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On Individual Liberty and Vaccinations — Troy Senik
Here in Nashville for a couple of weeks — the closest thing I have to therapy — I’ve been perusing the local press, partially as a means of playing one of my favorite games: “Spot the Contrast with California.”
It takes only one item to underscore the difference. The big economic fight right now in Tennessee — a state that already has no general income tax and is in the process of phasing out its estate tax— is whether the Hall Tax, a levy on income from stocks and bonds, is also destined for repeal. We’re not in Los Angeles anymore, Toto.
My survey, however, also brought me to this item — one that the two states have in common. From The Tennessean:
With preventable diseases such as measles staging a resurgence, a leading Nashville physician says it’s time for Tennessee and other states to stop allowing parents to opt out of vaccinating their children.
Exemptions for personal or religious beliefs put children at risk who have legitimate medical reasons for not getting vaccines, said Dr. Bill Schaffner, an infectious diseases professor at Vanderbilt University.
Forty-eight states, including Tennessee, have passed laws allowing parents to opt out of mandatory school vaccinations. About 2 percent of Tennessee children do not receive their required shots because parents cite religious or medical reasons, according to the state health department.
Infectious disease experts worry about that percentage rising, as it has in states such as California, where the rate of parents citing personal belief exemptions rose 50 percent in three years.
… Any action to remove exemptions for mandated school vaccinations in Tennessee would face certain opposition from organizations such as Vaccination Liberation. Kelly Riggs, a spokeswoman for the organization in Knoxville, said the opt-out law in Tennessee should be expanded, not restricted. She wants the state to add philosophical objections to the religious and medical reasons for refusing mandated vaccinations to attend public schools.
“We don’t want the state or any government to tell us what we need to do with our child or body,” Riggs said.
I don’t have any truck with the anti-vaccine crowd, who, in a just world, would receive the kind of “anti-science” scorn reserved for climate change skeptics (the anti-vaxxers, after all, actually hurt people). I’m also libertarian enough, however, that I don’t begrudge people their stupid decisions provided that they — and they only — are the ones who bear the costs.
That’s not the case here, of course. In fact, what makes this issue so interesting from a philosophical point of view is that it includes the two great spike strips of pure libertarianism: children and negative externalities. Both of those factors would lead me to be inclined towards narrowing the exemptions (thought, at two percent, I’m not sure the issue is pervasive enough to justify a response yet).
I’ve got to be honest — I don’t feel great about coming to that conclusion. I’m almost always on the side of those making the religious liberty argument. I was with them on the contraception mandate. I was with them on the fight in Arizona. And here … well, the right to leave your child gratuitously exposed to illness just feels like a bridge too far.
What say you, Ricochet? If you were a state legislator and this issue came before you, what approach would you take?
Published in General
People will blame the pill, however.
I agree on Vioxx.
Unfortunately, they do not.
Thank you. I’ve been wondering about this. What a shame.
In case anyone missed it, there was some brief followup discussion at:
http://ricochet.com/bonus-book-reviews-deadly-choices-and-do-vaccines-cause-that/
Pertussis vaccine, however, should be given during pregnancy; this will give an infant some immunity to pertussis before he/she can be vaccinated.
They do not use aborted fetuses in vaccines.
Some viruses cultured to make vaccines are cultured in human cell lines that came from one fetus half a century ago. They do not use aborted fetal tissue in vaccines.
That mercury thing should be block quoted, but I wasn’t going to fight with the formatting.