Hellobee Boards

I don't think suing or criminal charges are the answer but I do like @Mrs. Lemon-Lime: suggestion for paying a fine if you send your child to public school and do not vaccinate and that there should be some sort of PR campaign. I don't like the fact that people can send their children to school without vaccinating and without other parents being informed. I know this would violate medical rights but I feel like something needs to be done.

And yes, I am up-to-date on my booster shots.

@Rainbow Sprinkles: Yep, which is why I don't understand how only unvaccinated individuals could be singled out. My thing is I don't find it completely left field to have suits over these things but I thing anyone, vaccinated or not, should/could be held liable.... IF this route was seriously considered (which I think is a slippery slope & not a very good idea when looking at all the aspects).

@zippylef: that and even partial immunity is way better than nothing!

@Rainbow Sprinkles: @runsyellowlites: If a parent took basic precautions, they would likely receive safe harbor... i.e. immunity from any penalties or liability.

I'm curious - for people that don't vaccinate, do you believe you have no responsibility if your child gets sick with something like measles, or gets someone else's sick?

Somehow I doubt that the CDC can really pinpoint the beginning of an outbreak to a single person with enough certainty that it would hold up in court.

@mrsmate: I did a prosem with Art Caplan when I was an undergrad and although I chose it because I respected him, he struck me as somewhat of a renegade - one of those professors who'd gotten to a point where they didn't care what anyone thought anymore.

Although I feel that there should be some way to make parents responsible for vaccinating, suing doesn't seem like the way to do it because there are still just too many questions about vaccinations and immunity to enforce something like that.

I doubt anyone could pinpoint a person who started the infection.
Even vaccinated people can be fairly asymptomatic for some diseases and still capable of transmitting the disease to another person.
@littlebug: There is a person called 'patient zero' but he's not the first person to have HIV.
I'm a vaccine researcher and def pro-vaccine but I don't want people being forced into being vaccinated. I think that's a very weird and dangerous path to go down.

@Maysprout: +1

Also, the question to ask here is whether compelling individuals under pain of litigation or a fine, while allowing pharma companies to escape potentially bankrupting litigation by forcing plaintiffs who have actually been injured into the vaccine court, where damage awards are limited, will produce the best vaccines possible. I tend to think that would severely weaken the incentive for pharmaceutical companies to ensure that that they are producing the safest drugs possible. The regime Caplan is proposing is quite possibly very damaging to public health.

@Grace: actually they have plenty of techniques to ensure that they find the index case with good certainty.

@Grace: The standard for civil liability is much lower than beyond a reasonable doubt. Listen to the Caplan interview at the link in the post, and it is clear that he doesn't actually care about accuracy. At around 2:10 he says 'I think they can be accurate enough for use in a courtroom.' The civil liability standard is typically the preponderance of the evidence. That is an unscientifically low threshold. He is interested in compulsion, not precision. And as I argued above, I don't even think he's all that interested in public health.

Just as an aside, I fully vaccinate my child. Some of the vaccines I did freely, others I felt compelled to do due to state regulations. I would be unlikely to be sued under this proposal, but I still think the Caplan idea is a terrible one.

@Mrs. Jacks: Identifying a true index case is extremely rare, the first person hospitalized is not necessarily the first case. A location where an outbreak took hold is more feasible, but narrowing that down to one person with real scientific accuracy is extremely unlikely. I think what @honeybear said would be much more likely to happen - that people would be held to a unscientifically low threshold in court. And coupled with being unvaccinated it could just turn into a 'witch' hunt.

@Mrs. Jacks: @Maysprout: The index case is unlikely to be the defendant here. Caplan's proposal is that you can sue the person who passed the virus or bacteria to your child and made them sick. He wrote: "If I know you or your kid made mine sick because you chose not to vaccinate then you should bear full responsibility for the harm you knew or ought to have known could happen." (Link: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2013/05/23/liability-for-failure-to-vaccinate/)

Based on that, the universe of potential defendants is likely far larger than the index case. How easy is it to determine whether Patient A got a particular airborne disease from Patient B (their classmate) or Patient C (the dude who sneezed on them on the subway)? It might be in some situations, but in others (probably most), I'd venture to guess that it would be hard to impossible. And yet the defendant--probably the one with the deepest pockets--would still be on the hook for at least the cost of litigation.

In addition, it's possible Caplan is proposing that you could also sue everyone all the way back to the index case. Either way, this proposal would make plaintiffs' attorneys exceptionally happy, but would be an awful policy choice.

@Mrs. Jacks: I understood you to say that we could reasonably expect to find the index case. But the index case doesn't matter to Caplan's proposal. Can you identify the person(s) who infected any given victim in an outbreak? I think the answer to that is probably not.

If there is one person who has the measles, and only one other person gets the measles, then it's easy. But in an outbreak situation? Causation is very complicated and this proposal has all the markings of what I like to refer to as a "Full Employment For Lawyers Act."

@Mrs. Jacks: There are some diseases in certain circumstances that are a bit easier but even the last paper you cite the 'index' case had a source of unknown infection and hadn't recently traveled. The only real identifiable source in your list is the first paper, which I think agrees with the statement I made that it's relatively rare to identify the origin to a single person. For the pertussis paper there's a lot of conjecture, it is an extremely hard disease to pinpoint since subclinical infections can still transmit to another person. You can still transmit infections even if vaccinated.

@honeybear: I agree with what you're saying.

I have to say that I think there should be some liability held upon parents who don't vaccinate. Like someone stated, they can not vaccinate and then send their kids to school and the school can't tell anyone. However yes "sueing" them... is not going to bring your child back. That's why there needs to be some form of strict no gray area rules in place. Especially for something as serious as the measles. Measles is tracked very well because of how serious the disease is. Just like the H1N1 was so closely watched or other serious diseases. So maybe you don't have to vaccinate your kid but you you better keep your kid in a bubble away from my family then. There needs to be some ground rules if you're not going to vaccinate. I can be charged with neglegent manslaughter for killing a pedestrian in my car whom i simply did not see. You chose not to vaccinate your child because you thought the very rare symptoms were to dangerous .. accordin to the CDC website on the MMR vaccine for measles, Serious allergic reaction to the MMR vaccine occurs in fewer than 1 in a million people. A mild rash or slight fever were the most common.

I cannot justify not being vaccinated. There is no link to autism per the CDC website. and per the immunizationinfo.org website

Thirty to 40 million children were vaccinated during this time period. No children who experienced such a reaction died as a result.

In extremely rare cases (less than 1 child out of 1,000,000 given measles vaccine) children have developed encephalitis 6-15 days after vaccination.

Sorry but like I said, if I can be charged with manslaughter for killing someone in a motorvehicle accident that was completely accidently and not related to being on a phone or texting or alcohol or drugs or whatever in gods name else, then YOU should be punished for killing someone because you chose not to vaccinate your child and they were around others infecting them. And you're right sueing people doesnt bring the child back but funerals are expensive and knowing you are paying a consequence for your actions could being a tiny tiny bit of justice for a greving family who feels your child killed theirs.

I have pretty strong feelings about people who don't vaccinate (unless they have a medical reason not to) because they're not only putting their own kids in danger but others as well, so I think in theory this sounds reasonable. However, I think it could be hard to prove that a particular person made you or your child sick because we come into contact with so many people every day.

@MrsSCB: I actually find those lawsuits to be frivolous, as well. It is one thing to sue to cover medical costs or funeral costs. But I think asking for millions of dollars for suffering is unnecessary. So that's why I feel like sueing someone for not vaccinating their child is pointless. Well, one reason why.

People are absolutely free to make choices they feel are right for them. But they must also often abide by restrictions because of these choices. I may not want to obtain a driver's license, or pay for auto insurance, but that means I'm not legally allowed to drive a car. If I get in my car anyway and cause injury, then I need to suffer greater consequences than a licensed driver might under those same circumstances.

Taking the auto analogy further... You don't suffer financial or legal consequences if you took every precaution possible and still caused harm (your child was vacccinated but they contracted a strain of a virus and passed it on anyway -- you're licensed and obeyed the driving law and somebody ran out in front of your car and you hit them because there was no way of stopping). But you are liable if you failed to obey the law in any way. You are punished in varying degrees depending on your level of negligence. If you weren't looking where you went, you are liable for vehicular manslaughter. If you were drunk, you are liable for vehicular manslaughter as well as drunk driving charges. Similarly, if you chose not to vaccinate and your child infects a newborn at a doctor's office or somebody's baby sister at their birthday party, then you're liable. If your child is obviously sick with measles, etc. and you still bring them around, you're punished even more severely.

@allison I think that in a perfect world, we would all be able to make choices without fearing repercussions. However, like others have noted, our choices do affect others. If you brought your unvaccinated child to the doctor's because they were vomiting and had diarrhea, and a 2-week-old child in the lobby contracts rotavirus from your child and dies of dehydration, do you have zero responsibility? Or, although you certainly didn't intend for anything like that outcome to occur when you made the choice not to vaccinate, are you responsible in some measure? <-- ETA I'm not being snarky or trying to accuse you of anything, I'm legitimately curious on where you stand on that matter. Not trying to start anything

It's not an easy debate, and I don't know what the ultimate answer is -- I don't believe the answer lies in civil or criminal court, however, in all but the most egregious cases -- but I believe that some responsibility should be accounted for in cases like this. I also believe that you should have to follow consequences of your choices -- if you don't want to vaccinate, you have to home school. If you don't want to vaccinate, a pediatric practice has the right to turn down service to your children because they don't want to endanger their patients. Or your insurance company can deny coverage based on the increased likelihood of high health costs for your child and for others in the pool who are exposed to your child.

In other words, you can't just make a choice that endangers others and be free to walk around doing whatever you want (this statement isn't directed toward anybody here -- I'm not assuming any of the anti-vax HBers would NOT take precautions, but I'm just saying, in general).

As for the "slippery slope" argument, it's fallacious. You can say that anything could lead to anything, but the likelihood of somebody being prosecuted because their vaccinated child contracted a disease anyway and unknowingly passed it along, is akin to the likelihood of somebody being prosecuted because lightning struck their house and it caught fire and spread to the next door neighbor's.