The Anti-vaccination movement!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Anti-vaccination movement!

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

A lovely Reporter posted:

Screw their feelings. They're putting children at risk who cannot make the choice for themselves.

You realize that this describes a whole lot of things that parents do in the normal course of parenting, yes?

AVeryLargeRadish posted:

I think one would be justified forcing the children to be vaccinated too, but the law disagrees. This isn't about feelings, it's about the actions that stem from them.

You can't really handwave the implications of removing the right for parents to make medical decisions on behalf of their child though.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2016 23:56

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 05:03

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

fishmech posted:

that doesn't make doing those things not bad though?

Are you in favor of making it illegal to buy your kid a skateboard, or allowing them to swim in the ocean, or walk home from school by themselves?

Solkanar512 posted:

So you're cool with letting parents starve their children, leave them outside in the cold, deny them blood transfusions and other necessary medical care? Why do you implicitly ignore the implications of parents choosing, against medical advice, to deny their own children necessary and preventative medical care? I can't imagine that you're also fine with parents beating the poo poo out of their kids to the point of being maimed, so why would you be ok with them being maimed by an easily preventable disease?

What do you say to the young women out there who will inevitably get cervical cancer because their parents refused them a vaccination?

Who gets to decide what is necessary? You could easily argue that no "reasonable" person would refuse the standard of care for a given condition. Can doctors give a child whatever care they deem necessary in the moment, even if it involves, say, the risky and invasive use of scalpels? If a child is suffering (emphasis on the suffering bit here) from a terminal illness, when does the state deign to grant the parents the right to decline further care? How do you feel about Jewish parents arranging a bris for their male children? (Which is rather different from a clinical circumcision, before we start debating the health benefits of circumcision again.) Is it abuse if a parent feeds their child a diet higher in saturated fats than the FDA recommends? The realistic outcome of your proposal is a removal of parents' decision making about the care of their children on all but the most superficial level, instead substituting the choices of whoever the government deems an "expert." Would you trust an appointee selected by George W. Bush or Donald Trump to make healthcare decisions for your child?

Freedom means that people have the right to make decisions you disagree with based on moral frameworks you disagree with. I'm generally in favor of vaccination, but frankly the only moral way to talk about making it mandatory is as an exigent exception to normal questions of parental consent and bodily integrity. This whole "well, they are savages whose beliefs are based on superstitious nonsense, whereas I am Very Smart and listen to the experts, so gently caress them" tone is some repugnant poo poo.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 08:19

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

BreakAtmo posted:

You do realise that vaccination is not just about the health of an individual, but also about herd immunity, right? When an idiot anti-vaxxer “makes decisions i disagree with based on moral frameworks i disagree with", they aren't just endangering their child, but many people who come into contact with them.

Yeah, "we're going to non-consensually inject things into your body, not to save your life in the immediate circumstance, but to theoretically decrease the health risks of some other people you may come into contact with later" is even more morally fraught than transfusing someone against their will while they're bleeding to death in front of you. If there was a drug that demonstrably reduced violent tendencies and criminal behavior by 10% later in life if regularly administered to a child, but had a one-in-a-hundred-thousand chance of serious side effects, would you be in favor of making it mandatory?

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 08:34

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Declaring "this thing is bad, and anyone who disagrees is a monster" without considering precedent or the larger moral ramifications is childish.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 08:52

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

How broadly are you willing to apply that though? If I can show that the benefits of anything on a societal level are greater than the negatives, or vice versa, would you support mandating or prohibiting it? Because being being required to take whatever path the government deems as "most optimal" isn't so much offensive to the idea of personal autonomy as completely eliminating it. Or is it just for those issues where you think you're right and don't have any skin in the game?

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Aug 10, 2016

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 09:11

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Cranappleberry posted:

I'm not entertaining insane hypotheticals from some far-flung future where an authoritarian government has control. I'm entertaining real life, right now. Show me that the benefits of giving children vaccinations, even against their parent's wishes, is a net negative for an individual child (a person), a group of children (a group of people) and for society at large (a large group of people). That is my standard of proof.

hemale in pain posted:

We call these things laws

That's not an answer to the question. We're discussing what the law ought to be, not what it is. If you're going to argue, as Cranappleberry did, that something should be mandatory with the only evidence offered being that the benefits outweigh the negatives, then you ought to be prepared to agree that anything whose benefits outweigh its negatives ought to be mandatory. Otherwise you aren't really espousing any kind of consistent moral argument. FYI, even putting aside the question of who gets to make these judgements, pretty much the entire Bill of Rights fails the common good test.

Buckwheat Sings posted:

It's also fun to troll a topic with one side that actually amounts to actual pain and death of children.
Muh freedom Muh guvmint

But enough about the reinstatement of prohibition.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 09:26

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Zo posted:

It's because you're putting up a bad faith argument using an extreme slippery slope of "so if you say vaccinations are beneficial... are you consenting to making ANYTHING that's beneficial in the slightest bit mandatory???" It's a nonsensical and worthless argument.

An argument that you don't like and don't have a good answer for isn't the same as a bad faith argument. And my argument is an entirely rational question to put to someone who favors making something mandatory on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. If a simple cost-benefit analysis is sufficient for mandating vaccinations, why is this principle inapplicable to things that aren't vaccinations without resorting to special pleading? If a simple cost-benefit analysis is insufficient for making something mandatory, when y'all shouldn't be advancing it like some sort of checkmate. It's not up to me to flesh out the nuance of your argument for you if you want me to agree with you.

If someone said, "Killing Hitler was good, because it is good when bad people are killed," I would definitely interrogate their argument, because it can be used to justify all sorts of horrendous poo poo, even though I think killing Hitler was a good thing.

VitalSigns posted:

Wait so if we make it mandatory to (for example) feed your kids or send them to school, then we automatically have ban skateboards and candy?

I don't understand how we get from the first things to the last things. Like, if we mandate/ban anything for a huge public benefit, then we have to mandate/ban everything for any conceivable health benefit no matter how small? Is that the argument?

That's rather the point though. If you say "X should be mandatory because it has the overall least risk to the health of the child" and I say "that can also be used to justify Y", you have to provide some argument other than "nu-uh" or "they're different." If there is some magic numerical threshold of harm that X and Y are on different sides of, you should be able to articulate that... and also be prepared to support banning/mandating everything on the X side of it. It's your standard, after all. You're the one defining the terms. If your argument has more nuance than what you said, maybe you should flesh it out more, instead of acting like everyone is stupid for not agreeing with your reductive premise.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 09:59

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

OK, so in what other circumstances can the state take children away from parents and inject them with foreign substances on the basis of the parents having beliefs you disagree with?

Cranappleberry posted:

I'm addressing only Dead Reckoning's specific stance that freedom of a parent to exercise "bodily autonomy" of their child with respect to vaccines. Now you are saying people have to make up laws and have a "consistent philosophy" with completely extraneous topics. Consistency with other topics is unnecessary, we are discussing why the freedom of the parent to exercise control of a child's physical wellbeing (to the detriment of the child) is more important than the health of the child, children and society.

That's the thing, though. You can't cut specific scenarios away from governing principles and decide them in isolation in order to avoid morally difficult questions. That's pretty much the definition of special pleading.
If you feel that being consistent along related issues is unnecessary to construct a moral or legal framework, then IDK what to tell you.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Aug 10, 2016

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 10:17

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Truga posted:

Any, where the child in question is going to have a significantly better quality of life for it.

And who gets to make that determination? If I decide that female children would have a significantly better quality of life being raised in atheist/agnostic/Unitarian Universalist households than fundamentalist Muslim households, can we take female children away from fundamentalist Muslim couples and give them to atheists/agnostics/Unitarians?

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 10:33

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Truga posted:

CPS

So if President Trump fired the entire CPS bureaucracy and replaced them with people who agree that fundamentalist Muslim upbringing is harmful to girls, and began a program of actively taking away the female children of fundamentalist Muslims, this would be OK, good, and just? Or would you care to revise your non-answer?

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 10:42

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Truga posted:

No, that would not be OK. What's up with that strawman/slippery slope combo

Well, so far your argument has been that the state can take away children if being away from their birth parents would give them a "significantly better quality of life." I asked who gets to define "significant" and "better", and you answered that CPS does. Which is basically a nonsensical appeal to authority/status quo. So I posed a question about what you would think if CPS was staffed with people who had a radically different idea of what a better quality of life consists of than you do. You said that you would not be OK with that, which rather strongly implies that you think that there are some sort of universal precepts that government bureaucrats should follow when determining what constitutes a "significantly better quality of life," rather than CPS having the ability to make that determination as you stated earlier.

So what are those precepts?

This whole discussion is apparently necessary because the, for lack of a better term, anti-anti-vaxx posters seem loathe (for some reason) to acknowledge the idea that there should be a universal standard for determining what constitutes harm to a child and then discuss what those standards are, and the results of applying them to things that aren't vaccination in order to test them.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 10:53

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

QuarkJets posted:

This is basically an argument for dismantling all forms of authority out of fear that authority can be used for less-than-good purposes. Is that the argument that you're trying to make? Do you really think this is the appropriate thread for that?

No it's not. It's an argument in favor of a government with limited, enumerated powers that operates based on rule of law. It's an argument that just government requires adhering to equality under the law, and respecting the rights of others, rather than trying to carve out exceptions based on our personal prejudices.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 11:07

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

QuarkJets posted:

You want to ban child labor?? Whatever for?? If we let you do that then eventually you'll be banning any labor of any kind and then where will we be, hmm? Tut tut good sir your idea has been soundly defeated

Determining when someone is qualified to exercise various rights and privileges based on an objective measurement of their age is the exact opposite of legislating based on nebulous concepts like "a better quality of life."

BreakAtmo posted:

These 'well who gets to decide' slippery slope arguments are so ridiculous. It's like saying that if you are against kidnapping people and holding them against their will, you must also be against all imprisonment of criminals. After all, the only difference there is that the criminals are subjectively guilty of what are subjectively considered crimes by society.

It's not though. We don't imprison people for arbitrary reasons, or because they are bad. We imprison them for objectively breaking one or more predefined rules we've spelled out as a society. If someone hasn't broken the law, you can't put them in jail, no matter how much of an rear end in a top hat they are.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 11:28

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Solkanar512 posted:

Dead, I'm still waiting for you to answer my questions clearly and directly.

Solkanar512 posted:

Dead, what do you say to the young women with cervical cancer whose parents denied her a vaccination? Where is her bodily autonomy?

Don't say I never did nothin' for ya. Someone who is old enough to consent to sexual activity is also old enough to make certain decisions about their health care. That's why all 50 states and the District of Columbia allow minors to consent to STI treatment without parental consent. Which is the correct decision, IMO. The key distinction here is that adolescents are, in certain cases, considered competent to make decisions about their healthcare, beliefs, and other matters in a way that children at the age when the typical vaccine schedule is administered are not. The question of parental consent is much different in a situation where the patient in question is capable of making their wishes known and understanding consequences, rather than an infant or toddler. If a 14 year old wants to get vaccinated against their parents' wishes, I'd be OK with that too.

Ravenfood posted:

Where do you stand on being able to give blood to the kids of Jehovah's Witnesses against the parents' wishes?

I'm OK with it because it's a response to exigent, immediate circumstances, e.g. the kid is going to bleed to death. I'm much less willing to endorse interventions in situations that are not immediately life-threatening. If parents are letting their kid eat too much sugar and saturated fats, I don't think the state has the right to jump in and mandate a more balanced diet, even though childhood obesity has serious health implications and risk of early death. I'm extremely leery of the idea of forcing someone to undergo a medical intervention for others' benefit ("people should have to get vaccines because they might get other people sick") because we don't force people to donate blood, (or non-essential organs for that matter) even when it could immediately save a life, and even though the risks are negligible. If someone declines to become a post-mortem organ donor due to their spiritual beliefs, should the state be entitled to harvest their organs anyway in order to save several lives? On the other side of the coin, I'm perfectly OK with the government prohibiting the un-vaccinated from attending public schools, working as health care providers, food handlers, etc. and quarantining people infected or reasonably suspected to be infected with a contagious disease, because I feel those adequately balance the right of people to decide what happens to their bodies with the interest of the state in controlling disease. I also don't feel the need to punish people with beliefs I think are stupid by forcing them to do what I know they should.

Ravenfood posted:

For that matter, you keep equivocating between theoretical ethical/moral framework arguments and then arguments about practicality. You claim CPS is a non-answer for "who gets to decide" but "CPS" is actually "an institution that we societally have decided is empowered to make that decision through a combination of legal cases decided by judges and laws written by legislators elected through various means". Its not a non-answer, its an answer fully in line with "limited, enumerated powers that operates based on rule of law." Its exactly what you're claiming you want, but because you keep changing whether you're talking about a "universal moral framework by which all decisions must be judged" or "limited, enumerated powers based on rule of law" nobody can hit the target you want. Are you trying to discuss hypothetical theoretical ethical situations or not, because "limited enumerated powers based on rule of law" is just as subject to your asinine "what if someone unethical gets control of the lawmaking process" bullshit handwringing shittery you were engaging in earlier.

Earlier I was refuting the incredibly stupid position put forward by BreakAtmo that the question of guilt or innocence in a criminal trial is a subjective one. It was tangential to the overall point. Saying that you agree with CPS deciding is still a non-answer, because it's just saying that you agree with the status quo of who makes judgements about state interventions in child welfare, except that you want to expand their remit to include forcing non-immediate medical interventions on children when they deem it appropriate based on some nebulous consideration of "best" that you refuse to nail down in any way other than stating that it includes mandatory vaccination.

There are two things at play here. I'm probably not phrasing this in the best way, but there is the question of what purpose the law should serve, what principles should guide it, which is inherently a subjective question, but needs to be internally consistent. You can't say that we should legislate the greatest good for the greatest number one minute, and then argue about the need to respect the rights of individuals the next (unless you're either willing to address how that balance should always be struck, or you're indulging in a hand-wavey definition of "good" where the individual rights you care about are "good" for people, but not the ones you disagree with.) Then there is the actual codification and implementation of the law itself, which needs to be internally consistent and based on objective criteria.

For example, we generally agree on the principle that only people old enough to competently make decisions about governance should be able to vote. However, "competent enough to make decisions about government" isn't an objective standard. Now, we could set up some sort of bureau of experts to determine when someone had reached a significant level of competence, but then you have to decide who counts as an expert and therefore a gatekeeper of voting rights, and given our experiments with such things in the past, it would probably be used as a way to disenfranchise black people. So we instead say that citizens are granted the franchise when they turn 18, and objective standard.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 04:53

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 05:03

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

I mean, I guess there's nothing stopping you from arguing on the basis that the proper purpose of law is to follow whatever justification you choose to gussy up your emotional reaction to the issue du jour, but most people who do that at least make the token effort of an appeal to divine will or something. It does explain a lot about your posting though.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 08:14

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