IN light of the current measles outbreak in the United States, Americans are debating: Should children in the nation be required to be vaccinated? What should prevail – parental choice or public health and welfare?
While in the Philippines, measles (or “tigdas” as we call it back home) continues to be a problem among the general population, this is not quite the case here in the United States. Measles has largely been eliminated by vaccine since the 1980s.
This is a big leap in the fight against the communicable disease. According to an article by Monica Anderson released by the Pew Research Center, before the first licensed measles vaccine in 1963, hundreds of thousands of measles cases were reported annually in the US.
Just in 1958 alone, there were more than 750,000 reported cases. Ten years later, in 1968, that number went down to about 22,000, according to a data analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
But this decade, there has been a resurgence of measles cases.
The CDC reported that there had been a spike in 2014, with more than 600 measles cases reported. The CDC said this is the first jump in more than ten years.
The Pew Research article reported that such a spike was attributed to two factors: an outbreak among unvaccinated Ohio Amish communities and cases related to an outbreak in the Philippines.
More recently, the outbreak of measles cases at Disneyland in California has already spread to 14 states.
President Barack Obama is urging parents to heed modern science that has debunked any causal link between autism and vaccination.
“There is every reason to get vaccinated – there aren’t reasons to not,” Obama said.
In a Newsweek article by Richard Epstein, the author writes that the resurgence of measles in the past decade can be attributed to parents “who get a free ride off the vaccination of others.” While these parents reportedly believe measles is a contagious disease, it only spreads if there is a sufficiently large population of unvaccinated people in any given community.
Epstein wrote that these parents rationalize that taking any vaccine, including the measles vaccine, necessarily carries with it some risk of adverse outcomes. Vaccines could be impure or improperly administered, and even in the best of times, risk that the vaccine itself will transmit the very disease that it is supposed to prevent, had swayed some parents to choose not to have their kids immunized.
Epstein wrote that the second factor that reduces vaccination levels is the spread, sometimes deliberate, of misinformation that overstates vaccination risks. The article said such sentiment is often fueled by powerful suspicions that drug companies are greedy and governments corrupt.
This is also why despite new findings proving that vaccinations do not cause autism, many parents still choose not to have their kids vaccinated, thinking there is a grand conspiracy between the government, the drug companies, and scientists.
Because of the current measles outbreak, many pro-vaccination advocates have been promoting that all kids should get the shots, or face consequences.
Among the boldest moves made so far is a lawsuit filed in California by Carl Krawitt on behalf of his 6-year-old son, Rhett, who suffers from leukemia. Because of this medical condition, Rhett cannot safely take the vaccine.
According to the Newsweek article, Krawitt’s suit demands that his local school board require all students who can, but have not, been vaccinated to stay at home, so that Rhett can safely attend the school.
Epstein went on to explain the rationale and implications of the lawsuit: “if the school board should deem the risk sufficient to call for those suspensions, it is equally unlikely that any parent who refuses to vaccinate their children for either religious or medical reasons could have any success in keeping them in school. Discretion is always a double-edged sword, so that the high level of official discretion that lets health officials allow unvaccinated students attend school also gives them authority to force those students to stay home.”
This argument in support of mandatory vaccination is diametrically opposed to the libertarian principle: to have kids vaccinated or not is a decision only their parents can and should make, and the government should be out of this. To force parents to have their kids vaccinated is deemed to be in violation of the Constitution.
But Epstein presented a compelling argument that I wish to share with you:
“The main constitutional lens through which these issues were viewed at the time was one of police power. This all-pervasive notion has no explicit textual authorization in the Constitution. But a moment’s reflection makes it clear that the Constitution’s various provisions protecting individual liberty must at times give way to government control in response to health hazards. From the earliest times, therefore, the police power has always been construed to allow public officials to take strong action against individuals who posed threats to the health of others by the spread of communicable diseases.”
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
