Enforced vaccination
Name(s):
Compulsory vaccination
Enforced immunization
Denial of right to refuse vaccination
Claim
1. Advocates of mass immunization point to the decline in the incidence of diseases after the introduction of modern vaccination programmes. But one of the anti-immunization lobby's central arguments is that many diseases were already waning -- thanks to better public health, hygiene and diet -- before vaccines were introduced. Scarlet fever, for example, was a major killer in the last century, yet it is virtually unknown today -- and there is no vaccine. Rubella (German measles) is on the increase in the UK despite a mass immunization programme among babies and selective immunization of mothers. This may be a reflection that antibody levels have fallen in the population at large because children are no longer getting the mild diseased naturally. Why not immunize only women of childbearing age who have not developed natural immunity ?< 2. Homeopathy's system of protection treats many childhood diseases as cathartic, necessary evils: measles, for instance, is seen as helping to clear out toxins from the child's system.
3. Vaccination is a seductive insurance policy, but it is naive to think you can buck nature. Illness is part of health and out of disease comes health.
Counter-claim
As yet, there is no body of information in the anti-immunization camp as powerful as society's existing faith in the science of vaccination.
Aggravated by
Value(s)
Type
(F) Fuzzy exceptional problems