Vaccine vapid

What kind of fool would NOT want to stop the spread of dangerous infectious diseases?

By Will Collette

URI issued a warning this week of a possible outbreak of mumps after four students were diagnosed with the potentially dangerous but easily preventable disease.

The Rhode Island General Assembly has before it bills by wing-nut legislators to allow parents to opt out from having their children vaccinated to prevent the human papillomavirus (HPV) that can cause potentially fatal cancer that is contagious.

Each year there are 30,000 cases of HPV-related cancer. 10,000 of those are cervical cancer which kills approximately 4,000 women

Mandated HPV shots for school children can prevent this.

Our three area wingnut Republicans, Sen. Elaine Morgan, Rep. Justin Price and Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi, are sponsors of bills to make HPV vaccination optional. In both the RI House and Senate, two types of bills were introduced to block mandated HPV shots.

Price and Flip Filippi (Photo from Rhode Island's Future)

Justin Price, with Flip as co-sponsor, introduced H-5986 to allow parents to opt out based on any personal or philosophical beliefs. Price co-sponsored H-5919 to block the Health Department from mandating HPV shots and to give parents broad opt-out rights.

Elaine Morgan introduced S-0489 to block the Health Department from mandating HPV shots and to give parents broad opt-out rights. She also co-sponsored S-0047 to allow an opt-out based on personal or philosophical beliefs.

Here’s a personal, philosophical belief: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. 

While this line entered pop culture by way of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek II movie, this has been a guiding principle in society for millennia.

As Jeremy Bentham put it “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.”

It applies to the vaccination of school children to prevent the spread of communicable diseases. It helped us eradicate smallpox and polio. And until the internet nonsense about vaccines spread, we almost eliminated measles, mumps and whooping cough.

Now we have an actual vaccine against a contagious form of cancer and people like Price, Filippi and Morgan consider it a threat to personal liberty.

Take off that shirt, Flip you hypocrite!

The next time either of these three show up at a cancer event or put on a pink tee-shirt to bring “awareness” about breast cancer, they should be booted out as the hypocrites they are.

We actually have a vaccine that PREVENTS cancer and these three fools want to impede its use in the name of “freedom.”

You can also blame the internet for spreading garbage science about bogus links between various forms of vaccination and various types of illnesses or conditions, such as autism. 

We all know people who will read some nonsense on the internet and believe that it is true.

Worried parents decide they would rather risk preventable illnesses than expose their little darlings to what some internet quack deems a threat. This takes the concept of public health and flips it on its head.

As a society, we must constantly make choices that pit individual freedoms against the public interest. When it comes to infectious diseases, public interest usually wins out, as it should.

It makes no sense to pander to internet nonsense and loosen strict public health measures such as mandatory vaccination. Those kids at URI are a case in point. It they had gotten their shots, they would not have gotten sick or exposed others to the disease.

Personal liberty is not an absolute. Never has been. The old saw, “my right to swing my arm ends at the tip of your nose,” is not quite accurate – your right to swing ends if you are swinging in my direction. That is, you not only don’t the right to hit me;  you also have no right to threaten me.

So get your damned shots.