during outbreaks. That I don’t agree with one particular policy does not imply I think we should get rid of them all.

I really don’t get people like you. I vaccinate my children to protect them & also protect others. That there are parents, who, out of willful ignorance, are happy to put their children and others in harms way, just baffles me.

Perhaps if you stopped assuming things about me that aren't true, you would find it easier to understand me. I did vaccinate my children by the way, because I thought it was best for them. I don't object to vaccination. I object to laws that keep unvaccinated but otherwise healthy children from attending public schools.

@Justatech #132

Yes, I realize that children who are sick are not allowed to attend school while they are ill. That's a very different situation from the one under discussion - i.e. not allowing an unvaccinated but otherwise healthy child to attend public school. Telling me facts I already know is not particularly enlightening for either of us.

Reflecting on the OP and the comments, I have to think that one of my college econ professors would have been delighted by such a perfect example of the "free rider" problem. (Well, delighted except that he's both a parent and faculty at a science school and therefore would probably be super frustrated by AV-ers.)

But I think that in some ways the "health freedom" movement, in the places it comes into conflict with public health is a reflection of some of the cultural baggage of the roots of America. In my health policy textbook for grad school ("Introduction to US Health Policy: The Organization, Financing, and Delivery of Health Care in America") the author discusses a very important difference between the US and Canada, and why we can't just compare the two directly, despite a shared language, continent and general origin.
Basically, after the Revolution, people who liked the idea of a king, and the idea of being part of a big thing, moved to Canada, and people who liked the idea of being independent and not having much to do with other people moved to the US. And this pretty radical difference continues to impact the way that both Americans think about health and health policy and the way that health policies are crafted.
America was created with a gun in one hand, a bible in the other hand and a hearty "F U" to the Man.

Beth @134: "Yes, I realize that children who are sick are not allowed to attend school while they are ill. That’s a very different situation from the one under discussion – i.e. not allowing an unvaccinated but otherwise healthy child to attend public school. "
A child who has not been vaccinated against the measles who goes to school during a measles outbreak is pretty much guaranteed to become a child sick with measles in very short order.

What about my second point, that even the healthy children who do not miss any school will still loose educational time due to the need to catch up the sick kids who missed school?

@JustaTech #136

What about my second point, that even the healthy children who do not miss any school will still loose educational time due to the need to catch up the sick kids who missed school?

When I was in school, teachers didn't spend class time bring formerly sick kids current. They were expected to make up the lessons on their own time. While I can't deny there are likely to be more outbreaks in places with more students who are unvaccinated, I doubt the loss of educational class time is a large enough problem to change my mind on the cost/benefit analysis of not allowing non-medical exemptions. If you want to convince me it is, you would need to provide some data on the size of the problem. How many additional kids would you expect to miss how many additional days? How much time do teachers spend in class helping them learn what they missed? Is this a problem that warrants the elimination of non-medical exemptions for vaccines?

Just look at what happens at Waldorf Schools, Beth.

They have been forced to close for weeks at a time, due to disease outbreaks.

It appears that no other amount of information will change your wrong-headed opinion.

Beth @ 137: That's a good question. I do n't think there is going to be much current data on that, given that since the introduction of childhood vaccine public schools haven't seen the kinds of epidemics that empty classrooms.
50 kids missing a consecutive month of school? Would that be enough? What if it is a testing year that determines the funding for the school?

Lawrence: Oh, good point! I didn't think about Waldorf schools. But they're private schools, so a lot of the reasoning is different.

Well, doing a simple thought exercise...

Unvaccinated students can be held from school for upwards of 21 days during an outbreak.

If, say 10% of a 500 person school is unvaccinated and there is an outbreak of measles, those 50 students represent as many as 1050 student days missed, just for a single outbreak.

That seems pretty significant to me.

http://sethmnookin.com/2011/04/06/todays-lesson-alternative-virginia-sc…

Do the math, Beth.

Beth@127:
I was saying that, at the very least, your phrasing was absolutely horrid for making me feel any sympathy; it was also, honestly, quite prone to engendering exactly the same attitude that you are trying to claim your side is already feeling.

Of course, if you are actively trying to dig the partisan divide even deeper, then by all means, go ahead. Just don't expect to get any sympathy when your entire argument boils down to 'MY FREEDOM SHOULD TRUMP YOUR FREEDOM!' and deliberate ignorance of just how bad things used to be.

JustaTech@135:
Yes, that's definitely part of the problem right there. There is a pervasive streak of 'I'm all right, Jack!' in American political discourse.

I keep remembering a letter to the editor here in Toronto (in about 1990, I think) about the health care mess in the U.S. where somebody who'd lived about half his life in each of the U.S. and Canada said "While people in the U.S. don't believe their system is perfect, they like to think that it's closer than anybody else's; therefore, any problem that they haven't solved must be unsolvable, and they will gladly shoot the messenger who attempts to point out actual solutions already in use." Of course, the fact that the insurance industry in the U.S. was actively torpedoing any attempts at fixing the U.S. health care system for generations didn't hurt either...

Addendum to JustaTech:

The usual joke goes:

America was created as the result of a violent revolution.
Canada was created as the result of a political compromise that didn't satisfy anybody involved.
Both countries have continued much the same way ever since.

@ JustaTech #136--that wouldn't be a professor whose first name starts with Gary, would it?

When you try to force people to do something they have chosen not to do

Now, that's what I call a sound starting point for thoughtful analysis of public policy. Oh wait.

you bring a great many people, such as myself, into the debate and arguing against you.

Yah. The problem with this, of course, is that there aren't a "great many people, such as yourself" here, there's just you, and you're not credibly "debating" or "arguing" anything except as diversion and rancid frosting such as tthis:

It’s sad whenever a child dies, whether from measles, or complications of measles or being vaccinated for measles.

Well, where the fυck are they in this latter category? The more I see, the more I'm convinced that you can't think, just deliver lines from a poorly written play of your own devising.

^ Penultimate graf should have been blockquoted.

"Just look at what happens at Waldorf Schools"
“I think we’re just out of Waldorfs”

The sad thing is I feel it will take a mass outbreak and an innocent child dying to start reversing the damage caused by the anti-vaxxers. Vaccines have been so successful that we've forgotten how dangerous a lot of these vaccine preventable diseases are.

I hope I'm wrong, but can't see a way out when the Republican administration is anti-vaxx

Having done the dishes,* this reminded me of something:

When you try to force people to do something they have chosen not to do

And it was ol' Bullethead Schecter and his "inaction" trip, except that this version is even more pudding-like.

* No, really, you're not supposed to "season" the inside of a stainless pan, even if you affect the restaurant look on the outside.

People have been jumping on Ms. Clarkson and attributing propositions to her not in evidence.

In fairness, though, this is largely due to how peculiar this person's position is. Actually, she's stated her view clearly. Possibly, if you think that parental choice is sufficiently valuable, you actually can make a rational argument.

But not for free. If you are going to make this argument, with the full knowledge that vaccines are life-savers, you need to be willing to specify how many excess deaths are acceptable. Everything in life is a trade-off. If a person really wants to privilege parental choice, so be it. So how many excess deaths are acceptable as a trade-off? Double the current number? Triple? Or just 10% more?

If someone wants to defend parental choice, fine, own the consequences of the position. How many excess deaths are acceptable to defend parental choice?

The evidence is that expanding non-medical exemptions will increase infectious disease deaths dramatically. You accept this?

OK, I got a pet peeve with my side. I find it kind of disingenuous to say that people are not 'forced' to vaccinate their kinds, just to vaccinate to go to public school. Well, most people don't have the wherewithal to home-school or send their kids to a weird private school. Ergo...

My position is different. Citizens are required to assume tiny risks where there is evidence of massive overall welfare increase. I say forcing people to vaccinate their kids is a good thing. Because it massively increases the general welfare, and in the vast majority of cases, the welfare of the individual.

It occurs to me that a person defending parental choice, even with knowledge of vaccines, also needs to specify
- how much excess disease suffering is acceptable
- how many immune-compromised children unable to attend school safely is acceptable
- how much economic loss is acceptable
- how much tourism-shyness is acceptable
- how much excess inter-parental conflict is acceptable

Precise figures are not necessary and it would not be reasonable to demand them. But if a person wants to defend parental choice, they need to have some ballpark idea of how much loss is OK. Otherwise, the person does not have a good reason for their position, period.

@Beth Clarkson #130:

We'll just have to disagree whether “I choose not to vaccinate my kids” is enough to justify punishing them with a consequence of “Then they don’t get to attend public schools”.

Looks like I have to spell it out for you.
It's not about "punishment".
It's about protection.
It's about the fact that the deliberately unvaccinated and under-vaccinated pose a hazard to those too young to be vaccinated, those who can't be vaccinated, and those who are immunosuppressed.
It's about the fact that people can be both asymptomatic and infectious.
Public schools have a duty of care to protect their students. Part of that involves minimising the risk to them from diseases. A child who is deliberately unvaccinated ups that risk to others.
Finally, you talk about exclusion during outbreaks. That happens to all the unvaccinated, both the "can't be's" and the "don't want to's".
The bottom line is, denying the deliberately unvaccinated access to public schooling IS a legitimate precaution, and whining about "punishment" is a red herring.

Interaction of allergy history and antibodies to specific
varicella-zoster virus proteins on glioma risk

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.28535/pdf

"In a comprehensive analysis of
familial and personal medical histories in adults with glioma,
we previously showed that history of chickenpox and=or
shingles was inversely correlated with case status.36"

Did somebody factor this into the "benefits outweigh the risk" equation?

No one likes to suffer vaccine preventable diseases. But it would be nice if the experts also looked at the bigger picture and came with better solutions than simple vaccines.

Like gut bacteria, and worm infections (protecting against allergy), there are benefits to childhood diseases because we evolved with them.

Today's vaccines are like taking a sledgehammer to our delicately balanced, finely tuned, super-sophisticated immune system. Obvious result is a massive increase in immune disorders. Our children cannot live without immune suppressants (hydrocortisone creams, cortisone inhalers/injections). Like flouride in water, we will soon have buildings with HVAC that disperses albuterol and cortisone.

Fresh food and fresh air are poisons for our kids. Thank vaccines for that.

@Beth - I don't think you've actually said why you think that anyone would voluntarily not vaccinate their kids. What do you think the "risks" are?

Well Mr./Ms. arumugham, I searched your first reference can could not find the word 'food allergy', 'asthma', or 'autism'. In general, you have not given evidence of vaccine safety problems.

Why do you think that Orac perversely ignores your convincing evidence? Is it that these references don't say what you think they say, and/or contain falsehoods? Much more likely.

Vaccines don't cause autism. I think maybe dark metal causes autism, because the covariance between dark metal music production and increase in autism reports is very high. So maybe it's the music. The view that vaccines cause autism is a nutty, unevidenced view.

The experiments indicate clearly that vaccines massively improve the general welfare. No, fresh food and air are not poisons for our kids. False. The factors I've heard of, excessive use of antibacterial compounds and shielding kids from foods when young, have nothing to do with vaccines.

Get a scientific consensus that catching measles or chicken pox is a net benefit to the individual. Until then - I don't accept it. I trust people who know what they are talking about, and it does not sound like this is you. By the way, you seem to think that these diseases have been with humanity all the way back - I've heard of evidence that suggests otherwise. Anyway, the burden of proof is on you.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this massive fallacy yet:

I disagree that unvaccinated children are a health hazard to others for this reason because I find the risk engendered by their being unvaccinated sufficiently small to round it to zero. I will grant it is actually a very tiny but non-zero risk. Can you quantify it? I can’t, but I estimate the risk to others posed by an unvaccinated but otherwise seemingly healthy child to be less than the risk posed to any individual child by the vaccine, which is very small.

Translated, that means: "I don't have the facts to support the assertion that the dangers from the vaccine are worse than the dangers of an outbreak fueled by an unvaccinated population.

"So I'll simply assert that it's the case! I mean, it's absolutely key to my entire argument, but that's no reason I should actually acknowledge that it's pulled from my posterior!"

Not her only fallacy, of course. I note the re-appearance of a fallacy I see quite often from anti-vaxers, but have never been able to place in a familiar category: namely, arguing "the risk is small, and that justifies X", where X is an action which destroys the conditions that result in the risk being small.

It does overlap of course with the base rate fallacy: people look at a risk that actually happens horribly often to people who are in a rare situation and since the total number of such people is lowish, they say "Oh! That must be a rare occurrence! That means the risk will be very low for me, even if I place myself in that rare situation!" Example: "I'll be safe going into this shark-infested water! Shark attack deaths are a lot rarer than you think!" Except they're rare among the general population, not necessarily the population that goes into shark-infested waters!

The evidence does not support the conclusion that risks from vaccinating are less than risks from not. If someone wants to make a reasoned case for parental sovereignty, they need to admit this and say what level of loss is acceptable.

@Lawrence #144 and #145 – Do the Math
Okay, I love math. I should warn you, after working as a professional in the area for the past thirty years, numbers rarely change minds. The best you can usually hope for is to raise awareness and doubt about underlying and often unstated assumptions.
Original question from Justatech #133:

How about this. Your children have been vaccinated. But if they came home from school and told you that their teacher was having to go over the same material for a third or fourth time because too many of their classmates had been out sick with a VPD, you would be upset at the waste of your children’s educational time, right?

So, how many days of school did the Waldorf school have to repeat for a third or fourth time? Zero. It was a Waldorf school/daycare which doesn’t use the more traditional methods of a set curriculum to be covered in a set number of days.
Perhaps you were more concerned about days the school was closed? They article you posted is from 2011. 1 Waldorf school/daycare was shut down for 3 weeks back in 2011. According to their website, they have 150 schools in the U.S. 150 schools * 6 years * 39 weeks (9 months seem an appropriate estimate of weeks in a school years although daycares are often open all year round) = 35,100 school weeks with 1 school closed for 3 weeks giving a total of 0.0085% of lost school time. While I think this might be an economic incentive for the Waldorf schools to reconsider their vaccination policy, and I think they did in the case you linked to, I don’t think it makes a terrible good economic case for implementing new laws.
Your other example

Unvaccinated students can be held from school for upwards of 21 days during an outbreak.
If, say 10% of a 500 person school is unvaccinated and there is an outbreak of measles, those 50 students represent as many as 1050 student days missed, just for a single outbreak.
That seems pretty significant to me.

500 person school over a 39 week school year is 97,500 student school days. A maximum loss of 1050 student school days yields a 1.077% maximum loss rate of student days. I don’t think that will cause a significant number of teachers having to repeat lessons multiple times to the entire class. But feel free to make the case, using math (I LOVE MATH), that the economic cost of that is sufficient to make eliminating non-medical exemptions too costly for our society to bear.
In the meantime, the anecdotal evidence you presented is not particularly convincing to me that we need to tighten up vaccine requirements and eliminate non-medical exemptions for public schools to prevent this costly loss to our society.

@ Jenora Feuer #146 – I wasn’t trying to evoke sympathy, but you certainly have point. The antagonism goes both ways. This insistence that others behave as you wish them and trying to codify it into law does lead to people picking sides and becoming entrenched with their position, making it harder for others to change their minds. This was the point I was trying to make, so thanks for the endorsement.
@Narad #129 -

The problem with this, of course, is that there aren’t a “great many people, such as yourself” here, there’s just you

That statement was a discussion about the rise of groups advocating for vaccine choice in Texas and Oklahoma due to laws being pushed to eliminate non-medical exemptions. That I’m the only one arguing the point here only goes to show that this site has a bias and doesn’t attract many people to take the less popular side of a debate here.
@RJ #154 Thank you for NOT assigning opinions to me that I do not hold. I appreciate that.

Everything in life is a trade-off. If a person really wants to privilege parental choice, so be it. So how many excess deaths are acceptable as a trade-off? Double the current number? Triple? Or just 10% more?
If someone wants to defend parental choice, fine, own the consequences of the position. How many excess deaths are acceptable to defend parental choice?
The evidence is that expanding non-medical exemptions will increase infectious disease deaths dramatically. You accept this?

I’m arguing for the current status quo. Generally speaking, it’s the side that is promoting a change that needs to make their case. So let’s turn these questions the other way:
So how many deaths will be prevented as a trade-off? Half the current number? A third? Or just 10% less? In fact, there are so few deaths due to VPD in the U.S. today, it’s a very limited benefit that would be realized by eliminating the non-medical exemptions in public school.
What sort of impact would you expect eliminating non-medical exemptions from public schools to have on those numbers?
To answer your final question, no I don’t accept that eliminating non-medical exemptions will decrease infectious VPD deaths dramatically.
I’ll skip your questions in #157 because again, I am not arguing against the status quo, but for continuing it. I suggest instead that you provide some estimate of the benefits of eliminating non-medical extensions. Since there are two states that eliminated them years ago, you could compare find some data to base those estimates on. Somebody might have already looked into it and published a study.
@Julian Frost #159 – I understand that you see it as protection and that is a valid POV. People who don’t want to vaccinate see it as punishment and that is also a valid POV. These are not mutually exclusive, nor am I unaware of the things you mentioned. You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know, so why should I alter my opinion based on no new facts?
@Antaenus Feldspar #163 – It’s called stating one’s assumptions so they can be validated or disproven with data. This is generally considered a good thing. I might be wrong about that assumption, but I notice you didn’t provide any evidence to negate it, you simply rejected it as a fallacy. It’s unproven but it’s not fallacious to make an assumption when you explicitly state it as an assumption. In the absence of data to establish the truth or falsity of an assumption, you are allowed to reject the assumption, just as I am allowed to make it.
@RJ # 165

The evidence does not support the conclusion that risks from vaccinating are less than risks from not. If someone wants to make a reasoned case for parental sovereignty, they need to admit this and say what level of loss is acceptable.

The reasoned case for parental sovereignty is not regarding the risks of vaccinating versus he risks of not. The reasoned case for parental sovereignty is that the costs of mandating vaccines is or is not worth the benefit of increased herd immunity. This goes back to my first post in this thread #7.
Thank you all for the interesting conversation over the past couple of days. I think I’ll conclude my participation with this post.

I love the fact that Vinu continues to quote himself, as if he's the expert in the field....

JustaTech @139 Beth Clarkson @140
I had many acute infections when I was in school,sometimes dragging on for months.During thse infections,my mother would go to the school,and collect my work,which I would do at home,as soon as I was well enough to sit up in bed.

Vinu @ 156

My comment to you here still applies.I would love to know what Dr. Quadros,Dr. Frye,and possibly Dr. Ramaekers told you about about CFD/folate receptor autoantibodies and vaccines.

Have you seen Dr. Frye's newest study ?More evidence is pointing to cerebral folate receptor autoimmunity being caused by a defect in the thyroid,that begins early in gestation,and is inherited from the mother.

From the PubMed abstract
" On repeated measurements, change in TSH and FT4/TSH ratio were found to correspond to change in blocking FRAA titers. TSH and the FT4/TSH, TT3/TSH and rT3/TSH ratios were related to irritability on the Aberrant Behavior Checklist and several scales of the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), while TT3 was associated with SRS subscales and TRH were related to Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale subscales. The thyroid showed significant FRα expression during the early prenatal period but expression decreased significantly in later gestation and postnatal thyroid tissue. This study suggests that thyroid dysfunction in ASD may be related to the blocking FRAA. The high expression of FRα in the early fetal thyroid suggests that fetal and neonatal exposure to maternal FRAAs could affect the development of the thyroid and may contribute to the pathology in ASD."

@Beth Clarkson, you mention points of view as if they were all equally valid. They're not. Antivaxx parents whining about punishment because they're unhappy their children will be excluded from public education is just that: whining. It's at the same level as people complaining about seatbelt and helmet laws.
The evidence says that vaccinating according to schedule is far safer than exposing children to the diseases, and benefits herd immunity, which protects everyone.

The reasoned case for parental sovereignty is that the costs of mandating vaccines is or is not worth the benefit of increased herd immunity.

Asked and answered. The benefits outweigh the costs.

(I LOVE MATH)

Not enough to grasp a basic SEIR model, apparently.

And we have another travis-sock above.

I love the fact that Vinu continues to quote himself, as if he’s the expert in the field….

He has to believe in himself. Nobody else does.

Unvaccinated students can be held from school for upwards of 21 days during an outbreak.
If, say 10% of a 500 person school is unvaccinated and there is an outbreak of measles, those 50 students represent as many as 1050 student days missed, just for a single outbreak.
That seems pretty significant to me.

500 person school over a 39 week school year is 97,500 student school days. A maximum loss of 1050 student school days yields a 1.077% maximum loss rate of student days. I don’t think that will cause a significant number of teachers having to repeat lessons multiple times to the entire class. But feel free to make the case, using math (I LOVE MATH), that the economic cost of that is sufficient to make eliminating non-medical exemptions too costly for our society to bear.

Well, I'd look at the numbers this way -

50 out of 500 students, a full 10%, are missing 3 out of 39 weeks, that is 7% of one year of education.

Is 7% of a school year important? I'd say so. I'm old enough to have missed school because I had those childhood diseases. It wasn't easy to catch up.

According to this site -
http://www.attendanceworks.org/facts-stats-school-attendance/

Research shows that missing 10 percent of the school, or about 18 days in most school districts, negatively affects a student’s academic performance.

In this case, they are talking about 18 days spread out over the year. Think how much harder it would be to catch up it the absence was in a single block, plus all the other normal absences in a year.

Why would you want to subject 10% of the students to have a harder time than necessary in school?

In some states and/or school districts a student that miss 10 school days (excused or unexcused) total in a semester has to repeat that semester.

Ask any teacher (and I have) - this type of disruption has major ramifications across the curriculum.

There isn't enough time to teach everything that is needed today & having students miss a significant fraction of a quarter or semester is a big deal.

Not only is the student (or students) put farther behind, it also disrupts the class routine as well.

No matter which way you look at it, vaccine mandates are good policies for public schools.

Why don't you register that POS Saab, Travis Schwochert of 239 S Church St, Endeavor, WI 53930? is it because you can't afford to, or are you one of those 'freemen on the land' sort of loons? I mean, we know you're a loon, but just what flavor of loon are you?

Of course, if you're just too poor to afford it, well, that's nothing to be ashamed of. Back in the day, I was a young E-1, and $100 was a lot of money then.

To review....

The person making a case for parental choice in vaccines was unwilling to give a straight answer to what trade-off is acceptable. Even with the revised statement of what trade-off is to be favoured. I'm unsurprised.

If we are going to be super-charitable, we need to understand that the costs and risks of enforcement are not easy to compare to the costs and risks of disease; the latter can be measured in dollars and lives, the first much less clear how to measure.

But then the person in question was unwilling to answer when she was handed the most charitable reading possible. Cowardly; anti-intellectual; dishonest.

Once again to Mr./Ms. arumugham. You have to present real evidence, not made-up bullshit. I trust scientific consensus more than the judgement of any particular individual, because duh. Sometimes, scientific consensus is wrong, but it is almost always closer to the truth than made-up bullshit.

Chris @148: Nope, the other one.

Vinu: Why don't you go get some VC funding and start your own biotech and make your own vaccines? Then you could make them "right" and the world would love you.

(I'll be fascinated to find out how much vinu likes the chicken pox when it come roaring back out of their nerves as shingles.)

Beth @167: I didn't use the Waldorf schools (1) because I didn't think about them and (2) because their teaching style is in my opinion, bizarre.

But all of this isn't really to your point at all; you're talking not about perceived risks but about where we as a society draw the boundaries on parental rights. If that's the issue why aren't these "parental rights" people complaining about having to send their children to school at all? That is a legal requirement; children must get an education, either at public school, private school or home school.

That right there is a very different discussion about autonomy, ownership, rights and responsibilities. I'm not sure this is the best forum for that discussion.

I can see why someone living in Wisconsin would need a SAAB, but SAABs are nice cars, the poor thing doesn't deserve to be driven into the ground by someone as unpleasant as Travis-the-sock.

Nope, 92 Saab,WI 478WVL

Like I said, there ain't no shame in being poor and driving a broken down, rusted out s#!+ box. I was poor too, back in the day, and my POS was a Ford.

D. Daneeka @186: That's totally uncalled for and bizarre. How does where Johnny works make any difference to his comments?

No, it's pretty standard for Travis Schwochert - he just can't not break character.

And, of course, he's wrong about where I work, too (well, used to work - I'm an old retired guy).

Yay, socks.
It's too bad we can't do anything useful with all these socks around here. There's a charity that takes hand-knit socks for Syrian refugees. Socks have to be 100% wool, but single socks are fine. Which is incredibly sad.

Go away Travis....

He called a SAAB a POS! This is illegal in Sweden an punishable by banishment to Iceland.

SAABs may not be as stylish as Volvos but they are perfectly cromulent vehicles. Don't be haters.

I don't disagree with you, here doktor. But it did piss Travis Schwochert right off, and he outed himself. It was a good day.

I was so busy being charitable that I did not notice Ms. Clarkson had changed her position, from that of parents always having choice, to one of a vaguely-defined 'status quo'.

My distinct impression that this person is very invested in being The Reasonable One in the discussion.

Predictable, considering the site and its track record.

In this age of self-driving cars, why are vaccines DANGEROUS AT ALL?

I admire this construction and intend to use it frequently.
In this age of self-driving cars, where is MY PONY?
In this age of self-driving cars, why is there NO FREE BEER?
In this age of self-driving cars, who STOLE MY BICYCLE?

Saab are freakishly cool cars with their ion sensing module which control turbo boost and spark timing. Basically, the engine control module send a 120V signal across the spark plug to measure ion conductance in the air-fuel mixture and it can detect knocking on an individual cylinder basis and it use that to retard spark timing for that cylinder and cut down boost level for the turbocharger.

Paper is there: http://www.ieeecss.org/CSM/library/1998/oct1998/02-EngineFineTuner.pdf

Alain

Nested logic isn't all that hard to figure out.
But then, I was taught "the new math", which involved sets and subsets as a basic element of our tool set. :)
That's served me well, as I can figure out a resultant set of policy before the majority of Active Directory tools can display the same results I already figured out mentally.
In a large enterprise environment. It all comes down to tracking the elements and their levels Knowing each levels impact on the resultant level is the key.
You should see my Karnaugh maps. :D

I find it fascinating how you have *that* much information on that individual.
Fascinating, as one either has to subscribe to a somewhat expensive service to acquire that intelligence or you are that individual.
Oh, I also know how much throttle position sensors are, they're only potentiometers. Mass airflow sensors aren't all that expensive either.
Indeed, less expensive than a service to research that information is.

Is it a sock or a peer playing the sock?

That's actually a major design flaw!
Although, a few ways to address that flaw do come to mind, both analog and digital, as well as mechanical.

Wzrd1,

Have I pissed you off?

Alain

I am guessing we might have Travis back.

If you're both speaking about me, I'm no Travis nor sock and Orac know very much about me. Before 6 month ago, I was a regular dating back from when Orac had his blog on blogspot. Just that I'm a sponge when it come to information and cars have been a passion since 25 years ago (and by passion, I did a machining technics course 20 years ago to learn how to rebuild engines).

I also do happen to have a diagnostic of autism which the regulars know very well about it which do explain my individuality (if Wzrd1 is referring to me in his quote: I find it fascinating how you have *that* much information on that individual) but I must say that Wzrd1 comments have been really hard to parse on occasions.

Orac, can you put in a word for me please?

Alain

I think Chris Preston meant that Travis (Fendelsworth) is impersonating Wzrd1.

Forgot about that possibility.

Alain

Lately, it has been confusing to read the comments so I'm not that used to posting styles as I once was.

Alain

In this age of self-driving cars, why are vaccines DANGEROUS AT ALL?

In this age of self-driving cars, why are there STILL MONKEYS?
In this age of self-driving cars, why is a mouse WHEN IT SPINS?
In this age of self-driving cars, what's the FREQUENCY KENNETH?
In this age of self-driving cars, who WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?

I think Chris Preston meant that Travis (Fendelsworth) is impersonating Wzrd1.

Unless Travis somehow figured out, in addition to his e-mail address, Wzrd1's IP address that he almost always posts from, then, no, Travis has not impersonated Wzrd1.

I think something need to be said about me. For all my life, I had social issues and still have thought they are much less frequent nowadays but even then, they do show up here (and in real-life) from time to time.

The basic gist is that I have learned a lot over my life and this create issues with neurotypical peoples because I seem to know all the answers and then some. At some point in my life, I've been the target of a social harassment campaign in an entire city partly because of that (I hosted a psychopath at home for some time and it resulted in a complex ptsd because I always had the habit of correcting him in front of his acquaintances...always helpful...)

That learning capacity dates back from when learning how to read English at the age 13 (I'm 40 now). The high school director thrown me out of school on suspicions of cheating on exams because I was never doing homework (took me 5 hours to write a 5 pages document with a pencil and I was so much in pain after that, no wonder I have an easier time with computers and their keyboards) while having marks ranging from 80% to 95% in exams (the marks depended on my mood more than anything else). The end result is that I went to the local city library to learn English and various other things. I have a knack for learning and was listening in class (and no, my parents never had a PhD, the school did summon them before throwing me out).

The only thing that will remain a WIP for all my life is social grace and their consequence, good or bad. I have been learning about social situation for all my life and trying to be a chameleon for most part of my life because I only received my diagnostic at age 27 but deep down, I always knew I had issues and now, peoples seem to recognize the issues because for many, many years, I have been told I was one of the most "normal" of the autistics they ever met and nowhere near all the other autistics they met during their career (and yes, I do witness a royal bunch of different wrt the other autistics and aspies that I meet or used to meet). That uniqueness is a very lonely place to be, not quite neurotypical, not quite autistics.

What can I do? Learn 10 metric ton about the thing that interest me the most...and show a ton of restraint regarding speaking up IRL (or commenting here). No wonder I have an academic shrink because the regular ones don't know WTF to do with me. One good thing, my financial planner asked me to come up with 10 business ideas because, first, she realize I need help (I got a job offer turned down at the local academic hospital) and want to partner with me to start at least one business. Second is that I have so much knowledge and she don't want that to go to waste.

Alain

Here's some of what happens when vaccination rates fall below effective levels and people don't learn from past experience:
http://www.sbnation.com/nhl/2017/2/24/14731468/vancouver-canucks-mumps-…
Here's more:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/mumps-outbreak-medicine-hat-alber…
Does anyone doubt that there's a connection between these two stories?

It could be the Tall Poppy Effect.

If people had any sense they would bow to you, and not harass you.

Mein Gut Herr Doktor, the answer is simple,
In this age of self-driving cars, vaccines are dangerous because ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.

So, please do excuse my occasional dyslexic moments

You're excused :) I don't drink anymore but your drink is on me next time we meet.

Alain

Look tasty :) one wishes. At the moment, I'm watching the Toronto maple leaf get roasted on TV.

Alain

"If they can’t put a man on The Moon, HOW CAN THEY TAKE MERCURY OUT OF VACCINES?"
Moon. Mercury. Fake Moon landing. Vaccines and Mercury.
Hmm, I see the outlines of a vast conspiracy taking shape. Probably something to do with Roswell, Area 51, and aliens from Mercury.

...and watching the second Hunger Games film on TV...

Why? Did you loose a bet?

Books, that is...

Texas vaccination rates look okay.

Besides, the Texas Trump vote was somewhat less than the recent Texas Republican normal.

Why is autism listed as a possible side effect for certain (MMR) vaccines? Why does the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program - HRSA have a record of reimbursing the parents of children with autism for vaccine injury? Quackery and pseudoscience, you say? Please point me to the longitudinal studies on vaccines and the cumulative effect of the neurotoxins from mercury, aluminums, and formaldehyde on infants and young children based on the current vaccine guidelines. Please, include any studies you know of that test the efficacy and risks of the suggested vaccines and any references to the warnings for possible side effects included in the packaging.

"maternal FRAAs could affect the development of the thyroid”
Meaning, autoimmunity causes the thyroid defect."

Love how Vinu's "proofs" require interpreting every word in the sentence as something else .

"If you bothered to read my articles, you will find numerous peer reviewed published references to works by numerous researchers."

Nearly all twisted far beyond their original meaning

"Dr.Frye found it very interesting"

I bet he did, isn't that the common response when dealing with lunatics, children and con artists. :D

"If you dispute any, be specific and provide the appropriate scientific reference."

Been done already, you don't understand the science or the history of what you are dealing with (vaccines).
You post irrelevant links that don't mean what you say they mean, when pointed out you go straight into a hissy fit and
spam the same derided "research" you paid to have published.

Why not go study some actual science, before you get someone killed? Or at least give your "followers" on here your excuse for lack of science qualifications.

Why is autism listed as a possible side effect for certain (MMR) vaccines?

It isn't.

It appears in a list of adverse events observed in some people after vaccination. So do pregnancy, broken arms, motor vehicle accidents, domestic violence and drownings. The list of adverse events is not a list of side effects.

Hi Jill, interesting set of questions there, I'll do my best.

"Why is autism listed as a possible side effect for certain (MMR) vaccines?"

If this is from a package insert then it's because it was once considered possible. Probably to be removed once they update the insert.

"Why does the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program – HRSA have a record of reimbursing the parents of children with autism for vaccine injury?"

Could you show this record and be specific, kids with autism can then get a vaccine injury, especially as autism can come with co-morbidities. Truth of the matter is that autism is not a vaccine table injury.

"Please point me to the longitudinal studies on vaccines..."

To fulfil this brief would take weeks, these things are built on studies on top of studies, from across the globe. Go google Cuba's vaccination safety studies for a good starter.

"test the efficacy and risks of the suggested vaccines and any references to the warnings for possible side effects included in the packaging"

This link should answer most of that https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/research/iomreports/index.html

Bear in mind that the info is a bit outdated, some of the side effects have recently potentially been attributed to other non vaccine related causes. eg. Dravet Syndrome.

Why does the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program – HRSA have a record of reimbursing the parents of children with autism for vaccine injury?

Because otherwise, the condition of "vaccine injury or perceived vaccine injury" would have to be completely protective against all autism spectrum disorders.

They have never compensated for autism; the closest they have come is cases like Ryan Mojabi, where the family came to the court saying "we think he has an ASD, and we think it was caused by the vaccine" and the court says "your story doesn't really add up, and we're not even convinced that what he has is an ASD, but we do see he has something and it's possible enough that it might have been caused by the vaccine that we'll compensate it."

Show me that you can understand these two points, or there's no reason to discuss the more complicated subject of "what do safety studies on vaccines say?"

"They have never compensated for autism; the closest they have come is cases like Ryan Mojabi"

Cheers, I knew there was one, but couldn't remember any of the details.

One of the reasons why I don't particularly trust vaccine safety stories from the USA is the litigation culture you guys have going on over there. That's why I suggest looking to other countries like Cuba, where they haven't a financial incentive to claim injury (I assume).

Why is autism listed as a possible side effect for certain (MMR) vaccines?

I think that you've been confused by poorly-informed anti-vaccine activists.

Autism was listed as an adverse event that was reported to have occurred after receipt of the Tripedia DTaP (not MMR) vaccine. As directed by FDA, package inserts must contain such information from post-marketing surveillance even though there is no evidence of causality. Note, for example, that the Tripedia package insert also lists Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as an adverse event that, like autism, was reported after vaccination, even though (1) SIDS deaths are--by definition--NOT attributed to a specific cause (like vaccination) and (2) SIDS deaths were actually less frequent in vaccinated than in unvaccinated children.

"So how do milk proteins get into the vaccines?"

http://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/aaaai/25520
"The protein was identified as casamino acids derived from cow's milk, contained in medium used to process the vaccines."

http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(11)00747-0/fulltext

I’ll take that as an admission that no such randomized controlled trial has been performed.

No randomized controlled trial has been conducted, because there is no evidence indicating that this is actually a problem. Therefore, there would be no chance of getting ethics approval.

What America lacks is an unbiased medical evaluation on things like vaccines. Common sense is a key commodity that is lacking. Of course vaccines are a lot more harmful than is reported. Think a little about that people! Some vaccines have a place in our world but not like anything we've seen in the last few decades. Follow the money!

@guy hrushka:

What America lacks is an unbiased medical evaluation on things like vaccines.

There have been numerous studies done on vaccines, many by countries that are quite hostile to the U.S. Those countries also mandate vaccination.

Of course vaccines are a lot more harmful than is reported.

Supporting evidence required for this assertion.

Some vaccines have a place in our world but not like anything we’ve seen in the last few decades.

Very well. Which ones would you remove from the current schedule/s and why?

Follow the money!</blockquote.
This is actually an argument for vaccines. The cost of two hundred MMRs is vastly cheaper than dealing with the hospitalisations that would result if MMR was removed. In addition, Medical Aids pay for their clients to be vaccinated. To them, it's cheaper than treating the disease.

Wzrd1 " you’re shockingly unknowledgable about how papers are written, as to the use of phrasing2

Yup we are talking about a man, who sees something happening once, to two people, screams PROOF.

Do you reckon it could be psychological?

guy: "Follow the money!"

How much would it cost now if we had to treat 500,000 to 750,000 cases of measles every year (as was common in the 1950s)? Do those who want us to stop vaccinating and go back to "the good old days" own stock in drug companies and hospital corporations?*

Follow the money!

*not to mention the Batesville Casket Company.

"Let’s look at the “evidence” behind the ACIP’s recommendation to vaccinate pregnant women with Tdap:"

Yes let's:

Safety of Repeat Tdap Administration to Pregnant Women
In 2011, ACIP concluded that available data did not suggest any elevated frequency or unusual patterns of adverse events in pregnant women who received Tdap and that the few serious adverse events reported were unlikely to have been caused by the vaccine; at that time, a dose of Tdap for every pregnancy was not considered (9). Published data on receipt of 2 doses of Tdap and multiple doses of tetanus toxoid–containing vaccines were reviewed. Receipt of a second dose of Tdap at a 5- or 10-year interval in healthy nonpregnant adolescents and adults was well tolerated; injection site pain was the most commonly reported adverse event (9,17–20). The frequency of reported adverse events for the second dose was similar to the first dose in these same subjects and in naïve controls receiving Tdap for the first time. Of the few serious adverse events reported, none were attributed to the vaccine. Fever was reported in 2.4%–6.5% of recipients of a Tdap booster; the frequency of fever was similar to that in the same subjects after their first Tdap dose and in naïve controls (9,17–19). Studies on short intervals (i.e., within 21 days or ≤2 years) between receipt of tetanus and diphtheria toxoids (Td) and Tdap or Tdap-inactivated polio vaccine in healthy, nonpregnant adolescents and adults found no serious adverse events (21–23). Fever was reported in 1.7%–6.8% of subjects who received Tdap ≤2 years after Td; rates were comparable to the control group and to cohorts that received Tdap longer after receipt of Td (21,22). The number of subjects in these studies was small, and therefore, the findings do not rule out the possibility of rare but serious adverse events.
A theoretical risk exists for severe local reactions (e.g., Arthus reactions, whole limb swelling) for pregnant women who have multiple closely spaced pregnancies. Arthus reactions and whole limb swelling are hypersensitivity reactions that have been associated with vaccines containing tetanus toxoid, tetanus and diphtheria toxoids, and/or pertussis antigens. Historical data on multiple doses of Td and tetanus toxoid vaccines (TT) indicate that hypersensitivity was associated with higher levels of preexisting antibody (24–26). The frequency of side effects depended on antigen content, product formulation, preexisting antibody levels related to the interval since last dose, and the number of doses (24–26). Challenges to reviewing historical data on multiple doses of TT and Td include differences in adjuvant and toxoid amounts in vaccines over time and severity of adverse events by number of vaccines received (24–26). Most of the data are historical, and the risk for severe adverse events likely has been reduced with current formulations that contain lower doses of TT.
TT and Td have been used extensively in pregnant women worldwide to prevent neonatal tetanus; large studies on use of TT during pregnancy have not reported clinically significant severe adverse events (27–30). Safety data on use of Td during multiple pregnancies have not been published. ACIP believes the potential benefit of preventing pertussis morbidity and mortality in infants outweighs the theoretical concerns of possible severe adverse events.
ACIP concluded that experience with tetanus-toxoid containing vaccines suggests no excess risk for severe adverse events for women receiving Tdap with every pregnancy. ACIP stated the need for safety studies of severe adverse events when Tdap is given during subsequent pregnancies. Plans for safety monitoring in pregnant women following Tdap administration include enhanced monitoring in Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and utilizing the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) to assess acute adverse events, adverse pregnancy outcomes affecting the mother, and birth outcomes; assessing risks for rare adverse events in pregnant women after Tdap will require data collection for several years (31).

And whiles we are at it, all the research:

"Booy R, Van der Meeren O, Ng SP, Celzo F, Ramakrishnan G, Jacquet JM. A decennial booster dose of reduced antigen content diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis vaccine (Boostrix(tm)) is immunogenic and well tolerated in adults. Vaccine 2010;29:45–50.
Tomovici A, Barreto L, Zickler P, et al. Humoral immunity 10 years after booster immunization with an adolescent and adult formulation combined tetanus, diphtheria, and 5-component acellular pertussis vaccine. Vaccine 2012;30:2647–53.
Terranella A, Asay G, Messonnier M, Clark T, Liang J. Preventing infant pertussis: a decision analysis comparing prenatal vaccination to cocooning. Presented at the 49th Infectious Diseases Society of America Annual Meeting, Boston, MA; October 20–23, 2011.
CDC. FastStats: births and natality. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2013.
CDC. Summary of health indicators. 2010 Pregnancy Nutrition Surveillance, Pregnancy Nutrition Surveillance System. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2011. Available at
US Census
Halperin SA, McNeil S, Langley J, et al. Tolerability and antibody response in adolescents and adults revaccinated with tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid, and acellular pertussis vaccine adsorbed (Tdap) 4–5 years after a previous dose. Vaccine 2011;29:8459–65.
Halperin SA, Scheifele D, De Serres G, et al. Immune responses in adults to revaccination with a tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid, and acellular pertussis vaccine 10 years after a previous dose. Vaccine 2012;30:974–82.
Knuf M, Vetter V, Celzo F, Ramakrishnan G, Van Der Meeren O, Jacquet JM. Repeated administration of a reduced-antigen-content diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis and poliomyelitis vaccine (dTpa-IPV; Boostrix(tm) IPV). Hum Vaccin 2010;6:554–61.
Mertsola J, Van Der Meeren O, He Q, et al. Decennial administration of a reduced antigen content diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and acellular pertussis vaccine in young adults. Clin Infect Dis 2010;51:656–62.
Halperin SA, Sweet L, Baxendale D, et al. How soon after a prior tetanus-diphtheria vaccination can one give adult formulation tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis vaccine? Pediatr Infect Dis J 2006;25:195–200.
Beytout J, Launay O, Guiso N, et al. Safety of Tdap-IPV given one month after Td-IPV booster in healthy young adults: a placebo-controlled trial. Hum Vaccin 2009;5:315–21.
Talbot EA, Brown KH, Kirkland KB, Baughman AL, Halperin SA, Broder KP. The safety of immunizing with tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis vaccine (Tdap) less than 2 years following previous tetanus vaccination: experience during a mass vaccination campaign of healthcare personnel during a respiratory illness outbreak. Vaccine 2010;28:8001–7.
Edsall G, Elliott MW, Peebles TC, Eldred MC. Excessive use of tetanus toxoid boosters. JAMA. 1967;202:111–3.
Levine L, Ipsen J Jr, McComb JA. Adult immunization. Preparation and evaluation of combined fluid tetanus and diphtheria toxoids for adult use. Am J Hyg 1961;73:20–35.
Wassilak SGF, Roper MH, Murphy TV, Orenstein WA. Tetanus toxoid. In: Plotkin S, Orenstein W, Offit P, eds. Vaccines. 5th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2008:745–81.
Schofield FD, Tucker VM, Westbrook GR. Neonatal tetanus in New Guinea. Effect of active immunization in pregnancy. Br Med J 1961;2:785–9.
Newell, KW, Dueñas Lehmann, Leblanc DR, Garces Osoria N. The use of toxoid for the prevention of tetanus neonatorum. Final report of a double-blind controlled field trial. Bull World Health Organ 1966;35:863–71.
Hardegree MC, Barile MF, Pittman M, Schofield FD, Maclennan R, Kelly A. Immunization against neonatal tetanus in New Guinea: 2. Duration of primary antitoxin responses to adjuvant tetanus toxoids and comparison of booster responses to adjuvant and plain toxoids. Bull World Health Organ 1970;43:439–51.
MacLennan R, Schofield FD, Pittman M, Hardegree MC, Barile MF. Immunization against neonatal tetanus in New Guinea. Antitoxin response of pregnant women to adjuvant and plain toxoids. Bull World Health Organ 1965;32:683–97.
Zheteyeva YA, Moro PL, Tepper NK, et al. Adverse event reports after tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid, and acellular pertussis vaccines in pregnant women. Am J Obstet Gynecol 2012;207:59.e1-7.
Kirkland KB, Talbot EA, Decker MD, Edwards KM. Kinetics of pertussis immune responses to tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis vaccine in health care personnel: implications for outbreak control. Clin Infect Dis 2009;49:584–7.
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Oh yes and:

give your “followers” on here your excuse for lack of science qualifications.

He's a med student, as well documented at Medscape.

You americans are not good people. We all know in japan that vaccines can kill babies.

People here are arguing for crimes of drug corporation.

Ah, thought I'd seen you referring to him as a failed med student and assumed that was from a while ago.

So we are basically arguing with a child,,, well in my defence, have hurled multiple accusations of insanity.

This does change things a bit, for a start how is he going to pass his dissertation, when he misrepresents his sources the way he does? Oh well, that's his problem. :)

So Lawrence says

I love the fact that Vinu continues to quote himself, as if he’s the expert in the field….

I responded with -

He has to believe in himself. Nobody else does.

Which led Vinu to ejaculate -

If you bothered to read my articles, you will find numerous peer reviewed published references to works by numerous researchers.

Yes, I agree that you have cited many and varied sources, and as has been pointed out, they seldom, if ever, say what you claim they say. But my point is that nobody cites your work.

Except that isn't totally true. See -
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vinu_Arumugham/publications

It seems that your work has been cited 6 times. Who would do such a thing?

Well, it turns out that the only place your “publications” are cited are in your own work. Nobody else on the freakin' planet seems to think your “work” is worth referencing.

This should give you a clue. I don't think it will.

"You americans are not good people."

In response, I can only say:

あなたは異性嫌いなばかだ

Is this Travis: "We all know in japan that vaccines can kill babies."

Uh, huh. From Measles vaccine coverage and factors related to uncompleted vaccination among 18-month-old and 36-month-old children in Kyoto, Japan:

In Japan, measles vaccine coverage has remained low, and either small or moderate outbreaks have occurred repeatedly in communities. According to an infectious disease surveillance (2000), total measles cases were estimated to be from 180,000 to 210,000, and total deaths were estimated to be 88 [11,12]. Measles cases are most frequently observed among non-immunized children, particularly between 12 to 24 months.

Oh, and then there was this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15889991

The abstract says:

An antivaccine movement developed in Japan as a consequence of increasing numbers of adverse reactions to whole-cell pertussis vaccines in the mid-1970s. After two infants died within 24 h of the vaccination from 1974 to 1975, the Japanese government temporarily suspended vaccinations. Subsequently, the public and the government witnessed the re-emergence of whooping cough, with 41 deaths in 1979. This series of unfortunate events revealed to the public that the vaccine had, in fact, been beneficial.

What have we learned here? Well, for one thing do not make the same mistakes as Japan. And another thing is to base public health policies an actual science and not politics.

In my country, we know what mercury can do to people. We have laws against mercury in the water.

This is the baddest thing to use in vaccines.

@Dangerous Bacon
I hope Godzilla eats you.

Yeah, sounds like Travis.

Because no one from Japan would use the term "Godzilla."

Its "Gojira."

In Japan at least 88 kids died from not getting an MMR. No version of an MMR vaccine has ever contained thimerosal.

Go away Travis Schwochert from Endeavor, Wisconsin.

Ah, thought I’d seen you referring to him as a failed med student and assumed that was from a while ago.

He was never any sort of med student; he works (or worked) as a midlevel grunt for Cisco. But his sense of entitlement was such that he pretended to be a med student when commening at Medscape. I don't have time to go back through the stuff at the moment.

I once caught a fish with 3 eyeballs in Minamata Bay, thanks to Mercury.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YRaZFKq92A

Sorry, that is incorrect. Injecting food proteins causing the development of allergy and asthma is taught to every doctor in medical school.

Le sigh.

Reading. It is a skill worth cultivating.

Injecting food proteins causing the development of allergy and asthma is taught to every doctor in medical school.

Wait, what? Doctors in medical school are taught how to develop allergy and asthma by injecting food proteins?
Vinu is confused. That's what we're taught at mad scientist school.

ハルート, mercury is nasty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xHUfn0Du4c

"But his sense of entitlement was such that he pretended to be a med student when commening at Medscape. "

Lol.

No worries Narad, I'm sure I'll stumble across it, when I delve into the archives.

In case I'd missed in the voluminous ramblings of vinu:

Has vinu ever shown any evidence at all whatsoever of cow's milk proteins in vaccines?

(And no, the known eggs in the flu vaccine are not evidence of cow's milk.)

It seems that your work has been cited 6 times. Who would do such a thing?
Well, it turns out that the only place your “publications” are cited are in your own work.

I'm actually surprised that the parasitical-publishing scammers and their write-only journal-shaped dumpsters like "Journal of Developing Drugs" don't offer a citation service -- for a doubling of the original publication price -- where they generate on-line papers that are completely meaningless, but nevertheless cite one's otherwise-unread opuscule. Like paying for twitter-bot followers.

Oh, I've managed to piss Travis off....what fun.

vinu @57: Thank you for providing that information. Based on my very quick searching it looks like these vaccines are still in use.
So now 6 questions:
Is it possible to grow the components of these vaccines without bovine-derived materials?
Is there evidence (clinical or epidemiological) that the administration of these vaccines induces casein allergy?
Per 1,000 children vaccinated, how many will develop a casein allergy due to the vaccine and not other processes?
Per 1,000 children vaccinated, how many will *die* of a vaccine-induced casein allergy?
If these vaccines were removed from the market today, how many children would contract tetanus or pertussis?
How many of the children who contract tetanus or pertussis would die?

vinu, you apparently failed to notice this in the summary of the article you cited:
"Although the children we identified appear by history and testing to be exquisitely allergic to milk, we cannot accurately define a high-risk group based on this case series. Clearly, many highly sensitive children with milk allergy tolerate the vaccines because these reactions are apparently rare."
The authors refer to, I believe, 39 instances reported to VAERS. Out of how many millions of doses? Even if the number of unreported events were double or triple or even larger, the percentage of cases is very small. Measured against the risk of harm from the diseases vaccinated against, this is not an entirely unreasonable number.
Sure, those cases should not happen in an ideal world, but I can think of very few things that are entirely risk-free. Besides, who knows whether something else chosen as an alternative would turn out to be less safe?

ハルート, let's get our facts straight. The mercury-containing compound dumped into Minimata Bay was methyl mercury. It was used as a catalyst for the production of hundreds of thousands of tons of acetaldehyde over a span of 36 years. It accumulates in living tissue.
Thimerosal, also known as thiomersal, is an ethyl compound of mercury. It is rapidly excreted from the body. It has not been used in pediatric vaccines for over a decade. It is used in trace amounts in multidose vials of influenza vaccines. To achieve an equivalent dose of elemental mercury from flu vaccines would require impossibly huge amounts of vaccine given to each person.
Now I know this is not proof, but I have a documented thimerosal allergy, yet I have repeatedly had flu vaccines from multidose vials without the least hint of a reaction.

The protein was identified as casamino acids derived from cow’s milk, contained in medium used to process the vaccines.

Someone has failed to understand the difference between casamino acids and a protein.

Quelle surprise.

My fear of vaccines comes from 2 things...
1.  My kids and I got our last flu shot about 2009. The morning following our regular yearly flu shot my son and I woke up with the scariest coughs we had ever heard. We were told in the ER later that morning that we both had H1N1 (Swine flu)...Since deciding against any further flu shots my family's health has vastly improved.
  My second reason for being skeptical regarding vaccines is LARGELY due to trust.
2.  Have you ever heard about Ed Haslams book "Dr. Mary's monkeys"? It exposes one of the largest and most horrifying coverups of all time. It is a completely fact based book with solid traceable evidence about the polio vaccine in the early 1960s and it's DEVASTATING effects on our health, today, as a result of it. For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about.... I'll post the link below.
https://youtu.be/zmXRXrh8BHQ
  Asking Americans to wager the lives of people they love on the integrity of the government, or on the contents in a vaccine after seeing proof of what consequences may result, would make us wreckless. I do, however, understand the importance of vaccines but that's only if we can trust the true intentions of the source. So traditional vaccinations should be a thing of the past and a safer more reliable method needs to be implemented in order to get the vaccinations up to date.
  Im certain If we were not given REASON to distrust or worry, we wouldn't. We are suppose to learn from our past mistakes and entrusting life's importance to such a corrupt system is not only ignorant, its insane. It's just that simple..

As Vinu disgracefully dodged your legitimate questions, again blaming the FDA, as if that institution is the world's only source of answers. Let me have a quick go.

Quick and dirty, the way Vinu likes it:

Let's see milk allergy death rate from Britain: The UK under 16 population is 13 million. Over the past 10 years, four children died (incidence of 0.003 deaths per 100 000 children 0–15 years per year).

Columbian Vaxxed VS UnVaxxed study: UnVaxxed had a death rate of 7.8 deaths per 100, and the corresponding subjects in the Vaxxed group had none.

Crude though the above is, maybe even Vinu can see, we should be more worried about disease than milk allergies.

Whoops, the above was meant as a response to JustaTech.

vinu, do you even read the articles you cite?
This is from your response to me: "We are talking about these vaccines CAUSING THE DEVELOPMENT of allergy in the first place, in non-allergic individuals."
Now this is from the article:
" In this period we observed 8 children in our single center with a history of anaphylactic reactions to booster doses of these vaccines...Six of the [eight] patients had prior acute allergic reactions to cow’s milk, including severe reactions in 5 patients and reactions to trace exposures in 4 patients. One patient was given a diagnosis of milk allergy based on serologic testing performed to evaluate atopic dermatitis, and another was given a diagnosis based on serologic testing to evaluate proctocolitis."
This is not very good evidence for the vaccine causing milk allergy.
Maybe a different medium could be used in production of the vaccine. How would you know before it was used on humans that there was no unanticipated risk?

"Have you ever heard about Ed Haslams book “Dr. Mary’s monkeys”? It exposes one of the largest and most horrifying coverups of all time. It is a completely fact based book with solid traceable evidence about the polio vaccine in the early 1960s and it’s DEVASTATING effects on our health, today, as a result of it."
Mary, did you ever stop to consider that when something like that happens, physicians, scientists, vaccine manufacturers, and regulators don't just shrug their shoulders and continue on without making any changes? No, of course they don't. There is a concerted effort to find out what went wrong, where in the process the failure occurred, and how to prevent it from happening again. It is not just new drugs and machines that make medical practice today very different from the way it was even ten years ago.

Mary, you say, " Asking Americans to wager the lives of people they love on the integrity of the government...after seeing proof of what consequences may result, would make us wreckless (sic)."
You and I depend every day on the integrity of others, government included. We trust building inspectors, weights and measures regulators, health departments, police, soldiers, snowplow drivers, water departments, and so many others. Of course sometimes they fail, for all kinds of reasons, but do you think the private sector does any better? Sure, most people try to do a good, honest job, but there are plenty of people outside of government who ignore disasters, take bribes, hide their mistakes, and so on. Plenty of companies would dump toxic waste on your driveway or in your child's nursery school if they thought they could get away with it, just for one example.

"However, casamino acids are antigens in vaccines that do cause sensitization and subsequent hypersensitivity reactions including anaphylaxis, per the IOM."

But Vinu, we all know the IOM's position of the vaccine schedule causing food allergies*, don't we? If I remember right your response was to label them frauds or something.

Refresh my mind as why we should trust the IOM again?

* There is no evidence they do

That’s a quote from here. You may want to take it up with the author …
http://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/aaaai/25520
Repeating a statement as evidence to support one's dingbattery, then backing away from the statement and disclaiming all responsibility when it's obviously wrong? That's rather cowardly.

Whistler: Your Majesty is like a stream of bat's piss.
Prince: What?
Whistler: It was one of Wilde's.
Oscar: It sodding was not! It was Shaw!

Jay @75: Thanks!

Asking Americans to wager the lives of people they love on the integrity of the government, or on the contents in a vaccine after seeing proof of what consequences may result, would make us wreckless (sic).

So, you instead trust Infowars? That's beyond pathetic. Please, even if you've forgotten high school biology, crack a textbook.

https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm544330.htm
FDA approves Odactra for house dust mite allergies

Problem:
" Individuals with house dust mite allergies may experience a cough, runny nose, nasal itching, nasal congestion, sneezing, and itchy and watery eyes."

Solution:
"The most commonly reported adverse reactions were nausea, itching in the ears and mouth, and swelling of the lips and tongue. The prescribing information includes a boxed warning that severe allergic reactions, some of which can be life-threatening, can occur. As with other FDA-approved allergen extracts administered sublingually, patients receiving Odactra should be prescribed auto-injectable epinephrine."

Talk about a cure being worse than the disease.
FDA's corruptocratic oath: First do maximum harm, to keep Pharm happy ...

Effect of the first vaccine sledgehammer attack on the immune system:

Atopic dermatitis caused by vaccine-induced allergy to Saccharomyces cerevisiae?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305905780_Atopic_dermatitis_ca…

to "fix" the damage, the second sledgehammer attack:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1606490?query=TOC
Anti–Interleukin-31 Receptor A Antibody for Atopic Dermatitis

They want to attack IL-31?! What is the natural role of IL-31?
What happens when you attack it? Who knows, who cares?

They won't understand the root cause. They won't fix the root cause. Remove yeast from the stupid vaccines. Instead, they will create new classes of chronic diseases by taking out a cytokine without a clue about what they are doing.
They want to inject these antibodies into humans and see what happens.
This is what we call tinkering, not engineering.

Thanks to those who read my post and to those who also commented back about the content in it. I just wanted to clear up a couple things. First of all...Dorit Reiss...I was just giVing others a recount of a situation my kids and I had dealt with regarding the flu shot...it was a negative experience and have been in much better health without it. I do not know how it is made or what it contains...that was kind of my point. It could contain anything, as the book dr. Mary's monkey proves. I agree with you about getting sick the day after a flu shot would not be grounds to be anti-vaccine. I was just giving ONE example of many factors that got me questioning the safety of the vaccines Secondly, BRIAN, I believe I spoke about ed Haslams book "Dr. Mary's Monkey" and said nothing about info wars. I just thought it would be quicker to have people see the interview of Ed Haslam (which was done by infowars) rather than read the book, as that may take some time.
Im not sure if you even have an interest in this topic (brian) or if youre just here for some self therapy. Insulting people who speak up is bullying and just makes you seem like perhaps you have some mental health issues you should straighten out before embarressing yourself. It seems like you're screaming out for help or attention. I'm not sure if it's just insecurity or what but you should probably figure that out with a qualified health care professional before subjecting others to your vulgar, rude behavior. Good luck with that Brian.

Od Rockin' Dave
Thank you for your responses as well. What I really appreciate, dave, is that though you may or may not agree with me, you try to help others understand your point of view rather than insulting theirs. So thanks for your perfect online etiquette and behavior. HOPEFULLY OTHERS ON HERE WILL LEARN SOMETHING FROM YOU.

People typically give their strongest evidence first.

If you're explaining the factors that led to a decision, and the very first factor you find worth mentioning is a provably irrelevant factor ("I ran into too many red lights on my way to the doctor's office; it got me questioning the safety of vaccines") then it hints very strongly that you actually have no idea how to distinguish good evidence from bad evidence.

Infowars is a site that exists only because there are people out there who have no idea how to distinguish good evidence from bad evidence. It's a site that only exists because there are people who can't figure out the difference between "X has been speculated" and "X is supported by the evidence." Even if you merely invoke the site as the most convenient way to see Ed Haslam explaining his bizarre speculations about CIA plots and linear accelerators being used in virology (I don't think that plot point could even pass muster on "The Flash"!) and cancer viruses/vaccines just accidentally becoming extremely potent immunodeficiency retroviruses - the very fact that nobody more reliable than Infowars takes Haslam's bizarre speculations seriously is an indicator.

AF,

Haslam is also a regular on "Coast to Coast" if you need more proof of his lack of credibility.

So let's recap: Lisa shows up here out of the blue, spouting all kinds of discredited anti-vax nonsense, she shills for a conspiracy theory nutcase (he has no science background; he worked in advertising) who wrote a book and she promotes Infowars. She then gets all butthurt when she's told her sources are not reliable and she accuses brian of mental illness for his perfectly polite and accurate answer, par for the course around here.

Project much, Lisa?

Not to mention the fact that only cranks go on Infowars or "Coast to Coast" in the first place. As soon as someone has appeared on either of those two outlets, he/she is immediately discredited.

No real scientist or academic would ever have anything to do with Alex Jones or George Noory.

"Once in a while, you end up with honest scientists."
You mean that once in a while we end up with honest and sensible antivaxxers, at least one or two. Sadly, you are not one of them.
You'll get nowhere with me by impugning the integrity of the vast majority of medical scientists. I have worked with some of the best, and intellectual honesty was the biggest thing they all had in common. When you can come back here with some actual evidence that doesn't fold up like wet toilet paper when examined instead of claims based on your own misreading of the papers you cite, please do so.
Otherwise do us all a favor and keep it to yourself.

vinu @91: I don't understand, I though you would be thrilled by this. It's using very small doses of an allergenic material to modulate the immune system to eliminate the inappropriate immune response to the allergen. Oral allergy shots, what could be better?

And *of course* allergic reaction is a side effect of the treatment, since you'd only take it if you were allergic to dust mites! That's why the first dose is given in a doctor's office under supervision.

I'm really not seeing what your complain is.

Vinu @92: Uh, there's plenty of info on IL-31. Heck, it even has a W*pedia article. So, clearly people know and care.

From what you've said here, you want all injected medications to be made without: chicken eggs, any bovine product (hey, it was never *milk*, it was other cow proteins) and yeasts.
What does that leave us with to grow the cells where you grow vaccines? Soy?

You have *still* never shown any evidence that vaccines *are* creating food allergies. You've showed the basic science but no actual evidence that vaccines are causing allergies. Show the numbers! How many children have egg allergies that would not have had them without vaccines? Give the number per 10,000 vaccinated.

JustaTech, have you read the non Frank Herbert Dune books? One group used special cloned people to grow drugs and vaccines (and organs). This probably fits into what this Vinu would like to do.

Rich, didn't they also grow whole clones too? Wasn't one of the big reveals in the later books that the "vats" were actually women?
I'm not sure that I think that vinu would have read anything like Dune.

JustaTech, I think you are right. I tend to reread most books several times but the Dune series (later books especially0 are so dark I don't reread.

The only problem Vinu might have if they are women you could still get the milk proteins. (sarcasm)

One group used special cloned people to grow drugs and vaccines (and organs).
These of course are not canon -- as you note, they are not from the pen of Frank Herbert, being vulgar cash-in travesties by Brian.

And then there was this:
http://boingboing.net/2016/04/04/sex-nun-of-dune.html

Travis/Lou I think you are close to having the zeroth law invoke against you. You must enjoy being hit repeating with the ban hammer.

@Rich Bly

JustaTech, have you read the non Frank Herbert Dune books? One group used special cloned people to grow drugs and vaccines (and organs).

Have you read "Never let me go", by Kazuo Ishiguro? I've seen the film based on the book. Enjoyed it.

Mosquito saliva would be safe medium if it works …
Evolved over millions of years to be only mildly allergenic to humans.

I kind of doubt that it makes any evolutionary difference to mosquitos -- or other blood-sucking insects, or vampire bats for that matter -- whether their proteins provoke allergies in humans or not. The New Zealand sandfly species Austrosimulium australense and A. ungulatum have had only a few hundred years experience of feeding from mammals, and guess what! They don't cause anaphylaxis!

Rather than cobble together these elaborate Rube-Goldberg hypotheses to explain away each case when Richet was wrong and injected proteins don't lead to anaphylaxis, how about we consider the possiblility that Richet was wrong?

Consider the NZ Tiger leech Richardsonianus mauianus -- not evolved to feeding off mammals, and nor have mammals evolved to resist its allergenic bites. Yet its peptide injections don't cause anaphylaxis. It's almost as if Richet's ideas were just wild generalisations.

There are also a few beach-dwelling species of NZ leech but I can't remember their names right now.

Maybe like the way Richet was wrong about the existence of Ectoplasm?
Yes Vinu, why don’t we grow vaccines off Ectoplasm?

Goodness. I did not know about Richet's self-deluding ectoplasm-related gullibility. Nor did I know that his white-supremacist racism was extreme even by the standards of his time. Now I am imagining him covered all over with Aryan Brotherhood tattoos.

Now I have a Cunning Plan to culture vaccines on a medium made from tattoo inks. The only downside is that some tattoo pigments are aluminium compounds.

"Goodness. I did not know about Richet’s self-deluding ectoplasm-related gullibility."

Quite chuffed I've managed to inform herr bimler of something of interest. It usually the other way round.

vinu: "Mosquito saliva would be safe medium if it works"
This one deserves to be on the all-time list of really bad ideas.
First off, mosquito saliva is an anticoagulant. Do you think it's a good idea to go injecting people with an anticoagulant in quantities larger than a mosquito does?
Second, I have seen some drastic local reactions from mosquito bites, like wheals the size of a walnut, many hours of continued bleeding, infections from having a non-healing wound, and more. I don't know of it for a fact, but I would be surprised if there never have been anaphylactic reactions.
Third, mutations in the immune system of individuals occur, and are not strictly based on heredity. Allergies can arise in a population de novo. Beyond that, populations that have not been exposed to a particular allergen for centuries, even millennia, can show up when they are finally challenged.
Here's a thought - you go first.

It is taught to every doctor in medical school

Injecting food proteins causing the development of allergy and asthma is taught to every doctor in medical school.

Every doctor is taught in medical school that injecting allergens causes allergies and asthma.

4. They teach you in medical school that injecting any protein sensitizes you to the protein and causes asthma on subsequent inhalation of the protein.

Vinu seems pretty confident about the med school curriculum, for someone whose experience of it turned out to be a self-aggrandising fiction.

ORD @123: How on earth did vinu come up with the idea that mosquito saliva doesn't induce an allergic reaction? That's what the swelling, redness, heat and itchiness are!
And then you have people like my SO who get huge purple sores (sliver dollar to mouth of a mug sized) that last for weeks from every mosquito bite.

I'm almost forced to conclude that vinu does not actually live on planet earth with the rest of us.

HDB @114: I could have sworn the women-as-clone-incubators thing was in the last Dune book written by Frank, mostly because I've never read the ones by Brian.

People drink milk by the glass. They don’t drink mosquito saliva by the glass

They do! They do! They just call it "Pabst Blue Label".

@hdb:

People drink milk by the glass. They don’t drink mosquito saliva by the glass

They do! They do! They just call it “Pabst Blue Label”.

Mosquito saliva, not mosquito urine. :p

vinu: "When was the last time you read about people being prescribed Epipen auto-injectors to prevent anaphylaxis caused by mosquito bites?"
https://www.aaaai.org/conditions-and-treatments/library/allergy-library…
"However, some people have more serious reactions like blistering lesions or larger hives accompanied by fever and joint swelling. At its worst, a mosquito bite can cause anaphylaxis "
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7719881.:
"Immunotherapy with whole body mosquito extracts is a viable treatment option that can play a role in patients with mosquito bite-induced anaphylaxis".
When was the last time you knew what you were talking about?

"They just call it “Pabst Blue Label”."
Unlike Budweiser, which is a fine European-style pilsener beer that is warm-filtered through the kidneys of American beer drinkers.

Just in case anybody was perturbed about Vinu's Kawasaki mention, look what I stumbled across:

Childhood vaccines and Kawasaki disease, Vaccine Safety Datalink, 1996-2006.

"A total of 1,721,186 children aged 0-6 years from seven managed care organizations were followed for a combined 4,417,766 person-years"

"Childhood vaccinations' studied did not increase the risk of Kawasaki disease; conversely, vaccination was associated with a transient decrease in Kawasaki disease incidence. Verifying and understanding this potential protective effect could yield clues to the underlying etiology of Kawasaki disease."

I saw Kawasaki once in an adult with AIDS. At the time the boss and I thought there was an immune-related process, but it's so rare in adults that there were not enough cases to do any meaningful studies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbxfFOdp-bY

Method:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310021910_Significant_protein_…

Result for Kawasaki:

Sireci et al. below show molecular mimicry between Heat Shock Protein (HSP) 65 of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis and human HSP63.

Here are the results comparing protein sequence alignment between vaccine antigens and this epitope.

HSP63/Mycobacterial HSP65 is shown as baseline in the table below.

T Cells Recognize an Immunodominant Epitope of Heat Shock Protein 65 in Kawasaki Disease

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1949968/pdf/10997339.pdf

Score Expect Identities Positives Gaps Sequence
Saccharomyces cerevisiae 39.7 0.00006 13/19 (68%) 14/19 (74%) 0/19 (0%) Query 3 NIGAKLVQDVANNTNEEAG 21
N GAKL Q+VA TNE AG
Sbjct 89 NMGAKLLQEVASKTNEAAG 107
Clostridium tetani 32 0.029 12/21 (57%) 14/21 (67%) 0/21 (0%) Query 1 YKNIGAKLVQDVANNTNEEAG 21
Y N GA LV +VA TN+ AG
Sbjct 65 YENMGAQLVKEVATKTNDVAG 85
Streptococcus pneumoniae 48.1 0.00000006 16/21 (76%) 17/21 (81%) 0/21 (0%) Query 1 YKNIGAKLVQDVANNTNEEAG 21
Y N GAKLVQ+VAN TNE AG
Sbjct 65 YENMGAKLVQEVANKTNEIAG 85
Corynebacterium diphtheriae 29.5 0.23 11/21 (52%) 14/21 (67%) 0/21 (0%) Query 1 YKNIGAKLVQDVANNTNEEAG 21
Y IGA LV +VA T++ AG
Sbjct 65 YEKIGAELVKEVAKKTDDVAG 85
Bordetella pertussis 35 0.003 12/19 (63%) 13/19 (68%) 0/19 (0%) Query 3 NIGAKLVQDVANNTNEEAG 21
NIGA LV DVA T + AG
Sbjct 68 NIGAQLVKDVASKTSDNAG 86
Haemophilus influenzae 26.9 1.8 10/16 (63%) 10/16 (63%) 5/16 (31%) Query 5 GAKLVQDVANNTNEEA 20
G KLVQDV EEA
Sbjct 59 GVKLVQDV-----EEA 69
Hepatitis B virus 18.5 1482 6/8 (75%) 6/8 (75%) 0/8 (0%) Query 1 YKNIGAKL 8
YKN G KL
Sbjct 33 YKNFGRKL 40
Neisseria meningitidis 27.8 0.86 10/19 (53%) 13/19 (68%) 0/19 (0%) Query 3 NIGAKLVQDVANNTNEEAG 21
N GA +V +VA TN+ AG
Sbjct 68 NMGAQMVKEVASKTNDVAG 86
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
(Baseline)
29.5 0.22 11/21 (52%) 14/21 (67%) 0/21 (0%) Query 1 YKNIGAKLVQDVANNTNEEAG 21
Y IGA LV +VA T++ AG
Sbjct 1 YEKIGAELVKEVAKKTDDVAG 21
Measles virus 19.7 578 7/14 (50%) 10/14 (71%) 0/14 (0%) Query 6 AKLVQDVANNTNEE 19
A LV ++A NT E+
Sbjct 17 ARLVSEIAMNTTED 30

No significant alignments were detected with mumps virus or rubella virus.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16261831

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11939328

Let me try that again: Kawasaki`s Disease, Acrodynia, and Mercury

I am not convinced. Linked paper relies too heavily on the magisterial works of Haley and Blaxill. Repeats too many "Blaxill-facts" without questioning them. 2/10. Would not recommend.

Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Environmental and Complementary Medicine, Salusmed Medical Center,

Sounds legit!

Well, its the best theory that I've seen.

(Science Mom thinks that Kawasaki's Disease comes from riding motorcycles!)

Wzrd1, it is yet another sock puppet from Travis Schwochert from Endeavor, Wisconsin.

Go away Travis.

Yeah, it's like he's not even trying.

First and foremost, I loathe sockspuppets.
So, see my new watch? Se this buttoin?
It's a blow me button, want me to push it?

Second, a suspect study, yeah. See that watch button?
Finally, future links are *more* suspect than vinu's, which are rarely viewed. You killed yourself off early on.
There is absolutely no way to induce me enough to drink enough to review canine excrement links.
Especially so, when I've personally witnessed what a polio and measles outbreak occurred in many villages.

Kawasaki’s disease has an immediate onset and in not contagious. It has every indication of being caused by mercury poisoning.

Not aluminium? I am disappoint. But anyway, have fun arguing with Vinu!

Mercury exposure and early effects: an overview.

Readers may notice that Kazantzis does not deem 'vaccines' -- or any other form of ethyl mercury -- to be worth mentioning in his list of environmental exposures to mercury. His discussion of occupational exposures to mercury is out-of-date, but he was writing in 2002 so I do not judge.

I figure it does no harm to have $SOCKPUPPET monitoring AoA and kindred sites to see whatever crap studies they have dug out of the rubbish-bin of science, and are currently passing around like communal lollipops, in order to link to them here. It's not as if he takes them seriously himself.

One of those links -- now gone, like tears in rain -- was to "Urine mercury levels in Kawasaki Disease" (Orlowski & Mercer) from 1980. And it wasn't actually belligerently stupid... just an N=7 report that was soon disproven by later surveys with much larger numbers. Bad studies that don't replicate are not just a recent invention.

Kawasaki himself reckoned that no competent diagnostician could confuse his eponymous disease with mercury poisoning, and he probably saw enough cases of the latter.

Go away Travis...dressing in drag doesn't make you look any better.