Vaccines and vaccine-preventable illness
I, for one, am popping champagne to celebrate California signing SB277, which eliminates all but medically necessary vaccine exemptions for kindergarteners and 7th graders (the two times that public and private student records are checked.)
There is fury and hysteria from the anti-vax side, of course. Kennedy has used his usual Holocaust metaphor. Jim Carrey has shown all the medical expertise that sex with Jenny McCarthy provided. (Interestingly, he's had more to say right now than she has.) More disturbingly, Dr. Sears has thrown in his $.02, and I'm putting a $5 bet down right now that he's going to start falsifying records for his anti-vax leash holders. The argument that vaccines "just aren't right for my family" and "parental rights" not having gotten traction, the fight is now reopening along the line that kicking unvaccinated kids out of public schooling abrogates their Constitutional right to an education.
The idea of spreading disease to *other* kids being maybe a violation of *their* Constitutional rights is, of course, not mentioned.
In the meantime, in Spain, the unvaccinated boy who caught the country's first case of diptheria in 30 years has died. So much for the anti-vax argument that the ancient killing diseases have "run their course" or "don't make anyone that sick, anymore."
Aside from the news, I've had the fight against the ancient killers brought home in an unexpected way. I listen on and off to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio podcast, picking my favorites out of the daily lineup. My newest pet is the Tuesday upload of wartime Ellery Queen episodes. Ellery Queen has always made a big deal out of being a fair play mystery, stopping to say about 3/4 of the way through the TV and radio shows saying "I've figured it out, have you?" In the radio show, they even have a couple of in-studio armchair detectives chosen from the fan mail who are polled for their solution before the show closes.
Last Tuesday's armchair detectives were a student in the Nursing Corps (a sort of WPA way of getting a free nursing degree before being deployed to either military or essential homefront hospitals, apparently) and one of the high officers in the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
AKA: polio.
It's such an old-fashioned term to me that I had to look it up to be sure it meant what I thought it meant.
It was completely surreal to listen to this podcast, hearing a man earnestly speak about the March of Dimes and vowing that he was determined to see polio conquered in his lifetime, knowing that in roughly 9 years...he would.
There is fury and hysteria from the anti-vax side, of course. Kennedy has used his usual Holocaust metaphor. Jim Carrey has shown all the medical expertise that sex with Jenny McCarthy provided. (Interestingly, he's had more to say right now than she has.) More disturbingly, Dr. Sears has thrown in his $.02, and I'm putting a $5 bet down right now that he's going to start falsifying records for his anti-vax leash holders. The argument that vaccines "just aren't right for my family" and "parental rights" not having gotten traction, the fight is now reopening along the line that kicking unvaccinated kids out of public schooling abrogates their Constitutional right to an education.
The idea of spreading disease to *other* kids being maybe a violation of *their* Constitutional rights is, of course, not mentioned.
In the meantime, in Spain, the unvaccinated boy who caught the country's first case of diptheria in 30 years has died. So much for the anti-vax argument that the ancient killing diseases have "run their course" or "don't make anyone that sick, anymore."
Aside from the news, I've had the fight against the ancient killers brought home in an unexpected way. I listen on and off to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio podcast, picking my favorites out of the daily lineup. My newest pet is the Tuesday upload of wartime Ellery Queen episodes. Ellery Queen has always made a big deal out of being a fair play mystery, stopping to say about 3/4 of the way through the TV and radio shows saying "I've figured it out, have you?" In the radio show, they even have a couple of in-studio armchair detectives chosen from the fan mail who are polled for their solution before the show closes.
Last Tuesday's armchair detectives were a student in the Nursing Corps (a sort of WPA way of getting a free nursing degree before being deployed to either military or essential homefront hospitals, apparently) and one of the high officers in the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
AKA: polio.
It's such an old-fashioned term to me that I had to look it up to be sure it meant what I thought it meant.
It was completely surreal to listen to this podcast, hearing a man earnestly speak about the March of Dimes and vowing that he was determined to see polio conquered in his lifetime, knowing that in roughly 9 years...he would.