My point is that we need to protect the children of the boneheads that won’t protect their own children. Be it religious beliefs or misguided anti-vax beliefs, these children need to be protected.

http://media.oregonlive.com/oregon_city_news/photo/alayna1jpg-7e5bb9ccc2d6b094_large.jpg

I look at that image right there, and I know that that baby wouldn’t have had a chance had she remained in her parents custody, and the state hadn’t intervened.

I’m all for closing the loophole letting parents off the hook. It’s more humane to euthanize someone than to kill them off by letting painful disease run rampant in their body. Or, in this case, cause permanent eye damage and blindness.

Just my $.02.

There are kids with cancer, autoimmune disorders, or who are allergic to vaccine ingredients who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons (also rarely vaccines don’t take, so those kids would be at risk as well). Those kids rely on herd immunity to keep from getting exposed to those diseases. When the parents of kids who can be safely vaccinated refuse it puts kids who can’t for legitimate medical reasons at risk (as well as infants who are too young to be vaccinated).

There are many infants (and the few legitimately unvaccinated kids I mentioned above) that would be placed at an unnecessary risk for exposure if other patients in the waiting room might have those communicable diseases.

Blood dontations are always screened for things like AIDs, etc. I’m not 100% sure, but I would think they do this for organs too.

“Judeo-Cristianity holds freedom of the individual to be a gift of the divine, for the purpose of rendering service back to the divine; by choosing to act righteously.”

Which branch of Christianity? What about groups like Calvinist Protestantism with it’s belief in predestination?

“Take away that, and you’ve got basically almost any other nation’s philosophy other than the US. ”

Funny that the US has the largest prison population in the world then, and most of them are in there due to drug prohibition laws.

I’m afraid I have to vigorously disagree with you that the Bible teaches the freedom of the individual as a divine right. The God of the Old Testament commanded genocide (including the slaughter of babies and pregnant women) because people are the “wrong” religion, says slavery is OK, and set up a society where women were treated as property. The New Testament also assumes slavery is fine, says women are to learn about spiritual matters from their husbands at home, says men are the head of women because women are weaker morally due to Eve’s sin, teaches unquestioning obedience to religious authority, and is against homosexual rights. The God of the Bible is also against religious freedom and limits freedom of speech.

I’m glad that you believe in individual freedom, but those ideas come out of the enlightenment, not the Bible. When Christians say that natural right can come from God I am always puzzled, the idea of individual right, freedom of speech and religion, and thinking for yourself instead of reliance on dogma are written against strongly in many places in the Bible. Sure there is some good stuff in the Bible, but the rights of the individual, as we talk about it, is not there.

You might appreciate that I am an evolutionist orthodox Christian — and I’m the only one that I know. While I don’t understand the refusal of some denomenations of all contemporary medical practices, I do identify with those who refuse donor blood products, tissues and organs. The scriptural basis for these refusals is pretty clear, and even supported by the recent emergence of novel blood-borne pathogens such as HIV, hep C, and prions.

As I see it, conflicts are going to be inevitable for the basic reason that secular medicine regards death as the worst case scenario, and for religious believers it is offense to an eternal authority. There are medical situations where the two beliefs cannot be reconciled.

If Oregon is going to intervene in these parental decisions they should proceed in all due sensitivity. To anyone who values freedom I would say, “Well there’s a God for that.” Judeo-Cristianity holds freedom of the individual to be a gift of the divine, for the purpose of rendering service back to the divine; by choosing to act righteously. Take away that, and you’ve got basically almost any other nation’s philosophy other than the US. Freedom in most places is regarded like unclaimed property that fell out the back of somebody’s truck.

In every country in the world, everyone can believe whatever they want. That is nothing special. The first question is whether one is allowed to state that belief openly (e.g. “Obama is an islamic terrorist”) and the second question is whether one is allowed to act on that belief (e.g. “I will cut my daughter’s clit off”). We need government to protect people from what other people do (second example) and sometimes even from what other people say (because it might lead people to do something dangerous, e.g. yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre when there is no fire, which does not fall under free speech).

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You make a good point but, as I said in @88, it’s still more complex than that.

For example, your statement about the courts (I also am not a lawyer) — how does the process work when the judiciary is as politicized as it is in the US, when there is no legal consensus, when even the highest court in the land is politicized? How can a law be ‘reasonably’ constructed when society is so divided.

As an aside, be careful about arguing the exception (ie. protective services taking children). Like the slippery slope argument, it’s based on emotion rather than fact. In this case, the vast majority of cases are legitimate — you just don’t hear about them very often.

Cheers

Now, having gone all Founding Fathers on ya, I think such laws could be reasonably constructed to cover extreme cases where the life of a child is in jeopardy. Unlike most Internet commentators, I make no claims to the legal expertise required to evaluate such law. But, that’s what the courts are for: to judge the individual cases.

That being said, my reservations arise from the many abuses that the government at all levels commits every day, and how existing law is applied to things the people who wrote the law never intended. Look up the abuses of the Patriot Act or DMCA. Look at how RICO is used versus its original intent. Especially look up stories of local child protective services taking children from parents for the flimsiest of reasons, or even based on false accusations, and it takes months or years to sort out.

Let’s use a good old car analogy.

How many exploding Pintos are you willing to tolerate from a piece of legislation? Or stuck accelerator pedals, to use something more contemporary.

I’d want any potential legislation given a good shaking out by some hard core civil libertarians.

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Dan, you’ve hit on the heart of this thread – complexity.

This issue IS “more complex than if an adult patient was blowing off vaccinations.” It is more complex than “oppos(ing) increased governmental oversight (@79. Aubrey). It is more complex than “booking appointments” (@69 Joseph G), etc. etc.

It’s about finding a solution that meets the needs of the parents while protecting the health of the child in a politically charged, litigious society immersed in an ocean of competing and often downright false information. It’s about religious belief in the face of science. It’s about people believing everything they read on the internet or watching on television. It’s about law not being about justice.

While I personally think society has an obligation to protect children in spite of their parents and that physicians have a moral obligation to treat all patients, I realize that this is simply my opinion – it is neither right or wrong.

In the end, it’s about values in a society that has yet to find a consensus about individual rights – a society that is, itself, dangerously divided.

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All in all, this is an excellent thread about an important subject. Nice work.

cheers all

But the problem is that the child isn’t the one blowing off the doctors instructions; it is the parents. The question is, should a child lose his access to all regular medical care because his parents are stupid when it come to vaccinations? The official position of the AMA and the American Pediatric Association is that refusing to give access to medical care to a child in this situation violated medical ethics.

I’m kind of torn on the issue, but this is more complex than if an adult patient was blowing of vaccinations.

– Take this course of antibiotics all the way to the end; don’t just stop as soon as you “feel better” and save the remainder for the next time you or someone else has symptoms that seem the same to you.
– Do not take this medication with alcohol.
– Bring him back in next month, and I’ll see about removing the cast.
– This is a suppository.

If someone is going to blow off the doctor’s instructions because they think the doctor is ignorant or part of a conspiracy, there are better ways for the doctor to spend his time.

Excellent response response to a line of argument that is really nothing more than paranoia.

cheers

I have a problem with the Oregon Law, because I can see it being used to help push laws to regulate your child’s diet, exercise, video game time, etc. I think it is irresponsible and immoral for a parent to deny their child medical treatment because they want to wait for a miracle, but there are way to many people who would find me irresponsible and immoral for giving my kid a happy meal, or letting him play video games on the weekends.

The Slippery Slope? I'd only worry about that if you could demonstrate a lack of friction. Not that people wouldn’t argue that way, but I can’t see them making much progress. As has been pointed out, the Oregon law is not about how you have to treat your child – it just takes away an excuse for why you mistreated them.

What exactly is your point?

What’s to say that your child won’t, in the future, be saved by Mr. Wacky’s child whom you save today by forcing him to accept real medicine.

What’s to say that your child will avoid growing up to become Mr. Wacky? Should we not take the chance and force your child to be aborted?

A human is a human. Until we can determine which humans in the future will be beneficial or not, we need to allow all humans the ability to grow to healthy adulthood.

My older daughter had the same reaction…and it did get worse. Turns out to have been symptomatic of an underlying anxiety disorder. This is not to say that the same thing is true of your daughter; I’d keep an eye on her in similar situations and see if it seems to get worse. 13 is a great age for freaking out–kids have a lot of information, but not too much impulse control, and the concrete/abstract thinking line is very close to the surface; it may be a one-time thing. Some of her reaction may also have been because she knew better than to ride her bike without the helmet, and was seeing treatment as a kind of punishment for doing something stupid. But if this seems to be an escalating issue, it’s much easier to help your daughter get a handle on her anxiety earlier.

Sure, seeing a child die needlessly might make us all feel a little uncomfortable, and those who think it’s their religious duty to defend others might not like it. But I perceive government intervention in my life as a far greater threat to my survival than random religious person abusing his kids.

I guess I’d like to hear the “skeptics” around here explain the basis for their “moral indignation”.

and,

@59. Donald VR Said: “@53 Ron1 – I think my comment may have taken on some meaning for you that I didn’t intend. I’ve seen plenty of what you would call animal “altruism”. And sure altruism is beneficial sometimes, maybe even the majority of the time, but it isn’t always. Think of the mother giraffe who tries to save her offspring and ends up getting them both killed. Since we humans are self aware, we should be able to ignore our animal instincts (heroically altruistic as they may be) when they are not to our advantage.

Am I wrong?
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Are you wrong?

Well, what exactly is your argument? Is it that “denying children health care is no threat to you,” or is it ‘you don’t want to tolerate people who don’t think like you,’ or ‘you despise people who try to defend others’ or ‘you think government is a threat’ or that you use the standard Conservative form of arguing the exception or that you don’t have a clue about animal behaviour.

Take a look at what you’ve said in your two comments and try to see what you’ve really said, as I’ve indicated to you in the paragraph above. After doing that, ask me again if you’re wrong.

I’m not sure if this specific case was one I read about before, but I’ve heard of several doctors turning away unvaccinated patients. In every case I’ve read they only turn away children who were healthy enough to get vaccinations and their parents refused. Some children have autoimmune disorders, cancer, or are allergic to specific ingredients in vaccinations and usually the pediatricians say that they turn away children that choose to be unvaccinated specifically to protect the children who are unvaccinated for real health reasons. It would be especially dangerous for unvaccinated children with autoimmune disorders to be exposed to those diseases during a visit, so keeping them seperated from kids who are unvaccinated by choice can actually be a compassionate thing to do.

I see the point, but I still am conflicted. I don’t want to see children not receive regular medical care because of the stupidity of the parents, but at the same time children unvaccinated by choice are a danger to other patients.