Irrational Behaviour and Vaccination
Last March, four students of California High School organized a Hepatitis B awareness week, to promote treatment of this terrible disease.
The treatment, which is both safe and effective, is vaccination. Hepatitis B is an epidemic in many Asian countries which are too poor to afford the vaccine, relying instead on the help of charitable organizations to help them.
It is both disturbing and wrong, then, that people who can afford medical care in the United States choose to forgo getting vaccinated. Not for themselves, but for their children.
Last month, in Wisconsin, a family brutally murdered their oldest daughter, isolating her for a month as she died a slow, excruciating death. As her corpse was taken off to the coroner’s, her family was smiling. There were no charges pressed. That family has two more children.
Two weeks ago, in southern California, 12 children were infected, with 70 more quarantined, due to an outbreak of a disease barely seen in over a decade. This outbreak was due to the actions of one mother, who didn’t do the first thing to protect her children; Vaccinate them.
What do these two incidents have in common? In both cases, the reason given by the family was, “personal religious matters.”
These two cases illustrate that even though the severity of the parents’ actions vary, their motivation is the same. There are a growing number of people in this country who don’t protect their children from the most easily preventable of diseases, and don’t provide adequate medical care for them when they fall ill.
In the first case, the child had diabetic ketoacidosis, a disease in which one loses insulin. This disease can be easily treated if one has access to insulin shots, which the family in question did.
The fact that they chose to pray, rather than consult a doctor, as their daughter was dying in her bed amounts to criminal negligence. That they still don’t think they did anything wrong shows their sheer madness. These people are not alone.
In southern California and Arizona, there has been a recent rise in PBE’s, “personal belief exemptions.” These allow parents to enroll their children in school without having to vaccinate them, and they are given on the basis of religious objection to vaccination. The number of PBE’s given has grown 6% a year since 2001, and continues unabated.
The disease in the specific case in Measles, which is easily preventable with the MMR vaccine. Before the United States implemented the vaccine, there were 450 deaths and 1,000 children chronically disabled per year. There were also a further 28,000 hospitalizations. Now, the disease has been virtually eliminated from North America, with the notable exception of Southern California.
If people choose to not vaccinate themselves because of their religious beliefs, that is one thing. But the parents in both these cases didn’t provide for their children, who they are legally and ethically obligated to protect. This amounts to nothing less than gross incompetence on the parents’ part, and they should be punished to the furthest extent of the law.
I’m not advocating forced sterilization, but perhaps these people should be put somewhere where their irrational beliefs don’t harm others. Like an asylum.
The treatment, which is both safe and effective, is vaccination. Hepatitis B is an epidemic in many Asian countries which are too poor to afford the vaccine, relying instead on the help of charitable organizations to help them.
It is both disturbing and wrong, then, that people who can afford medical care in the United States choose to forgo getting vaccinated. Not for themselves, but for their children.
Last month, in Wisconsin, a family brutally murdered their oldest daughter, isolating her for a month as she died a slow, excruciating death. As her corpse was taken off to the coroner’s, her family was smiling. There were no charges pressed. That family has two more children.
Two weeks ago, in southern California, 12 children were infected, with 70 more quarantined, due to an outbreak of a disease barely seen in over a decade. This outbreak was due to the actions of one mother, who didn’t do the first thing to protect her children; Vaccinate them.
What do these two incidents have in common? In both cases, the reason given by the family was, “personal religious matters.”
These two cases illustrate that even though the severity of the parents’ actions vary, their motivation is the same. There are a growing number of people in this country who don’t protect their children from the most easily preventable of diseases, and don’t provide adequate medical care for them when they fall ill.
In the first case, the child had diabetic ketoacidosis, a disease in which one loses insulin. This disease can be easily treated if one has access to insulin shots, which the family in question did.
The fact that they chose to pray, rather than consult a doctor, as their daughter was dying in her bed amounts to criminal negligence. That they still don’t think they did anything wrong shows their sheer madness. These people are not alone.
In southern California and Arizona, there has been a recent rise in PBE’s, “personal belief exemptions.” These allow parents to enroll their children in school without having to vaccinate them, and they are given on the basis of religious objection to vaccination. The number of PBE’s given has grown 6% a year since 2001, and continues unabated.
The disease in the specific case in Measles, which is easily preventable with the MMR vaccine. Before the United States implemented the vaccine, there were 450 deaths and 1,000 children chronically disabled per year. There were also a further 28,000 hospitalizations. Now, the disease has been virtually eliminated from North America, with the notable exception of Southern California.
If people choose to not vaccinate themselves because of their religious beliefs, that is one thing. But the parents in both these cases didn’t provide for their children, who they are legally and ethically obligated to protect. This amounts to nothing less than gross incompetence on the parents’ part, and they should be punished to the furthest extent of the law.
I’m not advocating forced sterilization, but perhaps these people should be put somewhere where their irrational beliefs don’t harm others. Like an asylum.
posted by Tsukioka Yosho at
9:59 PM
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