Why do you have mixed feelings? As P.Z. said recently in another context, when the blood is so red, some things have to be black and white, with no shades of grey. Doesn’t your second clause convince you that you’re mixed feelings are just as delusional as the beliefs of the antivaxxers?

When science and libertarianism are in conflict, science wins, every time. Get used to it. Get over it and move on.

Next thing you know, Jenny McCarthy will be saying “even Phil Plait has mixed feelings about forcing kids to get vaccinated”.

The only reasons for not vaccinating should be valid medical reasons.

A follow-up on the Houston case–the case apparently was contracted elsewhere while traveling, and the baby was too young to have been vaccinated under normal guidelines.

Yes, the child got it at Orlando, FL. There have been more who took measles home as a souvenir. The Orlando Sentinel had an article called “Health officials investigate measles outbreak in Orlando tourists.” The article says:

Three tourists from Texas, Michigan and Minnesota who traveled to Orlando in the past month have come down with the measles — leading health authorities to investigate how they caught the disease and from whom.

I agree the situation is wrong. Your point about have to versus should is, in this case, semantics as that was the point I was attempting to make.

@36

The problem is that not always the case with religion. Parents are freely allowed to inflict their views on their children not just in raising them but also in choicing, or refusing, medical care. They are endangering public health in this situation but until it gets to a court where a judgement to that effect is made, anti-vaxxers are going to keep insisting it is their right because it only affects their child.

@37

We have yet to see an anti-vax parent brough up on charges of child abuse or negligent homicide. I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THIS. That would be the nail in the coffin of this particular issue. The reason the law-suit matters is because schools do everything they can to prevent them even if they are shaky or unfounded. They don’t have much of a legal defense budget or a desire for that sort of publicity.

A follow-up on the Houston case–the case apparently was contracted elsewhere while traveling, and the baby was too young to have been vaccinated under normal guidelines.

Yes, the child got it at Orlando, FL. There have been more who took measles home as a southerner: Health officials investigate measles outbreak in Orlando tourists.

I have mixed feelings about forcing kids to get vaccinated, but in the end we simply cannot have schools be breeding grounds for diseases which are trivially easy to prevent.

Thank you. Half my sister’s family got pertussis last year – brought home by my niece from someone at her High School. They were all vaccinated, but the pertussis vaccine is only about 85% effective and wanes over time; so unless you have a very high vaccination rate, you can still have outbreaks – even among the vaccinated.

I’d argue that we not only need a high vaccination rate, but we could do with a little more research into making the pertussis vaccine more effective.

-S

I understand your concern about anti-vax doctors, but from what I can tell there really are very few of them. I come from a medical family, and I myself am an attorney with a wife working in cancer research, so I’ve come to know a very large number of people in the medical community. I can tell you (and I know this is anecdotal evidence, so not particularly effective) that I do not know a single physician who buys into the anti-vax nonsense. I’m sure that they are out there, but I really believe that they aren’t as prevalent as you seem to think they are.