Are anti-vaxxers liable if their children spread preventable diseases? (gallon, independent, education)
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Suzy, as you know, I am an elderly retired woman. If I do not want a tetanus, flu, tdap vaccination, or for that matter a physical or mammogram, that is my choice to refuse medical intervention as an adult, whatever reasons I, or any adult over the age of 18, decides. WE dictate to YOU, and not the other way around, whatever our reasons, scientific or not. Again, I feel very sorry for the parents of young children, who cannot have the choice for their own children, that they can make for THEMSELVES.
I never said you cannot refuse treatment for yourself. If you are bleeding to death you can refuse a blood transfusion, for example. You do not have the right to refuse a transfusion for your child who is bleeding to death or antibiotics for a child with a life threatening infection or chemo for a child with a cancer that stands a great chance of being cured. There is ample legal precedent that a parent cannot deny his child medical care.
You are free to refuse to vaccinate yourself or your child. No one will force you to do it. The choice is still there.
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Please do not bring up Pandemics, again. As you know, an Influenza Pandemic was declared by the White House (post it yourself) in 2009. Were people rounded up, thrown into quarantine centers, knocks on doors giving flu shots, etc. ? You, and everyone on here, knows that did not happen. Spare me that 1918 Pandemic when we only have to go back 7 years for a declared "Pandemic".
You are going to need far more legislation extending to the entire US population to achieve your goals. Have fun. I am sure a lot of legislators in favor of vaccinations, do not want to go THAT far. Both Federal Mandatory "Vaccinate all Children" bills have been dead in the water since last year. Even Veterans have been furious over legislation that they are "tracked and complied with all CDC recommended vaccination schedules".
You do not get it. Go ahead awaken the sleeping giant. You will see what you get.
I do not think the 1918 flu pandemic has been mentioned in this thread before now. However, it only killed 30 to 50 million people worldwide, including about 675,000 Americans.
We indeed did have a flu pandemic in 2009. It appears you are ignorant of the definition of the word pandemic:
pan·dem·ic
panˈdemik/Submit
adjective
1.
(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.
No one is forcing veterans to be vaccinated. The legislation is just to make sure that vaccines are available to veterans through the VA and that records are maintained confirming that they are. Any veteran is free to refuse to take any vaccines at all.
The "sleeping giant" wakened in California last year after the measles outbreak that started at the Disney park. That is why California tightened its school vaccine requirements. That will probably happen on a state by state basis rather than through federal legislation. In some states the vaccination rate is high enough that the refusers can still get away with refusing. If more large outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases happen, the majority (who do vaccinate) will want the rules changed.
"In 1890, the Supreme Court of California upheld a state law requiring vaccination to attend school (Abeel v. Clark).
Later, the (Supreme) Court applied Jacobson in Zucht v. King (1922) to reject a challenge to school-entry mandates in Texas."
Prince v. Massachusetts, 1944
Phillips v. City of New York, 2nd Cir., 2015; Workman v. Mingo Cnty Bd. of Educ., 4th Cir., 2011.
"Somewhat paradoxically, the strongest constitutional arguments may arise in states that allow exemptions for religious but not secular reasons. Mississippi's Supreme Court ruled that such a distinction violated the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause by favoring religious over philosophical objectors (Brown v. Stone, 1979)."
Based on your explanation in this post, I'd love to hear an explanation of how the unvaccinated put the fully vaccinated at risk when their illnesses are so mild.
How about the fact that you put a fetus at risk when you take your unvaccinated child out in public when he is probably not showing symptoms of being sick yet, but is spreading around what he's incubating?
That's a prime example of how the unvaccinated put people at risk.
Miss Terri, at what point do you consider someone to be "fully vaccinated"? The minute they walk out of the doctor's office? When they've had the anti-bodies measured in a blood titer? Twelve years after their last tetanus shot?
I have a friend who has been regularly vaccinated against measles but it won't take with her. Her doctor doesn't know why, but because she's pushing 50, her doctor warns her against being around kids who could be harboring the measles virus. Which right now is lots of them.
By the way, I read this a while back and thought I'd share it with you all. There is a book on Laura Ingalls Wilder that dissects Prairie Girl with a bunch of notes. One of the things that's always been debated is what disease Mary had that made her go blind. In the books it's called scarlet fever. Doctors have considered meningitis. However, as the family had measles when they were in Burr Oak, Iowa, the consensus now is Mary had a stroke related to her having measles, and that's what caused her to lose her sight.
Take it for what it's worth, but you have to wonder how different things would have been if Mary hadn't gone blind. I wonder what she'd say if you told her a vaccine might have prevented her blindness. Think she'd wish she could have gotten it?
How about the fact that you put a fetus at risk when you take your unvaccinated child out in public when he is probably not showing symptoms of being sick yet, but is spreading around what he's incubating?
That's a prime example of how the unvaccinated put people at risk.
My post was in response to Suzy's. A fetus is not fully vaccinated so your point doesn't translate to the post you quoted.
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Miss Terri, at what point do you consider someone to be "fully vaccinated"? The minute they walk out of the doctor's office? When they've had the anti-bodies measured in a blood titer? Twelve years after their last tetanus shot?
Most people consider it to be when they have gotten all vaccines on the schedule. When do you think a person qualifies as fully vaccinated?
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I have a friend who has been regularly vaccinated against measles but it won't take with her. Her doctor doesn't know why, but because she's pushing 50, her doctor warns her against being around kids who could be harboring the measles virus. Which right now is lots of them.
Right and if you would have quoted my entire post and not just one sentence you would have included the part where I noted that some people are too young for vaccines or that some people don't benefit from vaccines due to health issues. A vaccine that doesn't take is included in the group. Here it is in case you're interested.
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Originally Posted by MissTerri
I understand that a small subset of the population can't get vaccinated for health reasons or age but I don't see that as a good enough reason to advocate for people being coerced into giving up their right to choose to forgo a medical intervention via mandates and the threat of lawsuits. Our freedom to choose is worth protecting. Today it's a push for vaccines, in the future it will be something else. One day the vaccine pushers may find themselves in a position where they wish to exercise their informed consent and forgo a recommended medical intervention and they will not be allowed to. They can thank themselves for paving the way for a lack of choice. If they get sued, they can also thank themselves for the lawsuit.
What you propose in thread after thread on the topic of vaccines is much more damaging to our freedom as individuals then any threat that comes from the small subset of the population who refuses some or all vaccines.
By the way, where does your friend live that there are a lot of kids harboring measles?
Antivaxxers tend to cluster. If you frequent a playground near a Waldorf school there would be a lot of potential measles harbourers there.
Katarina, I didn't realise I'd go back to TD vaccine next booster, I had assumed I'd get DTaP each time now. I think I'd prefer the pertussis booster. I reaally really hated having pertussis as a kid.
Someone upthread posted they thought most vaccines were over 90% efficiency. I think mumps is only in the 80's after the first MMR jab, the second one takes it into the 90s.
MissTerri, I chose not to get my kids the hep B vax until they started school. Yes, it annoyed me to have to get it then (did not want to fill out the exemption), but the argument against them getting it was weaker than the argument for them having it (both were fairly weak). Any decent argument (there aren't many, and many vaccines have none*) for delaying a certain vaccine relies entirely on the child being isolated. This does not hold true for a child in daycare or school, which is why the mandates are enforced for kids in those group situations. My husband just got back from a business trip to China this morning, he spent all day with the kids and they'll be off to school tomorrow. If we weren't vaxxed for polio or measles or rubella the kids at school could be at risk and their parents would have no idea. In fact, the people he sat next to on his domestic connection could bring a disease home to their kids, too.
*there is a decent argument for delaying the Hep B vaccine or the chicken pox. I have never had nor given my kids the vaccines for yellow fever or japanese enephalitis or TB or smallpox or rabies or Q fever. My kids have not been vaxxed for typhoid. Not all of my kids have had HPV yet. Everything else we've had.
Last edited by WildColonialGirl; 04-17-2016 at 07:25 PM..
*there is a decent argument for delaying the Hep B vaccine or the chicken pox. I have never had nor given my kids the vaccines for yellow fever or japanese enephalitis or TB or smallpox or rabies or Q fever. My kids have not been vaxxed for typhoid. Not all of my kids have had HPV yet. Everything else we've had.
There are many good arguments for getting the Hep B vaccine in infancy. About 90% of infants who get Hep B become chronically infected. Older kids and adults are more likely to recover completely. A big risk factor in Hep B is simply living with someone who has it. That can move you from low risk to high overnight if a new person moves into the household (marriage, take in a relative, etc). Hep B virus is much more contagious than HIV and can be spread through cuts, bites, and the like.
There's no good reason at all to delay chickenpox vaccine. When the vax first came out, many parents wanted to wait to see if their kids would get it naturally. However, the probability of that decreased as more and more kids got vaxxed, and the unvaxxed kids' chances of exposure decreased. Chickenpox can be much harder on adults than kids. In fact, about half the deaths pre-vaccine were to adults who caught it from their own kids. It's easy to put off something like that. IMO, it's better to just get them vaxxed young.
The other vaccines you mentioned are not part of the regular immunization schedule, other than HPV. Yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and typhoid are sometimes required/recommended for travel to certain countries. No one gets smallpox vaccine any more. Rabies isn't recommended unless you're working with animals, or if you get bitten by an animal that may have been rabid. Q Fever vaccine is not available in the US. The TB vaccine, BCG is not very effective and not usually recommended in the US.
The bottom line is that, yes, parents who knowingly ignore the vaccinations and thus allow their children to spread disease are legally liable. Tort law clearly supports such theories.
Has any such case ever been brought & successfully prosecuted in the US? I'm curious - I'm interested in the issues, but I don't remember any such case being won in court - nor do I remember any damages being leveled against the parents of the infected child.
CDC can track lines of infection to their satisfaction - for a public health agency. & they can do a good job on determining that it's the same DNA or RNA or even viral packet - whatever a virus uses in place of DNA. I'm not sure that all that would translate to a conviction in court, though. I don't know that tort law is appropriate for these cases - do the parents of the infected child have a legal duty to the parents of a child subsequently infected by contact with the first infected child?
Public school corporations typically try to ensure that all children are vaccinated - but there are religious & sometimes philosophical exemptions. & in some relatively small percentage of children, the vaccines simply don't take, or don't confer a good level of protection.
I was 45 when I had my kids. Therefore, all mothers should wait till their 40s to guarantee they produce highly gifted children. My sample size of two trumps all other logic.
Yah, I get that you're being facetious.
1. Congratulations on the excellent outcomes on your children. Would that all children were above average - but that can't happen. That's not how stats work.
2. The guarantee part is also a logical howler. Genetics (& all the other plausible factors) don't work that way, either.
3. I'm sorry - you don't have a sample size there in your experience - you have anecdotal evidence - which in a rigidly constructed experiment, is no evidence. Possibly grounds for further investigation, but that means that someone would have to design a good experimental procedure, get a representative sample, recruit volunteers for observation/reporting, collect data long term, crunch the numbers & on & on. It's a big effort, & would probably require a team of people, with long-term funding from CDC or somebody interested in the issues involved.
4. trumps is an interesting choice of words. That term comes from card play - & while the stats & analysis of optimal card play do go into interesting finite math & probability calculations, TMK there is no similar silver bullet in the biological/genetic world. A pity, because such a critter would be very handy in solving difficult statistical problems & public health policy issues - like what we're debating here.
Has any such case ever been brought & successfully prosecuted in the US? I'm curious - I'm interested in the issues, but I don't remember any such case being won in court - nor do I remember any damages being leveled against the parents of the infected child.
I don't believe so. Its a new idea. Actually, the reason for the idea is that in the past almost everyone vaccinated and diseases like the measles were pretty rare. There was even talk at one point of eliminating measles, the way that small pox has been eliminated. Measles hasn't been eliminated though and the number of cases has risen because of the unwillingness of a minority to vaccinate.
CDC can track lines of infection to their satisfaction - for a public health agency. & they can do a good job on determining that it's the same DNA or RNA or even viral packet - whatever a virus uses in place of DNA. I'm not sure that all that would translate to a conviction in court, though. I don't know that tort law is appropriate for these cases - do the parents of the infected child have a legal duty to the parents of a child subsequently infected by contact with the first infected child?
I discussed most of these issues in detail in post #103. Perhaps, you missed that though because this thread is becoming long. The major point I would make here is that the standard of proof in civil cases (suits for money damages) is less than the standard of proof in a criminal case. This is because society believes the standard for sending someone to prison and depriving them of their liberty should be greater than the standard for requiring someone to pay monetary compensation to another. In criminal cases, the case must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, the standard is that something must be proven by a preponderance of evidence. This is a way of saying that there only needs to be slightly more evidence that something occurred than that it did not occur.
Some people have opined these suits could never succeed because it could not be proven to a 100% certainty that A infected B with a disease. One hundred percent certainty is not required. If an expert witness is willing to testify that he believes to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that A infected B with the measles that is satisfactory evidence in a civil case for a jury to conclude that A did indeed catch the measles from B. If 100% certainty were required you could never have a verdict in any case.
Your second question you ask is "Does a legal duty exist to the parents of a subsequently infected child"? I would say that duty is established by statute in any state with a compulsory vaccination law. The state mandates vaccination not just for the benefit of the child getting it, but for the benefit of the public at large as well. Vaccines create herd immunity. Herd immunity prevents contagious diseases from traveling throughout a population. Those who refuse to do their share place the public at risk. I would also argue that even in states with vaccine exemptions that religious and personal exemptions should not operate as an excuse. I would read those exemptions as allowing a parent to "take their chances", with their own child, but in no way negating a general duty to the public or innocent third parties.
I would argue that in some cases tort law is indeed an appropriate venue to deal with this issues.
Public school corporations typically try to ensure that all children are vaccinated - but there are religious & sometimes philosophical exemptions. & in some relatively small percentage of children, the vaccines simply don't take, or don't confer a good level of protection.
As I said above the exemptions exist for the benefit of the parents who don't want their children vaccinated. They don't exist for the benefit of the public at large. Therefore, they should not operate as a defense to action brought by an innocent member of the public that became infected by that child.
It is true that vaccines do not confer immunity in all children who receive them. This is why it is particularly important that every child who does not have a legitimate medical exemption be vaccinated. We can afford a few cases where the vaccines fail to confer immunity if the rest of the population of the community has been vaccinated and we have herd immunity of 90% or greater.
I see these cases coming. Those of us who vaccinate are becoming frustrated with those who refuse too. We think those people should be financially responsible for the harm that their failure to vaccinate causes. The tort system offers us a way to make that point.
Last edited by markg91359; 04-17-2016 at 09:21 PM..
Water is a toxin. Which is why understanding what a toxic dose means is important.
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Water is not poisonous - which is the meaning of toxin, as in - typically - the toxins produced by bacteria. Water may contain a toxin - that is, something may be mixed in with it. But the water itself is not a toxin.
Too much water may drown or asphyxiate someone - but again, that action is not poisonous. Someone may drink so much water that they upset their electrolyte balance, & sicken. (Not sure if someone can drink so much that they die as a result.) But again, it's not that water is toxic.
Is water itself defined as a toxin somewhere in law in the US? That would be interesting, in & of itself.
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Cases?
