You must vax your kids if you want to send them to public schools, or travel internationally, but that's about the extent of the "must." Plenty of people have not vaxed their kids (and that's part of the reason why I got pertussis last winter).
My opinions on this are absolutely inflexible, and I do not debate them any more than I debate evolution vs. creationism. Here goes:
I think it should be criminal not to vax your children with the basics, if they are healthy. The diseases we vax for in childhood can kill, and they can take years off of your life or tank your quality of life. As a premodern social historian, I am acutely aware -- thanks to all those tiny gravestones -- of the benefits of mass vaccination. If you want a more modern cautionary point, take my FiL, who has post-polio syndrome, which is painful and erodes his quality of life as well as his cardiac health. If we take kids away from parents for neglect, the criminality of not vaccinating them for childhood illnesses is a pretty obvious call.
Beyond the otherwise healthy kids who are at risk from childhood illness because their parents are neglecting them, we ought next consider my goddaughter, who must be on a very limited and slow vax schedule now that she has a transplant liver. Her health, and the health of other medically fragile kids, is also at stake, and her docs and parents cannot do things any differently to protect her. So you're neglecting your own children and more or less putting others' kids out to play in traffic, when you refuse to vaccinate. It's utter bullshit.
If you're not allowed to pour your raw sewage into the local drinking water, you should not be allowed to decline vaccination for your children. It amounts to the same thing.
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Date: 2010-12-21 12:51 pm (UTC)My opinions on this are absolutely inflexible, and I do not debate them any more than I debate evolution vs. creationism. Here goes:
I think it should be criminal not to vax your children with the basics, if they are healthy. The diseases we vax for in childhood can kill, and they can take years off of your life or tank your quality of life. As a premodern social historian, I am acutely aware -- thanks to all those tiny gravestones -- of the benefits of mass vaccination. If you want a more modern cautionary point, take my FiL, who has post-polio syndrome, which is painful and erodes his quality of life as well as his cardiac health. If we take kids away from parents for neglect, the criminality of not vaccinating them for childhood illnesses is a pretty obvious call.
Beyond the otherwise healthy kids who are at risk from childhood illness because their parents are neglecting them, we ought next consider my goddaughter, who must be on a very limited and slow vax schedule now that she has a transplant liver. Her health, and the health of other medically fragile kids, is also at stake, and her docs and parents cannot do things any differently to protect her. So you're neglecting your own children and more or less putting others' kids out to play in traffic, when you refuse to vaccinate. It's utter bullshit.
If you're not allowed to pour your raw sewage into the local drinking water, you should not be allowed to decline vaccination for your children. It amounts to the same thing.