Anne Fitten Glenn argues the wrong point in her vaccination article [“Edgy Mama: Why Choosing not to Vaccinate Your Child is a Bad Idea,” Jan. 26 Xpress].
I was recently coerced into having my autistic 7-year-old daughter vaccinated for chickenpox because one of her classmates showed up at school with this dreadful disease. State law (if you can believe it) requires unvaccinated students to stay out of school for two weeks if they are exposed to a disease carrier. So it was either have my kid vaccinated or find daycare for two weeks, as my wife and I both work. I wonder whom the state is trying to protect here. The vaccinated are supposedly protected, and the unvaccinated have accepted the risk. It's just another baby-sitter law — more about control and submission than good conservative governance of a supposedly free society.
I will spare the readers the dramatic descriptions of the unfortunate acute side effects of my daughter's vaccination. I had chickenpox as a kid, and I don't remember it being that bad. I'm disgusted that someone else gets to have a say about what gets introduced into our children's bodies.
I [associate] this type of rule with motorcycle-helmet laws, seat-belt legislation and employee drug-testing policies. I must strap myself to my automobile to drive it down the road my taxes paved? My wife has to allow someone to watch her urinate so she can keep a job? I have to strap a plastic bowl to my head to ride a motorbike? It's embarrassing that we live in a country so “free” that women demand the right to have fetuses vacuumed from their wombs, but I can't enjoy the wind in my hair! It's all one thing: your body, your decision.
Edgy Mama, channel your inner feminist and your inner American revolutionary! Tell everyone, from policeman to POTUS: Keep your filthy laws off my body.
— Normon Plombe
Asheville
I was recently coerced into having my autistic 7-year-old daughter vaccinated for chickenpox because one of her classmates showed up at school with this dreadful disease. State law (if you can believe it) requires unvaccinated students to stay out of school for two weeks if they are exposed to a disease carrier. So it was either have my kid vaccinated or find daycare for two weeks, as my wife and I both work. I wonder whom the state is trying to protect here. The vaccinated are supposedly protected, and the unvaccinated have accepted the risk. It's just another baby-sitter law — more about control and submission than good conservative governance of a supposedly free society.
I will spare the readers the dramatic descriptions of the unfortunate acute side effects of my daughter's vaccination. I had chickenpox as a kid, and I don't remember it being that bad. I'm disgusted that someone else gets to have a say about what gets introduced into our children's bodies.
I [associate] this type of rule with motorcycle-helmet laws, seat-belt legislation and employee drug-testing policies. I must strap myself to my automobile to drive it down the road my taxes paved? My wife has to allow someone to watch her urinate so she can keep a job? I have to strap a plastic bowl to my head to ride a motorbike? It's embarrassing that we live in a country so “free” that women demand the right to have fetuses vacuumed from their wombs, but I can't enjoy the wind in my hair! It's all one thing: your body, your decision.
Edgy Mama, channel your inner feminist and your inner American revolutionary! Tell everyone, from policeman to POTUS: Keep your filthy laws off my body.
— Normon Plombe
Asheville
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I'm disgusted that someone else gets to have a say about what gets introduced into our children's bodies.
It's a public school, right? And you did have a say. You had a choice to keep your kid out of school or get the vaccine. And while that may have been inconvenient for you, blaming the school seems silly. They are just protecting themselves from lawsuits.
It's embarrassing that we live in a country so “free†that women demand the right to have fetuses vacuumed from their wombs, but I can't enjoy the wind in my hair! It's all one thing: your body, your decision.
Those are not comparable. Not at all.
By bill smith
02/09/2011
State law (if you can believe it) requires unvaccinated students to stay out of school for two weeks if they are exposed to a disease carrier.
The idea that those not vaccinated threaten the health of those who have been vaccinated is extraordinarily self-contradictory and bizzare. If vaccinations work as they claim, why do vaccinated persons have to be concerned about being around those who are sick (or as in this particular case, those who have been exposed to somebody who is sick)?
By Same Sam
02/09/2011
This is perfect. I love to hear people complain and talk about revolution, and the only things they have problems with are seat belt laws and mandatory vaccines.
By Thad
02/09/2011
Hey Norm! Helmet laws and seat belt laws aren't designed to restrict your freedoms, it's totally financial. People who don't wear helmets or seat belts and get into accidents, incur far more severe injuries, coupled with the amount of people who don't have health care, means a higher cost burden on everyone else. The world doesn't revolve around you (Normeocentric theory)
By Ashevegasjoe
02/09/2011
Same Sam,
Certain vaccines, such as the pertussis, wear off over time. So, while my kids, who have recently had the DTAP vaccination, probably won't get whooping cough from an unvaccinated child in their school, I could contract a mild form of it from that child. Then I could inadvertantly come into contact with a baby who has not been vaccinated (or is too young to be vaccinated), and pass the disease to that baby, for whom it could result in hospitalization or even death.
By Edgy Mama
02/09/2011
Vaccination laws are there to prevent epidemics and pandemics from occurring again. Would you rather the strain mutate into a resistant form and bypass the vaccine altogether? It's a simple choice: vaccination or quarantine. Refusing both means you're purposefully exposing the general public to a known health threat...and that's what the law's there to prevent.
By Cheshire
02/09/2011
So basically, the letter writer's point is since others follow the guidelines concerning vaccines, he/she shouldn't have to? Let everyone else get vaccinated so his/her kids dont have to?
By bill smith
02/09/2011
Because the varicella vaccine wasn't introduced until 1995, which means a lot of adults (myself included) don't have it. In case you didn't know, chickenpox can be very serious for an adult.
Do you anti-vaccine folks even bother to educate yourselves before spouting off about your perceived oppression?
By bobaloo
02/09/2011
And what does your daughters autism have to do with anything?
By bobaloo
02/09/2011
Edgy Mama,
Then if vaccines are so great, why don't you keep them up to date? Then you don't have to worry.
By Same Sam
02/09/2011
same sam- thanks for your logical responses.
By normanplombe
02/09/2011
thad- i don't see facism around every corner. true oppression doesn't start with gas chambers. it starts with arbitrary control and submission...a boil-the-frog type thing.
By normanplombe
02/09/2011
edgy mama-that's some wild extrapolation there...although i can't dismiss it totally, as that IS the way a virus runs. we could simplify things, though, and allow me to interpolate: every child born has received a death sentence. tragic but true. and 8 days or 8 decades death comes for us all, and all too soon. let's just quit breeding, and eliminate death and disease altogether. (i know that sounds like sarcasm, but it's acutally my true philosophy)
By normanplombe
02/09/2011
I'll tell you what Mr. Plombe. You go right ahead and continue to enjoy the right to feel the wind in your hair, and us women will continue to enjoy the right to decide what to do with our own bodies. If you feel that it's "your body, your decision" then we should be in perfect agreement.
By Erin
02/11/2011
"let’s just quit breeding, and eliminate death and disease altogether. (i know that sounds like sarcasm, but it’s acutally my true philosophy)"
Then why did you have kids?
By JMAC
02/11/2011
Our government, and by extension our public schools, always knows what is best for us
No one here is claiming anything close to that. Merely that the claims the letter-writer makes about vaccines and Autism are nonsense.
By bill smith
02/12/2011
The letter writer is way over the top! Loss of freedoms! Are you kidding me? Drama queen indeed!
By dpewen
02/14/2011
"So it was either have my kid vaccinated or find daycare for two weeks, as my wife and I both work. I wonder whom the state is trying to protect here."
All of this revolution talk and yet you expect the state to provide you with free day care...
By J S Campbell
02/17/2011