SiouxEmpire.com allows local conservative/libertarian writer and 2016 Sioux Falls school board election last-placer Peter Vaughn Pischke to take a swing at the Charlie Gard controversy (British infant with an incurable illness and severe brain damage, parents want to seek experimental nucleoside treatment, doctors say it likely won’t help, British courts won’t let them travel overseas—see this BBC explanation). Pischke attempts to boost his ethos by portraying himself as above making the British case a partisan issue, but then throws around inflammatory terms like “barbarism” and “insane” and links single-payer healthcare coverage to “Eugenics, Progressivism, and the Nazis.”
Back the truck up, Pete. The Charlie Gard case has nothing to do with single-payer health coverage. The hospital taking care of the infant applied for permission to attempt the requested experimental therapy, but the child’s condition subsequently worsened to the point that doctors decided that the treatment would only prolong suffering. Letting the parents travel to the U.S. to spend the donations they’ve raised online could save the U.S. National Health Service money, or at least free up resources to be used more efficiently on other patients. Private insurers in the United States regularly deny coverage for experimental treatments. So Charlie Gard is no indictment of single-payer.
The Charlie Gard case isn’t about the money; it’s about the thorny question of whose rights come first, a child’s or the parents’:
Parents in Britain do not have the absolute right to make decisions for their children. It is normal for courts to intervene when parents and doctors disagree on the treatment of a child. The rights of the child take primacy, with the courts weighing issues such as whether a child is suffering and how much benefit a proposed treatment might produce [Danica Kirka, “A Brief Look at the Medical Issues in the Charlie Gard Case,” AP via WSBT22, 2017.07.10].
By placing child rights above parent rights, British law and the European Court of Human Rights are taking what sounds very much like the pro-life position American conservatives use to justify abortion bans (I’m trying not to be partisan here, Pete, but the comparison is worth making): the rights of a young human being outweigh the right of a parent to make medical decisions.
That’s not insane barbarism. That’s a complicated moral question. If British parents want to deny their child a blood transfusion that can save the child’s life, British law says no, the child’s right to live comes first, and in goes the life-saving blood. If Charlie Gard’s parents wanted to try bloodletting or leeches, British law would likely say no way. In this case nucleoside therapy isn’t leeches, but it’s also not scientifically proven to have any positive impact on children with Charlie Gard’s condition. Doctors are placed in the unenviable position of having to study the issue and determine whether it will do more harm than good to the child, and in this case, the experts have said no, they can’t in good conscience do what their best analyses say is harm to this child.
Peter Vaughn Pischke is right: the Charlie Gard case is not a partisan issue (review: I managed to discuss the whole thing without mentioning Democrats or Republicans). But neither is the Charlie Gard case an issue of single-payer, or socialism, or Nazis.
Or whether it’s education!! Doing more harm than good for children is a worthy and valid goal. It’s time to take careful inquisition and surveillance of extremist, religious zealots being allowed to home school. What this tilted, skewed view of the world, from parental fringe players, conveyed to the innocent does to our common society is still a quandary and deserves definition.
ha ha … I mean more good than harm. *Maybe that was divine intervention??
US doc flew to England to examine Charlie Gard.
This is a no win situation for the child and liberals. No matter the outcome, wingnuts will accuse libs of some damn thing and campaign on that issue.
I believe the bogus potus had offered to fly the child to America, but that child will need to be vetted for more than 2 years before he will get a visa. Can’t have secret Muslims sneaking in to America, can we?
But to a considerable extent it is about money. If experimental treatment, or other treatments not recognized as appropriate for any given condition extends life, then what? The first thought is if the family has the money privately they should be allowed to take their infant to the United States, which is why this case strikes people as government overreach, but if a severely brain-damaged child then needs continued high-cost care, why should the British system have to pay? And would they? The reverse would be true if someone went to a foreign country and paid privately for a procedure, then came back and wanted Blue Cross Blue Shield to pay for follow up care on something they declined to cover. But the deeper question is quality of life. With modern technology we could keep people on life support longer than we do now, but there is standard medical practice and doctors and hospitals know what will be covered by insurance.
Discussions on quality of life versus extension of life are healthy ones.
Only 16 people have ever been diagnosed with this fatal affliction. Rarely does anyone make it through adolescence to adulthood. Most die by respiratory failure.
Hospital in NY will admit Charlie if he can get released. Doc believes he can help. Might just be using the little guy as a guinea pig for new treatment. I sure don’t know.
Good news for the dude with two last names, we are gonna start seeing a lot of birth issues. https://www.revealnews.org/article/trump-administration-suddenly-pulls-plug-on-teen-pregnancy-programs/?wpisrc=nl_lily&wpmm=1 Two last names can then attack the trumpcare as a single payer of stupid. Cult republicans can never get enough of being cruel to women of all ages. What did their mothers do to them to bring on that hate?
There is certainly a broader debate to be had about money. But money is not an issue the Charlie Gard case. The British doctors have reached a medical conclusion that this treatment is not in the best interest of the child. Neither the doctors nor the courts are ruling based on money.
So far every court that has reviewed this case voted in favor with the original court decision.
What happens if insurance companies had the parents DNA on file and warned them about carrying the genes for this horrific malady? Theyseem to want to do that in this country.
If you’re right then it’s just a differing opinion on medical treatment, since the U.S. would treat but Britain would not, another if, if the U.S. courts would make the same objection in a similar circumstance. The pro-life argument is less relevant. If however our courts are more libertarian toward parental rights then their socialist views are part of the equation because they have that sense of we know what’s best for the whole, Americans have a greater respect for the individual, an insistence I know what’s right for me and mine, or even if I don’t, it’s my decision to make.
Happy Camper, don’t fool yourself into thinking that the healthcare system in the US lets the patient decide. It’s always about the money, unless there are some charity quota cases to do.
Cory, the child can not decide for itself so the decision should be left up to the parents, not the European Courts. This liberal disagrees with the European Courts decision.
Where are our ‘pub lifers today?
Hap, you keep trying to force an ideological us-vs.-them paradigm on this issue and thus keep missing the point. In this case, the court is not weighing some sense of what’s good for the whole against what’s good for an individual. I don’t think the case has involved weighing any social welfare issue. Instead, British law is putting the rights of one individual, the child, over the rights of two other individuals, the parents. No socialist view is being tested here.
And as Jenny says, there is no guarantee the child would get the treatment in the U.S., since private insurers would likely refuse to pay for the treatment. Even in the U.K., the only reason Gard’s parents have a chance of subjecting their child to this experimental treatment, against the advice of every doctor who has looked at the child, is because a whole bunch of other people have contributed money. That’s not individual action; that’s collective action.
Jenny offers some intelligent liberal disagreement! Hooray!
I share your squeamishness about the doctors and courts trumping parental rights. If the patient is too young to make his own decisions, then yes, the right to decide defaults to the parents.
But Jenny, let me check your position:
I would disagree. The EU is deciding what is good for that child. To exaggerate, The Collective is making that decision, not the parents who have immediate responsibilities for that child.
Cory must not have an example of U.S. courts not allowing a child to be taken out of the country for treatment, or he would be using it. I doubt our courts are that restrictive.
I agree with Jenny, parents should decide if they have their own money to spend outside of accepted medical practice, but after that money does matter. Insurance itself, public or private, is a socialist concept. The more that goes for extreme life saving measures for people with very low quality of life, the more expensive and less available it is for routine procedures for others.
Incorrect. British law says doctors, not parents, ultimately decide. The courts and the EU are upholding that prioritization of individual rights. That’s not any more collectivist that my going to a U.S. court and winning protections of my individual First Amendment rights against a school district or city council that tries to force me to pray along with the majority.
I’m not saying that our courts are as restrictive as the U.K.’s. On this issue, evidently, they are not. I am puzzled as to why the parents cannot simply sign their child out of the hospital, take him on a plane, and come to America for their experimental treatment. But none of that is my point. My point is that the Gard case is not some great test case for single-payer medicine, socialism, or anything else that fits the usual paradigms.
And for the record I became a Republican today. When renewing your driver’s license on line you can change party affiliation. After always voting Democrat for major office, and always being a registered Democrat I’ve grown tired of never being able to vote in a primary for anyone who can ever win. At least I can possibly affect the final candidate.
Now you can legitimately call me Repub and all other host of bad names.
“The courts and the EU are upholding that prioritization of individual rights.” That doesn’t even make any sense. They can’t check out their child because The Collective decides!!!
Happy Camper – I cannot blame you. The long pull of SD history shows merit in voting for the least worst of the above, in place of voting for those who don’t have a snowball’s chance. So sad. So true.
Back to Chuck Gard – so sad for his folks and family. But that’s life. And life includes death. About 117 years ago in the US only 4 of 5 live births made it to adulthood. Yes, 20% died before the age of 5. Walk your local cemetery and ‘score the stones’ as we did in Bio 101. It’s a cruel myth that all life is scared – that’s an invention of the myth worshipers. Now days most born make it to adulthood – yet there are no guarantees. Nature votes. Mutations vote. And yes, socioeconomic status votes. Facts do not ameliorate the pain – but they assist with its understanding and acceptance. It is especially cruel and heartless to make political hay of newborn’s malady. Hell has a special place for folks who do so.
HC- for the record, who cares. You are free to be what you want until wingnuts toss you under the bus.
Winning drumpfs a clean and clear conscience, I guess. Do you like the way wingnuts win nationally? Voter suppression, extra hoops for registered Dems to jump through. Kick the poors and elderly off voter rolls. Walk proud, fella.
So much for that gay pride thingy hc, once in the cult, always in the cult. Sad
One thing John, my conscience is clean as it can be with my vote and that is all that matters to me. You can look around South Dakota and clearly see what your vote hath wrought. Natta. The only reason we have a couple of roads here is because of the federal government, and we cannot count on them for too much anymore. Next big deal coming to a faucet near you is the fact that our water systems are needing some real serious upgrades.
On more than one occasion on this blog happy camper announced that he was a gay republican, why he is announcing it again?
I think Happy just knows that a lot of republican men are secretly gay, especially in SD. He’s just going to where he will have better access to them.
Hap, my explanation of the British court’s and European court’s defense of individual human rights is no different and no more absurd than the collective defense of individual rights in this country. Rights do not exist outside of a social contract, outside of an agreement among all members of society to respect individual rights. In this case, the courts are protecting a child’s right not be subjected to unnecessary, medically unproven treatments that are more likely to prolong his suffering.
@cah: “Rights do not exist outside of a social contract, outside of an agreement among all members of society to respect individual rights.”
That isn’t what the Declaration of Independence says.
“… that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
The unalienable rights spoken of were not created by any government, but already pre-existed. Whether or not they are secured and respected is an onus placed upon the government. And of course tyrannical governments certainly have failed in that responsibility.
Coyote’s right on principle, wrong in practice.
Sure, our right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is inherent in our humanity. The creation or failure of a government does not change the fact that we all deserve fair treatment.
However, with government (laws, police, courts, collective agreement and action), we have far better chances of securing that fair treatment.
Consider: suppose we erase every government from existence (global nuclear war, plague, pick your apocalypse). Coyote and I meet in the desert. He has a canteen of water; I have a knife.
My act in the desert is heinous and brutal. I deny Coyote of things he as a human being deserves. But rights, like threats, don’t mean anything practically if you can’t back them up. And Coyote and I both lifting weights and studying martial arts to make sure we can beat back any marauder with our fists isn’t really an exercise in rights; that’s just a ceaseless, brutalizing cage fight.
Want rights? Better create a social contract to secure them. Otherwise, you’re just whistling in the desert.
Well said Cory!
Somewhere, in the not too distant past, a certain political party on the right lost sight of their humanity.
Poor little Charlie will end up being used as a political football-in life as well as afterwards.
Wingnuts failed to dismantle social programs via taxcuts for the wealthy are attempting the same strategy with House of Reprehensibles budget which slashes social programs.
I see you as more of a bludgeoning man, Mr. H.
Whatever’s handy, Grudz—I’m a practical man.
Thanks, Bear! Mike, I hope we can avoid using the child as a political football. Pischke claimed not to be doing so, but he only traded obviously labeled partisan politics for the only half-degree-removed America-vs-Europe socialism-vs-freedom political debate.
Yes Cory, what you say is true, but you’re not accepting that Europe has a different sense of individual rights. In other words less so. Their right to free speech is more limited. And in a social sense, from my own experience of living in West Germany as a military person and a civilian, they are much more conformist. They obey and follow the rules. That’s less in our nature and something most of us don’t want to give up.
I don’t date closet cases. As John understands sometimes we have to be pragmatic. I’m a Republican, day one.
But Hap, the Charlie Grad case does not demonstrate that Europeans value individual rights less than Americans do. It demonstrates that the British have chosen to place the individual rights of children above the individual rights of parents. Everything else you say about conformity and social pressure may be true, but this case is not part of that discussion. You, like Pischke, Trump, and others, are making the Gard case something it isn’t.
To recap, Cory, one of many Democrats who threatened to “get a gun” after the election and now fantasizes knifing another human being rather than negotiating a short term social contract for some water. Apparently, he was talking merde about shooting Trump. …but hey, thanks for being nuts and giving more ammunition to the anti-gun lobby. Like those he criticizes, he first defaults to “taking” by force to get his way since he can’t imagine a World without Government to Rule us as anything but a Mad Max movie. Never occurred to him to TRADE his mostly worthless knife for some life giving water.
Myself, I imagine a World where my proper use of the semi-colon will finally be acknowledged and celebrated, i.e. a calm anarchy.
A knife does not automatically beat a fist, but a Brain can beat Cory’s knife as it sees him at a distance and hides, recognizing Nature’s sign for: “Do Not Touch”. When nearly dead from thirst, Cory is relieved by the Brain of his oh-so-dangerous knife, extracted from his cold, dry, fingers. Darwin’s theory: “Survival of the Fitter”, was correct this time. Will the Brain save Cory… should it?
https://www.google.com/search?q=nature%27s+way+of+saying+do+not+touch&tbm=isch&imgil=5McppcUSSeRAlM%253A%253BgGt9xi4EYYyzJM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fbreatheandburn.wordpress.com%25252F2013%25252F10%25252F25%25252Fgary-larson-how-nature-says-do-not-touch%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=5McppcUSSeRAlM%253A%252CgGt9xi4EYYyzJM%252C_&usg=__GEHvi3zQnvG6MAHFTpg6zIdHbLk%3D&biw=1736&bih=788&dpr=1.09&ved=0ahUKEwj3xeCHvJXVAhWoyoMKHbLLAQwQyjcIOg&ei=8WBvWbeJC6iVjwSyl4dg#imgrc=5McppcUSSeRAlM:
@cah: “CAH: Give me that water or I’ll kill you.
DC: But I have a right to life and property.
CAH: Says what government?
DC: My inalienable rights were not created by any gov—
CAH: stabs DC to death, enjoys refreshing drink from canteen, continues quest for hapless
survivors preaching abstract platitudes in the wasteland.”
Actually it wouldn’t get past “Give me that water or I’ll kill you”. I’d invoke my right to vim vi repellere licet (“it is permitted to repel force by force”) with my .44 Remington Magnum. Thomas Hobbes in his “the war of all against all” stated that not even you armed with a knife would be so strong as to not fear a violent death. Why am I not surprised that you’d chose Hobbes authoritarian social contract over Locke’s.
https://jim.com/hobbes.htm
Happy, you’re in the Party that does everything it can to stifle LGBTQ rights. I’m disappointed in you, but yet realize how frustrating it can be to be a democrat in SD.
Just be careful, those closet ‘Pubs are very opressed, don’t get caught in any restrooms alone with one of them.
Jenny, most moderate people just pick a party, they aren’t very far one way or the other. In SD everyone should just become a Republican and bust it up. You can’t win with a D.
Oppressed I meant. (two p’s)
Happy, you’re abandoning the Democrat Party, a party that died fighting for your gay rights. What do you mean by everyone should become a ‘pub and bust it up? What exactly do you mean?
Here I’m doing you a favor, Barry.
http://tinyurl.com/y7xpsyv3
Next time get Tiny URL and shorten them links. People pay more attention to shorter links.
But Coyote, you are re-writing Cory’s fable. In the original the water guy was unarmed except for water and that is what you have to deal with. And you’d be dead because Cory’s knife Drumpfed your water bottle.
@mia: “But Coyote, you are re-writing Cory’s fable. In the original the water guy was unarmed except for water and that is what you have to deal with. And you’d be dead because Cory’s knife Drumpfed your water bottle.”
I’m not rewriting anything. cah mentioned nothing about me not having a gun or being unarmed. You see, when you conceal the weapon it introduces the element of surprise. Besides, why would I be walking around unarmed in a anarchist world?
Cory is showing a knife. Your gun is concealed. A flick of Cory’s wrist-scratch one Coyote-armed or not. Had you attempted to draw your weapon under duress you prolly shoot off part of your anatomy and die anyway. Either way you lost.
I’ve come to think that party loyalty is reprehensible and the tribal nature is the problem with politics. I’m much less trusting of government and all the political snakes. The label Libertarian or Classical Liberal suits me better but they are just labels. I will still likely vote Democrat if they moderate, but not for a Progressive/Liberal. Maximize freedom, minimize dependency.
Taking 8oo billion from Medicaid lessens the poors dependency on healthcare and giving that money to the wealthy increases their dependency on gubmint largesse. Tough call, ain’t it?
US Congress offered Charlie Gard permanent residency.
I think I might have to disagree with you on this one cory, I do think that it’s a tragedy that a parent would make a poor choice that hurts there child (denying blood transfusions and such) , but as an aspiring doctor whose spent a lot of time studying medical history recently , I really don’t think that the ultimate decision as to how the child’s treated should be left up to doctors.
They”re much more infallible than people believe and could never advocate for a child the way it’s parents could. As an expecting parent I would want the ability to do all I could to help my child.
Also I’d like to put in a plug for the Pischke guy, I don’t think the point he’s trying to get across is some kind of alarmist agenda, the idea of whose responsible and has the ultimate authority over who gets what treatment has a long history, and most fascist or socialist movement advocate for a single payer system where the government controls whether you are treated, how your treated and removes parents and individuals and parents the ability to advocate for themselves in any realistic manner, I think Pischke’s right , it’s not a partisan issue, it’s an issue about whose needs and rights should be placed first, the individual or majority, and I believe in America our decision was the Individual most of the time, right?
Point is, both Coyote and I recognize that, absent government, we aren’t talking about rights, but who can successfully resort to violence. My point that rights don’t practically exist absent government does depend on who can win a quick-draw contest.
Pre-med, note that you disagree with British law, not necessarily me, on whether parents or doctors should make the ultimate decision about a child’s medical care. I’m not sure where I draw my line between parental rights and medically unsound decisions. But let me ask you, as an aspiring medical professional: do you support giving parents the ultimate decision over vaccines?
You’re also wrong about Pischke: he is trying to blow the Gard case up into an example to promote an alarmist agenda about single-payer medicine and socialism. The court is grappling with the question of individual parental rights over individual child rights, not individual versus society.
happy-an unhappy dem now republican. lead on in your damage to Democratic values:)
@cah: “Point is, both Coyote and I recognize that, absent government, we aren’t talking about rights”
Sure we are. The rights are just not as secure since in a Lockean government such as ours, protection of rights and property is the government’s prime function.
“but who can successfully resort to violence”
Continuing, my right to defend myself and my property is not in question even though there is no government. In a Lockean state of Nature all men are free “to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature.” No government needed. The state of Nature is governed by Natural law and that law goes by the name of Reason. As Locke explains it, Reason states that “no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, and or property”
I have to admit that I do think it’s sad that so many people are opting out of vaccines for their kids, that does kind of put individual vs majority rights into question. I still think that parents should have the right to make that decision though, I would mention that when the first vaccines came out, Jenner basically just took some puss from diseased cows and shot into some kids to see what would happen, not to say that’s the situation today, but I definitely would want the right as a parent to say “no” to that one.
And when I say Pischke’s not alarmist, I mean to say that I don’t think his purpose in bringing up examples involving nazi fascism is the same as others who compare any kind of unpopular leader or decision to Hitler, I don’t think he’s trying to be petulant , his point is that there’s recent historical examples of the kind of problems associated with single payer systems and denying people the ability to make what the majority believes are poor decisions or a poor allocation of resources.
I would also like to point out that leaving the entire responsibility of whether a child lives or dies on the shoulders of a doctor instead of mitigating it between him/her and the parents takes an incredible toll on a person psychologically, and that if a single payer system were in place where doctors had the final say in everything, my sister would be dead today, because my mother would not have been able to advocate for her further after all her physcians said she was “fine” and just had a stomach ache instead of the cancer she actually had eating her up.
happy-GOP stands for cyber-espionage, voter and medical care suppression. mix that with coyotes insane prepper attitude that he’s got surprise on his side when the sheit hits the fan or whatever threat comes his way, and BLAM BLAM BLAM…. welcome to the club. I certainly wouldn’t align myself with these idiots.
CYBER ESPIANOGE/Voter Suppression
Trump invited Moscow to hack our election on national TV. They did. 39 states. “Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states.”
Five states in their entirety, and some counties in nine others, vote using electronic machines with no paper trail, which could make such a hack almost impossible to detect.
Republicans who benefited from Russian hacking of the DNC and Clinton campaign e-mails in the 2016 election have been trying for years to suppress Democratic-leaning
votes.
Moscow intended to discredit Clinton and help get Trump elected, and in exchange it hoped the Republican would consider its interests — in sanctions relief and otherwise.
in 2016—16 million Americans—encountered a problem voting, including long lines at the polls, difficulty registering, or faulty voting machines. And last year’s election was decided by just 80,000 votes in three states.
99 bills to limit access to the ballot have been introduced in 31 states this year, and more states have enacted new voting restrictions in 2017 than in 2016 and 2015 combined.
Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota, and Texas passed new voter-ID laws; Georgia made voter registration more difficult; and Montana is in the process of limiting the use of absentee ballots.
Kris Kobach pioneered the voter-suppression efforts in his home state, including requiring proof of citizenship to register, which has blocked one in seven Kansans from registering to vote since 2013 (because most people don’t carry around a copy of their birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers when they register). “[Vice President Mike] Pence and Kobach are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple,” tweeted Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Justice Department’s civil-rights division under President Obama.
the new presidential commission on “election integrity” is preparing to nationalize the GOP’s restrictions on voting…under the pretext of combating the virtually nonexistent problem of voter fraud. June 28, Kobach sent a letter to all 50 states asking for sweeping voter data
Voting-rights advocates fear that such data, in the hands of the Trump administration, will be manipulated to spread lies about voter fraud and purge the rolls in inaccurate and discriminatory ways.
The most notable achievement of this encounter lay in the campaign’s failure to report it to the appropriate U.S. authorities — as Russia would have realized when there was no immediate, dramatic increase in U.S. counterintelligence scrutiny. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-jrs-russia-meeting-sure-sounds-like-a-russian-intelligence-operation/2017/07/14/5f7f3dfe-6762-11e7-9928-22d00a47778f_story.html?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.b7762665770f
S
MEDICAL CARE
en. Ted Cruz personally presented an amendment, which would let insurers sell deregulated plans as long as they also sell an Obamacare-compliant plan, to senators.
“It seems hard to understand and doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Andrew Dreyfus, chief executive of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.
Some moderate Republican senators, including Mike Rounds of South Dakota, have suggested linking the risk pools in order to ensure that sick people are not charged tremendously more and to preserve their pledge not to hurt coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.
But insurance experts point out one other provision in the amendment that seemingly undercuts Cruz’s assertion that there will be no separation between people enrolled in Obamacare plans and those who purchase policies not compliant with the law: It explicitly states that there will be no risk-adjustment program for noncompliant plans.
Both America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association blasted the Cruz amendment before the specific language was released, arguing that it could jeopardize access to coverage for people with expensive medical bills if all the healthy customers flock to non-compliant plans
Insurers are bewildered by the suggestion that the Cruz amendment would allow the insurance market to operate as a single risk pool.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/13/insurance-experts-question-cruz-240540
Pre-Med-what about other children’s rights not to be exposed to serious disease because someone’s parents are convinced vaccines are terrible thing? How does one cut through the garbage of vaccine deniers and get the truth? And why should kids have to die from easily prevented/treated diseases on their parent’s say so?
Are we going to hear another Bill Frist say to drop Charlie Gard after the party has milked (Terry Schiavo case) for all the political mileage they could get?
I think parent’s should have the right to say no, and I would point of that while the idea of avoiding vaccination because it causes autism and is going to be more harmful to your child than helpful is ridiculous, however, there are circumstances involving attenuated vaccines and immune deficiency when a child can’t have a normal regimen of vaccines.
I understand there’s problems associated with not vaccinating too, things like the pertussis outbreak in california, but if your child is immunized from a disease there pretty safe, and if there not, then that is because YOU probably didn’t have your child immunized, and honestly the percentages of vaccinations required herd immunity for most diseases is still going to be maintained. Even if there’s outlying minority of people not vaccinating , the 90% required for herd immunity as recognized by the CDC is still going strong because MOST parents are intelligent enough to recognize the fruits of good science. Not all parents will make good decisions, but neither will all doctors, and I would rather a doctor be frustrated than take away a parent’s right to care for their child, even if others don’t think the parents are right.
Good luck, Pre-Med. Get all yer science classes out of the way first because science is not a priority in wingnutland.
I read earlier today doctors at LSU and North Dakota State used oxygen therapy on a 4 year old who spent 15 minutes underwater and two hours w/o her heart beating on its own. They apparently have completely reversed severe brain damage and restired speech and motor functions to pre-drowning levels.
Wasn’t science grand while it lasted?