Hm.

[magic_doors]

This not a particular pointful post, it's just I haven't said anything for a while, and I'd rather not talk about the finalsthesisbeast and the Extended Essay Swirling Vortex Of Doom.

jacinthsong pointed this out today - due to low uptake of the MMR vaccine caused by an idiotic and hysterical media hoax, cases of measles in the UK have risen dramatically.It

Comments

[loneraven]

The herd immunity for MMR is, if I recall, only effective at a ridiculously high rate of vaccination - well over ninety percent. (I am trying to remember this from A-level, so perhaps someone will come along and correct me on that.) In other words, some people choosing not to vaccinate are very definitely putting people other than their little darlings at risk. (Also? Choosing not to vaccinate is fine when your kids are well-fed and germ-resistant, but infecting a kid at school whose resistance is already low... yeah.)

I don't think vaccination should be compulsory, though. For the same old reasons - the same, hippie liberal, interference in the private sphere by the state reasons. I think it's morally reprehensible not to vaccinate your children, and I think you should be screamed at until your GP is blue in the face if you don't do it, but making it compulsory is still something I wouldn't endorse, even if I were holding my nose while I didn't endorse it.

[loneraven]

p.s. I am reading Mason & Dixon, epic Pynchon novel set in 1763, and it's great. Much recommended, if you are going through an American Revolutionary War phase.

[magic_doors]

Oooh, I have been wanting to read that for quite a bit. I want some good, epic fiction based on it - I don't think I'd have as much interest in the French Revolution as I do, were it not for A Place of Greater SafetyI feel much as you do on the vaccination thing. I think in this circumstance, people have to accept that in the vast majority of cases, their doctors usually do know what's best for them. The fact that it seems to be the moderately affluent and the moderately educated who took this thing and ran with it says a lot about this society; it's good that we're opening up knowledge, but I accept that while I know the chemical formula for table salt and the basic theory of nuclear fission, I'm not a chemist or a physicist. Yes, people should choose what happens to their bodies, but in lots of cases people think they know more than they do, and they don't like being told what to do. Of course I don't want doctors pushing their personal beliefs on us, particularly when it comes to optional things like vaccines, birth control or

[loneraven]

(Borrow it when I've finished? Is enormous 700-page monster, so this may be a while, but still.)

I think there's a distinction between a doctor pushing values on you - i.e., you're having sex outside marriage, that makes you bad and wrong - and pushing health facts on you. Not using a condom, when you don't want to be pregnant or get STDs, is stupid, from the health standpoint. Objectively speaking, it's stupid. So I totally agree with you on that point. And, hey, if your doctor was anything like mine, or indeed like my family-planning-obsessed GP mother, they really are telling you not to do things because they care about your health and they know better than you. (Er, generic you, of course!)

[magic_doors]

Oh, hell. Those links are some of the worst things I've ever read. It's not to anything like the same degree, but I suppose you could make an argument that refusing to have your child vaccinated is child neglect or endangerment.

[magic_doors]

But, who is to decide what's best, oh, oh, liberal handwring, liberal guilt.

...Wait, I remember. Empirical observation, experimentation and facts. Ah, science. *snuggles*

[chiasmata]

The thing about measles is (and I pick on this because it is one of the things that the MMR vaccinates against), it can have some very nasty complications: encephalitis, deafness, etc. It isn't just dangerous to pregnant women, and I don't think - from what I have read on various forums - that a lot of people realise this

[magic_doors]

I begin this comment with a short message: CONGRATULATIONS YOU CLEVER PERSON.

The whole media thing is interesting when the public health is involved; it's the same thing as shouting fire in a crowded theatre. Possibly we need some sort of secret council of scientists to secretly take control of the press and secretly stop them making complete twats of themselves and endangering the public at the same time. Also, they fight crime.

[magic_doors]

Oh, but am I right in thinking German measles isn't particularly dangerous to anyone other than very young children and pregnant women?

[chiasmata]

Um um um... Offhand yes, I think, except perhaps with the caveat that it is also likely to be dangerous to the immunocompromised, and that anyone infected can pass it onto pregnant women. Also mumps is more dangerous for young boys than young girls, as it can cause sterility in males :)

[tiggielil]

need I even tell you where I stand on this? If there had been more MMR vaccines in the late 80s I wouldn't have missed all of fucking 8th week. Interestingly, although the doctor told me about a fifth of immunised people are at risk of getting mumps, I've not even heard of anyone getting it in Norway. Stupid British people.