I had always though that refusal to get a flu vaccination was relatively harmless masochism. Refusal to vaccinate one’s own children, on the other hand, should probably be prosecuted as child abuse, but at the least the negative consequences stay close to home.
Yesterday, however, I read two articles on vaccination. One in Slate looks at the risks the unvaccinated pose to people with immunity problems (she’s unable to get childcare for her child, who is undergoing cancer treatment, because the risk of being around unvaccinated children is too high). If that seems like a parochial problem (“my kid doesn’t have cancer; why should I worry about vaccination rates?”), the other article, appearing in Wired, is feature-length, and focuses on the anti-vaccine movement and the dangers it poses to the health of everyone.
Both note the rise in non-vaccination and the concomitant rise in outbreaks of the scourges of yesteryear. And they were scourges:
Just 60 years ago, polio paralyzed 16,000 Americans every year, while rubella caused birth defects and mental retardation in as many as 20,000 newborns. Measles infected 4 million children, killing 3,000 annually, and a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type b caused Hib meningitis in mor ehtan 15,000 children, leaving many with permanent brain damage…
But refusing to vaccinate is more than just a convenient way of decreasing the probability you’ll have to pay for college (and that your neighbor’s kid with leukemia will survive). This is because the un-vaccinated put the vaccinated at risk.
The Risk to Us All
As told in the Wired article, an unvaccinated 17-year-old Indiana girl picked up measles on a 2005 trip to Bucharest. When she returned, she went to a church gathering of 500 people. Of the 50 attendees who had not been vaccinated, 32 developed measles. Any adults who got measles had at least made the choice to take on that risk, but the children had not.
Even worse are the two people who had been vaccinated but nonetheless got sick. They had been responsible and protected themselves, but this reckless 17-year-old and her parents endangered their lives. First, though, three cheers for vaccines. Of the unvaccinated, 64% got sick. Of the vaccinated and those with natural immunity, only 0.8% got sick.
But still, vaccines don’t always work. Sometimes they don’t take. Sometimes your immune response may have weakened (for instance, through aging). Or you might just have bad luck. A 2002 study in The Journal of Infectious Diseases determined that you were safer as an unvaccinated person in a well-vaccinated country than as a vaccinated person in a largely un-vaccinated country.
People who refuse vaccines aren’t just risking themselves, and parents who refuse vaccines for their children aren’t just risking their children, they are risking you and me.
Baby-Killers
What makes this even worse is that every baby is initially unvaccinated. Children have to reach a certain age in order to get vaccines. What protects babies is that everyone older is healthy (i.e., vaccinated). So adult vaccine-refuseniks made it through infancy partly thanks to everyone else getting vaccinated. But they aren’t willing to give other babies the same chance.
Do people have the right to choose for themselves whether they want vaccines? Sure — as long as they live on top of a mountain or on a deserted island away from contact with anyone else. Mandatory vaccination**, and now!
(With medical exceptions, of course, but not “philosophical”)
Not just you but we all do. Vaccinations are not just unsafe but the wrong approach to fighting illnesses. Humans have survived through several thouand years before vaccines were invented. There is anecdotal evidence that suggests that ancient people were stronger and healthier than their modern counterparts.
Sure vaccines mostly do their job. But they are a bad short term tactical approach. As viruses mutate there will be hundreds of them. These multitude of vaccines overwhelm a new born baby – mercury, animal cells etc… What else can contribute to autism and cancer rates in society these days.
So what is the right way to fight diseases ? Anyone familiar with Indian Ayurveda or any ancient medicinal system understands that chasing the DNA of every new virus or bacteria, or animal testing in the laboratory is not the way to go. Its not a battle going on here – between the good and the evil. Better health comes from STRONG immune systems that emerge through proper (mostly vegetarian and organic) diets, excersize, sleep etc.. Hathya Yoga has laid out practices that can bolster each single gland in the body that produce and regulate hormones that counter foreign bodies and white blood cells.
Well actually don’t go back to school – all their research is sponsored by these Big Pharma companies. What else are they going to tell you ?
Sure, there’s anecdotal evidence that ancient people were healthier. However, the hard evidence is that they were a whole lot sicker. Some of the data are in this post, in fact: lots of people used to die from disease. Black Death killed around half the population of Europe. Just 100 years ago, 1% of births in the US ended in the death of the mother. Now, it’s closer to .01%.
And so on.
You are putting flu vaccination on the same level of measles vaccination.
These are two quite different viruses with largely different effects. The mortality from the flu infection is orders of magnitude inferior to the one from measles. The flu vaccine is only (60-80%) effective on the current strain and has to be repeated every year. The current hype on flu vaccination is only due to this “pandemic hysteria” for a virus that has caused very few additional deaths compared to normal flu seasons.
This article doesn’t make sense. You are angry that an American girl was not required to be vaccinated, and so she infected other Americans when she returned home. Are you aware that visitors to the United States are not required to be vaccinated? The CDC recommends routine vaccinations but they are not required for entry. Are you suggesting we close our borders? Or do you believe it should be mandatory to vaccinate everyone as they enter the country? What about vaccination schedules that take months or years to complete, such as hepatitis? Should these travelers wait a year until they can come to America? Vaccination can pose health risks, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome. It is, as it should be, up to each individual whether or not they think the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks. You mention an immuno-compromised child (already unhealthy. . .) and suggest that another (healthy) child should have no option other than to subject himself to a potentially dangerous injection, for the good of the already unhealthy child. You are right, most vaccines are safe. Vaccines are fantastic and they’ve saved us from many diseases. I have all mine. . . That doesn’t mean that individuals don’t have the right to choose. THAT would be UnAmerican. I think, if you want to live in a germ-free society, maybe you and the kid with Leukemia should move to that deserted island together. Here in America, we have the right to choose.
If they were, we’d all have the right to shoot each other. Which we don’t, because that would run up against the right of other people not to be shot.
In general, we have laws against reckless and dangerous behavior that harms other people. Like drunk driving, selling contaminated food, etc. Preventing people from spreading disease fits right in with current and traditional American cultural values.
I strongly applaud this very well reasoned post (except the embrace of vaccines, but that is immaterial to the point of the argument). The article indeed does not make sense.
As another poster noted, public health laws require a carefully thought out balance between public health and individual rights. People aren’t fined for not vaccinating their kids, but it is legitimate to deny a kid enrollment in a school because s/he is not vaccinated and has not established a reasoin to be exempt from the policy.
That being said, the article left out key words for the reason to make the vaccination policy so strong: herd immunity. Not only does vaccination limit your exposure to other’s infections, it also creates exposure to the weakened virus that is shed by vaccinated people, creating a small level of immunity even before an individual is vaccinated.
This so-called herd immunity is only effective if almost everyone is vaccinated.
For polio, herd immunity was an important component of eliminating the disease, but that required the Sabin live but attenuated virus oral vaccine. Because there was a rare chance of a live virus causing a more virulent infection, the coup de grace will require the Salk killed-virus injected vaccine. The disease is still present in a few pockets, and public health policies there are not strong enough to complete the job.
Fred Bortz
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