Crossing my desk is a petition from Change.org:
Kill the Bill H.R. 2232 (114th Congress) “Vaccinate All Children Act of 2015”
A petition to not force parents to have their children vaccinated. This controversy has been bubbling along for years, but it’s instructive to decompose a petition for insight into at least one objector’s reasoning. The contents of the petition are as follows, somewhat abbreviated (misspellings retained):
>This bill is a violation of a number of our natural, God given rights protected by the Constitution.
–Since no provision is given in this bill for religious exemption, the first right infringed upon is the right to the free exercise of religion. For those who believe, according to their religion, that putting certain substances into their bodies is sinful, to have that mandated by the government without possibility of exemption, is a clear and direct violation of this first amendment right. …
However, all rights are limited. Religious rights, for example, do not include the right to human or animal sacrifice.
–This bill violates the fourth amendment right of the people to be secure in their persons…and other natural rights as covered in the ninth amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Two points. First, the minor point of slipping in the phrase “natural rights”. There really is no such thing. There are simply the rights negotiated between the governors and the governed; they are arrived at through mediation, laws, riots, wars, etc.
Secondly, and more importantly, is the refusal to recognize that the fourth amendment applies to everyone, and is in itself, because of this requirement, a limited right. Let us honestly assess reality: we are not independent islands, inviolably separate from each other. Along with voluntary bonds which we often assume with each other through association, contract, and other forms, there are also the involuntary bonds over which we have no control, as we share the resources of this reality, amongst which we can enumerate air and water. Because of these involuntary bonds through which pathogens travel, we are vulnerable to the illnesses of the age: mumps, measles, etc. — their names are legion.
When I say the Fourth Amendment applies to everyone, I mean that I and my progeny have an equal right to protection under the Amendment, and that protection, in my case, is from easily propagated disease. Here we see the tension to which I alluded: I do not wish to become infected with a pathogen which can cause severe damage or death, yet is easily negated. The author of the petition does not wish to accept the vaccination. The tension comes in the fact that we have unavoidably shared resources (air, water. etc.) through which many pathogens travel to infect a new victim.
How to resolve this tension? The petitioner calls for a religious exemption; but such an exemption leaves all unvaccinated persons carrying the entire burden of their exemption. These may be partially enumerated: other users of the exemption, infants too young to be vaccinated, other persons to whom the vaccination may be dangerous (typically, people with repressed immune systems, less likely would be a negative response to the agent, or possibly the very aged). The ideal of a safe and prosperous society is therefore endangered, so a religious exemption is in doubt.
Further, and as an agnostic, I suggest that realizing that science does not sanction absolute doubt as to the administration of vaccination agents must take precedence over religious doubts. Insofar as the medicine is evidence-based, (i.e., based in science, which is the study of reality) it should move us toward the short-term tangible goal of a happier society. Religious exemptions are inevitably based on faith, which by definition, has little basis in reality. Given the stronger call that science has on being correct, I believe a religious exemption is inappropriate.
–Another of those natural rights is the rights of parents to raise their children in the way they believe to be best. This bill, among many other activities in recent decades, seeks to erode the foundational unit of any nation, the family, and diminish the importance of the individual in favor of the state. Parents, not the government, have the natural right given by our Creator, to raise their children by virtue of being the ones to have conceived and given birth to, or adopted them.
I take offense at the suggestion that this bill “seeks to erode the foundational unit of any nation”. It should be obvious that a family wracked by death due to avoidable disease is not a functional family; beset by grief and loss of resources (i.e., mother, father, children), it is ENDANGERED by this petition, not strengthened. The petitioner should be embarrassed to have even written this paragraph; instead, it reads as one of the virulent anti-government memes spread by fringe thinkers (of virtually any particular political stripe).
On a lesser note, the suggestion that a couple of 20 year olds have enough knowledge and wisdom to raise a child wisely is laughable on its face. In an uncorrupt world, the government constitutes a collection of settled decisions from which parents can take direction on subjects outside of easy comprehension: medicine, for example. Even in our world, parents, young and old, should understand that they do not have any sort of claim of unlimited knowledge; qualified help should be welcomed, and admissions of ignorance, not to mention bewilderment and frustration, are not a sign of weakness, but of strength. Any other sort of attitude smacks of unwarranted pride regressive to one’s reputation – not to mention the overall health of one’s children.
2> This bill holds states hostage in terms of funding, forcing already financially strapped educational institutions to choose between equitable education for their students and holding to values their individual communities believe. It is essentially using our children as a bargaining tool for political maneuvering and increasing government control of the people.
Or, sometimes folks are stubborn in the face of reason and need to be whacked upside the head.
3> The federal government (and this should apply to all governments) was intended to be a negative force, protecting the rights of one entity (especially individuals) from violation by another entity. The government was not established and should not exist as a positive force requiring action on the part of individuals that has nothing to do with ceasing to violate the rights of another.
This sounds good until an analysis of the situation, in-depth, is presented, as above, and then we realize this simply evaporates into the air that destroys it, as in the common resource through which pathogens are communicated.
As a general philosophy, I think addressing this is outside of the scope of this posting. But, briefly, as a simple post facto finding, the US government has long functioned as a positive force in the area of scientific and technological development through the funding of basic research. Without such funding, we’d still be riding horses and maybe using a telegraph once a year, despite the claims of libertarians of the free market cure-all (I speak as a reader of REASON Magazine for 20+ years). Also consider the thoughts presented a few moments ago on the function of government in an incorrupt world, as I think it gives a different way to consider government in a world where institutions are cooperatively designed and used, rather than coercively applied.
4> The exception for child’s health as outlined in the bill is not sufficient. It reads, “certifying that, in the physician’s opinion, the physical condition of the student is such that the student’s health would be endangered by the vaccination involved; and demonstrating (to the satisfaction of the individual in charge of the health program at the student’s school) that the physician’s opinion conforms to the accepted standard of medical care.”
–Many Physician’s are unaware of the the adverse reaction’s risk of those with certain genetic mutations, such as MTFHR that comes with significant risk as sited by Pubmed.
No comment. It sounds like an objection on medical grounds, and I’ll leave that to the professionals.
–An Allopathic Doctor’s philosophy on medicine and healing is directly tied to the Pharmaceutical companies that manufacture prescriptions and vaccines since their human resource representatives educate them directly on which prescriptions to use and how often to administer vaccines. Their lack of agreeing upon risk factors is biased. A Naturopathic Doctor should be a viable opinion as well. The revolving door between the CDC and the Pharmaceutical Industries is transparent and a conflict of interest related to public health.
This, on the other hand, is a dig at mainstream medicine. From Wikipedia:
Allopathic medicine is an expression commonly used by homeopaths and proponents of other forms of alternative medicine to refer to mainstream medical use of pharmacologically active agents or physical interventions to treat or suppress symptoms or pathophysiologic processes of diseases or conditions.
The petitioners have an opinion; they find that mainstream medicine threatens the validity of that opinion– rather than examine the reasons for mainstream medicine’s critique of their opinion, they instead indulge in a form of ad hominem argument as old as the hills. The petitioners may actually believe it, as any argument confirming their bias, reasonable or unreasonable, is naturally more welcome than a challenging opinion.
But the simple fact of the matter is that an ad hominem argument, with little supporting evidence, is not valid. Worse yet, the rise of evidence-based medicine, even as haphazard as it sometimes appears, and the number of maladies that have gone from terrifying reality to historical curiosity, should confirm to the most casual observer that there really is something to “allopathic medicine” – and the relentless failures of “alternative medicine”, concealed and explained away as they may be, should be taken as a caution. With regard to the latter point, I will lend a sympathetic ear, as the proper evaluation of therapies is difficult at best; attempting to evaluate therapies on the order of, say, prayer therapy (from The Skeptic’s Dictionary) is very, very hard.
5> The wording in the bill “to the satisfaction of the individual in charge of the health program at the student’s school” gives the school nurse more power than the licensed Physician that has a more thorough knowledge of each child’s health history. It is also a conflict of interest which places pressure upon the school nurse to dismiss validated concerns for vaccine injury in order to obtain funding for the school and possibly retain their position and means to earn a living.
Without being completely familiar with 42 U.S.C. 247b, the law that this bill amends, it’s difficult to speak with confidence. I’ll note, however, that the law should not permit the administration of vaccines that do have “validated concerns”. This may be the paragraph of concern:
“(C) demonstrating (to the satisfaction of the individual in charge of the health program at the student’s school) that the physician’s opinion conforms to the accepted standard of medical care.
This may be seen as tying school medical personnel to accepted medical procedures, which are unacceptable when one’s opinion of those procedures is negative.
In general, any epidemiologist will testify that vaccines have been one of the greatest advances in the history of health care, but they are not perfect – like all human endeavors. That they are not perfect is not a reason for rejecting them, especially as they are the best we have for protecting the greater community.
