From The Metro:
Children who have not had MMR jabs should* be banned from schools, a leading health official said yesterday. The ‘radical’ move was the only way to increase immunisation rates, said Dr Sohail Bhatti, director of public health for east Lancashire.
‘It’s what happens in France,’ he said. ‘There, you can’t be admitted to school unless you show your vaccination certificate. That’s what we call big society. You have a responsibility to be a good citizen and part of that is not spreading potentially fatal diseases to other children.'
... In 2008, a similar proposal by the Labour government was dubbed ‘Stalinist’ by the British Medical Association.
Question: do children who haven't had the MMR jab 'spread potentially fatal diseases'? Is there the slightest shred of evidence for this? Like most of my classmates, back in the day, I've had measles and mumps and am still alive.
Question: would the excluded children be given the cash equivalent of the cost of the school place that is denied them to try their luck in the free market?
Question: isn't that last comment from the BMA a bit rich?
Declaration of interest: both my children had the MMR jab.
* He who says 'should' is usually completely in the wrong.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Fascist Health Scare Du Jour
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19 comments:
It's all about state control and the removal of choice. Nothing whatsoever to do with health.
"Question: do children who haven't had the MMR jab 'spread potentially fatal diseases'? Is there the slightest shred of evidence for this?"
Ever heard of rubella and herd immunity?
Not that I disagree with you on the condescending tone adopted by the various parts of the medical establishment. They lost their credibility long before they started banging on about '3rd hand' smoking.
They are suffering a severe logic error.
If am a parent who's child has had the MMR, what possible objection could I have to letting children without the MMR into the school. My child has been vaccinated.
If you are a parent who's child hasn't had the MMR, then I have made my choice about the risks to my child and surely can't complain when my child catches M, M or R from another non-MMR child?
What's the problem we're trying to solve here again?
JM, exactly.
PJH, yes I have heard of 'herd immunity', which was one of the reasons I was happy to let my kids have MMR jab - but I refer you to OP's impeccable logic: would I be bothered if it turned out that some other children at my children's schools didn't have the MMR jab? No of course not. (this was going to be my question 4).
So, if the kid is 'banned' from school, will the parents still be liable to jail for their kid's non-attendance? ;)
And yes, that's chutzpah from the BMA, reet enough.
Wrong tool for the job. The right tool is to say that any child who wasn't immunised (without medical reason e.g. in family medical history) won't be treated by the NHS if he gets M, M, or R. Or, will be treated but the parents will get billed.
By the way, that is one genuine public health reason for insisting on the jab - so that those who for good reason don't get immunised aren't put at risk by the parents who refuse immunisation for airhead reasons.
You can argue endlessly about what's best re any particular immunisation, but the idea of a public health reason for insisting seems to me entirely defensible. I's because State Power is so routinely abused for thousands of reasons that people overlook the fact that sometimes it's right to have it and exert it.
And the answer to the thousands of abuses is obvious - hang the bastards.
DP, yes of course!
D, great minds think alike! I posted this on a different thread a few minutes ago:
"Medical stuff is private decisions for each citizen to pay for out of his own Citizen's Income or earned income, and of course the government has a low level role in educating people about the merits of immunisation, but if people choose to save $50 on immunisation and risk facing a hefty hospital/insurance bill or dying later on, well, that's their decision."
Yeah, Mark, but that doesn't cover the case of the child who doesn't get, say, the whooping cough jab for reasons of family medical history, and then gets horribly damaged when infected by the child of some bloody Guardian reader who went without the jab for reasons of superstition. Although the term "Public Health" is routinely abused, it is meaningful and shouldn't be abandoned just because we are ruled by twats.
D, that one is a tough call, morally.
But in purely practical terms, do you really think we can isolate the child who hasn't had jab (for justifiable reasons) from all other human beings who haven't? I suspect not.
And again in practical terms, would it be so terrible to offer Guardian readers the option of their kids having three separate jabs, one for M, another for M and then one for R, assuming that this would improve take up rates at marginal extra cost?
In any event, this 'doctor' was talking about MMR, not whooping cough. I'm not aware that Guardian readers don't allow their kids to get the jab against that disease.
I can't help recalling how, during the AIDS scare years, parents were told they were silly for objecting to their child being exposed at school to children born with AIDS. I wonder, in our risk adverse times, whether that would still wash?
Separate jabs is a perfect example of why nationalised health is a rubbish idea. In a free market, doctors would be more than happy to provide separate jabs, if that's what customers wanted, at an appropriately higher cost.
RLJ, to be fair, AIDS/HIV is not particularly infectious. We don't expect school kids to be having unprotected sex or sharing needles. But you can catch measles, whooping cough etc just from being near somebody.
As to your second point, agreed, with the caveat that I'd make the MMR jab 'free at point of use' (it costs about £50, let's say) and if separate jabs cost £30 each, then the parents have to pay the difference of £40 themselves (i.e. 3 x £30 minus £50 'voucher').
"We don't expect school kids to be having unprotected sex or sharing needles."
Sure about that?!?
JM, I didn't say that none of them did; I said that we don't expect them to be doing so.
"would it be so terrible to offer Guardian readers the option of their kids having three separate jabs, one for M, another for M and then one for R, assuming that this would improve take up rates at marginal extra cost?" Quite: that was exactly my thought at the time.
Anyway, while we're on MMR, it's time to remind ourselves that the fiasco really took off after Blair's mendacity over his own child.
"Anyway, while we're on MMR, it's time to remind ourselves that the fiasco really took off after Blair's mendacity over his own child."
You appear to have misspelt "Andrew Wakefield's conflict of interest, manipulation of evidence and serious professional misconduct."
Bhatti by name; batty by nature? Just askin'.
Np, PJH, I said "really took off": until the contribution of the Loathsome Wee Twat, the silliness seemed to be pretty restricted in scope.
I have some sympathy with this proposal. The problem is that epidemic deiseases are not an individual problem but a social problem. Cutting the [proportion of vaccinated people increases the epidemic risk for all not particularly for the individual.
I suspect the rise of socialism coinciding with the battle & eventual victory over the mass epidemic diseases that used to kill such a large proportion of the population is not a coincidence.
This is an optimistic scenario since it suggests that all that is left of socialism is the corpse of parasitic government which could crumble quite fast, having no popular or economic base - a bit like the most spectacular displats of monarchical flamboyance being in the 19thC rather than the 12th.
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