Some people don’t want their kids to be vaccinated or consider vaccinations to be invasive and unnecessary. American public schools disagree, but kids who are home schooled don’t have these restrictions. If schools think it’s too risky to let these children attend, should we worry about them at church?
[poll id=”262″]
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Wow, a majority thinks that unvaccinated kids should be kept out of primary. I guess they will go to RS or PH meeting with their parents.
Although all public schools that I know of ask about vaccines, there are many who do not absolutely require them. Many allow personal exemptions or religious exemptions. I know several LDS members who have used the religious exemption and not vaccinated their kids.
Then those people who did use the exemption are fools.
I couldn’t attend a major university for graduate work a few years ago until i could prove my immunizations were complete. Its not that unusual.
I did vaccinate my children. My sweet six week old daughter spent 10 days in the hospital due to pertussis. Guess who gave it to her. Her grandfather. He also gave it to my 3 year old who hadn’t full immunity yet. I also got it. The hospital notified the CDC who called us and they had us contact people we’d been in contact with, including all the families who had been in nursery with my 3 year old the previous two weeks. I believe 100% I was prompted to take my baby to the ER. I shudder to think what might have happened in the night while sleeping if we hadn’t taken her. There are few things more pathetic/scary than a teensy baby in a hospital bed, hooked up to breathing, feeding, monitoring tubes, listening to her struggle to breathe.
Years earlier, I was traveling in India. I saw so many children with polio. What a simple thing to get rid of. Those folks are clamoring for basic vaccinations but we in our Western narcissism think what? That we are ‘immune’? That the ‘government’ isn’t being honest with us (as if they don’t have families of their own to keep alive)?
I just don’t understand people who don’t vaccinate. I love the anti-vaccinated, but I hate their choices.
Vaccination isn’t mandatory in Britain for school attendance. Recently there has been a rather large measles outbreak, predominantly in Wales. Some children died. Every time something like this happens there is a big discussion over whether it should be mandatory by law. But it never happens.
Our last ward, there was a family who didn’t get their children vaccinated, but opted for some kind of homeopathic system instead. They seemed well enough (though that could well be down to general herd immunity). But, once the children (and they all did) began their missionary applications they all had to go and get vaccinated, for everything, all at once. So, if you’re planning for your child to serve a mission, you may as well get the benefit of the vaccination at the normal time, I’d have thought.
I don’t think it’s going to work policing primary though. Kind of works against being welcoming to ask to see vaccination certificates.
How about a choice for “Failure to vaccinate is unsafe for the other kids who may be exposed to avoidable illnesses. The small risks of vaccination are far outweighed by the significant risks of infectious diseases. Responsible parents vaccinate, but I’m not going to fret about it for Primary because almost everybody is vaccinated for school, and Primary leaders have enough to worry about without making them police every kid’s immunization. Just keep your children home when they’re sick as per current policy.”
I’m with Left Field — I said yes they should attend, but more because church is about more than just safety from diseases. But, I totally think that vaccinations are worth it and should be mandatory for schools.
I am always amazed that parents of vaccinated kids are so concerned about their kids hanging out with unvaccinated kids. Don’t they have confidence in the vaccine?
But let’s be honest, vaccinated does not equal immune, therfore a vaccinated person can still get an illness that they have been vaxed for. Bacteria and viruses are carried by both vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Herd immunity is not a real thing it is an unproven theory.
I am really surprised at the vehemence. Almost all the people I know who choose to not vaccinate their children are extremely well.read on the topic. They have considered all the options for their children, I.e., risks and benefits, and feel like risks outweigh the benefits. There are many health reasons not to vaccinate. Allergies, family history of auto immune disorders, ethical reasons such as the presence of fetal cell material which has been cultured from aborted fetuses, and the argument about bombarding the infant’s immune system with an extraordinary amount of serious pathogens instead of allowing them to be exposed at a natural pace to mature the immune system at a natural pace has many people concerned. Early vaccination discounts the active and passive immune factors of breast milk. And most people I know have felt led by God or whatever they worship to choose a natural mode of health for their family. The CDC is riddled with corruption, and the research is extremely biased pro.vaccine. it is extremely hard to find complete unbiased information. Our family chooses delayed vaccination.
It begs the question of who ultimately has sovereignty over children: the State or the parents. Do parents have the “right” to withhold medical procedures on behalf of their children, including vaccinations? I’d say that in a qualified sense they do; wherein the medical benefit of same isn’t absolutely proven. I think of the JWs that refused blood transfusions for their kids or the Christian Scientists that insisted on their form of healing instead of standard medicine? Who, indeed, is right, and suppose harm (up to and including death) results from refusal of medical practice due to religious convictions?
I realize that the Church hasn’t come out with a position either way, though extremism is denounced. We ourselves rely on the Priesthood for healing but understand that injury and sickness is part of this mortal existence. I don’t rely entirely on modern medicine but this is where both common sense and having a good patient-doctor relationship is important. To me, it comes down to taking personal responsibility for one’s personal health and that of his family. We are the stewards of our bodies, and while our children are minors, of theirs as well. I trust that this is an area where I ought to rely also on the Lord, if nothing else, for guidance.
My daughter had to have her vaccines up-to-date as she’s entering the seventh grade. A bit heavy-handed, but I’ll pick my battles.
There is so little “opposition” research because the proof is in the pudding:
Vaccines work.
I will agree that, in general, they work. But does the risk out weight the benefits? I am vaccinated for everything routine in the 70s including Hep B because of being a HCP. I will think long and hard before ever being vaxed for smallpox because the side effects of the vaccine are very annoying. For a typical childhood disease such as chicken pox, is vaccination really helpful? There is some indication that getting chicken pox wild type causes for a healthier and more complete immune response.
In Britain, we don’t routinely vaccinate for chicken pox.
The vaccinations we do get are: polio, diptheria/tetanus/pertussis triple vaccine, measles/mumps/rubella triple vaccine, Hib and Meningitis C, and for girls hpv.
I have to agree with Llenrad, as I would like an answer. Isn’t the point of vaccines to become immune? If one unvaccinated kid can cause an epidemic then what is the point? Reliance on herd protection is not my idea of trustworthy, even if I feel blessed that we have fought for fewer outbreaks.
I don’t like either option in the poll so I didn’t vote. Yes, unvaccinated children should be allowed to attend Primary/Nursery but not because vaccinations are dangerous. However, children (and adults) who are sick with anything that is contagious should not be allowed to attend Primary/Nursery and should not attend church at all. Seriously, it’s ok to miss church if you’re sick. The rest of us do not want our children to bring home your child’s cold or whatever they may have.
I second DB’s comment [#14] — though I did vote in the poll for “Yes”.
I’m more worried about the parents of vaccinated children who’ll send their kids into nursery and primary with runny noses, coughs, fevers, rashes, etc. [Not exaggeration, all of those are examples of things I regularly see] because they’re too invested in having their “two-hour vacation” every Sunday to be bothered to keep their infectious children away from the rest of their “brothers’ and sisters” children.
Vaccinated or not — I don’t really give a hoot one way or the other.
Justin, could you send me an email at mormon heretic at gmail dot com? I have a question not related to this post.
The measles outbreaks at my university were from vaccinated people.
I caught measles at 19, having been vaccinated with a single dose measles vaccine as a toddler. I didn’t get it badly though. Since about 2005, teenagers here have been getting an MMR booster at age 15, in addition to the booster they’d have got at 4. Child 1 will be getting it this afternoon, funnily enough.
Recently Utah made the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). Was it due to another study touting the benefits of our health code? Hardly. A little Utah measles epidemic was reported that is thought to have originated in Eastern Europe. Hmm, I wonder who the most common exposures to measles might be? Mormon missionaries?
We are doubly fools when we persist in sending large numbers of our youth for long periods of time into every corner of the earth making contact with the most people possible as missionaries and at the same time refuse to vaccinate our children back home.
Black-and-white thinkers might have trouble with the concept of herd immunity. No vaccine is 100% effective and none are 100% safe. But when enough people are vaccinated the spread of the disease to the few in whom the vaccine is not effective is minimal. Herd immunity places a social responsibility on all of our shoulders. Every effort is made to make vaccines safe and the risks of the disease are orders of magnitude greater than any problems with common vaccines.
West Nile Virus kills dozens of people every year and leaves others with severe neurological problems. An effective vaccine is available for horses at this point. But not one for people. The primary reason is not lack of technical ability; it is that no manufacturer of vaccines is willing to assume the potential risk of a human vaccine that didn’t work perfectly. Horses with rare exceptions are only worth a few hundred dollars and not a big liability risk. Even one or two damaged children make excellent court room props and settlements of tens of millions of dollars are inevitable. This vaccine craziness is indirectly killing dozens of us.
Mike:
You’re normally well thought out, but your response here is lacking. Linking missionaries to a measles outbreak in UT is stretching logic given that the same could be said for international travelers, tourists or many other number things. Was the cause actually linked to missionaries? The # of missionaries who (a) live in UT and (b) returned home with the measles virus is likely MUCH, MUCH lower than the number of people who visit Utah annually from those countries.
Secondly, I’m a taken aback by those who are so quick to judge parents who choose not to vaccinate. It’s no secret that the vaccination industry is a profit machine and will bring in revenues of over $32 billion annually by 2017. Decoupling rapidly growing vaccination schedules from a profit driven industry seems sophmorish. And, lastly, there are literally HUNDREDS of things that “indirectly” kill people any given year.
As a vegan, I have extreme reservations about vaccinations. Perhaps a switch to a healthier western diet would go as far as pumping our bodies full of pathogens. Or, perhaps we could look a more sanitary culture as promulgating fewer diseases (i.e. clean water and better hygiene). Just a thought, but then we do live in a country where we’d much rather get plugged with some chemical concoction than actually change lifestyles towards something healthier.
And, lastly, I’m with those who say that parents who drop their kids off with coughs, runny noses and other sicknesses are much worse than a parent who makes an educated decision on whether to vaccinate their kids or not.
http://www.lds.org/church/news/church-works-toward-world-goal-to-eliminate-preventable-diseases?lang=eng&query=vaccinations The Church vaccinates others…why not vaccinate our own children?