It looks like Pharyngula is back online…at least I’m seeing new comments appear. Now let’s see if I can post anything.
How about another pointless poll? In a web page for some TV show I’ve never seen, ABC is asking, “Did Arlene have the right to refuse to vaccinate two of her sons?” (I presume this refers to some fictitious incident in the program). Alas, the anti-vaxing kooks have seized upon it, and the vote is now at:
70% say “YES – The parent has a right to act on their beliefs.”
30% say “NO – Her decision put her sone and hundreds of other people at risk for the measles.”
Wait, measles? That’s a dangerous disease that is currently on the rise because of these paranoid idiots who oppose the MMR vaccine. This should be a no-brainer — it’s too bad there are so many brainless people out there.
Orac has transcripts of the relevant part of the program, if you want to figure out what the poll is refering to.
Voted, but still at 70/30.
Welcome back PZ! It works.
So far I about all I can say is that it feels slightly snappier. Same old illogical godbots though, but that isn’t a computer problem, just the software between their ears.
Sadly, the correct answer is “Yes”, parents still do have the right to endanger the lives of their children and others in this way.
You’re back, and so are the spammers! *glares at #3*
I completely agree that parents should vaccinate their children but I’d like some clarification on this statement.
Are you advocating taking medical decision making power away from parents? In that case, to whom would you give that power?
Would this involve only vaccination or would there be some system by which parents’ decisions could be overruled in any medical situation?
Again, I feel that it’s vitally important that children get vaccinated and I feel that if an unvaccinated child gets ill then the parent is criminally negligent but there are broader implications here than whether or not particular kids are getting their shots.
Arlene has the right not to vaccinate her sons,unfortunately.
And then Arlene will turn up in my Emergency Department with her son in a stupor,and demand all these fancy medicines that save people.
Its outright pathetic.
Not to mention the effect her not vaccinating her kids has on all the other kids.
Interesting that the UK seems to be leading in measles deaths in Europe these days….
There’s an enormous difference between having a right and being in the right.
The boundary between individual rights and the impact such rights have on a greater society is blurry. I’d contend that part of the social contract is vaccination because of the consequences it can have on society at a greater level. In any case, one may have the right not to vaccinate their kids though they may have a responsibility to vaccinate for the sake of others.
#3 is no longer a spam comment — that one has been deleted.
A nice feature on the backend of this update: one-click deletion of spam. It used to take me two clicks.
This is a rather ambiguous question we are dealing with.
I think the parents have the right to refuse the vaccination.
I also think they would be stupid and selfish to actually go ahead and refuse the vaccination.
We aren’t talking about insulin for a diabetic child here, or antibiotics against a raging infection. There is no imminent risk of danger to the child from refusing the vaccination- Of course we know there isnt a risk from taking the vaccination either and that it has long term benefits for the child as well as society at large but does that mean that parents are forced to accept non acute medical interventions on their children?
I’m all for universal vaccinations but the wording of the question goes a lot further than this.
A better question is “Does Arlene have the responsibility to vaccinate her sons?”
The answer to that is a resounding yes.
It does, and Orac has the transcript here:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/01/an_actual_provaccine_storyline.php
It’s a very stupid question with two answers that aren’t mutually exclusive. She clearly does have the right to refuse vaccination for her son, whether one agrees that she should have it or not, and her decision to refuse did indeed put her son and others at risk. She may not have been right to refuse, but that’s an entirely different question.
In the USA the patient (in this case the parent), has the right of autonomy of refusal. This autonomy can only be overridden when the other person or persons at risk can be specifically identified-not just a population risk. This rarely occurrs outside of diseases such as tuberculosis and direct threats made by the already identified mentally ill. Endangering your child or yourself for whatever reason only means that the healthcare provider has to send all the proper registered letters so that they are not blamed for adverse outcomes that stem from refusal. Blaming immunizations for the explosion in amounts of diagnoses of autistic spectrum disorders makes no more sense that blaming them for the explosion in the diagnosis of fibromyalgia that has occurred over the last 30 years or so.
@10: Nice.
Grrrr,3 days I couldnt flirt with SC,i want my money back scienceblogs !!!
@ the pro,
Fibromyalgia is a nice way of saying,your life sucks,youre getting no sex and you probably wont until you die….And youre absolutely right,this sort of diagnosis is just as absurd as diagnosing a 12yo with depression or ASD…..
What if she only refused the Hepatitis B and HPV vaccines? Can she refuse circumcism? Can she refuse breast tissue mastectamies for her boys to prevent breast cancer? For her girls?
The site is too wide. I don’t remember how it was before, but now there’s a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom. Bad form…
Oh, and welcome back!
I have to say that I don’t think vaccinations should be mandatory. A parent has the right to act in the best interest of their child. Now, I think vaccinations are necessary and I’ve had all my kids vaccinated. I think this Arlene woman is putting her children and others at great risk by not vaccinating her kids. Maybe the State or City should make life more difficult for those that choose not to vaccinate like not allowing access to any public schooling at all (but then they’ll just home-school) or requiring a quarantine period after traveling outside the Continental U.S. or travel to areas where these diseases are experience a resurgence.
You can definitely refuse circumcision for a child. The American Academy of Pediatricians has this to say::
Eclogite @ 19,
thats fine,just dont turn up at my Emergency Dept with your moribund children.
Yes,that is something I would subscribe to,keep non-vaccinated kids away from public schools,or,in turn,just demand vaccination.Its not about some anti-vacc loons rights,its about the immunity of countries or the world to diseases nobody has to die of anymore these days.
I voted no, there’s no reason to propagate the stupidity of the antivacination crowd because the idiots at ABC don’t understand polling, or maybe they do and they’re hoping for a specific outcome?
When considering whether to coerce people for their own (supposed) good, or the good of others, we need to take into account the effects of the coercion as well as of what they are being coerced to do or not do. There’s no general “right answer”.
A question for africangenesis, who is very fond of throwing out questions he thinks others should answer (very like Facilis in fact):
Should the state intervene to stop parents subjecting their daughters to clitoridectomy and infibulation?
You all are taking the question too literally. Of course she has the legal right to refuse vaccination. The question is whether she has the moral right.
Here in the UK a number of local authorities are looking at whether they have the right to prevent unvaccinated children from attending schools run by those authorities.
I got vaccinated the old fashioned way- I caught them all as a child. In the early 70’s getting measles was what small children did.
How about this: if she wants to refuse vaccination ok but if someone else can trace their infection back to her kids then she faces felony assault charges and if they die she faces murder one.
And some of those children ended up becoming deaf or blind as a result, or even dead.
Without having read the poll, is the reason that Arlene refuses to have her children vaccinated due to the increasing Autism scare in relation to vaccines? I recall some celebrity sceaming about this…can’t recall who though.
c@27,
What if her kids infections benefits your children? Many vaccines were once thought to confer life long immunity, but near universal vaccination has shown this to not be true for many of the vaccines. The reason the immunity used to appear life long, was because ciruculation of the wild type disease effectively boosted the immunity of the vaccinated much like a booster shot.
I got vaccinated the old fashioned way- I caught them all as a child. In the early 70’s getting measles was what small children did.
And in the 70s we never wore seatbelts either, and we turned out just fine! Of course, none of the kids who ended up dead as a result aren’t around to voice their thoughts on the matter…
For the record: I am not a delayed/no-immunizations parent. I do immunize and on schedule. However, I do have the right and have exercised said right to deny certain immunizations.
I have denied the Varivax(chicken pox) and the HPV vaccine for both of my girls. They received the first does of the Varivax when they were younger and promptly contracted chicken pox. I felt that if they were still going to get it, might as well get it the proper way and be naturally immunized against it–and I was correct, so we denied the second dose. The HPV does not have enough positive research for me to expose my girls to that kind of not guaranteed dosing.
Otherwise, I do have and will use that right. As should all parents. Become educated about the type of vaccines out there and choose the ones that are time tested and you know work(the standard MMR, etc..).
toni
Argh, “are around”. Double negatives bad.
According to the CDC, as of the 2005-2006 academic year, all 50 states already require the MMR vaccine before entering kindergarten. (A few states don’t require the mumps vaccine, but they all require measles vaccination.)
Colleges, even, require proof of immunity. I had to have a measles immunity test done before USF would accept me, since I lost my record of vaccination.
I hate when I prove myself wrong.
On the last page of the linked document, it shows that all states allow some form of exemption. All but two states allow religious exemption, and about half allow ‘philosophical’ exemption.
One of the best comments I’ve read over at RI – and I’m sorry I can’t remember who wrote it – was about how, through vaccination, we’ve come increasingly close to eradicating some of these diseases altogether. If this is accomplished, vaccinations could cease entirely – no one would have to be vaccinated. Any intervention has to be decided on a risks vs. benefits basis. As the number of cases declines with vaccination the chances of exposure decline, so even though the risk from these vaccinations is miniscule (and research to date shows no relation to ASD, whatever goalpost-shifting mechanism the antivaccine crowd dreams up), there will always be a brief moment in the course of disease elimination at which the tiny risk of the vaccination will exceed the tiny risk of exposure to the disease. What the antivaccine boneheads are doing is stopping/reversing the process of disease elimination on the basis of scientifically-unsupported beliefs about risk just when we’re at the verge of eradicating the diseases at which point no children would have to be vaccinated. It’s insanity.
slightly OT…
Who knows how many polls went uncrashed while scienceblogs was down. We may never know.
This is becoming more and more of a problem for me. The older I get, the more liberal I become on just about every single issue.
The problem that I’m finding is that the further left I go, the more the fringes out here seem to be populated with the same anti-science kooks that populate the far right.
On the right we have to deal with morons like Creationists, but on the left we have to deal with New Age bunk, crystal healing, reading auras, tarot cards, anti-vaccination zealots, astrology, nature worship, and so much other drivel.
The right wing I can easily dismiss because I don’t have to be around them on a daily basis. But in my far-left social group I have to deal with anti-scientific opinions on an almost daily basis. They’re opinions that aren’t worth even the barest amount of my respect, but the people that hold them are.
How does one deal with it when one’s good friends start spouting this sort of utter nonsense?
We are now at 51%. WooHoo.
SC @ #36:
Isn’t that what happened with smallpox? We (collectively) vaccinated so thoroughly and so consistently that smallpox was effectively eradicated?
BengaminGeiger@40,
Yes, except that smallpox has been eradicated, although the USA and Russia retain stocks, supposedly in case of a new outbreak (where from?). Smallpox was particularly easy to get rid of, because as far as is known, you don’t get infection without very obvious symptoms. Polio has nearly gone the same way, but there was a setback recently in northern Nigeria, where some Islamists decided the vaccination was a wicked plot to sterilise Muslims.
Yes. Here’s the CDC page:
http://www.cdc.gov/Features/SmallpoxEradication/
Because it can still be weaponized, unfortunately, some people are still vaccinated and stores of the vaccine are kept for that eventuality.
It also helped that the smallpox vaccine was one of those that resulted in lifelong immunity in most people. This strong reaction to the smallpox antigens is thought to be evidence of the strong impact of past epidemics on the genome. We are descended from those that survived WITHOUT vaccination.
african genesis,
What exactly is your point?
Many of us are descended from those who survived because they were vaccinated, or not exposed because others had been vaccinated.
Any advantage to registering with TypeKey (TypePad now)? Safari does a nice job of loading Name and Email at home, but IE6 at work is a pain in the #$%^.
For a moment, I want to use AG’s logic. The millions of people who died of the flu back in 1918 and 1919 were descended from those that survived WITHOUT vaccination.
Janine @ #46:
I don’t think AG was arguing against vaccination, now that vaccination is an option. It seemed that he was pointing out evolution in action.
There is no right to refuse and put others in the population at risk. If parents do not want to vaccinate their children then those children should be forever segregated from the rest of us rational people. They should then have no right to use schools or any public facility. They need to avoid the supermarket and mall and any other place where they can infect and harm others. They have freedom to leave the country if they want to be irrational and have beliefs without any proof.
KG@23, As someone who was a victim of involuntary genital mutilation, I have great sympathy for those girls. In order to be consistent, since I don’t believe states own “their subjects”, I guess I should translate the question to make its more general form clear. Should a state invade another state to save innocent girls from genital multilation?
Hmm, I think I prefer the evolutionary perspective, parents own their children. Most native cultures and major religions seem to reflect this. Domestic issues are seldom raised to higher levels, such as between the tribes of Israel, although almost certainly domestic issues exist. I used this to argue with Christians against the need to elevate abortion to the national or even state stage. That said, Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. The consequences of these behaviors are visited upon ones own genetic lines, and are traditionally addressed within the extended family.
So what? Look at the reduction in measles cases and mortality through intervention:
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/Vaccines/12037
The goal is of a 90% reduction worldwide by 2010, and it is (or was) pretty much eliminated in many countries – going the way of smallpox, unless these cranks get their way.
As TV shows go, House did a good job of laying the smack on anti-vax.
I, too, am afraid that she HAS that right.
If not, the vaccine would have been mandatory.
As already stated, there’s a difference between having a right, and being right.
So that poll should have been about ‘should she, or should she not have the right’
Interestingly enough, since all consequent pro-lifers out there SHOULD have voted NO (A mother has NO right to make decisions that can kill her child), and considering there are appalingly many of them, one would have expected the poll to be already overwhelming on the NO side.
Since it isn’t (wasn’t), it appears that there must be quite a few devout pro-lifers who think she HAS “the right” to make life threatening decisions for a child.
That’s interesting: they’re against killing a child before birth, but after it has been born, then it’s okay?
Ben@47,
Right, I wasn’t arguing against vaccination, I strongly favor it. I was just pointing out the hypothesis about why the small pox vaccines conferred life long immunity while others don’t. I even, despite being a libertarian, support subsidized vaccination in public health clinics. I oppose mandatory vaccination however.
I revaccinate my children through college age for those vaccines such as pertussis and MMP, that wear off and the diseases which will threaten my grandchildren. I refused both hepititus B and HPV. The children can make those decisions later if they decide to engage in risky behavior or with risky partners.
(Yeah yeah, I know.. I see the fallacy in my own argument (#52) …, but still…)
In order to be consistent, since I don’t believe states own “their subjects”, I guess I should translate the question to make its more general form clear. – africangenesis
No, you should have the honesty to answer the question as asked, which is not some distant hypothetical, but a matter on which legislators have actually made recent decisions.
parents own their children.
However, this seems clear enough. Rather than violate your religious beliefs, you would allow young girls to be mutilated in a way that is designed to destroy their ability to enjoy sex, and risks their life, or lifelong suffering from pain and incontinence.
The way to solve this is so simple (to me anyways)is to have the insurance companies not cover any of the medical costs due to lack of vaccinations. It still gives the parents the right to no vaccinate, but puts the burden on the parents if the child should get infected.
The problem I have with this is that is may result in the victim suffering even more. Diseases such as measles can have horrific complications, but these can be largely avoided with access to modern healthcare. If accessing that healthcare is made harder then there will be more suffering.
If however healthcare is provided regardless of insurance coverage, and consideration about recovering costs only made after then I have no objection.
Some people unfortunately are unable, for genuine medical reasons, to be vaccinated against certain diseases — and are therefore reliant on other people having immunity and so not communicating the disease to them. If my kid were invaccinable, and caught a preventable disease from someone else who could have been vaccinated but wasn’t by choice, I’d certainly have a few choice words for that child’s parents.
If parents have the right not to vaccinate their kids, then
(1) Insurance companies have the right to refuse to pay out in the event that a disease could have been prevented by vaccination, and
(2) Schools have the right to refuse to admit kids, and workplaces have the right to refuse to employ adults, who could but have not been vaccinated.
Don’t forget that most vaccines are not given before 12-18 months, which leaves a proportion of the population rather vulnerable, especially when they have older siblings of school age.
Yes, except that smallpox has been eradicated, although the USA and Russia retain stocks, supposedly in case of a new outbreak (where from?).
Surely you’re not that naive. The US and Russia maintain stocks of smallpox in their bio-warfare labs. Not “in case of a new outbreak” but “in case we need to cause a new outbreak.”
There are civilian stocks at ATCC as well as USAMRIID(military) in the US and Russia has allegedly kept their stocks in multiple military facilities.
Humans suck.
Speaking of anti-vaxers, it must not be allowed to occur that Mad Mel Philips wins best UK blog. She’s in the lead. Second is Created in Birmingham which is functional and worthy and, if you aren’t an artist in Birmingham, kind of dull. I don’t know how it got to be second, but Melanie Philips is a far right, mercury militia, sack of crap so vote for “Created in Birmingham”.
Erin asks:
How does one deal with it when one’s good friends start spouting this sort of utter nonsense?
Tell them “you’re spouting utter nonsense.” If they’re worth having in your life, they’ll think about it and if they storm off in a huff, they weren’t worth it.
Rational people sit back and chew their lips and go “well, maaaaaybe accupuncture works” (yeah, it does: if you’re the accupuncturist!) and it serves to support the groundswell of plausibility. This has happened to the point where in some countries in the civilized world, homeopathy is taken seriously and is paid for by government “health care” systems. When you see the manufactured controversy effect that the fundies are trying to produce, you can see the payoff when you look at Andrew Weil (whom many people take seriously) and the whole mushbrain alternative medicine movement. It’s exactly the same game: get people’s minds used to poison, one drop at a time.
The antidote is a faceful of reality. I had a good friend who got snookered in by an accupuncture con (to the tune of about $2,000/month to cure her ‘poisons’) and I told her she was being a rube and a fool. Now she doesn’t talk to me. Shrug and move on.
KG@55,
I am allowing young girls to be multilated and so are you. The difference is it is consistent with my values, and it is apparently not consistent with yours. Do you think your obligations to other human beings ends at the borders? Do you assume that states are the only entities that can act?
I’ve learned from history (yes even the 19th and 20th centuries) that states are more of a threat than parents.
Ok, I’ll support people’s right not to vaccinate their kids against measles due to their woo-beliefs if I get the right to kill them and their kids when those disease ridden kids infect my pregnant wife with measles and cause my unborn child to become mentally retarded.
Sound fair?
Louis@64, Yuck, hopefully they can get their right not to vaccinate without your support then. Your support comes too dear. Why not just vaccinate your wife before she becomes pregnant?
Hey, back in business! Sorry this is off-topic, but my wife just sent me a Times article by an atheist who thinks that Africans “need God” because they’re passive and missionaries do good and so forth. The commenters are all like; “Oh, Mr. Parris, you’re so insightful, blah-blah”.
As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.
Ugh… I need to go wash my hands after typing that link.
because vaccines don’t work 100% and it needs herd immunity to REALLY protect people from diseases.
am I ever fucking glad idiots like you weren’t around to “let parents decide” on the smallpox vaccine :-/
Do you think your obligations to other human beings ends at the borders? Do you assume that states are the only entities that can act? – africangenesis
No. I think starting a war almost always has dire consequences which passing and enforcing a law generally does not. As it happens, I also contribute to charities that work against FGM in other countries than my own.
The fact that states are in general more of a threat to children than their parents are (if it is one – there’s considerable room for debate here once one abandons the stupid idea that all states are equally dangerous), does not imply that in a particular case such as FGM, state action should not be supported. This only follows from your worship of “The Individual” – once again proved to have nothing whatever to do with protecting real, living people.
Incidentally, given your stance on FGM, presumably you feel the state should not intervene to stop men raping their children either – after all, according to you, they own them. Murdering them?
J@67,
Was the smallpox vaccine coercively distributed?
George@66,
I believe some missionaries are working against female genital mutilation, presumably non-coercively. Could your Mr. Parris think, evangelism was a small price to pay?
well, considering that almost 100% of my most recent ancestors lived through a citywide Smallpox quarantine, I daresay I’m a descendant of people who only survived BECAUSE of vaccination.
ergo, screw yourself.
WOOOOSH!
The sound of a point being missed.
The anti-vaxxer woo has tragic consequences. As mentioned up thread there are genuine medical reasons some (tiny minority of) people cannot be vaccinated. The “MMR leads to ASD” demonstrable nonsense isn’t one of them. For vaccination to be successful a minimum proportion of the population needs to be vaccinated. If people have good reasons for not vaccinating (demonstrable allergy to some component of the vaccine for example) then they get to avoid that specific vaccination. Nonsensical beliefs, whatever they might be, which are not merely unsupported by the evidence but directly contradicted by it don’t count as good reasons.
It’s possible to have a liberal and tolerant society without pandering to nonsense and protecting said nonsense from critique and rebuttal. If one has to be dubiously political about it, obviously some spurious appeal to “left-wing-big-statist-government-intervention” fails. No one suggests that the only (or even preferable) alternative to tolerating demonstrable nonsense as if it were fact is the eradication of tolerance of any kind by legislation.
Oh and whilst my wife is well vaccinated my neighbour’s wife isn’t. So I support his right to kill anti-vaxxers and their disease ridden kids when his unborn children are damaged by the preventable ignorance of others. Figured out which bit is hyperbole and which bit isn’t yet?
Incidentally, with responsible coverage of medical/scientific matters in the media and generally effective education of children with useful “bullshit detectors” nonsense like the “MMR jab leads to ASD” would occur vastly less often and have less effect.
“Did Arlene have the right to refuse to vaccinate two of her sons?”
A government that can force medical treatment on somebody who doesn’t want it is a government out of control.
what complete and utter bullshit. my friends mother just had a hysterectomy because of cervical cancer; she had only ever had sex with one man (her husband). care to explain how that’s “risky behavior or with risky partners?”
There was a good This American Life story (# 370: Ruining it for the rest of us: shots in the dark… http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1275) about a family in San Diego (I think) that refused to vacc their kid against measles… and guess what? The whole neighborhood had to go into hardcore old fashioned quarantine because every kid <1 year old started getting measles! They had interviews with parents from both sides. It was pretty interesting discussion about what’s good for the individual versus what’s good for society. Really good episode.
it was mandatory, yes.
my comment re: This American Life above got cut for some reason:
here’s the rest.
under 1 years old got measles! Crazy nuttos. But in reality it was a good discussion with interviews of parents on both sides, and the evidence against the anti-vacc movement, and in general a good discussion of the importance of individual versus society. Good episode.
For the benefit of non-UK readers: Matthew Parris is one of the good guys, and an interesting character. He is a former MP; he is gay; he breeds llamas; he has “gone green” in a big way. He likes to think for himself, and weigh up all sides of an argument. It is to his credit that he is able to come to a conclusion that goes against his preconceptions and his natural instincts. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he is right, of course, but he should certainly be taken seriously.
KG@68,
The state isn’t god. I don’t worship the individual, but I know the individual exists. There are limits to everything. I oppose child rape, and I don’t think it is a right of parents. But that is different from allocating scarce resources to stop it, and trusting a state that has the power to stop it. As disgusting as child rape is to our culture, sexual exploitation of children is the norm in some New Guinea cultures. Are our resources, better spent fighting malaria or fighting child rape, or educating my children? These are choices. State involvement in domestic issues is frightening, and often clearly not the best way to handle things. If your son molested your younger daughter is your worship of the collective such that you would call the police? You have the traits that help maintain the collective, daemonization and contempt of the “other”. Do you really want to revel in them? These and other traits characterized by the Judeo/Christian culture as negative, must have contributed to fitness over modern human evolution. Exploitation of these traits to ccntrol mass society is a much greater threat than domestic issues.
For the benefit of non-UK readers: Vole does not speak for all Brits. I for one think of Matthew Parris as “That Tory arse who publicly outed a political rival (in a case where said rival had never made any hypocritical statements regarding homosexuality)”
depends on what you mean by “molested” of course, but what exactly should I do if my son rapes my daughter…? NOT call the police and tell the girl to suck it up? send my son to bed without dinner?!
this sort of tribalism is dangerous. being related to someone is no excuse to commit crimes against them, or to hide their crimes
@73–Jadehawk
Anecdote does not equal data. While HPV is not necessarily contracted via risky business, cervical cancer and cancers of the uterine area are related not just to risky behavior but hereditary so as well. All females on my mother’s side of the family have had to have hysterectomies early on in life due to some form of cancer in that area. That still does not mean my daughters will get it nor does it mean they’ll get it via risky behavior.
EG: there just is not enough evidence to convince me the HPV vaccine is worth getting.
However, Hep B is a disease contracted either via birth (hence the eye drops) or risky behavior (which would be a circular argument–the need for the eye drops in newborns was brought on by the behavior conducted by mothers participating in risky business). (cite: http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/index.htm)
Your friend’s wife receiving cervical cancer if she only had relations with one man, was probably due to heredity as opposed to risky behavior (in other words, I’m not pointing you out because I disagree with you, but quite the opposite). My endometriosis was due to heredity and was what caused my own hysterectomy as well as my mothers, and my grandmothers. That still doesn’t mean I trust the HPV vaccine.
toni
africangenesis #53
If they get raped then they shouldn’t have dressed provocatively and walked in those places, forcing those nice men into sexual arousal. Damn sluts, if they get HPV that’s what they deserve.
Now say that to your daughters when you explain that you don’t want them to be protected by vaccines.
J@73,
If a risky partner was not involved, then how did she contract the Human Papilloma Virus. She should ask her husband. If she wasn’t infected with HPV and developed cervical cancer anyway, then the vaccine would not have made a difference. What is BS about that.
The logic and it’s realtionship to faith is rather simple really:
Pascal’s Wager–believe in God because if you don’t and you die and there IS a God, you’re fucked.
As applied to vaccinations: Don’t get them because you believe ON FAITH that vaccinations may put your child at greater risk for autism thus if you DO get them and that’s ever proven true, you’re fucked.
The solution is even simpler: have governments provide clear and concise scientific, medical evidence that vaccinations DO NOT cause autism. I realize this evidence already exists, but maybe if our governments made more of a PR campaign out of it we’d see some real change. Here’s a novel idea…let’s do in with the stupid anti-marijuana campaign and put some funding into this one! Then if the parent chooses not to vaccinate their decision will be exposed for what it is: misinformed, supernatural, and stupid…but then not only WE will know that EVERYONE will! Thoughts?
My meta-study of the relevant research shows that not been a single study that demonstrates a correlation, much less causation, between breeding and good parenting.
Simultaneously, there are numerous studies showing that idiocy, poor self-discipline, lack of education, the consumption of narcotics and booze leads to breeding.
Yet, despite these startling facts, there are no licensing requirements to breed. No minimum IQs. No criminal background check. Not even a credit check. People starting spawning at any time without any supervision despite the deleterious effects on their community those children may have.
We require almost anyone else that deals with children to be extensively licensed, screened, and even bonded. Daycare centers, the teacher assistants the state pays barely legal wages to to deal with the most violent, idiotic, and subnormal of our children, pediatricians, and teachers all have extensive licensing requirements. Some require years of study and degrees.
Worse yet, we grant those have kids because they were too impulsive/dumb/drunk to use a condom or pop the morning after pill as being endowed with special knowledge. We give them rights over their children’s education, health care, and other highly specialized fields that take years of study to master on the grounds that they are parents. Seriously, if a child does not want to learn something, he’s a bad student in need of discipline. If a parent decides there children do not need to learn something, we grant them the right to overrule the dozens of experts who have deemed it necessary despite the fact they have no idea what they are talking about. Nor does it matter if their idiocy endangers other people. If they are a parent, we let them go with it.
Take conspiracy theories. If I believe that vaccines are the cause of the world’s evil- I’m a kook. If a parent believes that vaccines are the tool of Big Pharma to poison the world- they’re being a good mom.
Anyways, if you believe that getting knocked up grants people magical powers to raise children without need for education or training, I invite you to look at the parents around you. Would you trust them with your kid? If not, would should they be trusted with the ones they’ve accidentally bred?
About the autism bit: I did just read(news site, british) that even though there is the scientific proof that vaccines do not cause autism, that the thimerosal contained within could exacerbate anyone with the genetic markers for autism, thusly “giving” them autism.
Meaning: those with autistic children who claim the “vaccine did it” are not looking at the fact that their children already had the genetic marker for autism and the only thing the vaccine is guilty of is “bringing it to light sooner rather than later”.
toni
she got it from her husband, who fucked up once and cheated on her during a crisis in their marriage.
again, explain how that’s “risky”? should we all just not ever have sex, just to be sure?
My grandfather told me about the smallpox when I was a child, it was horrifying!
I survived the measles, mumps, chickenpox and pneumonia. I’m lucky, I didn’t get smallpox or polio, we had shots for those at school. My parents loved me enough to sign me up.
tis@82,
My daughters know they weren’t vaccinated, they are old enough to make the decision for themselves and continue in that state knowing the risks. Perhaps a home or auto alarm system or key panic button or pepper spray, or good decision making, lowers their risk of HPV and hepatisis infection better than the vaccine. Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources.
How does anyone know if a sexual partner is risky or not? Asking questions is not reliable. People lie about sex. People don’t know details about prior or even present sexual partners’ behaviors and relationships. Plus few rapists give sexual histories to their victims.
You’re playing “blame the victim” very well. Do you have a lot of practice at this game?
The poll is currently running 63-37 against the fictional mother’s right to refuse, but there’s a second question that you access by clicking the “Next Poll” button. It asks if the fictional doctor was right in vaccinating the youngest chld against the mother’s wishes. That one is running 2:1 against the doctor.
@87–Jadehawk
If your friend received it from a husband who cheated on her, then yes, it IS very risky. Maybe not on her part(of course), but on his to have been so careless(regardless of the reasons for his cheating) to have done something like that and put his wife’s life in jeopardy.
Trite as this sounds, it could have been worse. He could have passed HIV on to her, he could have passed a non-curable STD, etc..
So yes, the behavior that led to her contracting it, is risky.
toni
@ElectricBarbarella
I was responding to AfricanGenesis’ idiotic remark that he didn’t vaccinate his children because they can choose to engage in risky behavior and then get vaccinated for it. because people PLAN to do stupid things, you know [/sarcasm]. I understand being wary of new vaccines per se, but that’s about the dumbest line of reasoning I’ve ever heard. I bet he’d not vaccinate his children for HIV if we had such a vaccine, for the same reasons.
Posted by: africangenesis | January 11, 2009
Perhaps a home or auto alarm system or key panic button or pepper spray, or good decision making, lowers their risk of HPV and hepatisis infection better than the vaccine.
This is not an either/or game.
Jadehawk,
I figured you were speaking to AfricanGenesis and no one else, hence why I made sure to clarify I wasn’t against what you were saying, just trying to answer the question you asked. ;)
toni
*sigh*. but SHE didn’t do anything risky, and neither of them considered themselves people who engage in risky behaviors! my point is that “chosing to engage in risky behavior” is often a fallacy. people don’t decide such things ahead of time (i.e. in time to get preventively vaccinated for it), and they also don’t usually consider what they do “risky behavior”
and of course that says nothing about instances of being raped, which, again, you don’t plan for.
the whole logic is like saying “people can decide to get health insurance if they want to get ill/break a bone, but since I don’t want those things, I’m not getting health insurance.”
Yes: 36%
No: 64%
Pwned!
Iam@85,
Why would you even hypothesize a correlation between breeding and good parenting? Fruit flies breed and they don’t engage in parental care at all. The correlation is between mammals and good parenting and modern humans are especially good parents. Let me share something I wrote elsewhere about the value of good parenting to evolvability:
“Robustness” subsumes the concepts of redundancy and overlapping function, homeostasis, developmental homeostasis, canalization and niche reduction. Robustness enables evolvability.
The robustness mechanism that I think I had not appreciated before was niche reduction. The most exemplary of this is parental care. Think of all the mutations which are developmentally deleterious, yet can be tolerated because of parental care, and are advantageous to the adult. Think of all the mutations that made the human baby this slow, defenseless, sniveling, noisey predator attracting, relatively instinctless, large brained, empty headed little beast. Yet parental care allows that helpless large brain to develop into the most robust adaptation that evolution has yet devised. This was done through niche reduction. Mutations don’t have to be developmentally stable in any niche other than that formed by the womb and parental care.
I wanted to add this: AG’s line of reasoning is faulty, but not for reasons Jade stated. The HPV vaccine is ONLY good up to those aged 25 and no further. Meaning, *I*, as a 36 year old woman, could not get this vaccine (should my life circumstances be different than they are now).
Likewise, I do want to add that I sort of agree with AG in that one can choose better life choices that would lead one down the path of *not* contracting any disease. Of course.. One would hope that any decent parent would teach their kids that doing stupid stuff leads to serious consequences. If the HPV vaccine can be proving within the next few, very short, years, to be more reliable and less invasive than it is now, I will encourage my girls to get it. Just the same–if an HIV vaccine came out, same rules would apply and though I know my girls are not engaging in risky behavior of any kind, the facts are that some people **are** engaging in risky behavior (rapists, etc) and I want my girls protected.
Until then, the HPV is off my list. Otherwise, I agree with everyone else.
africangenesis
In other words, if they’re raped you figure they got what was coming to them. What an asshole you are!
Or perhaps they don’t. How about this for an idea? Alarm systems, pepper spray, good decision making AND vaccinations? Or is that concept too difficult to wrap your brain around?
Curiosity killed the cat. See, I can toss out a non sequitur as well as you can.
The state isn’t god. And no-one said it was.
I don’t worship the individual
I say you do – an entirely abstract “individual”, while you’re quite prepared to let real individuals suffer in the pursuit of your religion. I invite others to review your comments and judge for themselves.
but I know the individual exists.
So does everyone else.
I oppose child rape, and I don’t think it is a right of parents. But that is different from allocating scarce resources to stop it, and trusting a state that has the power to stop it. – africangenesis
So in practice, you’d rather do nothing about it.
Are our resources, better spent fighting malaria or fighting child rape, or educating my children? These are choices.
This is simply deceitful. At the margin, there may be choices about whether to put more resources into one thing rather than another, but that’s not what you’re arguing, is it? You’re saying the state shouldn’t be involved in preventing child rape. That, for example, if I suspect my neighbour is raping his daughters, I should not report this to the state authorities.
If your son molested your younger daughter is your worship of the collective such that you would call the police?
As Jadehawk says, this would depend on the gravity of the “molestation”, the age of my son, whether he had done anything similar before, etc.
You have the traits that help maintain the collective, daemonization and contempt of the “other”.
That you think these are “the traits that help maintain the collective” is evidence of your warped and disgusting religious fanaticism, to which you are, as this thread has shown, quite willing to sacrifice real individuals.
@Jadehawk,
Your inference is correct, I would not vaccinate against HIV. I would leave that decision to them. If I got concerned about their behavior while they were still minors, I might change my mind and take the precaution of vaccination. The issue never arose.
Jade, the **cheating** is the risky behavior, whether they do risky things or not, cheating on anyone, cheating on or during anything, is an identified risky behavior.
Think of it like this: You walk into a casino and you know you can cheat to win at poker. But you also know that there are risks associated with said cheating, yet you still do it. The casino did not ask to be cheated, nor did you ask for the end result of said cheating–yet both occurred. You may not consider yourself a “risk taker”, but the very nature of gambling is a risk in and of itself.
So while you may not be the type of person to normally engage in risk, you’ve done so by 1)being in the casino and playing poker and 2)considering and acting upon a need to cheat to win at poker. Therefore, the consequences are handed out.
Now, since your friend did not ask to be cheated on (who does?), she *is* the victim in this(so please spare me the “rape victim asked for it because of their clothes” argument, that doesn’t apply here) and her husband had to have known the risks involved in cheating. No one is that stupid to assume that cheating won’t be risk free. At the very least, “getting caught” is a risk as well.
Again, I am NOT blaming your friend, she is innocent in this. But please don’t continue to believe that the behavior her husband executed was not risky behavior. His actions had dire consequences for not just him, but her as well.
That’s the definition of risk.
toni
Or make it clearer still:
Tell parents that if their kids get sick when vaccination would have preventer it, they get convicted of assault with actual bodily harm (or local law equivalent).
I think this was touched on up-thread but in the case of the child dying, the verdict would be manslaughter rather than murder.
And to escalate the conversation: Should you be told if one of your neighbours is refusing to vaccinate, to protect your children? Should there be an anti-vax offenders register?
@ElectricBarbarella
I’m not saying the behavior of the husband was in no way risky, only that in general neither of them lived any kind of risky lifestyle, and certainly neither of them planned to do risky things, therefore saying that someone can get a vaccine if they plan to do risky things is completely and utterly idiotic. I don’t really have much argument with anything you have said, I’m arguing against AG’s logic that if you don’t plan on living a risky lifestyle, you don’t really need the vaccine. That’s nothing more than wishful thinking at best and stands in no relation to reality.
If I recall correctly, the smallpox vaccine actually had one of worst risk profiles, when compared with other vaccines. But the risk was well worth it because smallpox was such a terrible disease. And we don’t vaccinate universally against smallpox anymore precisely because the risk is high and the benefit no longer very compelling, with smallpox being virtually eradicated.
But the smallpox virus was particularly vulnerable to eradication by vaccination, being a large, comparatively stable DNA virus with a lower mutation rate than others. I’m not so confident that any of the other diseases we currently vaccinate against will ever be eradicated to the same extent.
Personally I am wary of the chickenpox vaccine, at present, because it hasn’t been in use long enough for us to have reliable data on its permanence, and the tendency for chickenpox to be more severe the older you get it, which means that getting your immunity naturally (which is lifelong) as a child might actually be safer than getting the vaccine only to have your immunity fade when you’re 30 and then getting a much more severe case of it.
Re AG @89;
When will they be old enough to decide for themselves if they want mutilated?
Actually, this is still being investigated:
http://www.cdc.gov/std/Hpv/STDFact-HPV-vaccine.htm#hpvvac1
ElectricBarbarella, you should get your information about things like vaccinations and autism from better sources, and double check it, before you go spreading it around on the web. I recommend Respectful Insolence as a starting place.
*ignoring the ignorant fundamentalist wackadoo africangenesis*
Just wanted to mention that for those genuinely interested in children’s rights, CRIN (the Child Rights Information Network) is a very good resource. Here’s a link to the news page:
http://www.ombudsnet.org/resources/news/
Perhaps a home or auto alarm system or key panic button or pepper spray, or good decision making, lowers their risk of HPV and hepatisis infection better than the vaccine.
Wow. Perhaps if more resources and social mores were aimed at preventing men from becoming rapists in the first place, there wouldn’t be so much need for alarm systems and pepper spray. Still doesn’t address the need for the HPV vaccine, though.
ElectricBarbarella@99,
Why do you think the vaccine is not effective at age 36? Do you have a citation? Of course, this assumes that you haven’t been exposed yet, but you may not have. Even among the sexually active the infection rate is less than 40%
I originally thought the same way, but seeing as most people vaccinate now the chances of getting natural immunity at just the right moment in time (i.e not an infant, but not old enough for serious consequences) are quickly dwindling, so by the time I might actually have children to vaccinate, I’d probably do it because that will be the only certain way to get them immunized.
@jadehawk–ok now I see what you are saying. :)
@SC, maybe you should consider not insulting me for speaking something that is/was truth when this vaccine arrived on scene. That you say “it is being investigated” does not prove me wrong nor ignorant and only proves otherwise about yourself. While it is being investigated, it is NOT incorrect nor not-factual for someone to say what I did.
The investigation being on going does not prove me wrong nor otherwise.
Thanks for playing though.
Toni
Not virtually eradicated. Eradicated. For going on 30 years now.
Again, that extent is completely. Given that it is expected that there is expected to be a 90% reduction from the 2000 stats by 2010 (i.e., in the space of a ecade), globally, and has been all but eradicated in numerous countries, I can’t imagine why you would be so lacking in confidence on this score.
It’s not a well-stated question.
Does someone have “the right” to refuse medical treatment? Sure, it’s a free country.
Do they have “the right” to choose or refuse medical treatment for their kids? In general, I’d say yes; better the parents than the government, in most cases.
Is choosing to refuse standard vaccinations a wise or informed choice? Nope.
Seems to me this sort of stupidity is a great example of evolution in action. Stupid parents refuse vaccinations for their kids; said kids may catch rubella or something and be sterilized, or catch something as adults with even worse consequences. Meanwhile, the sensible parents’ kids are safe.
EB@112,
It looks like the government is pretending to do something important. There don’t appear to be any known mechanisms that would increase the risk at your age. If you want the vaccine, exercise your freedom of choice, now before the medical system gets socialized. It is not considered cost effective to vaccinate older women, but your peace of mind might outweigh that big screen TV or the upgrade to leather seats in your next car.
on a completely unrelated note, I think PZ needs one of those for his car, heheh
When I was in junior school, every kid got chickenpox. It was understood that having this minor infection, and a week off school, conferred resistance to smallpox by allowing your immune systyem to make anitbodies effective against both these and other infections. This was Lister’s great discovery when investigating cowpox.
In that light, is vaccination against chickenpox a good or a bad thing?
PS – Is AG not razib in disguise?
Stupid parents refuse vaccinations for their kids; said kids may catch rubella or something and be sterilized, or catch something as adults with even worse consequences. Meanwhile, the sensible parents’ kids are safe.
But the thing is, they’re not safe. If they have an infant, that infant is vulnerable. If they have a child who cannot be vaccinated, they are vulnerable. And some vaccines are not 100% effective – they work by a combination of holding off infection and helping (herd immunity) to keep it from spreading to immuno-compromised people in the first place.
Has anyone figured out where AG’s actual beliefs lay(lie)? I can’t. AG, while I own a big screen tv(which was bought from hard work), and since I live in Florida which makes leather seats not only silly, but downright stupid, the rest of your post just seems to be of the “spouting off Oh Noes the ebil gubment” kind.
I personally wish we had a socialised medical system. And for the record, I am vaccinated in every way I should have been. At my age, I don’t need any damn more shots. Unless I step on a rusty nail again. :)
You are free to believe otherwise, that’s what makes this a great country.
toni
There’s a false dilemna here. Some people rightfully say “you can’t force medical treatment”. Fair enough. Others say “not vaccinating is dangerous and stupid”. Yes, no doubt.
I think there is a perfectly reasonable middle ground: people should be allowed not vaccinate – but they do NOT have the right not to be ridiculed publicly for their choice, or have their choice private. Unvaccinated people are potential carriers – if there is an argument that pedophiles should be publicly known , then it’s at least as good a case that unvaccinated people should be publicly known.
Scorn and derision and social pressure. No, it won’t work against all of them. But then, they will be first to die of the epidemic, so at least there’s shauenfraud.
ElectricBarbarella, AG is a libertarian (that includes AGW denial, hatred of everything even vaguely government related, a disturbing way of talking about human society in terms of Survival of the Fittest, and possibly a few other such impressive whammys)
I wasn’t insulting you originally, but now I will, honestly: You’re an idiot. It is not an insult to caution someone against spreading information on serious medical issues without prior checking or considering sources. Nor was I responding to your remark about Gardasil when I made that recommendation. But in fact what you said was “not-factual.” You said “The HPV vaccine is ONLY good up to those aged 25 and no further. Meaning, *I*, as a 36 year old woman, could not get this vaccine (should my life circumstances be different than they are now).” You have no basis for this claim. If its safety and efficacy are still being investigated for higher age groups, then it is baseless to assert that it is not “good” for these women.
I was referring to your comment about vaccines and autism, as I made clear in my comment, FFS. Your conclusions were based on reading a “news site, british” – which, even had you cited it, is not an appropriate source for medical information – and then you were irresponsible enough to spread your ignorance around here. Your comments to Jadehawk are equally idiotic and confused. You are a jackass.
Eddie, chickenpox is not always a one-off disease. The suppressed virus can live in nerves, and later erupt from there as a disease called shingles. Since the virus erupts from nerves, the disease is localized to the area just above the nerves, but it is also very painful. About four or five years ago, I had a case of shingles. I was lucky that the eruption, which started near the spine on my right side just under the rib cage, and then curved around my right side and headed slightly downward in front, was not in an area where it was rubbed by clothes, or near the eyes. This lasted the typical five weeks, with me popping naproxin every 6 hours. Not fun.
@SC–Here’s you rope, I’ll choose to let you hang yourself with it.
@Jade.. hmmm, is his political leaning a condition or requirement of his behavior or the other way around? I’m pretty darn liberal in my beliefs(politically), but I don’t fit the whole “government is out to get us” bit either.
Or is he, as SC has branded me, a “jackass” (which of course, I am not, but hey–to each his own opinion and to his own opinion shall he hang).
toni
Lie, you lazy shit.
*rolls eyes* Quite a substantive response.
There has NEVER been ANY form of life on Mars.
It was understood that having this minor infection, and a week off school, conferred resistance to smallpox by allowing your immune systyem to make anitbodies effective against both these and other infections. – eddie
Then it was badly misunderstood. Chickenpox infection does not give immunity to smallpox, nor vice versa, although the two can be confused in the early stages. The two viruses are not closely related.
Quite true KnockGoats. But an infection of chickenpox can have lifelong immunity to further chickenpox infections.
Sadly, I do wish my girls did not get that first dose of the varivax, I tried my hardest to find them a way to get natural immunity, but found that many parents thought that abusive of me. Oh well.
@SC–here is a general “Ha ha” for you. I laugh at your vehemence towards my posts. It’s quite unsubstantiated, but hey–if it knocks yer knickers, go for it.
toni
As I said, you’re a jackass, who’s clearly lacking in logical- and critical-thinking skills.
eddie, Minor infection? Surely if you had chickenpox you don’t remember it feeling like a minor infection.
My smallpox shot didn’t save me from getting the chickenpox.
Just the childhood form. Shingles (see my post #123) is from the same virus that causes chickenpox. No chickenpox, no chance of getting shingles. Be kind to your kids in their later years by making sure they don’t get shingles. Vaccinate them against chickenpox.
eddie #117
When I was in junior school, every kid got chickenpox. It was understood that having this minor infection, and a week off school, conferred resistance to smallpox by allowing your immune systyem to make anitbodies effective against both these and other infections. This was Lister’s great discovery when investigating cowpox.
Chickenpox is caused by the varicella zoster virus. Smallpox was caused by the variola virus, which is closely related to the vaccinia (cowpox) virus. Varicella zoster and variola are distantly related, immunity to one does not confer immunity to the other.
KG@101,
Why is it socially acceptable to mock, daemonize and openly express contempt here? It helps form the bond, that feeling of us against them, of the “other” as enemy, less than human. The Nazis, the fascists, most nations during war, the ugly side of patriotism, all socially accept these unifying emotions. The marxists take it to new levels with little positive to offer, daemonizing the other classes, daemonizing colonialism, characterizing just about everything as exploitation. This is group think. It is the stuff of fanaticism.
It was probably quite effective in aiding survival of the genes that carried it. But in modern times it has been exploited by social collectives far to large to be a reasonable unit of selection, and for the benefit of few leaders who may not even share the genes but merely ruthlessly exploiting this human vulnerability.
Jadehawk@121,
I don’t accept what evolution has wrought uncritically, but I look to it for perspective and understanding. Libertarianism doesn’t include AGW denial. That is an orthogonal issue. I am not an AGW fanatic, that is different than denial. I’m familiar with the literature and the IPCC AR4 reports, and they can’t support their conclusion. I am open to wherever the evidence leads, as should be clear in my discussions to be found at this topic:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/the_ways_of_the_bush_administr.php
Ask yourself, why personal attacks make you feel better, and why you rush to dismiss substantial issues that you are unable to reject on the merits.
Should humans discipline themselves to avoid these emotions that are so easily exploited. Should they be silent when these emotions are expressed by others, in expectation of irrational agreement?
hmmm…. all i remember about having chickenpox is that it itched like hell, and that i was allowed to stay in bed all day and eat lots of ice-cream :-p
The poll is now 66% NO and 34% YES. I’m assuming it’s because everyone here went and voted. The language is ambiguous though. Either they don’t know how to write a poll or they want a very specific outcome.
*enjoys watching ElectricBarbarella making more and more of an ass of herself*
But on topic… I have never really been able to make up my mind on this question. On the one hand I’m very wary of forcing people to do anything. But if there is one thing I might agree with forcing people to do, it’s to get vaccinated. Does the (probably very great) benefit for the many outweigh the violation of the crazy few? Even when I put it like that, I’m not sure.
And watch lots of tv, Jadehawk–don’t forget that. :) Calamine lotion was the bomb at removing the itchies, but the tv was best. :)
And as I said, they’ve been vaccinated enough. When time comes, they’ll get their last round of vaccines, but not before or not unnecessarily.
toni
Posted by: africangenesis | January 11, 2009
KG@101,
Why is it socially acceptable to mock, daemonize and openly express contempt here? It helps form the bond, that feeling of us against them, of the “other” as enemy, less than human. The Nazis, the fascists, most nations during war, the ugly side of patriotism, all socially accept these unifying emotions. The marxists take it to new levels with little positive to offer, daemonizing the other classes, daemonizing colonialism, characterizing just about everything as exploitation. This is group think. It is the stuff of fanaticism.
AG, do not worry about me making fun of you. This paragraph does all the laughing I need.
I love the killfile feature.
AG, i’ve read all your comments. I stand by what I’ve said before. Your openmindedness on AGW is the same openmindedness that religionists have towards evolution: it doesn’t suit your worldview, therefore needs to be “examined critically” and we need to “wait for more evidence”
it’s counterproductive bullshit, and I STILL don’t feel like arguing with you about it, since you honestly think you know better than most scientists whether we should take actions or not.
Because contemptible ideas deserve to be mocked.
Your concern is noted.
It seems to me that one precaution that should be taken, at the very least, is that children known to be unvaccinated should not be allowed in waiting rooms or other public areas of pediatric medical facilities as the boy was in this episode.
Ah, I only now noticed the Godwin. Permanent Fail. I knew there was a reason not to argue with you.
*I’m* making the ass of myself? No, surely you have me confused with AG, who continues to spout from his fount of knowledge, whereas I have backed off and allowed (nay chose) to have people like SC hang themselves rather than have their mockery placed on my head.
It’s all quite amusing, really.
toni
Janine, Bitter Friend #137
Especially for libertarians. Engaging on AG in 3…2…1….
Jadehawk@138,
Is mischaracterization also selfdelusion? You know that I wasn’t engaged in denial, I discussed the evidence for my positions. There is no doubt the evidence is relevant. The earlier papers for the most part were IPCC diagnostic studies, actually produced for the IPCC process. Somebody tells you they can magically reach a conclusion despite this evidence and you believe them. Who is the religious one here?
Explain what you mean by this. By “backed off,” are you alluding to some sort of retraction on your part? If so, please make it explicit.
How so?
Godwin’s law. You lose.
Futhermore, comparing mocking on the internet to the Nazism? Are you insane?
I’m not a Marxist, but colonialism should be demonized. Also, does anyone know the what communist equivalent of Godwin’s law is?
It’s my understanding (but I am British, and could be wrong) that the Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms stops somewhere shy of biological weapons.
If you have a child who cannot be vaccinated by reason of age or allergy, and your child catches a disease from another child who could have been vaccinated but was not by reason of parental dickheadedness, would that give you grounds to sue the parents of that child?
But an infection of chickenpox can have lifelong immunity to further chickenpox infections. – ElectricBarbarella
You really should make an effort to find out the relevant facts. In some 10-20% of cases, the chickenpox virus lies dormant and later causes attacks of shingles. Shingles may well be a contributing factor to Alzheimer’s disease.
ElectricBarbarella@142,
You can’t defend yourself without attacking me? Do you want to belong that much, be one of the contemptuous elite? And you criticise knowledge. Knowledge raises questions, it endangers unity doesn’t it?
Christ on a cracker, here we go with the Nazi thing again. Stop comparing us to Nazi’s, we aren’t christians.
Libertarianism doesn’t include AGW denial. – ag
Odd then that I’ve never yet come across a “libertarian” who was prepared to explicitly accept the scientific consensus that AGW is real, and requires urgent action. This is understandable: that consensus shows the entire “libertarian” philosophy to be a bunch of crap, with its a priori dismissal of the need, in some cases (even in some cases not involving violence or fraud), for collective coercion of the individual. Of course it’s by no means the only such demonstration, but it is a particularly clear one.
Anecdote not being equal to data and all that–what of my grandmother who has never had chickenpox nor shingles, yet passed away having Alzheimer’s? What of those who may have had chickenpox, but never shingles, yet still pass on having Alzheimer’s?
@AG, my words were not an attack but merely a mention towards the fact that I am not posting in the same manner as you are, yet being equated to the asshatery they believe you have.
Hence my “quite amusing” statement.
toni
@121: As a libertarian, I’d like to point out that I think the science supporting AGW is beyond dispute and consider the reluctance on the part of some libertarians (based I have to assume primarily on their not wanting it to be true) as a source of considerable embarrassment, I have absolutely no problem with government functions as long as they stay within their proper sphere, and think Social Darwinism is complete bunk. Can’t say as to the other “whammys,” but given your track-record with the other predictions…
Also as a libertarian, I’m surprised at how many people here are asserting a right not to vaccinate. I’ll support just about any individual right you can think of, but as much as it pains me to say it, this one is bunk. Sure, you’ve got a right to keep and bear arms, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got the right to threaten me with a gun. If you bring a gun into a school, people will rightly forcibly hold you down and take the gun away from you. As authoritarian as it sounds, I would similarly support a law to require vaccination for common communicable diseases (emphasis on both the qualifications “common” and “communicable”) as a precondition for engaging in certain interactions in a society, such as attending a public school (private schools will necessarily make their own policies, but I imagine that most of them would come up with something similar). If you want to go off on your own, do what you want. But if you’re interacting with others, you have no right to threaten everyone else with your stupidity: individual rights end when you start infringing on someone else.
I see Miko standing in front of the assembled ranks of libertarians while Bob Barr and Ron Paul cut the buttons off his shirt, punch a fist through the crown of his baseball cap, and toss his Glock into a septic tank.
“Miko? We know no Miko.” His name is never mentioned. His portrait is turned to the wall.
Miko, #121 was a specific description of the brand of libertarianism AG ascribes to. your libertarianism seems to be the mildest of mild, so OBVIOUSLY the description doesn’t apply. if all libertarians were exactly like AG, I would hardly had to specify just how libertarian he is. Though it’s not like he’s the exception. It seems there’s far more libertarians of his brand than of yours here on this blog. I daresay your stance on vaccinations would get you thrown out of the True Libertarian(TM) club ;-)
Just jumping in here without reading the comments…
This situation is only made worse when people who weren’t vaccinated don’t get sick because it gives them ammo to say, ‘I never got vaccinated and I didn’t get sick so it would have been pointless to pump that poison into me when I was a child.’
Sure, you just better hope you don’t catch something as an adult!
Er. How long have we had a chickenpox vaccine? I know this is going to sound completely idiotic of me, but I had no idea that we had one, and I’m pretty certain I never recieved one. I remember looking at my list as a kid (when they have the chart that shows the early vaccines for rubella, measles, etc.) and every available vaccine on it was checked off. But when my little sister got chickenpox at age 6, my parents tossed us all in with her on the grounds that we should get exposed and go through it as soon as possible so we didn’t have to go through it as adults. It took us about a week to pass through the chickenpox and we mostly just itched. Nothing major. (I’m pretty certain if my parents had known there was a chickenpox vaccine, or that certain forms of chickenpox lie dormant to become shingles, they would have gone with the vaccine, as they’ve never been vax-deniers.)
For the sake of reference, I’m in my thirties now and went through this in the 80s. Is it possible my doc didn’t tell my mum that there was a chickenpox vax?
ihateaphids (@74 & 76):
Thanks for mentioning the This American Life episode; you beat me to it. For folks who enjoy that kind of stuff, it makes sense to subscribe to the TAL podcast, which is free… because other than the current week’s show, episode downloads from the archives cost $0.95 (but streaming of any archived episode is free).
Regarding all the back-and-forth about “risky” behavior, there’s an unacknowledged dimension to all this: Lots of human behaviors (eating in the company of others, shaking hands, being outdoors in the presence of mosquitos, etc.) contribute to the spread of disease, and many do so more effectively than sex, yet those behaviors don’t get tarred with the same sort of “risky behavior” language. In fact, the only times disease is attributed to “risky behavior” is when the behavior in question is attached to some moral stigma… like sex (esp. that perverse kind of sex teh gayz get up to) and IV drug abuse.
Thus, the “risky behavior” trope is really an expression of moral judgment, and one that (IMHO) is firmly based in religious prejudice. Those who contract diseases through “risky” behavior deserve punishment for their sins (or, tragically, for the unknown sins of their loved ones) in this life, just as they deserve eternal damnation in the (imagined) next life.
It’s not that I’m suggesting there’s no actual risk associated with sexuality; only that we talk about it differently because millennia of priests and shamans have told us our appetites in that area are evil. Of course, if we could get past all of this moralistic bat crap and recognize sexuality as being just as normal and essential as eating and breathing, we could perhaps start making rational, reality-based decisions about disease control (and a whole lot of the rest of life would be much better, too).
PixelFish – it was mid-late 90s, I think. When my kids were old enough for it, it was still fairly new.
My son is a perfect example of why vaccines beat the “pox parties”; he had asthma and a pretty compromised immune system, so anything he got he had worse than everyone else. Our doctor pushed the pox vaccine on us even though it wasn’t quite standard yet because he had no idea how badly my son would react if he did get it. We were also always first in line for flu shots in those years when it was rationed.
Again, for all those “but I didn’t get it badly” people out there, you never know how other people will react to the disease that you had “mildly”, including your own kids.
pixelfish, the chickenpox vaccine is new. came out in the 90’s I believe.
toni (@152):
I don’t mean to be rude, but this is just stupid.
Repeat after me…
may be a contributing factor ≠ is a necessary precondition for
On second thought, please write that on the blackboard 1,000 times.
@Bill Dauphin
My statement that her friend’s husband was practicing risky behavior(and thusly, inconsiderate) was not based on any religious or moral belief system. I am an atheist and do not hold to that belief. I simply explained to her that his behavior was risky(inconsiderate, stupid, etc..) towards her friend and nothing more was meant by it than that. I did not go in to as much detail of the inherent risk in everything we do, as you did, because I just wanted to focus on what she had said.
According this site: http://www.vaccineinformation.org/varicel/qandavax.asp the chicken pox vaccine was licensed for use in the United States in 1995, with Japan having it licensed in 1988. And, I did not get it “mildly”. I had it severely enough that it kept me out of school for a month.
toni
He did not say “may be” he said “may well be” indicating his belief that it almost nearly is. Agree or not, the wording of his statement prompted the question.
toni
The chicken pox vaccine (or a variety thereof) is VERY effective in blocking or diminishing occurrences of shingles and is currently recommended by the CDC for everyone who has has chicken pox and is over 60 yrs. They’ve even started OKing it for folks who have already had shingles.
That there are people actually sympathizing on this site with the anti-vaccine cranks that are putting the rest of the population at risk is astounding. Anybody here actually seen a real, live case of diphtheria? Didn’t think so.
Don’t want a vaccine? Good. You volunteer to put everything you own as collateral on that decision. IOW, I lose work because your non-vaccinated kid requires that I lose time from work because my 8-month-old is not yet old enough to receive vaccine? You pay. You pay for your own kid’s hospitalization, physician bills, diagnostic testing, and prescription treatment.
Amazing how it’s okay to impose parental idiocy when it comes to vaccines, but boy not so much when it comes to religion. Hypocrites.
Pixelfish – You can tell if you’ve had the smallpox shot by looking at your left arm, just below the shoulder joint, to see if you have a scar about the diameter of a pencil eraser.
Wow, I must have been a wimp as a kid, I remember being as sick with the chickenpox as I was with the measles.
I guess the chicken pox vaccine came out after my sibs and I had it then. I mentioned this to my boyfriend, who is a few years older than I, and he said, “There’s a chickenpox vaccine now?” He also was deliberately exposed to it via the convention of the time.
Patricia: I did know about the smallpox vaccine marks because it’s a plot point in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series.
toni (@162 & 163):
I think you’re wrong about that, because…
…even though I don’t presume to doubt your atheism or your word regarding what you believe, I think the religion-inspired condemnation of “things of the flesh” (and sexuality in particular) is so deeply embedded in Western culture that it almost always distorts the very language of any conversation that touches on sexuality.
If Jadehawk’s friend’s husband had shaken hands with someone outside the marriage, then kissed his wife and in the process transmitted to her a near-fatal case of the flu, nobody would be using the language of “risky behavior” to describe the case (notwithstanding that the risk is evidently equivalent). That sort of language is reserved for activities that the godfearing decided were naughty millennia before you were born, and that prejudice endures quite without regard to your personal atheism.
Aside from stylistic flourish, I deny that there’s any meaningful difference between the two locutions. If anything, “may well be” is a less emphatic way of putting it, owing to the extra qualifier.
But it’s irrelevant: Even if he’d said “[s]hingles absolutely is a contributing factor to Alzheimer’s” it would not follow that shingles was a necessary precondition for Alzheimer’s. Outcomes can have multiple possible precursors, any one of which can be the cause but no one of which must be. For instance, IV drug abuse absolutely is a contributing factor in the transmission of HIV, but many transmissions of the virus take place through other means, without any reference to IV drug use. Similarly, smoking absolutely is a contributing factor in lung cancer… yet some folks get lung cancer without ever having smoked.
pencil eraser?! my regular vaccine scars are that size. my moms smallpox scar is at least a good centimeter in diameter (well, the dot is small, but there’s weird radiating scarring that makes it look like a sun symbol)
@Bill
I think it is safe to say I disagree with you on this one because while I understand what you are saying, since I expressly stated to her that I was not condemning her friend on any belief **other than** cheating(of any kind) is wrong and risky, I believe your understanding of my statement to be wrong. It may well be correct for others who believe such nonsense, but since I do not and stated so in my post, I shouldn’t be equated with those who hold to that “sex is nasty” notion.
Cheating is wrong, risky, and just plain inconsiderate. Of any kind. I won’t make the assumption that you are stating his cheating is acceptable, because I don’t believe you are. But his cheating on his wife, any cheating, as I stated earlier, is risky (as you have stated with a myriad of other things). I am merely and only focusing on his cheating and what his cheating did to his wife. It did and still does put her at risk for many things(just as it did and does him and anyone else who cheats).
That does not equate to me saying sex is evil or bad or nasty. Nor does it mean I actually believe as you stated. No, I quite enjoy sex…with my husband.
toni
No, but I was a real, live case of pertussis (whooping cough) just about this time last year. Because I was so unfamiliar with it, except as one of the things we get mandatory vaccinations for, the diagnosis momentarily terrified me: Sure those universally-vaccinated-for, nearly-eradicated diseases must be life threatening, right?
As it turned out, I survived (for good or ill). Whooping cough is annoying and uncomfortable, but, I gather, not usually particularly grave in otherwise healthy patients.
BTW, I’ve just read The American Plague, about Walter Reed and the conquest of yellow fever… and now I keep imagining I’m coming down with it, even though there can’t be a single mosquito alive in midwinter CT! Careful what you read about! ;^)
ElectricBarbarella@163
I said “may well be a contributing factor”. This is fairly precise: “may well be” means there are good grounds for thinking so; “contributing factor” means “makes it more likely you will get it, or worse if you do”. Actually the situation is a bit more complicated than I recalled: herpes simplex, the cold-sore virus, has been implicated as increasing the likelihood of Alzheimer’s itself, in conjunction with a particular genetic makeup, which herpes zoster, the shingles virus, can cause a dementia that is indistinguishable from Alzheimer’s except at autopsy. In any case “may well be a contributing factor” or even “is a contributing factor” most certainly does not mean “is necessary to cause”.
May I clarify (26)- I wasn’t saying catching it was a preferable method- I’m fairly sure my kids were jabbed amoung all the other jabs (9 years ago). I was just remembering how it used to be. Some parents used to visit sick children to make sure theirs got it at an early age, as the belief was it was worse when you were older- is this true? We were always told we had to stop pregnant ladies getting it- no mention of person danger was made.
I had to drop out of the school Nativity because of one of the MMR (dunno which)- I was supposed to be the Innkeeper. Does anybody else have a measles scar?
I really, really wish the chickenpox vaccine had been around when I was a kid. I had chickenpox as a teenager, and it was not a pleasant experience. I was quite ill for more than a week, and since nothing really helped against the itching (showering in ice cold water helped a little but my parents wouldn’t let me do that for more than half an hour at a time, for some reason…) I only managed to sleep 3-4 hours every two days. Then I got shingles a few years ago; just a mild case since I was so young (mid-thirties), but still bad enough to make me understand why the Norwegian name for this illness is “helvetesild” – hellfire.
@Bill
Be thankful you do live in CT right now. I’d love to have “no mosquitoes” bugging me.. In Fl right now, it’s 72* and the bugs are biting. Ugh..
And I wanted to add something to the end of my above statement: Just because I enjoy sex with my husband doesn’t mean neither of us lack risk posing to the other. We may have been together for 8 years and exclusive to each other, and while I trust he won’t and he trusts I won’t–anything can happen and the fact that it can proves that the risk of either of us potentially affecting the other in a bad way, is risky behavior. This is doubly so as he is asthmatic so I have to be careful what I come in contact with so as not to make him sicker than he already is.
My actions are risky towards him. Sexually and otherwise. I could do some damage to him with just one slip up.
toni
toni:
You keep missing my point; I’ll try just once more:
I didn’t suggest that you think sex is evil or nasty; I said that, regardless of your personal beliefs, the conversation takes place against a cultural baseline that presumes sex is morally depraved, and can only be redeemed in certain narrowly limited, god-approved instances.
Do you really mean to suggest that the fact of your personal individual enlightenment has moved all of Western culture off bottom dead-center WRT its historical condemnation of virtually all expressions of sexuality? Gee, I wish I had that sort of influence!
Bill @171
Break through cases of whooping cough are not unusual these days, although, to be accurate, there is no comparison between whooping cough and diphtheria.
Your reaction to your bout with pertussis is somewhat indicative of the reactions in general to the commonly vaccinated diseases: not so bad. Well, they are and can be. Diphtheria is baaaaaad stuff, irrespective of the fact it’s paired commonly with pertussis and tetanus in the form of a DPT.
My point still stands. I detect more than a little bit of hypocrisy on this thread, and that’s made all the more bitter by the fact that the folks posting here are supposed to be science literate and discerning.
Patricia et al: I do have a noticeable smallpox vax scar, but the reaction varies. My sister’s is only the size of the head of a pin. You’d be hard put to find it.
I, too, got my measles immunity the old fashioned way. By getting sick. Badly. Thanks to the state of medicine at the time, neither I nor my little sister are dead. She was a baby, and had a huge “gamma globulin” shot to prevent her getting it. I had Athena-knows-what antibiotics or whatever, and so did not die of the ultra high fever, nor even go deaf from the raging ear infection. Dodged a bullet there!
Bill is right in the sense that we equate sex with train surfing, in the sense that getting fucked up by either is shrugged off with “should have known better than to do something risky and stupid like that!”
in reality though, sex is more like going jogging. lots of normal people do it, it’s generally good for you, but occasionally something bad happens.
Now at 70% “no”.
Nerd, thank you for pointing out that contractingchickenpox is what causes getting shingles later.
I had an extremely virulent case of chickenpox as a child that kept me out of school 3 weeks. I’ve had shingles twice, and both times at an age much younger than is typical.
Not sure if how bad my chickenpox was had anything to do with that. I know my brothers weren’t as sick as I was, and they’ve never gotten shingles.
Any data on which CP sufferers acquire shingles later?
In regards to what were called childhood diseases back in the 50’s, I had in succession over a period of 3 years, measles, chicken pox, mumps & rubella. The vaccines for them were still be devised. One note, at the same time a friend of my mother’s noted that an aquaintance of hers had let her 2 sons become exposed to the measles from a measles patient “to get it over with.” Unfortunately her 2 sons died with it.
I was in bed for over a week with thee measles.
Remember what they call alternative medicine that has been proven to work:
Medicine
“which herpes zoster” -> “while herpes zoster” in #172
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/varicella/dis-faqs-gen.htm
wistah:
Forgive me, I didn’t mean to be creating any confusion (nor did I mean to be disputing your point). Your mention of diptheria only reminded me of my pertussis incident because (as you note) they share a vaccination.
No, my reaction was just the opposite: Because it’s a commonly vaccinated disease, I assumed pertussis was far worse than it turned out to be. In fact, for a split second right after my doctor said “whooping cough,” I actually thought I was going to die. It was only my doctor’s relatively calm, cheerful manner that made me hope I was overreacting (which my eventual survival confirmed).
I think the diseases people really tend to under-rate are the so-called childhood diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, etc. Since many of my generation experienced these as relatively trivial illnesses (even as a free pass to stay home from school), I’m afraid we tend to forget how devastating they can be if contracted by someone other than a healthy child living in an affluent, middle-class society.
Posted by: BobC | January 11, 2009 12:07 PM
“A government that can force medical treatment on somebody who doesn’t want it is a government out of control.”
Children do not have the power or voice to protect themselves from negligent adults. The state has an obligation to intervene to protect them. Parents should not, and in many states do not, have the right because of religious belies to let a child die by refusing medical treatment such as blood transfusions. A society that does not protect innocent children is a society out of control.
Screwed up my cutting and pasting:
@Aquaria#181
I too have had 2 outbreaks of shingles. It is not fun at all and I now have permanent nerve damage and scarring with periodic pain episodes that mimic a shingles outbreak. At this point it is estimated that about 20% of those who had chickenpox will develop shingles later in life. it lives in nerve ganglia commonly near the hip or in my case close to the ear. The anti-vax whackos have decided it is caused by the vaccination. I am living proof as are you it was not.
I think that was simply to get people immunized as early as possible. The longer you go without, the higher the chances that the disease being fought has a chance to infect/spread. In the 60s, my mother was a public health nurse in the 60s, and home immunizations for rural people was one of her many duties.
Tying that in with the smallpox vax scar, I was one of the people whose scar disappeared before I even left high school, but I noticed that some people had scars as big as dimes. I once asked my mother (by then a CRNA), if how people scarred after the vaccine might be an indicator of how people would have reacted to the actual disease, and she gave me the classic response: “Thankfully, we’ll never know, at least for those who got vaccinated.”
It tends toward the immunosuppressed, but can just happen. Fairly common after anticancer treatment. Age also suppresses the immune system to a degree. When I got my case, I was under quite a bit of stress at work.
Dang, mayhem. That’s terrible! I don’t have any scarring on my skin, but I do have that shingle-like itchy sensation to this day. Drives me crazy, when one of the spots gets that itchy thing going, because it’s right where a seatbelt crosses over my stomach. Makes that strap feel like it’s burning me…
Thanks Nerd. I was under tremendous stress when my last outbreak occurred, in my late 20s. More incentive to keep stress down as much as I can.
Breathe in, breathe out…
I got chicken pox when I was 19 (pre-vaccine days). I think everyone was fairly surprised, having assumed that I must have had a very mild case as a child that had gone undetected since I had been exposed, including by my sister, and not gotten it. It was nasty – very high fever, weight loss, pain,… I’ve only ever been sicker on one occasion. No shingles yet, fortunately.
My googlefoo is weak because I can’t find that data. I did find a place that said 1 in 5 Americans over 60 get shingles and another website that said before the chickenpox vaccine became widely used about 70% of children under 10 had CP.
I brought home the mumps from 1st grade and my dad got it. He was in his early thirties, the doctor came to our house twice because dad was so sick. My brother and I weren’t nearly as sick as my dad.
If a chickenpox shot will keep me from getting the shingles I’m sure going to get one. I’ve heard that stuff is painful.
Oh! By the way, I learned from my searching today that there’s a shingles vaccine, which apparently can be used to prevent future outbreaks among people who’ve already had one:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/shingles/vac-faqs.htm
Hey, I have a scar like that! Only I’m fairly sure I got it from being bitten by a pony when I was six. Does that mean I need a booster? ;)
Not to needle anyone, but I’ve noticed there’s a lot of hostility on this blog. Where does it all come from? We can all be civil adults when we talk to one another, can’t we?
I enjoy the general freedom that PZ extends to his commenters. Though the playground is relatively free of oversight, that doesn’t mean we should bully one another for having differing opinions on things, does it?
I’ve been reading the blog for a long time, but never commented until very recently. Many of the commenters here are quite intelligent, insightful, and funny people. Some of those same people are particularly prone to bully others that profess a differing opinion.
Because the environment is so hostile, the only chance you’ll get to have a dialog is with unrepentant trolls who can survive the hostility. Regular people with more moderate points of view are culled from the herd. You evolve the very breed of super-trolls you’d hope would go away.
More specific to the topic (since the above observations are general to every topic here and fit under no post I’ve seen PZ make):
Though I’m a Libertarian, but I am against exemptions for regular schedule vaccination beyond health concerns (allergies, etc.) I recognize that anti-vaccination parents aren’t just making a choice for their own children, but for other children as well. Still, I feel compelled to question policy that gives a government the power to stick a needle in a child’s arm through compulsion.
What are solutions that can suit everyone without an overwhelming bias in the favor of too much regulation and too little? Some solutions can be arrived at that harm nobody’s freedom to make choices for themselves or others. Perhaps legislation could be passed that inform parents better.
Couldn’t schools be required to disclose records of percentages of unvaccinated children, and a separate percentile versus other schools within the state versus estimated percentages of herd immunity for various preventable diseases? This would help to inform parents and policy makers without unduly disclosing individual medical records (which is against the law due to HIPAA regulations and unethical). This also diffuses undue paranoia that some parents may feel just not knowing. This kind of data would certainly help the CDC (assuming they don’t already collect it, and I’m guessing they do) to watch for outbreaks and provide trending data to help decide where vaccination educational funding should be distributed.
The suggestion to disclose the identities of individuals who are unvaccinated similar to the disclosure of sex offender records is morally repugnant to me. Since these children have no choice, it would be marking them with a scarlet letter and allow other children (and adults) to single them out. Just because a child’s parents are ignorant doesn’t mean we should subject them to the indignity of social shunning during a time in their development that they’re still working out their social skills.
Say that parents could easily obtain a report that looked like this for any school they wanted within their school system:
Disease, % vacc. , prcntl. vs. sch. sys., Herd imm. thresh.
Diphtheria 95%, 99%, 83 – 94%
Measles 83%, 15%, 85%
Etc…
Wouldn’t that give parents everything they need to know to select a school to send their children to? Does such reporting exist already?
It is very painful. One 220 mg naproxin every 6 hours just took the edge off the pain enough I could function. Prevention is a very wise decision.
Bill Dauphin said “No, my reaction was just the opposite: Because it’s a commonly vaccinated disease, I assumed pertussis was far worse than it turned out to be.”
Pertussis is often called the “100 day cough”, but its symptoms are usually much milder in adults. The problem with pertussis is that it is deadly to babies. Most of the death and disability are those under the age of one.
The biggest problem is the transference of pertussis from an adult or adolescent with few symptoms to a baby who can become very ill.
Also, the vaccine is not as effective as others and it does wear off. That is why there are tetanus boosters every ten years. To help stem the rising numbers of pertussis adolescents are being given the Tdap, and it is recommended that adults also get the Tdap at their next scheduled tetanus booster.
Check out the information here:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/pert-508.pdf
You will find a side box on page 2 (which is has page “7” printed on it) that says (it is also on the slide set, http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/Slides/Pertussis10.ppt#7 ):
Pertussis Among Adolescents and Adults:
Disease often milder than in infants and children
Infection may be asymptomatic, or may present as classic pertussis
Persons with mild disease may transmit the infection
Older persons often source of infection for children
you’re ignoring the fact that a lot of people can’t just up-and-move when it turns out that all the schools in the area suck ass. you’d aggravate the already existing problems of school-choice by not only endangering the children’s education as is already the case, but also their and their families’ health!
Ward at #199
So are you suggesting that because I might live in a neighborhood with a high number of anti-vaccine parents that I am the one forced to make a choice about sending my child to the neighborhood public school?
Methinks you have it backwards. The default public health position is this: children are immunized in order to attend a public school. If the anti-vaccine parents choose not to do that, then the onus is on them to find another place to educate their children. IOW, I, having followed the appropriate and mandated vaccination protocol, am entitled to send my child to a school with similarly vaccinated children. Those who choose not to vaccine their children can find an alternative setting.
Well, there is a solution to that but it’s sure to meet a lot of hostility here: vouchers. When the public school system fails to provide an environment to protect our children from preventable diseases, there should be no shame in being able to opt out. Besides, private schools may not legally have to allow the exemptions that public schools do (and if they don’t, that really should change — people really should be able to pay for schooling with a 100% vacc. rate).
Vouchers? This is starting to sound very familiar. A lot like our old friend Eric ‘bash the homos’ Atkinson. Considering he swore he’d never be back, that would explain the nym change.
And Ward S. Denker? Say it out loud – ‘what a stinker’.
Nobody forces you to live anywhere, it’s all a matter of choice. If we’re being realistic, I think the majority of America is not going to vote to give the government to force vaccination and offer no exemptions besides medical ones, I just don’t see it happening. Remember, it’s a position I similarly advocate (at odds with many Libertarians), but I’m talking about realistic goals here, not wishful thinking.
That said, isn’t the best we can do to report and educate? Given only the choice between knowing and not knowing (since public sentiment is unlikely to change), which do you choose?
@wistah#203
I completely agree. No vaccinations, no admittance to public schools… period.
As Ward stated, he is a Libertarian and they have these fantasies that the Individual Free Choice/market God will solve all problems just like it has with free market health care. Of course Ward thinks the problem is that health care is already too socialized. I wonder if Ward fits the common Libertarian profile of a single white male in his 20-30s… from the tone of his posts he doesn’t appear to have or have had children.
I brought it home from school, and it spread like wildfire through our house, including to some of my cousins who came to visit. My brother got it last, he was just a little guy, maybe about 3, and he was in really bad shape. I remember it was one of the few times my grandmother called my mother home from work when one of us was ill.
Since God has been a major cause for and/or the direct result of the following:
war(s), famine, sickness, bigotry, hatred (self and otherwise), guilt, self-righteousness, brazen behavior, abortion clinic bombings, planes-flying-the-fuck-into-shit, self-mutilation, hording of riches and resources, poor leadership, poor leadership decisions, genocide, racial profiling, discrimination, environmental destruction, sexism, unprepared pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and the proliferation of other known disease, torture, burning at the stake, disruption and sometimes forbiddance of good science, anti-logic, anti-reason, immorality, FEAR, imposition, alienation, and a whole host of other things, I say this:
To hell with the measles! It’s a shame we can’t get a vaccine for religion.
Well, that excludes me from being him. I’m a defender of gay rights. I’m vehemently against constitutional amendments that single gays out and subjects them to laws that none of us face (and write discrimination into our Constitution for the first time). I also support their right to form a civil union (since the term ‘marriage’ has a lot of religious baggage associated with it). Please don’t accuse me of thread jacking since I responded to a comment directed at me, though.
Are you for real? So all those minimum-wage/working-poor folks in urban areas struggling with all of the attendant issues of poverty-level urban life are doing so because they’ve made a choice? All those minimum wage/working-poor folks living in isolated rural areas are doing so because it’s their choice?
O-kay…
And I don’t see it, either. What I prefer to see is a mandate that all children who are to attend a public school be vaccinated on a typical childhood schedule. Those parents who choose not to vaccine their children by default simultaneously choose not to send their children to a public school. Seems to me a good solution is to home school or privately school the child. Choices have consequences, I guess, and home schooling or a private school seems to me to be a great solution for anti-vaccine parents.
I choose that every child who attends a public school be immunized according to the prevailing recommended schedule unless a pre-existing medical condition precludes such immunization.
Parents who voluntarily choose to forego immunization may educate their children in an alternative setting.
you’re a prime example as to WHY the American Public Schools (or pretty much anything the small-government crowd gets their hands on) are failing: first you’re saying that Public Schools have no right to demand full vaccination, then you say if they fail to somehow magically provide it anyway it’s ok to dump them for private schools which you say should be allowed to insist on full vaccination. double-standard much?
*facepalm*
Ward,
No accusations of threadjacking – well, not from me anyway. And apologies on the Eric accusation. I seem to recall school vouchers being high on the list of Eric’s arguments; I just thought I’d check to see if he hadn’t decided to come back under another name.
Is the ‘what a stinker’ just a coincidence, then?
The poll was up to 71% NO after I voted…
If this thread has taught me anything, it’s that AG and ElectricBarbarella are idiots.
Arguably one of the worst threads in a long time.
Ward S. Denker killfile in 3…2…1….
@207, I’ve blogged on health care before. My position is clear, if you’d like to argue against any of the points I made I’d be happy to oblige. As a matter of politeness, I’d suggest taking that argument to my own blog since it’s not germane to this discussion.
Compared to SfO or Walton, Ward is positively mild.
Ward, I can go along with vouchers as long as the playing field is absolutely level. This means that the public schools can send some of their problem kids to the private schools. Say 10-15% of the school population. Otherwise, the public school are at a disadvantage since the discipline problems of private schools are thrust back upon them. Let’s level out the gangbangers so all schools, public and private, have the same problem. However, if the private school excepts no vouchers, that policy would go back to normal private school admittance policies.
Well, both answers are correct really, the parents do have the right but it does put her son and hundreds of other people at risk. Unvaccinated children should be excluded from child care and public schools, though. The parents can do what they want with their own children but they don’t have the right to force the consequences on other children.
People just have to be educated in the hope they’ll make the correct decision.
Wowbagger:
Wow, I totally missed that auditory pun. Instead, I was flashing back to the Mad magazines I used to read in my misspent youth. Remember the “fold-in” cartoons in the inside back cover? I was thinking that if you fold in “Ward S. Denker” in the Mad style, you end up with… Wanker.
There are people that have immigrated to this country from countries with worse conditions, faced the hardship of adjusting to a new culture, different language, and rampant xenophobia and still managed to make a life for themselves here. I’m not saying that it is easy, I’m just saying that we all have the power to make choices about where we live.
Actually, I said exactly the opposite, but I see your zeal to berate me is greater than your intellectual honesty. If you’d like to apologize for missing my point, I’d be willing to take that back though.
There’s nothing magical about economics – freedom of choice is useful. The government (mostly) doesn’t tell you where to live, eat, what car to drive, or what products you can buy, but they do tell you what school you can send your children to through taxation. The amount of freedom available to us has led our country to be the wealthiest nation on the planet.
I did say that I expected that many of you wouldn’t like my answer, and I do understand your objections. Belaboring them isn’t concern trolling, is it?
people really should be able to pay for schooling with a 100% vacc. rate Ward S. Denker
That’s right. After all, who gives a shit if the children of the poor get sick?
It baffles me why people would oppose the HPV virus on the grounds that it may encourage promiscuity. I would be very suprised if any teenager has become sexually active on the grounds that they have been vaccinated. If the threat of pregnancy or HIV isn’t enough to deter them, HPV certainly wont be. To deny the vaccination to a child seems to me to be a way of punishing them for not living the chaste lifestyle the parent had in mind for them, as though if they contract cervical cancer they deserve what they get.
Someone above had a rant about allowing parents who didn’t plan their pregnancy, due to being too stupid/drunk to use a condom, to make decisions on behalf of their children and not getting vaccinated. The argument seemed to be that the single/teenaged mums who couldn’t sort out their own life, were poorly educated, fell pregnant accidentally etc, had no right to contradict proffessional advice. The reality in my (admittedly limited) experience, is that the families from the lower socio-economic bracket do follow advice, and it’s the thoroughly planned, well-to-do middle class parents, believing themselves to be better eductated and to know what’s best for their little pride and joy, that will refuse vaccinations.
I was years ahead of my peers (not to mention my parents) in terms of my understanding of American culture (I’m Australian) thanks to MAD Magazine. There’s a photo of me and my family in which I’m aged about eight and am holding an issue. I don’t have it nearby or I’d look to see which it was.
There’s little doubt (in my mind) that MAD (with help from Douglas Adams and Ben Elton) contributed much to my sense of humour.
This is the thing about libertarians that really, really annoys me–everything’s so black and white for them. Yeah, nobody forces you to live anywhere. But if your company decides to transfer you, or is closing down to set up shop somewhere else, and there isn’t a large market (if any) for your skills in the local market, if the jobs don’t pay as well as you’re currently earning, you are having to make a choice that is more difficult than necessary: So you’re left with “choosing” to do what your wage Massa says, or not moving and 1) take a cut in pay or 2) not be able to work for a while and possibly have problems with, you know, eating.
Probably not, but that doesn’t mean everyone who wants that to be policy have to just lay down and die. They can educate and try to use the process to get that policy enacted. And vax supporters do have some success with getting something onto the books, like in Texas. Texas has a specific process that has to be followed to opt out of vaccinations. You don’t follow the process either getting vaccinations or getting an exemption, your kid stays home. Period. The schools are not lenient about this at all, and good for them.
It’s not the best law, but it’s not the worst. There’s a provision that unvaccinated children can be excluded from school in times of emergency or epidemic declared by the commissioner of public health. It sounds like lawmakers made a compromise with vax supporters whose concerns were that their children could be exposed to danger by unvaccinated children.
So it looks like vaxers have a greater chance than it seems of making the law better.
I personally consider it horrifying that the only way to protect children from these unvaccinated kids is an epidemic or emergency. Epidemics don’t start huge! How many kids have to get sick or die before it’s an epidemic/emergency? And who wants to be the parent of a child who gets sick or dies before it reaches “epidemic” level?
Not me, and I think not many other parents with their heads on straight.
That’s a positively unfair characterization. I fully support 100% free vaccinations from the government. Socializing at least that one small aspect of health care is of negligible cost to the public and everyone gains from it equally. If the govt. started denying free immunization to the poor, I’d be there ahead of you in the line complaining about the injustice and incivility of it.
See? Common ground.
I’m just saying that we all have the power to make choices about where we live. Ward S. Denker
Sure, if we’re born to a crack-addicted single mother in a gang-dominated slum, we have every chance in the world, don’t we?
The amount of freedom available to us has led our country to be the wealthiest nation on the planet.
Could it also have something to do with having stolen half a very well-endowed continent from its previous inhabitants? That’s a lot of natural resources.
Posted by: Eliza | January 11, 2009 7:21 PM [kill][hide comment]
It baffles me why people would oppose the HPV virus on the grounds that it may encourage promiscuity. I would be very suprised if any teenager has become sexually active on the grounds that they have been vaccinated.
Just keep in mind, we are dealing with people who think that any mention of sex is, in fact, an encouragement to have sex. Nevermind that most people desire it.
CORDELIA: Well, does looking at guns make you wanna have sex?
XANDER: I’m seventeen. Looking at linoleum makes me wanna have sex.
Ward S. Denker@226,
Well if vaccinating your own child was always medically possible and gave complete protection, there would be no need to seek out 100% vaccinated schools, would there?
DOH! DOH! #218 Last sentence …. school
exceptsaccepts no…..(The Redhead sprained her ankle again, so I’m posting between “honey do” tasks.)
Posted by: Aquaria | January 11, 2009 7:23 PM
” ‘Nobody forces you to live anywhere, it’s all a matter of choice.’
This is the thing about libertarians that really, really annoys me–everything’s so black and white for them. Yeah, nobody forces you to live anywhere.”
That’s why Libertarians tend to be single middle class white male in their 20s-30s (notice he hasn’t refuted it.) They have no responsibilities except to themselves and have never experienced homelessness, racial bigotry, poverty or severe health problems. They also haven’t had to deal with paying family health care rates and deal with sick children.
African slaves came here voluntarily? situations cannot deteriorate beyond your control? emigrants ALWAYS find better lives than where they came from? you’re either very naive, historically illiterate, or just plain stupid.
@199
“Still, I feel compelled to question policy that gives a government the power to stick a needle in a child’s arm through compulsion.
What are solutions that can suit everyone without an overwhelming bias in the favor of too much regulation and too little? Some solutions can be arrived at that harm nobody’s freedom to make choices for themselves or others. Perhaps legislation could be passed that inform parents better. […]Say that parents could easily obtain a report that looked like this for any school they wanted within their school system”
@203
“When the public school system fails to provide an environment to protect our children from preventable diseases, there should be no shame in being able to opt out.[…]people really should be able to pay for schooling with a 100% vacc. rate”
as far as I can tell, you’re saying you’d rather see information disclosure rather than enforced 100%vaccination rates either through vaccinated-students-only or mandatory-vaccines. and then you’re saying that if just telling people how bad the schools in their area are isn’t going to poof them into being better schools, they can leave for public schools for private schools; which you say should be able to enforce 100% vaccination rates. granted, you frame it better than a lot of other libertarians, but a polished turd is still a turd. no apology.
the Economics libertarians believe are pretty much magical, invisible hand and all. and luckily for all of us, the government DOES tell you what car you can drive (via the Motor Vehicle Safety Act), or what you can eat (various food safety laws), or even what you can buy (various Environmental and Customer Protection Laws); we were all a hell of a lot worse off before that was the case in each instance.
and of course geographical luck doesn’t have anything to do with it. after all, it’s “freedom” that makes America resource rich, averagely populated, and invasion-free since 1812 [/sarcasm]
Denker argues “I am against exemptions for regular schedule vaccination beyond health concerns (allergies, etc.) I recognize that anti-vaccination parents aren’t just making a choice for their own children, but for other children as well,” but he considers reasonable solutions to be ones that require other parents to move out of their districts to avoid them or the restructuring of public education around them. These he presents as realistic alternatives to compulsory vaccination or requiring children to be vaccinated in order to attend public school.
Actually, I think a few outbreaks of measles like we’re starting to see, and ones in which other children die because of some idiot parents’ decision not to vaccinate, would have a pronounced effect on public sentiment. The only reason people are as lenient as they are about the antivaccination loons is that vaccinations have allowed a loss of cultural memory of the horrendousness of childhood diseases and because vaccination has drastically lowered the risks of contracting them. But people have no right to endanger children (not their own and not those of others), and this would hit home with a few more outbreaks.
Or if poor women are raped, as ag has pointed out to us above. Protection from rape (pepper sprays, alarm systems, and presumably living in safer areas) can be purchased (…because of course women are always sexually assaulted by strangers). If a woman is raped, well, she should have chosen to be risher so she could afford a safer situation.
This is a mis-characterization. Of course I recognize a spectrum of of hardship. The question becomes one of reality: how much can government feasibly do? If we agree that government can’t solve all of our problems then, by necessity of that agreement, we have to choose our battles over what problems government can solve, narrowed further by discussions on what government is good at solving. Libertarians surely believe that the problems that government solves best should be solved by government. We’re not anarchists, after all. We have our nuts that call themselves Libertarians, but you really can’t claim you don’t have yours either. Ours are just more visible because there are fewer of us.
Isn’t your own argument about “black and white” vision of utility here? I did say that I wish exemptions weren’t so easily obtainable. I agree with your position on this, but I also recognize that our position is probably infeasible in our society. In the “shades of gray” arena, compromises sometimes have to be made and we don’t all have to like them, but that’s the price of liberty and democracy. The law is often a blunt instrument where surgical precision is necessary, that’s just the reality of things.
considering that small-government types often starve or hinder programs, and then point to them as non-functioning, that’s a really bad way of looking at it actually.
on the other hand, I find that mandatory vaccinations have yet to actually harm anything other than people’s pride, while people’s right to put their ideologies ahead of their children’s welfare results in suffering and even death on a fairly regular basis. note the measles outbreaks, as well as the “prayer instead of medicine” crowd. yeah, we could punish those parents AFTER something horrible happens, but what have the kids done to deserve death or disease because their parents are inept idiots?
That reminds me. KnockGoats – I did find this a few weeks ago when you were having that conversation:
http://www.struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/anarchism/libcap/refuteAC.html
Decent.
Great point, Jadehawk. Let me renew my previous recommendation (back in the Fall) of Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew, which connects the dots of this little scheme very nicely.
It’s impolite, not germane to the discussion, and not as characteristic of me as you’d like it to be. It’s basically an ad hominem argument against the person/people making a point and not against the point being made.
KnockGoats, mayhempix, SC, and others, please read through my points. I’m speaking entirely from the perspective of what I think can be reasonably achieved. That says nothing about what I, personally, think is reasonable. You’re looking at what I am saying expecting an ulterior motive, rather than giving me the benefit of the doubt that what I am saying is what I actually believe/desire.
I’m extending the benefit of the doubt that what you’re all saying is representative of your actual beliefs (sarcasm aside). I think it’s poor form to not do the same for me.
Nerd of Redhead appears to have extended an olive branch to me by describing me as “positively mild.” For that, I thank you. I’m an exacting sort of person when I share my opinions (hence the length) but I can’t offer up a brain dump on demand, no matter how much the idea intrigues me.
I think we’d find that we all have more in common than we think but the acidity of this environment lends itself less to finding that ground that it probably should.
lastly (and this is not against you specifically, Ward), I find that until we get global population and global rate of consumption stabilized, the world will be less and less “free”, and more and more regulated. basically libertarians are demanding to be able to behave as if they were living in their private mansion on a large farm (stuff like running around the house naked, throwing large parties anytime you like, being able to trash the entire place at will), while actually sharing a small apartment with a bunch of roommates (where you better keep your clothes on, learn to lock the bathroom door, keep the noise down, and clean up after yourself)
basically, at current growth rates, 50-100 years from now either EVERYTHING will be government regulated (birth-permits, rationing of food and water, space allocation, etc), or we’ll live in a collapsed eat-or-be-eaten world a-la post-collapse Easter Island, but on a global scale.
this of course is completely off topic, but I just needed to say that :-p
The question becomes one of reality: how much can government feasibly do? – Ward S. Denker
Well of course you could get some hints by looking at countries similar in other ways (rich, politically pluralist) where the state (no, not “the government”) does more – but maybe that would be un-American?
as a libertarian, you’re surprisingly bad at the whole bargaining concept. you’re supposed to demand the impossible, and then go from there. if you start at what can only be considered a reasonable first step, you’ll never get anywhere! :-p
SC@239,
Thanks – I’ll take a look, but it was really for speedwell. I’ll point her at it when she’s next around.
I get it that you’re kidding, but that kind of bargaining doesn’t work out that well in some circumstances. Making ridiculous, impossible demands on your prospective employer in an interview isn’t likely to get you that call-back (except in the rare case that your employer is likely to gamble on the strength of your personality).
Politicians aren’t particularly deserving of trust if history is any example. A moderate approach to policy making helps us build trust with a policy maker. Building from what you can reasonably accomplish rather than butting heads on what you can’t illustrates which is the better way to get things done and which is the poorer one.
The reality in my (admittedly limited) experience, is that the families from the lower socio-economic bracket do follow advice, and it’s the thoroughly planned, well-to-do middle class parents, believing themselves to be better eductated and to know what’s best for their little pride and joy, that will refuse vaccinations.
I think it seems that way, but I think we have to also think about other factors. One is views of authority. Some poor people are very deferential, so they will listen to an authority figure like a doctor or social worker. Another factor is how limited the sources for information might be for a poorer person. If the only basis of info is the doctor telling them to get vaccinated, they’ll tend to do i.
But if the poor person has more information to choose from, or if their idea of authority is The National Enquirer or Juju Mccarty, then the numbers probably level off.
Another factor in this insanity may be something I haven’t seen mentioned yet, and that’s how older generations seem to be less susceptible to being anti-vax than the younger. I think I understand why: It’s been long enough since we’ve gotten control of certain diseases, that we have a couple of generations who have no idea what they’re about, really. It’s something that happened a long time ago, so they don’t seem quite real.
But people above a certain age were around when these diseases were common. Many of us suffered from them, or knew people who did. Obviously, we survived them, but we know we were lucky. Many died. We know that people could also survive the illness itself, but experience long term effects from them.
The solution is pretty simple: Keep showing things like this TV show. Show people how horrible these diseases can be. Thanks to PBS, I got an eye-opener about the major disease of the generation just before mine, polio, and now I don’t think of it as this disease we don’t have to worry about anymore. Not when it still has outbreaks in other parts of the world. Not when we have idiots here who aren’t vaccinated against it because they believe a self-pitying bimbo on TV rather than science.
Ward:
It’s not impolite, because it is germane: Even if it’s not true of you personally (and I note that you’ve used the accusation of impoliteness to once again avoid addressing the question), it has frequently been true that people who’ve come here with ideas similar to yours have been (as far as one can ever know who anyone is on teh intertoobz) white middle-class males with no material responsibilities to anyone other than themselves. It’s extraordinarily difficult for people in that situation to understand how sharply constrained the “choices” become of those who are less well off, or who have inviolable responsibilities to others, or who have been born into circumstances that restrict their freedom of action.
It’s easy to say “there’s always a choice” when that’s always been your experience; it’s measurably harder to realize that your experience is not necessarily universal.
Far from “impolite,” this is actually the most charitable explanation I can imagine for the apparent heartlessness of libertarianism: If you understood how little effective freedom of action most folks have and still went on about the magic of the free market, then you’d just be an uncaring bastard. That’s not what you mean to be calling yourself, is it?
Isn’t your own argument about “black and white” vision of utility here?
Uh, no. Where did I even mention utility?
I was responding to what you said earlier, that Americans wouldn’t accept it. My response was that just because it doesn’t seem that way now (a point on which I agreed with you) doesn’t mean that it has to be that way. You’re reading too much into it.
Okay?
Thank you, Bill Dauphin, for stating so much better than I did that choice isn’t as “free” as it seems sometimes.
Posted by: Ward S. Denker. | January 11, 2009 8:06 PM
” “That’s why Libertarians tend to be single middle class white male in their 20s-30s (notice he hasn’t refuted it.)’
It’s impolite, not germane to the discussion, and not as characteristic of me as you’d like it to be. It’s basically an ad hominem argument against the person/people making a point and not against the point being made.”
Nice try but it just isn’t the case. It is completely germaine to the discussion. I too was once a “single middle class white male in their 20s-30s” and it not meant as being derogatory. It does show what particular life experiences influence a person’s perception of the rest of the world. You rarely see someone who grew up in poverty become a Libertarian. There is a reason for that. That person knows that being born in poverty is not a choice and that the chances of escaping are much more difficult than the “free choice” of another job or moving to different neighborhood. And the cliche of not knowing what is to be a parent until you’ve had children is a cliche because it’s true.
FTR I did read your blog before I posted my comments so my observations, including those about your position on healthcare are based on your writings.
I know, and had originally mentioned her, but since you were in your earlier incarnation then and I knew you would know what I was referring to, I wanted to leave it more vague.
And I and others have addressed that.
If you don’t find a solution reasonable, what difference does it make if it’s feasible (which yours aren’t, in any case)?
Oh, knock it off with the Emily posts, already. You showed up on this thread with a bunch of lecturing on people’s tone, without even referring to specific ones or explaining why you found them “uncivil” or “bullying” in context. If you were referring to me (and since you mentioned “intelligent, insightful, and funny people,” I assume you were :P), please point out what you were talking about, and I’ll be happy to explain my comments even though I’m not obligated to do do. If you simply wish to keep biting your lip and whining because this is, as Henry Gee complained, a rough bar, then your concern is noted, and you can fuck off.
Ward S. Denker is a fan of michelle malkin. how do i know? he uses the term “ad hominem.”
that crowd just LOVES them some “ad hominem.”
on topic, the poll is now 72% “no”
Aquaria
I think this is a very important point. When I was a kid the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines were just getting out to the people. Polio was a very real disease with possible permanent effects. The older brother of one of my friends caught it before the vaccines came out, and it withered one of his legs. He could still walk with a prothesis and cane, and he did the best he could, which was really impressive. When you see that type of disability go way just because of a shot or eating a sugar cube, you end up being very impressed. Nowdays, the arguments seem mostly over chickenpox, mumps, and measles, which people remember as mild childhood diseases.
You didn’t. Re-read the sentence, I see how you could misinterpret it, but punctuation is everything. :)
Bill Dauphin,
I fail to see how my political bent is germane to the discussion about vaccination. I, in fact, mentioned that I go against the grain of my political philosophy on this point. That’s as far as it needs go for the discussion at hand, because it leads to discussing (and defending) myself. Unless this thread is titled “All about why Ward is a Libertarian” it’s not germane. Agreed?
The rest of it is merely about attacking Libertarians and really is a mis-charaterization. Because it’s so filled with invectives and venom (veiled though they may be) it’s particularly undeserving of a response.
I will, however, point out that the the final bit is actually a logical fallacy plurium interrogationum, colloquially put as a loaded question. It presupposes that Libertarians are heartless and is the equivalent of asking a question like:
When did you stop beating your wife?
SC,
Thanks very much!
it’s not a presupposition, it’s the conclusion most of us have arrived at after talking with a whole host of libertarians, most of which were blissfully unconcerned with social injustices of any kind, and just brushed them away with the following equation:
“the marked solves all problems” + “everything is a choice” = everyone who’s suffering is to blame themselves, because they’re lazy/drug-addicted/spoiled by the government”
ugh, “the marked” is supposed to be “the Market”. I need to slow down when typing.
Your mentioning it doesn’t make it so. Your proposals, which you present as more feasible and likely to be supported than those that are very close to the existing situation, are perfectly in keeping with your ideology (though not consistent with some of your other claimed opinions).
Nerd, my only personal experience with polio (that I can remember–so many died), is my uncle, who had survived, but had an arm visibly shorter and “withered” than the other. Not in a dramatic way, but it was noticeable if you looked closely enough. Beyond that, there was FDR, but he seemed so long ago to someone like me (JFK baby).
When that’s your only experience with something, you don’t tend to realize how bad it can be. Like I said, I knew in an abstract way beyond that how polio was not a good thing, but actually seeing what uncontrollable polio could do… It wasn’t abstract anymore.
I wish I could remember where I saw that on PBS, or when. It was very, very effective.
It presupposes that Libertarians are heartless – Ward S. Denker
But that’s not a baseless presupposition. It’s based both on experience of interacting with them, and on the content of their political beliefs, which basically come down to: “If you can’t get ahead by your own efforts, then you can fuck off and die.” Oh sure, a lot of them try to sugar this by burbling about how charity will expand when the ebil gubmint isn’t stealing all the enterprising people’s money, but there’s never any serious attempt to show that this would work, and we know private charity has never come near abolishing poverty in any society, while collective provision has.
@Ward
“Because it’s so filled with invectives and venom (veiled though they may be)…”
Project much?
The Libertarian as victim. He comes here whining about abuse in his first post before anyone has even responded and is now fullfilling his own projection. He wants to play but also wants to decide the rules, what the content must be and who the bad guys/gals are. Sorry. We don’t do that here. You sink or swim by your own volition.
#258… You are oh so right. Charity will take care of everything, huh?
Yes, life was so wonderful in that paradise of 1888 America, where there was no evil gubmint holding back the free market, no poor people thanks to charity, no special interests groups sticking their nose where it didn’t belong (in the can-do people’s business), and complete freedom (unless you were a woman, or a minority, or…)! Where was I? Oh yes… Everyone was fat, dumb and happy, except for those slackers and whiners nobody cares about. It was a paradise.
Aquaria #244
When I was in 3rd Grade, the Salk polio vaccine became available for testing. My father was a graduate student and his university medical center was one of the ones conducting tests on the vaccine. It was made available to all the students in the town’s schools and every single one of them, with the exception of kids of Christian Scientists, was volunteered by their parents for testing. My parents were overjoyed that their children would not be threatened with polio.
I know people my age who had had polio. A good friend of mine has been using crutches to get around on for over 50 years. When my kids were old enough, they were vaccinated against polio. In my lifetime a dreadful scourge that killed and crippled thousands isn’t a threat any more.
Ward:
My “last bit” (@245) doesn’t “presuppose” anything at all. Rather, it asserts that libertarianism appears “heartless” (i.e., I’m stating my observation, and my interpretation thereof), and suggests that libertarians’ presumed general lack of personal experience that contradicts their ideology is a relatively charitable explanation for that appearance. The only part of that “bit” that’s constructed as a question — “…an uncaring bastard …. [is] not what you mean to be calling yourself, is it?” — is not a loaded question, but a rhetorical one: It does not seek to elicit any answer at all, let alone to trick you into giving an embarrassing answer.
Don’t try to teach an old English major to suck eggs… ‘kay?
BTW, nobody was asking you to declare your “political bent”; we’ve come to a conclusion about your politics based on the content of your comments. Instead, we’ve been asking you to comment on whether or not you’re a white, middle-class (or better) male with few or no dependents… a question that’s “germane” to the conversation for reasons several of us have tried to explain to you.
In a discussion on HPV I came upon this discussion:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=4338312#post4338312
sigh
It reminded me a bit of the summer when I was 17 and visited some relatives at their second home (which was still in the “recover from being abandoned” stage, the toilet facilities was an outhouse which required careful navigation to avoid falling into the collapsed septic tank). The trip required a visit to the neighbors who were kind enough to watch the property while my relatives were in their “regular home” (which was also in the boonies, don’t ask). This was to make sure that I was not shot on sight, since they took their “watching the property” task quite seriously (okay, my relatives also rented the property to wealthier folks who pastured Arabian horses there, and it was cool when the farrier came out to work on the half a dozen horses*).
At that very cordial meeting the first thing the neighbors asked my 17 year old self was “What does your husband do?”. Ummmm… I was a student, I don’t have a husband! Their 16 year old daughter was already married.
Yikes!
*What was not so cool was going to pick the apples from the old trees only to find that the bears had gotten there first. Something I thought about as I weaved my way to the outhouse past the sunken septic tank!
He says right out that he thinks it’s a small price to pay. I think it’s condescending garbage to package a truth inside a lie for the rubes on the street. If female genital mutilation is wrong, say so. Missionaries also lie about condoms, say they’re ineffective, say they even contribute to AIDS. Once you get in the habit of lying…
Bill Dauphin,
Well, then you’ll recognize just as well as I that you’re playing at semantics.
Saying “When did you appear to stop beating your wife?” is not substantially different. It’s perhaps more sly and, for that, is actually worse for trying to appear different than what it is.
I was previously accused of being a “thread jacking troll” and am trying very hard to not let this thread turn into one about me or my politics. If a man tells you he thinks a question about his personal life is rude and asks you to drop the subject, it’s respectful to do so.
What you are trying to focus on is the man and the “color of his skin” rather than the “content of his character.” A wise man warned against that kind of prejudice.
Ward, you’re missing bill’s point: we have already made the repeatedly verified observations previously that libertarian philosophy is non-emphatic towards the less-well-off. there’s two explanations for that which Bill presents: libertarians are, by virtue of their social, racial and economic standing, completely unaware of what live for the downtrodden in their society is really like; or, they know that very well, and just don’t give a fuck, and honestly think the disadvantaged deserve to be disadvantaged. Knowing that you are indeed white, well off, and in the prime of your health would make you guilty of the lesser crime of naivete.
as far as libertarians go, you’re a very mild case indeed (compared to AfricanGenesis, for example); still, you either think there’s no such thing as the “uninsurable” or “people who can’t find a better school”; that still means you’re either naive, or you think that those who don’t get insurance are always fully at fault, and that those who can’t sent their children to a good school don’t want to sent their children to a good school, and therefore they deserve their fates.
Ward:
As regards “threadjacking,” I don’t think the points several of us are trying to make about your apparent libertarianism are really too far removed from the original question of whether the state has a valid case for compelling vaccinations. Oddly, it’s you who has been diverting the discussion into the personal, ironically by crying ad hominem when no such argument has been offered. But since you insist on diving into the minutiae…
No, this is just a comprehensive failure to understand on your part. Technically, the formulation I used is called a tag question. It consists of an initial clause in the form of a statement (in this case, a sarcastic one: “That’s [i.e., an uncaring bastard is] not what you mean to be calling yourself,…”) followed by a “tag” in the form of a question (“…is it?”). The tag ostensibly solicits the agreement of the person addressed with the statement in the initial clause… but in fact it requires no answer at all; it functions to emphasize the comment. This locutiion is in no way similar, neither logically nor syntactically, to the classic “beating your wife” question, nor to any other equivalent loaded question.
Your failure to comprehend this is not something I would normally pick on, except that you keep repeating your misunderstanding, and it’s mirrored by your misunderstanding of the rest of the argument as well:
It’s amazing to me that you imagine any of us cares about your personal life. If you’ll notice (i.e., go back and read my comments to you carefully), I haven’t actually pressed you to give us any details; instead, I’ve tried (patiently) to explain why the initial speculation (on someone else’s part, I might add) about the preponderance of white, middle-class single males among libertarians was directly material to the argument on the table, and not just a bit of gratuitous nosiness. It’s about the fact that people’s ideas are influenced by their experiences, and by the circumstances of their lives; it has nothing to do with dumping on your ideas because we don’t like you.
Hrmmph! “White,” in this case, refers to membership in an historically privileged demographic, which in turn bears materially on the ease with which one can empathize with those less privileged; nobody (trust me, nobody) gives a rat’s ass about the actual hue of your actual, personal hide. Your attempt to characterize a sociological line of argument as racism is laughable.
Oh, so now you imagine MLK rising from his grave to march on behalf of cranky libertarians everywhere? This last bit almost convinces me you’re a Poe… but only almost.
Jadehawk,
No, I understand why you’re asking. You don’t understand why I’m objecting.
See, the problem here is that, either way, you’ve decided that I’m guilty of either a greater or lesser crime. In your minds, I’m irredeemable and my position is inherently wrong. That’s called prejudice. Asking me what the color of my skin and my social status is shows how morally wrong that position is.
for what it’s worth, I’m personally convinced in your case it’s naivete, since your comments about subsidized vaccinations make it pretty clear you aren’t a heartless asshole. but in that case, the naivete is pretty strong. like I said before, you seem to think everyone has enough unconstrained choices in matters of education and health-care, when that is obviously and evidently not true.
For example, do you think the people who didn’t evacuate before Katrina hit had a simple choice in staying or leaving, and decided to stay?
Do you think the extremely poor diets of poor Americans are 100% freely chosen, or might they have something to do with food cost and food preparation times (and the culture that results out of that)?
those and many other questions are generally answered ignorantly and shallowly by most libertarians, who seem unaware of variables that constrain choices. You seem to be less blind to that, but still optimistically believe that there’s always some market-solution. that, too, is blatantly NOT true.
actually you’ve already proven yourself to be incorrect in two instances in regards to matters of choice. that’s not prejudice, it’s judgment of statements made, based on evidenca aailable to us. now we’re trying to decide why you’d think that.
I do believe you, so far as the information would be useful to slagging on Libertarians.
Let’s try an analogue. Say I was a Democrat and you were all Libertarians and I were to try and convince you of the value of welfare. If you were to ignore all of the reasons I supported welfare and, instead, cast aspersions that the only reason I’d support welfare is that I was black, poor, and from a low socioeconomic upbringing and that I wanted welfare was because I was lazy and unwilling to work (basically that I stand to gain), people would be appalled. It is, on the face of it, extremely prejudicial.
That is no position that Democrats actually hold, and we all know it. This won’t continue however, because I’m done with your interrogation.
This wasn’t about me, but in the course of answering questions (politely), the slagging hasn’t been let up, and you’ve made it about me. No more.
I bid you good day.
except that if welfare programs had already been proven to be an absolute, dismal failure with no way of redeeming itself, had already been abandoned by most other developed nations which were doing better at helping their poor with their non-welfare programs, and had even become an obstacle to fighting global problems, and yet, once in a while some poor sod would show up insisting that welfare is a good and necessary thing, we’d also suspect either selfishness or ignorance; selfishness in this case would indeed imply most likely being a “poor, black, inner-city person”, while being well off and having nothing to gain from it on the other hand would indicate ignorance of historical, socioeconomic etc. facts, no matter how clever your argument is phrased
sometimes, socioeconomic status is relevant; and we’re morbidly curious how someone can come to such a completely wrong conclusion about the working of the world, so we ask this of everyone who proves himself to be a libertarian. probably because we’d like to think no-one is REALLY that heartless.
also, this place is not exactly known for tact. I’ve had my head ripped off for being clueless and priviledged on several occasions :-p
Dunno if you’re still listening, Ward, but…
Sadly, the argument you hypothetically put in our mouths is precisely the implied argument of many libertarian-leaning commenters who’ve shown up here: When you assert that everybody has all the freedom of choice required to lift themselves out of any sort of misfortune, you are inescapably implying that any nevertheless misfortunate people (e.g., “black, poor, and from a low socioeconomic upbringing”) are responsible for their own misfortune, either because they have made poor choices or refused to make the liberating choices you presume are available to them (i.e., “lazy and unwilling to work”).
To those of us who understand that many people significantly lack effective freedom of choice, and are often not rationally responsible for their own misfortune, this position appears heartless on its face… but we’re also aware that some people who hold it (you are by no means the first) do so because they are naive, or lacking in personal life experiences that might cause them to revise their thinking, and those we try to give the benefit of the doubt (which is what’s going on in this thread). It’s amazing to me how many fight back against this attempt at charity, just as you are.
Notwithstanding your persisent claims of victimhood, the only reason “the slagging hasn’t been let up” is that nobody’s really been slagging you in the first place. We’ve been trying to articulate, on your behalf, an excuse for positions that otherwise strike us as reprehensible.
And our thanks for that have been that you willfully misunderstand our arguments (note that I don’t accuse you of blatantly lying, nor of being too damn stupid to understand… more charity) for the purpose of calling us all racists. Thanks ever so much!
Indeed. And I you.
Thank you, Bill Dauphin, for your patient deconstruction of the stated and implicit messages found in the bizarrely courtly comments of Mr. Denker. Despite the fact that he managed to actually articulate little of substance in his many comments here, he does manage to convey more than enough information for those reading closely to ferret out his intentions and biases.
See, the problem here is that, either way, you’ve decided that I’m guilty of either a greater or lesser crime. In your minds, I’m irredeemable and my position is inherently wrong. That’s called prejudice. Asking me what the color of my skin and my social status is shows how morally wrong that position is. – Ward S. Denker
Straight out of Debating Tactics for Libertarian Dummies, chapter 1: as soon as anyone points out that most “libertarians” have had a pretty good start in life and that this may influence their beliefs, scream “racism!”.
Couldn’t you have made the Pharyngula down time permanent, thus sparing the browsing public from the witless ejaculations of a godless liberal and his equally witless amen chorus?
Poor JohnQPublic, being forced to be here against his will! That must be some crappy browser he’s got that only lets him see Pharyngula even though he doesn’t want to.
KG@151,
Perhaps your experience of libertarians isn’t as broad as mine. In fact at least two, perhaps more of the capital L Libertarian presidential candidates accepted the IPCC conclusions about AGW, former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel and George Phillies from Massachusetts. I believe Phillies intended to address the issue with tax policy, and Gravel supported even more intrusive measures.
Yes, libertarians are about as far from fascist as you can get. They don’t accept the heglian/fascist notion that the nation is an organic entity with rights and moral standing of its own. The libertarian purpose of the state is to protect the rights of the individual and cannot encompass the imposition of involuntary/servitude such as conscription.
Re various replies, thank you;
…and it was Jenner, not Lister, but even he wasn’t the first.
My childhood was such a long time ago.
Also, since AG is back, why won’t he/she answer my simple question in #107?
Jadehawk@266,
It might surprise you, but I do find insurance problematic for the free market, since insurance companies most like to insure the people that don’t need it. Insurance companies also discriminate against individuals on a statistical basis, for instance, charging young drivers more, even though some are good drivers right from the beginning. I’ve looked into posting bond instead of purchasing insurance, but the relative costs are made more prohibitive by the state than need to be.
I also favored the medicare prescription drug addition, since I thought covering procedures and not drugs, resulted in uneconomic decision making in both treatment and prevention.
not in the slightest, since all forms of insurance are a socialization of risk. some systems do it for profit, some not, but it’s still a socialization of risk.
Eddie@107, My daughters are old enough to choose to have their genitals mutilated, but since they haven’t even opted for piercings, I doubt they are interested. I have a hard time believing this is what you meant however.
Speaking as someone who last year got to suffer through the joy that is Whooping Cough because of a combination of “someone didn’t vaccinate their precious bundle of joy” and “I come from the generation who thought vaccines were forever,” I have to say, I hate people who don’t vaccinate.
Including myself, four people (one of whom I did not have contact with) came down with Whooping Cough in Seattle last winter. One of those is the person I caught it from, and the other is someone who, unfortunately, I spread it to before we knew what it was.
Did you know that a lot of younger doctors don’t know how to treat Whooping Cough? Because no one gets it. Well, no one GOT it. One friend of mine had to call me from her doctor’s office to get my doctor’s number, because her doctor didn’t know what to treat it with. (Erythrimycin and Prednisone, in case you’re wondering).
When the friend who actually caught it from me told his doctor that it was Whooping Cough, his doctor actually said, “You’re kidding, right? No one gets that.”
So, not only are the non-vaccinators putting the rest of us at risk, but an awful lot of younger medical professionals have no experience with these diseases and they may go misdiagnosed (as mine did for several weeks), which makes the recovery time exceptionally long. It took more than 6 months for the coughing to go away entirely.
You’ve all inspired me to formulate a law describing your behavior (it’s so common that I’m surprised nobody else ever formulated it).
I present to you Denker’s Law.
Thank you, and good day to you.
Geek@283,
You’ve got it wrong. Adults have been getting whooping cough all along, doctors just hadn’t been recognizing it because it doesn’t have the characteristic whoop. Whooping cough is one of the vaccinations that isn’t for life. You probably got it because you didn’t revaccinate and got it from someone who was vaccinated, but too long ago.
Denker, The progressives here are more intellectually honest, they will actually own up to every aspect of being a fascist except the term “fascist” itself. They are certain the individuals “belong” to societies and have “obligations” and that nation states have a right to “conscript”. Human’s don’t have the genetic characteristics of social insects or nake mole rats, but they are sure that nations are organisms with rights and moral authority.
I wonder at what point during evolution human’s developed these obligations? When kings and dictators acquired devine rights? Given their concerns over soveignty perhaps we can only be sure that Castro, Chavez and Saddam have these rights.
wtf are you on about? humans and a good number of human ancestors and relatives are all herd animals; as such, human societies are as real as a herd of antelopes or a pack of wolves.
For those wise enough not to follow Ward’s link (@284), his “Law,” phrased similarly to Godwin’s Law, essentially asserts that the longer one talks to liberals about libertarianism, the more likely one is to be accused of being either naive or “morally corrupt” (I would’ve said “heartless” or “selfish” instead, but you get the point).
Actually, I agree as far as that goes.
But (of course) there’s more than one possible explanation for the observation contained in “Denker’s Law”: Ward clearly wants to suggest that we liberals are blinded by irrational bias, leading to an absurd and defamatory conclusion… but the Denker’s Law “truism” is equally well explained if the conclusions we come to are true. Or in any case true enough, often enough, to be a plausible supposition. It is my honest appraisal that the laissez-faire ideologies (whether self-identified as “libertarian” or not) typically touted around here almost always turn out, on careful inspection, to be rooted in a fundmental lack of empathy with those less fortunate. Whether that lack of empathy comes from lack of knowledge or lack of heart (or some combination of the two) varies from case to case, and is left as an exercise for the student.
Ward, notwithstanding your armwaving about how mean we were to you, several of us really tried (harder and for longer than you had any reason to expect, BTW) to engage your ideas rationally, and we tried equally hard to attribute what we saw as the failures of your ideas to the least damning of possible motives on your part. If that’s not good enough, then to quote a great (but fictional) president’s great (but fictional) dead secretary, “well, Hell, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.”
Dawwww. *pouts*
Dauphin@288,
How can something be rooted in “lack” of empathy or anything for that matter. The free market and libertarian methods are othogonal to empathy, but even so, often produce better results than the zero sum transfer payment thinking of progressives, that often destroy the incentive and consume the capital that will make for a better future in the long run.
Consider the “empathy” that the Soviet Union had for the people they kept poor. They subsidized bread and clothing at below market prices. Thus there were long lines for bread and new clothes were used as dish clothes.
Consider the nations that have good socialized medical systems. They reject most of the poor that want to micrate there. Too bad for them. Whereas the United States barely pays lip service to border control providing the more basic needs of food and shelter to millions of poor. Of course, the social democratic nations think it is shameful that the US doesn’t provide them with medical care also. But the US has already given them a living, why aren’t those nations doing their share, or are they geographical bigots?
A brilliantly succinct statement of precisely the point I and others have been making!
Damn! Somebody oughta’ put that on a t-shirt.
JohnQPublic, fuck off.
Dauphin@291,
I think you will find that socialism has a cold calculous as well. Giving medical treatment to the elderly isn’t “cost effective” for instance. Even though more frequent medical screening can save lives, socialized medicine weighs the benefits and opts for the most cost effective frequency. Some systems prevent the private purchase of more frequent screening, i.e., luxury medical care such as is available in the US. If purchases of luxury cars are allowed, why can’t someone spend their discretionary income on medical peace of mind instead. Socialist societies are often very restrictive of immigration, that’s not very empathetic.
Socialism isn’t an end, it is the means to Communism. Socialism is about teaching the citizens to become good communists- ie work for the benefit of all. Note that Marx called it dictatorship OF the proletariat, not BY them. Once society reaches a point where it self perpetuates this social empathy, then much of government becomes redundant, and withers. The compact is society will look after you, and you will contribute what you are able. This babble about ‘socialised medicine’ denying the old is a smoke screen. Where resources are limited then someone has to make decisions for society. You have one heart for transplant. Do you give it to the 20 year old or the 60 year old?
Of course what happened in the 20th century is brutal dictators used Socialism as a mask with which to hide their (non marxist) Autocracies
AG @282 – Clearly it wasn’t what I meant because it wasn’t what I asked. I asked ‘when’ because you made the distinction between ‘old enough to decide’ and ‘parents own their children’ and no-one shosld intervene to protect children from abuse.
Your remark about ‘nake[d] mole rats’ and ‘extended families’ shows your double standard. All humans are extended family. You appear to be drawing a line that most favours child abuse.
Well, here’s the problem: if you propose to take the authority for a child’s medical care from the parent and give it to an agency of the state, you’re trusting that the state in question will make better decisions than the parent.
Now, what if that state is South Africa, which has killed a hell of a lot of people by pursuing quackery instead of effective AIDS treatments? What if the state is the Soviet Union, which embraced lunacy like Lysenkoism?
For that matter, what if the state is the USA, where the population is so poorly educated that a scarily large percentage of them are creationists and think that HPV vaccine will cause immoral behavior? Do you trust that the number of pro-vaccination voters will exceed the anti-vaccination voters indefinitely?
Parents are fallible, but they have a unique interest in preserving their child’s health which the state doesn’t share. I say, leave that authority with the parents, unless you can convince a jury in each individual case that the parent is showing depraved indifference towards the child’s safety.
-jcr
It is my honest appraisal that the laissez-faire ideologies (whether self-identified as “libertarian” or not) typically touted around here almost always turn out, on careful inspection, to be rooted in a fundmental lack of empathy with those less fortunate.
That is a rather vicious smear.
I could just as well say that statist ideologies are rooted in a desire for power, cloaked in a pretense of compassion.
I advocate laissez-fair policies for many reasons, and the primary one is utilitarian: the wealthier any country is, the better off everyone in it is. An American laborer who loses a job suffers great inconvenience. A third-world laborer who loses a job might starve to death.
-jcr
It might surprise you, but I do find insurance problematic for the free market, since insurance companies most like to insure the people that don’t need it.
We do not have a free market for insurance. We have a highly-regulated insurance market, with regulations mostly written by insurance industry lawyers, to favor the larger companies and raise barriers to entry by new competitors.
Insurance worked quite well for the customers and underwriters at Lloyds for a couple of centuries before the crown got involved in regulating them.
I sketched out an idea for micro-syndication of insurance in an online market a few years back when a lot of people here in Silicon Valley were thinking about micropayment systems. Basically, it would be similar to Lloyd’s, except that it would be open to anyone who could put up a hundred bucks in cash to open an underwriting account, and it would handle consumer-level policies like auto collision and fire insurance.
There would be a lot of benefits to such a market (not the least of which would be greatly increased competition and lower costs for insurance buyers), but it’s probably impossible under current laws in the USA.
-jcr
For the most part, I do. I think that people are getting less ignorant over time, not more, at least in the overall trend.
Also, this line of argument can easily be extended to any aspect of the state’s authority, though. You’re arguing, in essence, that the state should not be able to pass any laws at all because it may pass ones you don’t agree with. (Well, it already has, no doubt.)
The problem is, the fallout from not vaccinating your kids can affect my kids, too. I don’t see how mandating vaccinations is any different than mandating traffic laws. I agree with your approach in general, but it falls apart in my mind when some other parent’s stubborn ignorance can give my baby niece measles.
I wish I could say that better education is the answer — and it should certainly be encouraged — but there will always be intractably stupid people around.
Exactly !
And thats why vaccination needs to be regulated and mandated,like sending you child to school(well,in the first world anyway),because otherwise the lunatics fuck it up for everyone else.
@ 283,
I have seen 3 or 4 cases of whooping cough in adults last year,and I have the dubious honor of being the one doctor to diagnose the first case of Diphtheria in an adult in Australia since 1991.
Anti-vaccinationists need to be held responsible for the damage they inflict not only on their children,but on society.
@clinteas: Diphtheria? Oh yuck. Definitely a very dubious honor, because if it was seen in one, you know there are more out there who have not been diagnosed.
I had what turned out to be whooping cough a few years ago. Coughing until you throw up is not fun. Sore ribs from coughing are not fun. I couldn’t speak 3 words in succession without triggering a coughing fit.
A friend of mine, who developed pertussis last year, broke 2 ribs coughing. Neither of us were diagnosed until several weeks into the disease, because our doctors had no reference point, and only made the diagnosis based on the “100 day cough” we ended up with. (In fact, I suggested to my friend she be checked for pertussis, since I had been through my session, and after much fussing, her MD did and treated her.)
I can easily see how an infant or toddler could suffer lasting effects or die from this disease. Since speaking triggered coughing fits, an infant or toddler who communicates basically through crying would be in a lot of trouble. And they don’t have the reserves I had as an adult.
Clinteas is right. We cannot let “the lunatics fuck it up for everyone”
I think libertarians like to use phrases like ‘the state’ and ‘statis’ as pejorative. As I said before; we are all ‘extended family’.
providing the more basic needs of food and shelter to millions of poor.
I’m sorry, where do you see the US doing that??
Eddie@295,
I honestly found your earlier post confusing.
Yes, I do think the dangers of a government that can prevent most child abuse and can impose vaccination greater than the problems they use as an excuse for their power grabs. When progressives are around, our children become the greatest threat to our freedom. Where is the evidence that sufficient herd immunity can’t be achieved by voluntary means and incentives alone? Why is the threshold for coercion so low and the arrogance to presume to run the lives of others so high among progressives?
Yes, the effective population size of humanity is only on the order of 10,000 and even lower outside of Africa. But that is a long way from what it takes to support a social insect or naked mole rat type of social organization.
There is even a hypothesis that one of the reasons for the small effective population size is that for most of modern human evolution, we did not consider each other extended family. It make be ugly but we have to face it.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/108/2?etoc
clinteas@301,
I’m surprised at how rare your clinical experience of whooping cough is. It should be suspected in most cases of persistent cough in children and adults. Perhaps it is rarely serious enough to prompt an emergency room visit. Given, the ineffectiveness of vaccination, perhaps there needs to be more research tracking different antigenic strains ala influenza, or perhaps drugs need to be developed instead of vaccines.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7560/174
Vicious smear? Comments like this, and all the handwringing over “civility” in a couple other ongoing threads, makes me wonder exactly how thin our skins have gotten. Disagreement — even profound, heartfelt disagreement — is, per se, neither vicious nor uncivil.
Maybe the problem is that nobody expects others to use language precisely anymore: By “empathy,” I don’t mean “saintly goodness” or even “compassion”; I mean the ability to understand things from the perspective of others. I assert that approaches based on the premise that we don’t need social support institutions because individuals have all the freedom of choice they need to enable free-market solutions to social problems fail to recognize that many in our society do not possess adequate effective freedom of choice to enable these solutions. It may not be true of the white-collar middle class (esp. those in that class who don’t have financial dependents), but the choices available to many others are constrained by external factors that are either entirely outside their control or effectively so. If your preferred “operating system” for society assumes adequate freedom of choice for everyone, I assert without apology that your model is based on a lack of empathy.
Now, that’s not necessarily any “smear” at all, let alone a vicious one: People can be wrong about stuff for all sorts of relatively forgivable reasons, and many lack empathy for the less fortunate simply because they lack knowledge or experience (and of who among us has that not been true, on some issue or another?). If, OTOH, you (that’s the generic second person pronoun, jcr, not necessarily you personally) promote a model that works for you even though you know it doesn’t work for your fellows, just because you got yours and you don’t want to share… well, calling you out on that might well be a “vicious smear”… but in that case, you might deserve some smearing.
I think you’re underestimating the “inconvenience” of being unemployed in America. Further, I suspect you and I might prefer different standards for measuring how wealthy a country is: I would agree that a rising tide (i.e., broadly shared prosperity) lifts all boats; the effects of a tsunami (i.e., the accumulation of vast wealth within a narrow slice of the population) might be less salutary. It doesn’t seem likely to me that laissez-faire approaches produce the sort of broadly shared wealth we need; in fact, recent events suggest rather the opposite.
Besides, if you listen to negentropyeater, we’re just around the corner for being a third world (or worse) nation ourselves; might as well get ahead of the curve while we can, no?
Finally…
Of course not: As Jadehawk pointed out way upthread, insurance is by design not a free market. It is, to use Jadehawk’s phrase, “the socialization of risk,” or, looked at another way, the redistribution (ooh, that word!) of wealth from those who have more than they need to cover their risk to those who have less than they need.
The difference between private and public insurance is that the former skims profit off the top of the redistributed wealth, often (if not always) to the detriment of those at most risk.
Dauphin@307,
Why do you assume that people don’t have adequate effection freedom of choice? Their parents evidently had survival skills in an even more problematic environment. Why are they entitled to complain when with all the benefits of public education and libraries, they still can’t compete with 50 cent per day illiterate laborers in the third world, yet they are surviving just fine. They were probably the ones calling us nerds, and now you feel sorry for them because they still want to drink beer and watch football on Sunday’s rather than read journals and prepare for their next career. The problem is they are probably being convinced by society that they are the losers, when in reality, they may have had twice the children, and far fewer worries. It is only the materialists that think we should have empathy for them.
Empathy is perhaps best expressed by the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You know, it wasn’t the Christians that invented this.
I don’t assume they don’t; I have observed that many (obviously not all) don’t.
Your hypothesis that people do have adequate freedom of choice1 fails, it appears to me, the evidenciary test.
Fair enough… but I can’t help wondering how that translates into the “every man for himself” sorts of ideologies that so frequently show up in these comments threads. As for me, what I would have others do, and what I strive to do myself, is work to lift up the entire society, including even its lowest members (and even those who might be individually undeserving), for the benefit of us all. And lest you think I’m unwilling to put my money where my mouth is, that includes things like taking no extraordinary steps to avoid reasonable taxation and voting in favor of well-funded town budgets (the town is the only level at which I get a direct vote on budgets), even when I know it means I will pay more taxes.
1 And the corrollary hypothesis that those who don’t appear to have such freedom are lazy slackers or anti-intellectual clods. There’s more than a whiff of old grudges in your examples, it seems to me.
Randolph@298,
That micro-syndication sounds interesting. Are you aware of anything going on in that area now. I’m sorry to admit it but I think a gas tax based, limited liability no-fault insurance is probably better than what we have now. But the lawyers will resist it.
Dauphin,
Yes, there might be some old grudges there. I was being taxed to support the tranmission of the genes of others while, while deferring my own reproduction until I could reponsibly afford children. I think I could have afforded them sooner if not for that extra burden. And yes, a cheerleader or two would have been nice.
I like Bill Dauphin’s Tsunami comparison. there’s a good reason that there’s storm warnings before storms, and wave-breakers (fuck if i kno what the correct English term for them is) in harbors: while massive storm waves will do little to no damage to the Queen Elizabeth II, small sailing and fishing boats will be sunk. even those “rising tides” are controlled to protect the weaker boats!
and we can see an economic example of that from the recent crisis. just compare Iceland and Denmark: one soared and crashed, the other slowly continues to climb upwards
also, AG’s statement that socialist countries are mean to immigrants is the height of historical and demographic ignorance. of course it must be socialism that causes strict immigration laws, not the fact that the U.S. have from its inception been an low population, resource rich immigration-based country (and has actually increasingly restricted immigration), while Europe is overpopulated, and that in the past (you know, before socialism) this has resulted in mass-emigration, while more recently opening its borders to immigration. the only place you can fairly compare with the U.S. in matters of space-per-person, climate, and resources is Russia, and no one in their right mind will argue with you that the place has been mismanaged for centuries.
AG:
I glossed over this…
…but on further review, I must politely call bullshit. I don’t pretend to know your personal situation, but in the U.S. you typically get taxed for three reasons: You make a nontrivial amount of money (federal and/or state income tax); you own real estate (property tax); or you spend money (sales tax). For any combination of these conditions that adds up to a total tax liability worth bitching about, it strikes me as highly unlikely that you genuinely couldn’t afford a child. Further, since adding dependents to your household gives you both exemptions and deductions from your taxable income, it’s usually true that having a child reduces your taxes.
I suppose it’s not impossible to imagine a situation in which taxation truly is “the straw that broke the camel’s back” WRT having kids, but it seems likely to be both extremely rare and, in any one family’s life, very brief in duration.
Dauphin, Your right, it probably wasn’t as causal as it was unfair. regards
O RLY
ever heard of Nylonase?
Jadehawk, what are you doing over here by yourself. Oh, I see, mucking up behind he who has been banned for stupidity, Insipidity, slagging and morphing. PZ clean-up is aisle 5. Patricia, get the trebuchet and big shovel.
i like how it mutates with every post…
Jadehawk,
Ignore shtann/stan/supersport/etc. – he’s the worst kind of goalpost-moving ignorant troll. He’s been given hundreds (if not thousands) of examples (on this blog and others) to answer his stupid question but he never reads any of them because he is a) incapable of comprehending the content and b) unwilling to learn anything.
He seems to believe that evolutionary theory postulates modern species developing radical changes overnight – if it takes any longer than that it must be the ‘modification of an existing function’ and not a ‘real mutation’ at all. That no-one has ever described evolution of being capable of this is the stuffing in his strawman.
PZ’s banned him numerous times.
oh fine *pout* but there just aren’t any good trolls around lately…
Ishtanbul(Not Constantinople) sure is obsessed with this site.
Stanass, it is not that any does not dare. It is that no one cares. I am kind of surprised that Nerd did not say this so I will say it for him. If you have something that is so hot and will stand up to scrutiny, do not just have just a blog. Put it up to peer review.
Judging from your bit about bacteria morphing into a human, I think it is safe to say that I have a better grasp of biology then you do. But I am hopeful that if you wish hard enough, you can morph from a troll into a human.
Happy monkey.
Until then, get over yourself. And take this site off of your bookmark.
Jadehawk, we cannot always have a Grade A troll wondering around. I said before but I will repeat it. I really enjoyed your ripping apart that asshole the other day. Thank you.
now i’m gonna have that song stuck in my head for the rest of the evening! :-p
yeah, that johnny was a rare one: short, novel and fun
I would say that at five percent of the time I am up, I have Birdhouse In Your Soul playing in my head.
i rarely get earworms, but one one sticks, i can’t get them out of my head for hours. luckily, the boyfriend’s punk music doesn’t stick well, and removes all earworm residue from my brain
Janine, thanks for adding the “write the paper” to the troll. I had to run off and pick up the Redhead from the opera, which meant driving into the city, so I was a little rushed.