Across these United States, a fierce vaccination debate has started to flare up, and straw-man arguments are being paraded around as the truth. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey said he’s for a balanced approach, in which parents have some measure of choice. Unfortunately, that’s not how things are actually done in New Jersey.
The reality is that New Jersey parents have no real choice. You have to get your child vaccinated unless you can provide a certified letter from your doctor saying that a vaccine will make the child sick, or if you can prove that it is against your religion.
Governor Christie’s comment about a “measure of choice” reveals the self-importance these politicians give to themselves. Parents living in the Christie regime don’t get full choice, but he is willing to grant them some measure of choice. Perhaps the citizenry’s ability to voice its perspective would suffice for the Governor, as long as they understand that he and his bureaucrat comrades have the final say.
Senator Rand Paul defined his position clearly, saying all parents should have the right to choose. He then went on to bring up why some parents have reservations about heavily vaccinating their young children, describing stories that he’s heard where perfectly healthy children get sick after an immunization shot. In response, the mainstream media made it its mission to brand his commentary on why others may have reservations, into Rand Paul advocating against vaccinations. In fact, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean went so far as to say it should disqualify Rand from running for president.
At the core of this entire debate is the question of who is in control. Who owns your body? That is precisely why corporatist-state media and politicians have come out so passionately about this issue. The busy bodies and medical profiteers are irate that you and I think that we should actually have a choice in how we manage our own healthcare decisions.
Nine months ago, on April 18th, I was sitting in a maternity room with my 12-hour-old daughter. When a nurse came in to immunize her from hepatitis B, a disease known to be transmitted only from sex, blood transfusions, and child birth only IF the mother has the virus. Knowing my newborn daughter hadn’t had sex, hadn’t had a blood transfusion, and that my wife – who had been to about 20 doctor visits in the past 6 months – didn’t have hepatitis, I told the nurse I wouldn’t allow them to give this immunization to my baby. The nurses were quite pleasant. They had me sign a form, and that was the end of it.
Prior to the nurse leaving, I asked to see the side effects of the vaccine they had attempted to inject into a half-day-old newborn. The side effects were fever, insomnia, hypotension, drowsiness, loss of appetite and irritability. My heart was crushed after reading this, thinking of all the other babies in the hospital that would be given this shot. Here you are, hours old, you just survived delivery, which can pretty intense, and now someone wants to inject a vaccine into your body, where the side effects could make you sick. For no reason, by the way, in my daughter’s case. So the risk-reward wasn’t even in the equation – it was pretty much all risk.
From the CDC’s website:
On the decision of which vaccines to get and when, for my family it’s all about trust, and I don’t trust anything mandated by this government. I will be damned if they force a needle into any of my children. I have often pondered where I would draw the line, and that’s it. Take my money, take my property, but do not F*** with my kids.
By the way, would it surprise any Liberty Blitzkrieg reader that the former CDC Director went on to become president of Merck’s Vaccination Unit? Today, Dr. Julie Gerberding is the Vice President of Strategic Propaganda… I mean Communications for Merck.
In her title change, Merck had this to say: “Julie has been instrumental in making Merck’s vaccines more accessible.”
With the help and support of my doctor, my children are receiving some of the vaccines at the ages we feel appropriate.
I want to mention this only because this is not an anti-vaccine essay. The debate to vaccinate or not to vaccinate is a distraction from the more important issue at hand:
Who owns your body, you or the government?
– Daniel Ameduri aka The Dissident Dad
For more info see this author’s bio.
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Its been a witch hunt out there with the made up story of the measles outbreak. Saddens me every time I see or read propaganda. You’re the first person I’ve seen who has correctly identified the bigger issue about whose body is it anyways? Sad how few moderate voices are in the debate.
I am very skeptical of traditional medicine….sometimes when I hear a friend tell me that their infant son is experiencing horrible side effects from his 5th vaccine in 10 months, I feel like speaking up. But they assure me that their doctor said everything was okay. Sometimes when I hear a friend start on the cancer rollercoaster with the mantra of how they’re going to fight it with chemo and yeah their doctor recommends eating some fruit too, I get really depressed because I can’t watch another person go all Riddex pest control on their body and hooray how they are in remission 3 months to 1 year later but whoops it came back bigger and nastier than before and now it’s all about making them comfortable. I get sad about hearing another friend tell me how they got prescribed to such and such a medicine for their problem, but now they’ve been prescribed to a second medicine to treat the side effects caused by the first medicine.
But at the end of the day those are my friends choices, not mine. They don’t threaten me personally. Why doesn’t the government feel the same way? If a product is safe and effective, won’t the free market sort that out for us?
The issue is that vaccines are only really effective if everyone gets them. I remember getting vaccinations as a child and those vaccinations helped to completely eliminate certain dieseases from my country. The real problem is that the current vaccinations assume everyone is the same biochemically speaking and that is not true. These vaccinations need to be nuanced to handle the differences that can occur in human biology.
“The issue is that vaccines are only really effective if everyone gets them.”
Then how do you explain the way this chart shows a massive decline long before everyone had finished getting the vaccine?
http://blogs.wgbh.org/media/cms_page_media/2014/5/8/global%20polio.jpg
I think the anarcho-libertarian angle on vaccines should be pretty clear:
1) It’s your body. You (or your kids) suffer first and foremost, so that’s who gets to decide. Insert standard qualifications about deferring to a doctor of your choice.
2) The numbers make vaccination approximately a no-brainer. Social pressure, citing the odds and emotional appeals to civic duty and peace of mind are up to the task of selling the majority of people on getting vaccines. If you’re playing the odds, there is only one rational choice. If you’re not, you’re kind of stupid. (There’s that social pressure I was just talking about…)
3) Tort law informed by modern DNA genotyping (which is nearly capable of tracking down the actual vectors based on the heritage of the specific virus) is or will soon be up to the task of dealing with the outside chance that someone causes an outbreak. If they should have got vaccinated, or should have kept their sick kid home or whatever, they should pay the price for their poor choice.
“Tort law informed by modern DNA genotyping…”
Naive nonsense. Our modern “justice” system has already given precedent to “Affluenza” as a valid defense for a teenager to avoid jail time after killing 4 people in a drunk driving accident in which his BAC was 3x the legal limit. Add to that the fact that vaccination is not a guarantee thus making it entirely possible that a vaccinated person can be infected overseas and spread illnesses in the US upon return, so assigning blame comes down to a witch hunt against the unvaccinated. Even if your argument was valid it certainly wouldn’t be enforceable, or at least enforceable against anyone that can afford a superior legal defense.
Now here’s a dilemma for you. What if actual or potential patient zero is an immune compromised child that medically cannot receive vaccines? What then? Ban them from schools and public places? Force their family to make reparations?
The main problem is that many of the mandatory vaccines are not necessary to stem public health threats and this represents a very dangerous overreach by the government. In the US, pre-vaccination Hep-B was found in 8.5/100,000 and post-vacc 2.1/100,000. That is hardly an epidemic. If you ignore the reduction and assume 8.2/100k that amounts to roughly 65,000 Hep-B infections since 1991 vs 66,654 ‘documented’ Hep-B vaccine adverse events (see NVIC). HPV and Guardasil is another fine example of unnecessary aggressive action and thankfully the Texas Legislature stepped in and shut Rick Perry down on that nonsense.
From the National Vaccine Information Center:
“Hepatitis B is not common in childhood in the U.S. and is not highly contagious in the same way that common childhood diseases like pertussis and chicken pox are contagious.”
“The primary reason that the CDC recommended hepatitis B vaccination for all newborns in the United States in 1991 is because public health officials and doctors could not persuade adults in high risk groups (primarily IV drug abusers and persons with multiple sexual partners) to get the vaccine. [9,16,17] “
“Naive nonsense.”
But you can’t actually EXPLAIN what you think was wrong, the way people who know what they are talking about do? I see you changing the question, and asking me irrelevant questions, but you didn’t actually explain why you think I said something false, the way someone who knows what they are talking about could have done. Coincidence?
Abandoning the discussion after expressing the personal incredulity fallacy means you lost the argument because you were wrong, so remember what you learned:
Tort law plus modern DNA technology will soon make it practical to track down the specific individuals who harbored specific pathogens.
If someone doesn’t get vaccinated, and because of that they get sick, then transport what is clearly an OPTIONAL illness somewhere and infects someone else, modern genotyping will soon be up to proving culpability, by showing that the particular bug someone got must have originated in YOUR body.
The people are risk are those who cannot, for some medical reason, get the vaccine, which means they have ONLY the herd immunity protecting them. Interesting that you mentioned them as if they refute, rather than perform as the CRUX of my argument.
When you free ride on the herd immunity, even though there isn’t any particular reason why you shouldn’t get vaccinated, and it fucks up and hurts someone – YOU’RE the fuckup and modern technology will soon be able to hold you to account.
And THAT is good enough, IMHO, to account for the outside chance that some anti-vaxxer hurts someone else.
IOW, because of that option for redress, there is no valid argument for prior restraint or forcing vaccines.
My previous comment should have said 65K deaths, not “infections”.
“If you ignore the reduction and assume 8.2/100k that amounts to roughly 65,000 Hep-B infections since 1991…”
In adults, 90% of those infected with Hep-b fully recover and develop antibodies against future infection. In children, the chronic infection rates are much higher but the infection rate is much lower due to the nature of the primary modes of infection. One of the highest rates of infection in infants is transmission from mother to newborn child during birth, a vector than cannot be addressed by the vaccine but which is still included in the infant infection rates as a scare tactic to convince parents of healthy children to vaccinate their infant against hep-B.
And just so we’re clear, this is not an anti-vaccine rant. MMR, Polio, etc. of course you should vaccinate. Hep-b, HPV(guardasil), Chicken Pox, Flu, etc.? These should all be by choice.
“mandatory vaccines”
Sorry, which ones?
“Tort law informed by modern DNA genotyping (which is nearly capable of tracking down the actual vectors based on the heritage of the specific virus) is or will soon be up to the task of dealing with the outside chance that someone causes an outbreak. ***If they should have got vaccinated, or should have kept their sick kid home or whatever, they should pay the price for their poor choice.***”
This makes no sense at all. If someone doesn’t believe in vaccination, let them take the risk of exposure. If someone wants it and the vaccine is effective–it IS supposed to be effective or why the charade–they are protected. Who is harmed other than the person who made the “poor choice”?
Think of it like no-fault insurance. I’ll cover my car, you cover yours. I’ll be in charge of my body, yours is your responsibility.
Is that so difficult to understand? You seem not to be clear on this and want to go to a DNA genotyping process to discover something that is immaterial. You’re suggesting cap and trade for vaccines.
“no sense” sounds like an argument from personal incredulity, aka, you need to do some homework, but I’ll summarize:
If someone doesn’t get vaccinated, and because of that they get sick, then transport what is clearly an OPTIONAL illness somewhere and infects someone else, modern genotyping can prove culpability, by showing that the particular bug someone got must have originated in YOUR body.
The people are risk are those who cannot, for some medical reason, get the vaccine, which means they have ONLY the herd immunity protecting them.
When you free ride on that, even though there isn’t any particular reason why not, and it fucks up and hurts someone – YOU’RE the fuckup and modern technology will soon be able to hold you to account.
And THAT is good enough, IMHO, to account for the outside chance that some anti-vaxxer hurts someone else.
IOW, because of that option for redress, there is no valid argument for prior restraint or forcing vaccines.
“the charade”
I’m afraid that when you pack your evaluations into your nouns, where it’s harder to honestly evaluate them, nobody with half a brain is fooled.
Wait – did you buy it?
Well, the important thing is that you can always trust the government and big business. They’d never lie to us. I mean absolute bastions of honesty and integrity. Probably all headed for sainthood. You know the elites always have our best interests at heart even at great cost to themselves.
Yes, I’ve been really happy with the way the ballot box can make wings sprout on the backs of the winners.
Thank you Daniel. I’m the parent of a vaccine damaged child and have spent 30 years reviewing the vaccine literature. People are given a very simplistic understanding of vaccines – vaccines good, illness bad. Unfortunately life is not so simple.
The government and pharmaceutical industry are responsible for the lack of trust in vaccines. They have failed to provide even a semblance of safety trials to prove that vaccines are safe.
It surprises me that so many people are willing to turn over their bodies to government and industry. They trust these organizations a lot more than I do.
“…even a semblance of safety trials”
So they don’t do even A SEMBLANCE?
From the CDC:
“http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Vaccine_Monitoring/Index.html”
400,000 Scholarly articles on google RESULTING from the trials of which there wasn’t even “a semblance:”
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=vaccine+safety+clinical+trials&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=ckjeVOGsI8vyoATm5YGwCA&ved=0CB0QgQMwAA
Protip; when you make outrageous claims that are obviously bullshit and easy to prove false … nobody bothers to check if your conclusions are accurate.
Would you like to correct that impression?
” turn over their bodies”
Paranoid, much?
Does ‘obeying a traffic light’ qualify as ‘going to the gas chambers’ too?
Hyperbole is what people use as a SUBSTITUTE for evidence.
Let’s all pretend it is the year 1950. Can someone please find me a study that shows that smoking causes cancer? …. Anyone? …. None? …. Great. I guess I have nothing to worry about if I smoke this pack of Pall Malls.