Chris Powell: Kick religion excuse out of the childhood-vaccination question

Child being given oral polio vaccine

Despite the nastiness the other day at the marathon hearing on the bill in the Connecticut General Assembly to repeal the religious exemption for vaccination of schoolchildren, there are fair and even compelling questions about vaccination policy. Unfortunately the discussion gets detoured by silly denials that the government has the right to regulate not only health standards in public schools but also parental treatment of children.

Too much is claimed for “freedom of religion’’. It does not authorize spreading communicable diseases any more than it authorizes disciplining children by lashing or caging them or denying them medical care. Crucial as parents are, they are not the ultimate guardians of children -- the government is. Indeed, Connecticut is full of child neglect and abuse, which are the primary causes of the state's social problems, including educational failure, mental and physical illness, and crime. That's why the state maintains its Department of Children and Families and its medical insurance for poor kids.

"My child, my choice," a slogan of the anti-vaxxers, is nonsense.

If government's ultimate responsibility for children can't be acknowledged, the vaccination argument is over. But if government's responsibility could be acknowledged and if people could lower their voices, there might be a lot to discuss.

For example, while vaccines are said to be perfectly safe, they're not. They are overwhelmingly safe but a few people do suffer bad reactions to them, even disabling reactions, as did a young East Hartford, Conn., woman whose story was reported at length by the Journal Inquirer's Will Healey last October. That's why federal law exempts vaccine manufacturers from liability for bad reactions to properly made vaccines and why a federal agency compensates people injured by them.

So it is fair to ask how much vaccination is worth how much risk.

Since there are many vaccines, some for diseases that are more severe than others, the entire vaccination schedule for schoolchildren is fairly questioned too. Are all the vaccines on the schedule essential for "community immunity" and individual health, or are some merely desirable? The General Assembly seems to have accepted the state Public Health Department's recommendations without any review of its own. Experts should be heard but questioned too.

Additionally, some vaccines are more effective than others, a variable that affects their desirability and necessity -- another issue that could be worth legislative review.

But issues involving the safety and efficacy of vaccines are not really religious in nature and thus don't properly fall under the legal exemption being claimed for them. That claim is a convenient pretext for those who consider vaccines too dangerous.

The use of fetal tissue from elective abortions in the invention of some vaccines is also cited for a religious objection. But this objection argues that knowledge obtained through a bad act should be disqualified for use in a good purpose. The Catholic Church, a leading religious opponent of abortion, approves vaccination despite the distant connection.

After all, the world would lose much if inventions were allowed or banned according to the character or purposes of inventors.

If the opposition to the vaccination of schoolchildren dropped the religious pretext and concentrated on safety and necessity, it would deserve a more sympathetic audience.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

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