Discussion for article #232936
Imagine that the cause of death of a child was measles… because a parent used a ‘religious’ exemption to avoid vaccination. Is that considered a premeditated or negligent homicide?
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So, let’s suppose I had a “sincere belief” that air was very harmful for children. After all, oxygen produces free radicals which can cause cancer, cellular aging and other serious problems. There is actual (non-retracted) science to support this. Could I then put pillows over my kids’ heads and claim exemption from prosecution?
The anti-vaxers are entitled to believe any nonsense they like, whether out of pseudo-religion or paranoia. They are not, however, free to subject minors under their control and others in society to dangers based on their beliefs.
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“… Is that considered a premeditated or negligent homicide?”
I THINK there may be some precedent for this. Not sure. I’m not a lawyer, but I seem t recall some kind of case like this.
Hobby Lobby is a religious exemption. Home schooling is a religious exemption. The exemption could be carried to it’s logical extreme and conclude with ritual human sacrifice and genocide having religious exemption. This is why there should be NO religious exemption. It’s a snake oil business and should be regulated and taxed as such.
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An argument could be made that antivaxism is a religion. Certainly their elevation of anecdote to dogma, resistance to empiricism, reliance on circular reasoning, and persecution complex are borrowed from religion.
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Anti-vaccine radicals are the dumbest smart people walking the planet. Maybe they shouldn’t have kids seeing as they want to basically torture them.
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Not vaxed? House arrest for you until your selfish sociopathic behavior is ended.
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There is a more obvious example of religion exemption that the right wing is hysterical about: Sharia law.
When talking about the religion of someone else, the flaws in letting religious thinking trump rational and legal norms is obvious. When talking about your own religion, it is a lot harder to see clearly.
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"How Vaccine Skeptics Game The System "
Please don’t use the word ‘skeptic’ in this way. These people are anything but skeptics. ‘Cynic’ is more appropriate.
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This is really a tangent on the question of religious/faith objections to all vaccines. I was curious as to what many people have objected to in the particular MMR vaccine. Yes, the discredited study was made by a discredited doctor. But why did this have relevance, particularly to the question of the kids who develop normally and then start regressing? They DO EXIST. THere’s a name for their condtion, I found:
Childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD) is a developmental disorder that resembles autism. It is characterized by at least two years of normal development, followed by loss of language, social skills, and motor skills before age ten. Other names for childhood disintegrative disorder are Heller’s syndrome, dementia infantilis, and disintegrative psychosis. (http://www.minddisorders.com/Br-Del/Childhood-disintegrative-disorder.html).
It was identified by Heller long before the vaccine existed, and there seems to be some link to brain damage from, perhaps, encephalitis, which in turn apparently can very occasionally be caused by complications from measles… It isn’t autism per se, it is far less common than autism, it is far more damaging BUT the MMR vaccine IS a live-virus vaccine so you can see how researchers, even honest ones, could be interested in pursuing a line of research.
I have no medical training and would appreciate someone who does explaining to me why this has absolutely no relevance to the decision not to vaccinate. Obviously the risk of damage to kids from the vaccine is a lot smaller than the risk of damage from measles, and there’s the whole herd immunity thing. But if the vaccine is so totally safe, then why is it not given to people with compromised immune systems?
Crackpot*
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“Concern troll”
MMR is made from live attenuated virus; i.e., viruses that have genetically mutated to be very weakened in their ability to cause disease. In a person with a functioning immune system, that virus will not be able to cause disease, yet will evoke a strong immune response. However, in immunocompromised persons, the vaccine could potentially cause disease, while likely not producing a protective immune response. Thus, such people are dependent on the population as a whole being immunized so that the virus does not circulate.
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Since when is it a person’s right to endanger the health and lives of others?? This is yet more pseudo-religious BS, masquerading as “personal freedom.” It’s long past time that this nonsense stops. Don’t want to vaccinate your children? You’re free to do so, but I’m not going to allow your virus-carrying spawn to get within 100 feet of my child. (Full disclosure, I don’t have any children.) This is analogous to yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater, in my opinion. You can not endanger the rest of society to pander to your own beliefs.
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Here is data that is hard to argue against:
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Clearly what we need is the Church of Pyrodixology, whose main tenet is to shout “Fire” whenever the holy spirit moves you…
It’s yelling fire in a crowded school and that’s the very same thing as in a theater in my opinion. The parent who will not care about the kids their child comes in contact with needs to keep their kid at home since they are endangering the community as a whole. It’s not just children who get measles or some other preventable disease. It is child endangerment to not vaccinate. There are laws about endangering kids.
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can we also exempt religious tweeks from health care of any kind? let their GOD heal them or rapture their asses, either way, good way to thin that herd.