Do you support forced vaccinations?
in Politics

YeshuaRedeemed · September 2018

No. Now that I know what is in vaccines, and how they effect people, and considering the facts that vaccines injured me by causing my Asperger's, I consider vaccines to be against my religion. I am a Christian. I believe products that cause harm to my body are not for me. Have you even asked what you are putting in your body? I am not saying vaccines are the only cause of my autism as genetics does play a factor, but I don't want animal blood, animal brains, mercury, and aborted baby cells in my body, and I have that right.

agsr · September 2018

I wouldn’t supported forced vaccination, as there isn’t suffient research to guarantee it won’t cause harm. However, given the overall benefit to the society and indivduals, it should be strongly encouraged.

whiteflame · September 2018

I support mandatory vaccinations, largely because the decision to get vaccinated for many diseases doesn't solely affect you. If this was just about personal health and the capacity to decide what you will do to ensure it, this wouldn't be an issue, but viruses like measles, human papilloma, influenza and pertussis are communicable. Every person who decides they will refuse to get a vaccine constitutes a threat to others who cannot get the vaccine, such as those who are immunocompromised, too old, or too young. There are reasonable limitations on what the government can and cannot require people to do, and I'm not advocating strapping people to a table and forcing them to take a vaccine, but if they're going to refuse, they should at least have to pay a substantial fine that scales with their income.

As for your arguments against,

@YeshuaBought, there is no evidence whatsoever showing that vaccines cause anything on the autism spectrum, including Asperger's. You can believe all you want that they caused them, but unlike what @asgr asserts, there has been extensive research showing that there is no link here. That research has also shown that there is a very small portion of the population that would see negative effects from vaccination, though that portion is almost nothing compared to the population harmed by these diseases. I have asked what is in vaccines, and I've done extensive research into each of the ingredients to make sure that I understand what potential dangers each pose. It's not substantial, and, contrary to your assertions, they do not include "animal blood, animal brains, mercury, and aborted baby cells". Vaccines are purified from infected tissue, which can include animal tissues, but the vaccine itself is purified away from those tissues. Similarly, while some cell lines that are used for producing vaccines were, at one point, derived from embryos, they have been propagated in the lab for decades (i.e. they aren't using fresh embryos every single time), which means they're pretty distinct from the cells that were originally used to start those lines. Vaccines produced in them are also separated from the tissues in the process, so you aren't getting cells injected into your body. As for mercury, vaccines used to be stored in a solution containing mercury, but that is no longer the case.

MayCaesar · September 2018

I do not support the right of the government to do anything against my will, as long as my actions do not violate other people's fundamental rights. The company I work in can, however, implement such policies, as long as they do not violate the contracts the employees have signed with it - but the government should have no legal power to do so, since the contract (i.e. consent) here is not involved.

That said, "It is against my religion" is not a valid argument. I could just as well say, "I worship the Lord of the Death, Kelemvor. He dictates that I kill a person once a day. You cannot arrest me for it, because it would be against my religion!"

Arguing in support of a legal ruling based on the principle of fundamental rights and liberties is logical, as it follows the axiom proclaiming those rights and liberties. Arguing in support of a legal ruling based on your individual beliefs, however, is shallow and demonstrates lack of tolerance towards other beliefs.

@whiteflame has a logical reasoning as well based on a certain set of axioms, but I do not agree with those axioms. The government's role should not be to prevent people's deaths; it should be to create the environment in which people can prevent their deaths. Otherwise there is a very short road to justifying totalitarianism, where the most drastic measures are taken in the name of saving lives. This has happened many times in human history, and I think we should learn by now that this mentality does not work well in practice. Nothing should trump individual liberties, in my opinion, and especially the idea of the collective good should not trump them.

whiteflame · September 2018

MayCaesar said:
@whiteflame has a logical reasoning as well based on a certain set of axioms, but I do not agree with those axioms. The government's role should not be to prevent people's deaths; it should be to create the environment in which people can prevent their deaths. Otherwise there is a very short road to justifying totalitarianism, where the most drastic measures are taken in the name of saving lives. This has happened many times in human history, and I think we should learn by now that this mentality does not work well in practice. Nothing should trump individual liberties, in my opinion, and especially the idea of the collective good should not trump them.

Forgive me, but I feel I don't understand your rebuttal, at least the second sentence. You talk about creating "the environment in which people can prevent their deaths", but that doesn't seem very possible in a world where people interact on a daily basis and not everyone (in fact, scant few) take precautions that adequately prevent the spread of disease. How, exactly, would a government "create the environment" where this doesn't happen? People are commonly instructed to sneeze into their elbows or use a paper towel to open bathroom doors, but messaging alone does little to modify behavior. What's more, there are many individuals who cannot protect themselves against the threats that come from poor prevention of disease spread. Does a government have no obligation to protect them?

I understand the notion that too much government can lead to totalitarianism, but it seems like your argument functions based on the slippery slope fallacy. A government should both recognize and respond to the fact that many widely-studied diseases present a clear and present threat to its people via the spread of those diseases, and vaccines function as the best available means of addressing the problem. That sets a clear standard for what should define a circumstance in which a government can take action. The government has taken numerous actions along this mentality, and there's no reason why this fundamentally alters the calculus they've made on previous issues. And, frankly, the notion that individual liberties should always outweigh has always been a strange one to me, particularly in instances like this. Individual liberty is harmed by the spread of disease as well, since no one is given the option of getting an illness. Preserving health and liberty go hand in hand.

YeshuaRedeemed · October 2018

@whiteflame I have the right to religious liberty and my own body. I have the right to choose what to do with my body and my relationship with God and the Bible. I find it ironic that liberals say I can murder an unborn child who is not part of my body, but I can't choose what to do with my body. I guess YOU are antichoice.

MayCaesar · October 2018

@whiteflame ;

The government cannot prevent any deaths from diseases from occurring no matter what it does. What it can do, however, is to let people be the masters of their own fate - by letting private organizations compete for the best cure for the disease, and letting the individuals choose whether to take the cure or not. That is the best it can do, and that is what it should do, in my view.

The slippery slope notion is hardly a fallacy. We are talking about the policies based on the general mentality; specifically, what is more important: the individual, or the collective. When the society makes a choice in favor of the latter, other similar policies will necessarily follow, as history has shown repeatedly.

The notion of individual liberty does not mean some kind of guarantee of a personal well-being. It simply means the freedom to do whatever you want, as long as other people's liberties are not affected. Stretching it to claiming that not doing something violates other people's freedoms would not be reasonable.

Individual liberty means that I can go to a forest and be killed by a wolf. It does not mean that the government can prohibit me from going into a forest, because it can lead to my death, and because the wolf that killed me can get hungry for blood and attack other people in my village. The latter would be violation of my individual liberty.

Liberty is not about guaranteeing the outcome. It is about guaranteeing the freedom to try to affect the outcome. If that freedom is not guaranteed, and if the government decides to suppress it in the name of protecting other people's freedoms - then we have stepped on the road the end of which tends to be very dark.

Joeseph · October 2018

I don’t believe people should be forced to do something against their wishes but Anti Vax idiots are just another band of loony conspiracy theorists who endanger the lives of their children by denying then vaccinations, the great pity of this is that most of these nuts are of the religious nut variety who’s world views are informed by a book of childish myths and nonsense as in the Bible

whiteflame · October 2018

@YeshuaBought

I would say that that right should end at the same point so many rights do: when that liberty causes substantial harm to others around you. Your decision to not get vaccinated puts everyone you interact with who is not vaccinated at risk of acquiring clearly preventable diseases, many of which are potentially deadly. And no, I wouldn’t say that there’s anything hypocritical about being pro-choice and pro-mandatory vaccinations. The decision to get an abortion only physically affects you and your potential offspring. The decision not to get vaccinated affects a great deal of the people you interact with on a daily basis.

@MayCaesar

I really don’t get this argument. A government can prevent diseases from occurring by ensuring that more individuals are vaccinated. An individual who is vaccinated against a given disease can no longer get that disease. They can no longer spread that disease to others. Many communicable and preventable diseases are potentially deadly, which means that, yes, this does prevent deaths from those diseases. I don’t see how any of this is inaccurate.

You talk about “let[ting] people be the masters of their own fate”, but that seems, at best, to be an uncertain way of bringing about a similar outcome. Private organizations can compete to produce the best vaccine (note: a vaccine is not a cure) in a world where vaccines are mandated, but what makes that world different is that more people take those vaccines. We can reasonably argue about the value of lives saved and quality of life improved vs. the value of liberty lost in the decision, but there is a pretty stark and quantifiable cost to allowing people the choice to take vaccines. It’s one thing to say that that doesn’t outweigh the liberty lost, it’s quite another to say that it effectively doesn’t exist.

Regarding the slippery slope, I’m not sure how you’re establishing support for it. Policies exist in the status quo that clearly restrict individual liberties, many of which are based on a similar principle, i.e. that individuals shouldn’t be allowed to choose whether or not to engage in a given action so long as that action/inaction does proven harm to others. Things like traffic laws show that personal disagreements with certain laws do not always trump the shared responsibility of living in a society where actions have consequences. Many laws have already established that the collective outweighs individual autonomy in some instances. Why is this particular law going to dramatically alter that? How does this particular law fundamentally lead to other policies? What are those policies? Why are they bad? Remember, your argument was that this was fundamentally supporting totalitarianism. That’s not just a single policy, or even a group of policies. That’s a wholesale shift in how our government functions. So, where in history does it show that any country has mandated a change similar to what I’m suggesting, and that change has led to totalitarianism? I’d honestly love to see any examples you could provide.

I would disagree with the notion that a prohibition on not taking a specific action is fundamentally different from a prohibition on taking a specific action, and the main reason is because both are exercises of individual liberty. People are actively making the decision, whether that decision is to engage or disengage. The notion that a person’s agency is only important enough to regulate when it results in an activity that alters their current state is incredibly odd to me when it fundamentally does alter their status in society. They become a willing vector for numerous preventable, communicable diseases. The fact that they don’t have to take an action to accomplish that goal doesn’t make it any less of a choice, nor any less consequential.

The comparison to the wolf situation is… really odd. Seriously, I have no idea how it’s comparable to anything we’re talking about. We’re discussing someone becoming a vector for a potentially deadly disease and spreading that to others. Using your analogy, it would be as though someone went out into the forest, was mauled by a wolf, brought it back and started walking it around their crowded town. Except even that isn’t accurate because we’re talking about a microscopic pathogen, so the wolf would have to be invisible and the outcome of the interaction would be based on who had been able to receive wolf repellant before the person returned. That admittedly strange situation seems like something the government should aim to prevent, not to mention a loss of liberty that seems incredibly minor by comparison to the harms that would come from it.

Look, I get that there’s a personal liberty argument to be had here, and I’ve heard it argued well on many occasions. Hell, I could probably make a pretty decent argument myself. What I’m getting from you, however, is not that argument. You just keep telling me that this is leading down a dark road or that there’s something precious being lost here without telling me what’s so precious about this particular liberty. There are real questions regarding medical autonomy that I’m frankly surprised you haven’t even mentioned, particularly as it relates to the ability of parents to make decisions for their kids. We could talk about how this clashes with basic religious freedoms, and how the backlash against a decision to mandate vaccines could realistically cause more harm than the vaccines bring in benefits. And there may even be some realistic policies that could spawn from this, ones that follow a similar logic and may raise a few eyebrows. I’m not arguing that mandating vaccines is perfect policy, though I still do support it. I just don’t get the argument that it’s the start of some fresh, new hell that’s never existed before, as though society has never taken actions along anything close to the same lines, and if it ever did, we’d all be doomed. That’s as fallacious as anything I’ve ever heard on this topic.

Ampersand · October 2018

Vaccines don't cause autism or other similar disorders as has been shown by countless studies (e.g. please see https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0cfd/0253ceba70cad1a9eb89d8acc27c2b248524.pdf). The list of ingredients is also a mixture of the completely made up and the massively misunderstood. For instance one molecule which had a mercury atom in it was used in vaccines but has been removed years and years to quell public displeasure even though the evidence shows it had no scientific connection to autism, aspergers, etc. Similarly there are no "aborted baby cells" in the vaccine - the confusion is that cell cultures are started from genetic material that comes from aborted fetuses. The WI-38 cell line for instance came from a fetus over 50 years ago and continues to be used to this day and had saved literally millions of lives. (http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/vaccine-ingredients)

Though people's liberty is an important right, but so is people's health (both their own and others) as well as being an important responsibility that the government is required to cater for. As the health benefits are so large, the drawbacks to liberty are so minute and this largely concerns children who are not normally considered to be able to consent to important decisions anyway due to their limited capacity I think it's fairly obvious that mandatory vaccinations are fine.

AmericanFurryBoy · October 2018

I support them. They stop outbreaks of very harmful diseases. They also help you not get sick. And no, they don’t cause autism. No matter who says it.

YeshuaRedeemed · October 2018

@AmericanFurryBoy I don't. I have the religious right to not be vaccinated.

YeshuaRedeemed · October 2018

@whiteflame Nope. This is my body. You don't have the right to my body.

YeshuaRedeemed · October 2018

@MayCaesar Yes religious liberty IS a good enough reason, and I have that right. I have religious and ethical objections to the ingredients in vaccines.

AmericanFurryBoy · October 2018

@YeshuaBought
then what church are you apart of that “rejects the ingredients in vaccines”?

Zombieguy1987 · October 2018

YeshuaBought said:

@AmericanFurryBoy I don't. I have the religious right to not be vaccinated.

So, you’d be alright with starting WWZ?

YeshuaRedeemed · October 2018

@AmericanFurryBoy I don't have to be part of a church to reject vaccines.

YeshuaRedeemed · October 2018

I DO have the right, I mean.

Ampersand · October 2018

"Human beings have a right to life! Unless it means that I should take a harmless injection, in which case I'm perfectly happy for people to needlessly die from communicable diseases".

AmericanFurryBoy · October 2018

@YeshuaBought
Im asking because you literally factored in religious rights yourself. “I have religious and ethical objections to the ingredients in vaccines.”
So, my question is what church are you apart of that rejects vaccines?

whiteflame · October 2018

YeshuaBought said:

@whiteflame Nope. This is my body. You don't have the right to my body.

I'm honestly curious about how you'll answer this question: to what degree do you think the personal autonomy you have over your body outweighs the needs of the people around you? I suppose, in a way, you answered this question already, though I will be interested to see if you have a more nuanced perspective. You've stated that your right to your body should never be jeopardized, which presumably means that your personal autonomy, insofar as your bodily integrity at least, always outweighs any harm that autonomy could cause to others. So, let's roll with that hard-line perspective. You become a vector for a disease that currently has a vaccine, let's say measles. Measles causes a great deal of bad complications, most of which happen in children, including a death toll of roughly 1-2 out of every 1000 infected. That's to say nothing of the harms of encephalitis, pneumonia, and premature births in pregnant mothers. If you bump into a child in the process of going about your day as a vector, you stand a very high chance of transmitting that virus. What makes it even worse is that it can infect people who enter the same airspace you leave every time you cough or sneeze, so even if they are very careful (and few children are), the likelihood that you would transmit the virus to another human being is very high. What responsibility do you feel towards the people whom you would infect? Do you feel that the personal autonomy you wield is worth the wholesale loss of theirs?

AmericanFurryBoy · October 2018

Also, guys, vaccines can’t cause autism because autism is a developmental disorder. Meaning, you get autism while you’re swimming in the womb.

AnneHakkert · October 2018

The injection won’t harm you, but by not taking it you might harm others around you by spreading a disease. Tell me, how does your church feel about harming others? You should love thy neighbor, no?

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Do you support forced vaccinations?
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