Boy survives tetanus. 57 days in hospital. Parents refuse further vaccinations | Hacker News Reader

Boy survives tetanus. 57 days in hospital. Parents refuse further vaccinations

nytimes.com

28 pointswjossey18 comments

> This month, a teenager who defied his mother’s antivaccine beliefs and started getting shots when he turned 18

Just in case any young people are reading: In England you get to make your own medical decisions at 16 and your parents don't need to know, and if you're under that age your doctor will see if you understand the issues ("Gillick Competent") and if you do then again you can make your own medical decisions and your parents don't need to know.

This is because you are a human, and you have human rights, you are not the property of your parents.

All it takes is an epidemic level flu to hit and these idiots will be classified as terrorists.

I'd love to hear the parents' perspective on things... "The boy spent 57 days in the hospital and racked up medical bills of more than $800,000." All that pain and cost, and they still didn't want further vaccinations: "But despite an “extensive review” of the risks, and the benefits of vaccination, the article said, the family declined the second vaccination — or any other recommended immunization."

You leave a 13 year old with a mobile phone home alone for the evening in the suburbs and you can go to jail.

You torture a kid by denying effective treatment it’s fine.

I can’t understand the doctors that didn’t say fuck it I don’t care what these morons think and didn’t just vaccinated the kid.

> I can’t understand the doctors that didn’t say fuck it I don’t care what these morons think and didn’t just vaccinated the kid.

Probably because they didn’t want to lose their medical license, and make their degree (that they’re still paying back their debt on) suddenly worthless?

The a medical board that revokes their license it should be disbanded, forcing someone to suffer through this seems to be directly go against the Hippocratic oath.

Forcing someone to undergo a procedure that they explicitly do not want is far worse than harming someone at their request IMO.

Doctors aren't there to make everyone healthy, doctors are there to offer their services when desired. Sometimes they have to make a tough call and can't ask permission (e.g. patient is incapacitated and the legal authority isn't available), but directly going against someone's wishes is harm.

If doctors aren't careful they can be used as weapons against others. They give people access to very dangerous substances, which can be used for poisoning or ... they may institute mandatory treatment, and use violence against their patients (in case of child abuse, psychiatric illnesses, contagious diseases, war/disaster scenarios ...)

The rule, that has been thought very careful about for thousands of years is that a doctor CANNOT override a patient, or responsible parent's wishes, except where it poses a clear and present lethal danger to others. If the patient cannot make their wishes clear, it is assumed (but confirmed ASAP) that they want to follow the doctor's best judgement to let them survive. Vaccination is generally not considered one of the cases where overriding the patient's wishes is reasonable.

There are other WTF medical opinions of people that doctors will advise on, but NOTHING else. Chief among them "but my natural healer/homeoptahic/guru/... said to ...". A close second "I hate doctors because they're evil/money-grabbing/... and so I'm not going to get ... treated". Both cannot be overridden, not even in psychiatric patients.

If the child wants it, but the parent refuses, I believe they mostly have a free choice legally and ethically at that point, but every doctor I've ever known would vaccinate under those circumstances.

Parents like this should be denied all tax-exempts. They should even have to pay a high extra tax. That tax money can then go into vaccination education and treatment of unvaccinated children.

In France vaccination is mandatory, and not vaccinating your kinds is considered child abuse in the eyes of the law.

I have argued for a long time that not following the child vaccination programme (in Sweden,my home country) should disqualify you from childcare and any public schools since you are putting other kids at risk. then I'd probably withdraw their government benefits (1050sek/month/child)

Edit: but of course, one should also see to what works on the population scale. Sweden has no compulsory vaccination, but also has the highest percentage of vaccinated kids in the world. I do however think removing child benefits or limiting childcare for unvaccinated kids is a good idea. You can choose whether you vaccinate your kids, but you can't choose not to have an infection sensitive kid that can't be vaccinated.

Probably would have no effect on the boy's parents as they seem to be ok with takin the financial hit and further risk the child's life.

In Finland they vaccinated us at school without asking anybody. And without any pre-announcement. Acute polio epidemic as I recall. So it is totally possible to organize mass-vaccinations without much ado.

> should disqualify you from childcare and any public schools since you are putting other kids at risk.

In the UK you're allowed to home-educate your child, and we see disproportionate numbers of parents with conspiracy-theory mindsets home-educating. This is because we see larger numbers of "freemen on the land" and "sovereign citizens" in this group.

Excluding these children from mainstream education feels satisfying, but may well be counter productive. At school they get to see all their friends having BCG and polio vaccines (I had these at school, are they still given?) and not suffering any harm. They also get less indoctrination about wierd ideas. And I'm uncomfortable with making the child suffer because they have an idiot for a parent.

So, it's a bit tricky.

Sweden has no homeschooling (except for one orthodox Jewish family a couple of years ago which I believe ended up in the supreme court. I don't know the final.judgement though), so that problem is already solved.

But yes, that is a problem.

Parents like this should be denied being parents this is what CPS should be call on for.

The people that such a policy would actually apply to are not who you think of as typical pro-plague people. Vaccination rates among low income households and minority households is lower than white households. It would mostly target those people instead of the pro-plague movement.

I don't know what's more shocking, the inflated 800k, or the ignorance of the anti vaxxers

I’m not entirely sure how inflated that is form the NHS in Wales:

“A Level 3 Intensive Care bed cost an average £1932 per night”.

Add to that the additional costs of the treatment and staff and even in a country with relatively cheap health care you get to costs of $300-400K for a period of nearly 60 days.

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