Dear Readers,
I have no idea what to write about, like everyone else at
this time of year I am currently very busy, I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing, but I’m somehow very busy. So then the question arises should I be writing something
light-hearted and appropriate of the public holiday’s? Or should I
delve into a topical issue? Seeing as I
don’t have anything remotely interesting to talk about in my own personal life;
except of course a certain family member getting a gf, I’m going to talk about
the anti-vaccination debate.
So let me start by stating my stance very clearly on
vaccinations. THEY ARE A GOOD THING. All the credible scientific evidence
supports them as well as almost every single religion (well the main ones
anyway), not going to find that a lot are you? Vaccinations are an important
part in ensuring that our communities remain healthy. But despite all this there
still seems to be some “debate” around them.
Now there are two sides of this story that I feel should be
explained and looked at separately.
The first is the view from the developing world; here there
may actually be a case to justify people’s resistance or antagonism towards vaccinations.
Not because of anything to do with the vaccinations themselves being bad but
because of the socio-political environment. If you are someone who is
illiterate, has very little formal education and are part of a minority
community in a country that has a record of treating minority communities
badly. You probably have a valid reason to be distrustful of what is often
either foreigners or the government coming into your community and giving your
child something that on the surface, a needle in the arm, is causing them harm.
This is particularly so if you live in a country, where the government in the
past has performed human rights abuses such as sterilization of minority communities
(say in Peru, where a sterilization program under the administration of President Alberto Fujimori has been accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, targeted at indigenous people under the guise of a "public health plan) . I believe in this case you have a valid concern and more
work should be done in these communities to better education and communicate
what exactly a vaccination is, how it works and why it is good.
The above scenario however does not apply to people who live
in developed countries, such as Australia and the United States, who are
literate and have accesses to a wide range of information and still try and
cling to the disproven theory of vaccinations causing autism. This is simply a
wrong. The initial study that conducted the research was disproven, I don’t
feel I need to go into it all, just look it up in google. Point is in this
case vaccinations are not a debate and should be mandatory, and the government
should be allowed to enforce this. To take an economic view, vaccinations
provide positive externalities, in the form of herd immunity, those who are too
young to be vaccinated or unable to due to allergic reactions are protected.
People who choose not to vaccinate their children create negative externalities
whereby they not only put their child at risk but other people and their
children around them who cannot for whatever reason be vaccinated. The recent
outbreak of measles at Disney Land (USA) show that despite all the campaigns and information available, people are
not vaccinating their children; a market failure is occurring. And when a
market failure occurs the government’s role should be to step in so as to
reduce these negative externalities and protect the community. Now when it
comes to adults this gets a bit tricky as autonomous individuals free to make
their own choices and in charge of their own bodies regulating vaccinations for
adults is not going to fly. But this does not hold for children, it is already
acknowledge that for a number of reasons children are not capable of making
their own decisions especially when it comes to weighing up complex long-term decision
making, that part of the brain is simply not developed. This idea is already
acknowledge in a number of aspects in society, e.g. legal drinking age is 18, children
cannot get married, primary school is mandatory, child labour laws etc. the
list goes on and all as a society to protect the welfare of children. So for
that reason I do not understand why we cannot add vaccinations to the list of
things that are necessary to protect our children and the community at
large.
-Mrouge-
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