Jeez, I've seem more intelligent posts from Dayton. I sort of feel embarrassed for you right now. I post pro-vaccine link after pro-vaccine link - both pro-vaccine science and pro-compulsory vaccine. I have not posted anything in defense of anti-vaccination. While y'all go on and on about how libertarians are anti-vaccine without giving the slightest nod to to the fact that there are significant libertarian arguments totally in favor of vaccines. Because that would disrupt your flimsy narrative about libertarians. And you call me "defender of anti-vax". Fool.
You haven't figured out that's their style? I mean after years of watching them argue against the version of conservatives that pretty much only exists in their heads?
Yeah, I think gul must have misread some posts. Captain X is the only idiot here against mandatory vaccinations.
Ah, you missed the point, then. When you put words in somebody's mouth that they haven't said, you look silly. So when you get defensive about people saying something that hasn't been said (namely that all libertarians are anti-vaxers), you look kind of silly. I was using your playbook in that response. Get it now? As for my original point, I'll add this -- if you are a libertarian, why aren't you against mandatory vaccination? That's what the discussion ought to cover. You are pro-vaccination. Does that mean everybody must be vaccinated? Or are you fine with that being a matter of personal choice? If the former, how do you square that with libertarian views? See, this doesn't have to be yet another me/you, us/them discussion, but you've gotten defensive about something nobody said. And since you didn't like it when I responded as if you had said something you didn't, maybe we can agree to set aside those assumptions. So here's the question boiled down: can a libertarian support mandatory vaccination?
For goodness sakes just stop it. You said it was the ultimate libertarian platform. If you didn't mean it, then you should have said something else. No, you got caught with egg on your face and are now backtracking. That has already been answered by self identified libertarians in this thread. Do you not read what people write or are you so ignorant and blind in your idealogy that you can't comprehend answers when they are laying in front of you?
I did mean it. That does not mean that libertarians need to be anti-vax, but they should be honest enough to acknowledge that libertarianism doesn't work in this example. Or, like Paladin did for a while, they can try to argue that it does. What they should not do, is ignore that point, instead focusing only on whether vaccination works. Prufrock keeps saying he believes it works, I agree, so where does he stand on mandating vaccination? Does he say yes, or does he believe that anti-vaxers should have the right to pursue a path that harms others? No, because Prufrock has ignored the key point. He doesn't want to address the dilemma that strict libertarian philosophy supports the anti-vax movement (regardless of his personal vaccination choices). Instead, he has pretended that I have stated that libertarians don't believe in vaccination. Nobody has said that. If he can't discuss what has been said, why shouldn't I similarly make a false statement about what has said? If he doesn't like it, then he should stop doing the same. Answered by some, not by him. Or did you not read what he has been saying, which amounts to this: If you don't see how that might mean he supports anti-vaxers, you are pretty stupid.
I suppose you could argue that "strict libertarian philosophy" is "no rules, no regulation, no nuthin'," but outside of one or two of our resident lunatics, most people don't take it to that extreme. "Libertarian" the way sane people describe it means a point that's further toward the anti-regulation end of the spectrum than many other people, but still not a complete absence of government.
Libertarians believe that the government shouldn't be able to force people into taking part in vaccine trials to see if they are safe and effective, and that the free-market should be used instead, with drug companies offering money to individuals to take part in such studies voluntarily.
Yeah, but Captain X is also fine with requiring them for school, and if you don't want to go to public school, you can skip getting vaccinated.
Yes, but that usually ends up as a qualitative distinction between positively harming others, which government can step in to stop, and any kind of obligation to positively do something to help others, which government mustn't force you to accept, according to many Libertarians. Getting vaccinated is a positive action, not an avoidance of actively harming others; which is why some of the arguments against forced vaccination in this thread instead argue that government should keep unvaccinated people away from some public places, hindering them from doing something that hurts others rather than forcing them to do something that protects others.
Here's something we should be ashamed of. So, while the US has gone from zero measles cases in 2000 to over 100 in 2015, parts of Africa have gone from a 39% immunization rate to about a 100% immunization rate. Lesotho, which is basically the South African version of an Indian reservation, has a higher rate of vaccination than the US. I'd be willing to bet that most of you have never even heard of Lesotho until now. (I've known about it for a while, but only because I worked at a distribution center for The Gap, and saw "Made in Lesotho" on some boxes and decided to look the country up because I'd never heard of it.)
You do know that most childhood immunizations are given in the first year? How would you secure an infant's permission?
One would think Internetarians would be all over that. Actually, that may be a factor in their OUTRAGE!!!! "Waaah, Mommy let them stick needles in me and it hurted!!!!"
I would be surprised if someone HADN'T heard of Lesotho. Shit, didn't you people have to take world geography in 6th grade?
Well, we had geography sections from 3rd to 5th grade and mandi tory geography classes in both 6th and 7th. They were mostly physical geography (name states/countries and their capitals, placing them on the map, etc...) but they later got into cultural geography and even a bit on history and politics. This was in addition to the regular history stuff. There was lots of label the map sort of stuff where you had to label countries, mountain ranges, islands, rivers, and other geographic features along with naming the capital of Romania or what not.
Most adults aren't the ones who need to get vaccinated. We are talking about children and, yes, the State should intervine when retarded parents put the lives of children unnecisarially at risk especially when their decisions start risking the lives of other people's children. We have child protective services for a good reason.
Daily Mail article about a Utah family that's being bullied because one of their kids is unvaccinated, as three of their other children had a severe vaccine reaction.
That would be the parents' permission you need in that case, just like every other medical or legal decision that involves minors.
If you didn't have a reaction to the vaccine, then it didn't do anything. Some people have bad reactions, which is why we have the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. According to the CDC, the measles vaccine kills about 10 American children a year, and leaves 200 disabled, whereas no American children have died from measles in the past 10 years. Part of maintaining the herd immunity is that some of the weak will perish.
Stop. Lying. The CDC actually says that while there have been reports of serious injuries caused by reaction, they are so rare that no causality can be established. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/mmr.html#risks
Did you even read your link? Several other severe problems have been reported after a child gets MMR vaccine, including Deafness Long-term seizures, coma, or lowered consciousness Permanent brain damage Coma, retardation, permanent brain damage, and deafness. Of course all the children recover from a coma, because all comas end in recovery... So yes, the vaccine probably kills about 10 kids a year, and permanently disables many more. That's just bad luck. Vaccines are vastly better than letting a vicious disease run rampant, but they aren't magic fairy dust. They use dead or weakened versions of lethal pathogens to try to illicit an effective immune response. There are some children whose immune systems can't cope with much of anything, and who get overwhelmed even by a weakened version of a sometimes lethal virus, while other kids' immune systems just freak out and go haywire. Pretending this doesn't happen just undermines you position. Medical science says that such children shouldn't be immunized because they're highly unlikely to be exposed to the pathogen in a population that is overwhelmingly immunized against it, and that even if they were, they'd be unlikely to pass it to another non-immunized individual. If you're worried about a disease for which a vaccine is available, get immunized, but there are a whole lot of diseases for which a vaccine isn't available. On top of that, there are only a limited number of diseases against which you can be vaccinated before your immune system starts having profound problems, because you cells don't have access to "The Cloud". Some of the Soviet bio-weapons researchers were vaccinated against so many lethal threats that their immune systems basically broke down, with too many threats to keep track of. Ken Abilek, the head of their program, testified before Congress that we can't immunize US troops against all potential biological threats because the vaccines would do more damage than the bio-weapons, and that further progress lay in the area of anti-viral medications such as we use against AIDS.
the full quote is: Serious allergic reaction (less than 1 out of a million doses) Several other severe problems have been reported after a child gets MMR vaccine, including: Deafness Long-term seizures, coma, or lowered consciousness Permanent brain damage These are so rare that it is hard to tell whether they are caused by the vaccine. Your myopic distortion of a quote is quite educational though, please continue.
