Posted on 02/05/2015 8:26:56 AM PST by Kaslin
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie unwittingly ignited a firestorm earlier this week when he responded to a reporter's question in Great Britain about forced vaccinations of children in New Jersey by suggesting that the law in the U.S. needs to balance the rights of parents against the government's duty to maintain standards of public health.
Before Christie could soften the tone of his use of the word "balance," Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul jumped into the fray to support the governor. In doing so, he made a stronger case for the rights of parents by advancing the view that all vaccines do not work for all children and the ultimate decision-maker should be parents and not bureaucrats or judges. He argued not for balance, but for bias -- in favor of parents.
When Christie articulated the pro-balance view, he must have known that New Jersey law, which he enforces, has no balance, shows no deference to parents' rights and permits exceptions to universal vaccinations only for medical reasons (where a physician certifies that the child will get sicker because of a vaccination) or religious objections. Short of those narrow reasons, in New Jersey, if you don't vaccinate your children, you risk losing parental custody of them.
The science is overwhelming that vaccinations work for most children most of the time. Paul, who is a physician, said, however, he knew of instances in which poorly timed vaccinations had led to mental disorders. Yet, he was wise enough to make the pro-freedom case, and he made it stronger than Christie did.
To Paul, the issue is not science. That's because in a free society, we are free to reject scientific orthodoxy and seek unorthodox scientific cures. Of course, we do that at our peril if our rejection of truth and selection of alternatives results in harm to others.
The issue, according to Paul, is: WHO OWNS YOUR BODY? This is a question the government does not want to answer truthfully, because if it does, it will sound like Big Brother in George Orwell's novel "1984." That's because the government believes it owns your body.
Paul and no less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court have rejected that concept. Under the natural law, because you retain the rights inherent in your birth that you have not individually given away to government, the government does not own your body. Rather, you do. And you alone can decide your fate with respect to the ingestion of medicine. What about children? Paul argues that parents are the natural and legal custodians of their children's bodies until they reach maturity or majority, somewhere between ages 14 and 18, depending on the state of residence.
What do the states have to do with this? Under our Constitution, the states, and not the federal government, are the guardians of public health. That is an area of governance not delegated by the states to the feds. Of course, you'd never know this to listen to the debate today in which Big Government politicians, confident in the science, want a one-size-fits-all regimen.
No less a champion of government in your face than Hillary Clinton jumped into this debate with a whacky Tweet that argued that because the Earth is round and the sky is blue and science is right, all kids should be vaccinated. What she was really saying is that in her progressive worldview, the coercive power of the federal government can be used to enforce a scientific orthodoxy upon those states and individuals who intellectually reject it.
In America, you are free to reject it.
Clinton and her Big Government colleagues would be wise to look at their favorite Supreme Court decision: Roe v. Wade. Yes, the same Roe v. Wade that 42 years ago unleashed 45 million abortions also defines the right to bear and raise children as fundamental, and thus personal to parents, and thus largely immune from state interference and utterly immune from federal interference.
Paul's poignant question about who owns your body -- and he would be the first to tell you that this is not a federal issue -- cannot be ignored by Christie or Clinton or any other presidential candidate. If Paul is right, if we do own our bodies and if we are the custodians of our children's bodies until they reach maturity, then we have the right to make health care choices free from government interference, even if our choices are grounded in philosophy or religion or emotion or alternative science.
But if Paul is wrong, if the government owns our bodies, then the presumption of individual liberty guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution has been surreptitiously discarded, and there will be no limit to what the government can compel us to do or to what it can extract from us -- in the name of science or any other of its modern-day gods.
(Just posted this on Facebook to a suitable argument)
The issue is that those choosing to not vaccinate are relying on the vaccinated around them to prevent exposure to the disease, thus enjoying the benefits of mass inoculation and avoiding individual risk from vaccination ... but that ideal condition collapses, lethally, when too many people choose it.
Let’s talk measles. I’ll talk fatalities to keep the numbers simple, but other casualties are proportional.
With no mass vaccination, measles has repeatedly killed (!) around 30% of identifiable populations throughout history. MILLIONS DIED.
With mass vaccination, measles has been reduced to a 0.3% fatality rate.
Yes, the vaccine is not completely harmless. <0.0001% of measles vaccinations prove fatal. Horrible when it does happen, yes.
Those choosing to not vaccinate because of the risks of vaccination are seeking to enjoy the benefit of the vaccinated population at large reducing measles fatalities to 0.3% _AND_ avoid being one of those <0.0001% of fatalities caused by vaccination. Best of both worlds ... IF they’re essentially the only ones unvaccinated amid the vaccinated. It’s a VERY attractive position to take.
UNFORTUNATELY ... If the number of those unvaccinated rises to a critical mass - a surprisingly small percentage of the population dissenting plus those immunocompromised by other diseases - the disease can find a vector thru the population and FATALITY RATES EXPLODE BECAUSE PEOPLE CHOSE NOT TO VACCINATE. If you start hanging around like-minded anti-vaccination folks, you are CREATING THE LETHAL DISEASE VECTOR: one kid gets sick, they all get sick (measles is very contagious), many get very sick, and odds are distressingly high that at least one of them will DIE.
I don’t recall ever having Chickenpox and few years ago a doctor at the Blanchfield Army Community Hospital (BACH) at Fort Campbell, Ky forced me to get the Shingles shot. Guess what, I got the Shingles from the shot. Talk about someone being angry (I)
The fact is if you had the Measles as a child or were vaccinated against it you will not catch it again, the same with Mumps. That does not mean that your children can not get them
I did a quick check of my pocket constitution and could not find the word “vaccination”.
If you walk through an old cemetery you’ll see many graves of infants who died before they were one year old. That doesn’t happen anymore. Diphtheria,Typhus and Pertussis once killed millions. Today they have been practically eradicated. Make sure your children get their shots. We don’t want to go back to the days where we buried so many infants.
There, fixed it for ya.
Now you are being silly. I would not be around if I had not survived the measles *rme*
I HATE Government corruption. This issue is a great example of corruption and cover up. The CDC continues the mantra, vaccinate your children, immediately if not sooner yet they refuse to investigate/study the increasing rates of Autism and vaccine injury. Then the pundits and doctors continue to promote the CDC Vaccinate Mantra without even knowing that the CDC is negligent in their job to protect the recipients of these Vaccinations.
I also worry about the increased number of vaccines being recommended by the CDC. Especially a recommendation to vaccinate newborn babies for Hep B when most Newborns are not even at risk for Hep B.
Following is excerpt from CDC Whistleblower William Thompson
“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-AUGUST 27,2014
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. THOMPSON, Ph.D., REGARDING THE 2004 ARTICLE EXAMINING THE POSSIBILITY OF A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM
My name is William Thompson. I am a Senior Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where I have worked since 1998.
I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”
It wasn’t just this one paper, either: Other statements attributed to Dr. Thompson include:
“I have a boss who’s asking me to lie...Higher ups wanted to do certain things and I went along with it. In terms of command, I was 4 out of 5.”
“...the effect [autism] is where you would think it would happen. It is with the kids without other conditions [”isolated autism”]...I’m just looking at this and I’m like ‘Oh my God....I cannot believe we did what we did...but we did [bury the data on these children]...It’s all there...It’s all there. I have handwritten notes.’”
Lots of info on this here too: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1164794
Who is the moderator? And why is he/she deleting any and all reasonable responses to this article????
The simple solution for that seems to be for you to go get vaccinated.
(Wow, what happened at 3, 7, and 9?)
Oh, I’ve got the knack for being silly AND serious at the same time.
Don’t worry! MEASLES won’t kill you! Here is proof!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19633516
“The imported epidemics of infections including measles diminished Hawaii’s population from approximately 300,000 at Captain Cook’s arrival in 1778 to 135,000 in 1820 and 53,900 in 1876.
The measles deaths of the king and queen in London in 1824, likely acquired visiting a large children’s home, was a harbinger of the devastating impact of measles upon Hawaiians 24 years later with its first arrival to the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands.”
WOOPS! I WAS WRONG! Get vaccinated DUM BASSES!
Is age the issue?
it seems the dispute is raised over the 12 month age of the infant. Why not just wait to two or three or even four years old? Does that matter?
Largest recent measles outbreak was in Ohio’s Amish country, where 383 people fell ill after unvaccinated Amish missionaries traveled to the Philippines and returned with the virus.
The Amish.
Something like 700 people among 300+ million, were reported to have measles as the govt said Measles is eradicated. Now we have 100 more added, it is a problem?
Maybe we should quarantine visitors for the length needed to ascertain they are disease free, and make them take their vaccines before allowing them in? Instead, this same government that floods the country with “immigrants” lights the fuse to inspire fear and “herd mentality” to turn us against our fellow Americans.
It is not that we have too much freedom. The problem is we have a Federal Government that sets policy in such a way as to CAUSE the problem it then produces a solution to.....Forced Vaccinations for all.....
Sorry, but using the force of government to require medical procedures is totally Anti-Freedom.
Schools and daycares can disallow attendance without vaccines, but the Federal government has no legal dog in this fight. With that said, they are CHARGED with enforcing immigration policy, and purposely refrain from their job. THEY are criminally negligent in their duties, and blame it on too much Liberty for their “herd”.
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