Great Article and MUST READ!!! From 23 Doses of 7 Vaccines to 69 Doses of 16 Vaccines!!!! One of the reasons parents are asking more questions about vaccination is that there have been big changes in US vaccine policy and law since 1982. In 1982, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials told pediatricians to give children 23 doses of seven vaccines before age six, with the first vaccinations starting at two months old.106 Today, the CDC has upped that number to 69 doses of 16 vaccines by age 18, with 49 doses of 14 vaccines given between the day of birth and age six.107 That is twice the number of vaccines children in the 1980s got by age six and three times as many vaccinations as Americans used to get during their whole life! But these new vaccines are not for diseases like smallpox and polio. They are for infant diarrhea and chickenpox, which are rarely fatal in this country, and hepatitis B, which requires direct exposure to infected blood and cannot be easily transmitted in public.108 Jacobsen v. Massachusetts: State Police Powers Affirmed These are not the kind of infectious diseases the justices of the 1905 US Supreme Court probably had in mind when they issued their ruling in Jacobsen v. Massachusetts.109 In that precedent setting split decision, the high court majority ruled that state legislatures could use police powers to force a minority of dissenting citizens to use smallpox vaccine for what medical doctors and government officials judge to be the greater good of the majority. Those early 20th century justices based their decision in part on a false premise argued by lawyers representing public health officials, who argued that medical doctors could predict ahead of time who will be injured or die from smallpox vaccination. Doctors have never been able to predict with any certainty who will be injured and die from vaccination. In affirming the constitutional right of states to use police powers to enact public health laws, the Supreme Court was also reaffirming the roles of state government versus the federal government in public health law. Anything not defined in the US Constitution as a federal responsibility has traditionally defaulted to the states. Public health was not defined in the Constitution as a federal responsibility so public health laws have always been state laws and this is why vaccination laws vary from state to state.110, 111
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 01:11:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015