Parents are also increasingly opting out of the polio vaccine. Seventeen years ago, 95.4 percent of kindergarteners in Washington state were vaccinated for polio.
This year, 88.4 percent had the vaccine.
It’s even more dramatic in Seattle, where 81.4 percent of kindergarteners have been vaccinated for polio. That’s lower than the 2013 polio immunization rates for 1-year-olds in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Algeria, El Salvador, Guyana, Sudan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Yemen, among other countries, according to data from the World Health Organization.
Sigh.
The hippies and the alternative health practitioners could have a lot to answer for in the future.
The brain melting idiocy of some (most) in the anti-vaccine mob is breathtaking.
A demonstration that the practitioners of wishful thinking are actually evil. My cousin lived on ventilatory support for thirty of his thirty five years. My father’s secretary was an exballerina with a paralysed leg. Every class above me at primary school had at least one child wearing a legiron for support.
Yes, these people aren’t just stupid but wicked.
What will be the next step for them? Campaign against the use of antiseptics and disinfectants in hospitals: they kill all our natural bacteria!
Evil bastards, every one.
I’m at the point with these people where natural selection can run its course. You’ve been told what’s good for you. It’s freely available. If you’re going to turn it down for your kids, maybe your line needs to end soon.
The worse thing is that you need that particular percentage of the population vaccinated to get the herd immunity that protects those who can’t be vaccinated for a genuine reason. So these stupid cunts aren’t just killing/maiming their own kids they are killing others too.
This creates a conflict in my libertarian views with which I have difficulty.
Sadly polio was almost wiped out a few years ago but now due to the Taliban and others the opportunity was missed.
Hm… do we think that is the result of changing beliefs? Give the high “cost” (in terms of inconvenience and crying children) of such vaccines, it makes total sense to me for parents to free-ride on herd immunity. As long as everyone else is doing it, there’s really no point in getting the vaccine. Odds of contracting polio are vanishingly small.
I predict after one small outbreak in the US, and rates will shoot right back up again. If so, it means that the decline wasn’t due to worries about efficacy or safety.
According to the wiki 5% of polio vaccinations don’t work and you need 80% to 85% vaccinated for herd immunity to work.
So 10% to 15% of parents being dicks is enough to fuck their own kids and those 5% of kids who are not immune through no fault of their own. (Ok… they won’t all get it, most won’t, but still it’s an unfair and unnecessary risk).
I think this is an issue to do with the success of vaccines. People forget what life was like before vaccines and the horrible effect on a society that these diseases caused.
What people are now focussing on is the side effects, both real and imagined, of the vaccination programs. People see that as the nasty side of vaccination rather than the disease that the vaccination prevents.
Sadly we will need to see a major outbreak of a preventable disease before we see change.
Matt Moore,
It’s not that parents are free-riding, it’s that polio mostly disappeared. People like my parents, people in Africa have no hesitation about vaccinating because they saw the effects of polio.
People in Afghanistan want to vaccinate their kids because they see the effects of polio. However, the Talibs have decided that it is an Amerikan plot to sterilise Muslim men, therefore will plant bombs on the routes to school for kids who have been vaccinated.
This creates a fairly easy to solve problem in most Afghan parents’ minds.
Where I live, we are infested with posh greens, tie-died homeopathic vegans, and titled leftists, and as a result the local herd immunity is terrible. I spent six months last year suffering from whooping cough, which is fairly unpleasant in adults but obviously deadly to babies. (I was innoculated as a child, but pertussis immunity declines over time.) According to my chums in the local medical community, half the dreadlocked trustafarians who run the organic fair trade coffee shops and freecycle websites and reiki workshops which infest the area flatly refuse to have their Arabellas and Achilleses (seriously) jabbed. As Dongy John says, this creates conflicts for me.
LJH,
I actually went to school with kids that had the polio braces. That doctor who published a research paper, which was proved to be totally flawed, linking autism with the three in one booster, has a lot to answer to. But, keep in mind that we are descendants of witch burners, so it is only logical to expect that the genes of the feeble, superstitious, and gullible folk are around in our population today, looking for bullshit stories to latch on to.
Libertarianism doesn’t work on vaccines. They should be compulsory.
Viruses and bacteria evolve. The more host organisms they have, the faster and more effectively they evolve, hence the more virulent they can become. That is why measles is a minor thing when a couple of kids get it but can kill when there’s an outbreak.
I think what fuels a lot of the anti-vac stuff is the genuine distress injections can cause babies.
Not just the momentary tears – and remember, it’s hard for any loving mother to hold down her baby while a stranger sticks a needle in them – but the aftermath.
After his first shots, our youngest regressed from being a happy baby who slept and fed well, to being tired, unhappy and listless for a whole fortnight afterwards. It was painful to watch.
My wife, already upset, googled the symptoms and came across anti-vaccine websites that frightened her. And she’s a foreigner, so not inclined to immediately trust everything the NHS tells her.
Matt,
> Give the high “cost” (in terms of inconvenience and crying children) of such vaccines
Sorry, but that’s absolute nonsense. There is no inconvenience because you already have to get your baby checked by a doctor or nurse regularly anyway. Kids cry for about a minute. Maybe two.
I used to know someone who’d been crippled by polio (she died this year). Spent the last fifty years in a wheelchair, able to move her head and one arm. Needed carers to lift her out of bed every morning and put her back in the evening, wash her, empty her bag, etc.
Funnily enough, she was also an animal rights activist and a vegan, and was one of the only anti-vaxers I’ve known. Big defender of Andrew Wakefield.
Nowt so queer as folk.
BTW, speaking of idiocy…
Over in Ritchieland, a commenter writes:
HMRC offices don’t cost money, they MAKE money.
Herd immunisation works best in herds. Figures I have seen suggest 95% as a minimum for ring fence immunisation to work with humans.
As we simply do not cluster in a herd the right way.
85% covered? You can bet the person with no immunity comes into contact with other vulnerable people. An outbreak can find those pathways…..
Yet when the parents have a sick child or bury a dead child they will often blame anyone but themselves.
Funny, isn’t it? Americans believe that third-hand smoke will kill you, but are fairly sceptical about polio, measles and TB.
Curiously enough, the places where these nutters live tend to be very pleasant indeed. Washington state, Brighton, posh pockets of London, etc. – these people are clearly doing something right. Perhaps there’s a correlation between the disrespect for authority that can fuel a career, and the disrespect for authority that puts you off vaccines.
keep in mind that we are descendants of witch burners
We are now much worse than witch burners – junk science AGW pushed by Western governments kills millions every year (4 million from burning dung rather than coal, 200K from starvation when biofuels eating their food, unknown number of old people from who can no longer afford to keep warm).
As John Miller says, light a fag within 50 yards of one of these wankers and they’ll be down in the bunker inside of five seconds.
How did that homeopathic mission to cure ebola and the anti malaria campaign go?
Not heard much since the pre-travel PR hoopla…….
In fact the success seems seems to be measured by their own numbers M1 seems appropriate.(cheat sheet HERE)
America had its first measles death in 12 years a few weeks ago.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/02/measles-death-washington-state/29624385/
It stuns me that Wakefield’s fiction, although completely discredited is still trotted out as a ‘no smoke without fire’ excuse by the anti vax brigade.
“Curiously enough, the places where these nutters live tend to be very pleasant indeed. Washington state, Brighton, posh pockets of London, etc.”
Decadence allows them to concentrate on side effects, rather than the prevented disease.
“Not just the momentary tears – and remember, it’s hard for any loving mother to hold down her baby while a stranger sticks a needle in them – but the aftermath.”
This is totally unnecessary now. Pain from shots is preventable.
http://buzzy4shots.com/
Polio is an oral vaccine with a sweet taste. No needles necessary.
Steve,
Google the name mate. Although this one could be someone who actually likes the chap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Pollitt
“Not just the momentary tears – and remember, it’s hard for any loving mother to hold down her baby while a stranger sticks a needle in them – but the aftermath.”
And in any case, the Polio vaccine is not delivered by needle: I got it on a lump of sugar, my children as a syrup.
“This creates a conflict in my libertarian views with which I have difficulty.” That suggests that your views result from prejudice rather than logic.
” it’s hard for any loving mother to hold down her baby while a stranger sticks a needle in them”: the alternative is for the sainted Mum to bloody grow up.
This is all part of the feminisation/infantilisation of society.
> It stuns me that Wakefield’s fiction, although completely discredited is still trotted out as a ‘no smoke without fire’ excuse by the anti vax brigade.
That’s the trouble with conspiracy theories: the fact that it was discredited proves it was true.
What we need is for the Government to conduct a top-secret programme of giving a few extra vaccines to the children of Cabinet members, chief constables, and the Royal Family. Then let the story leak. The anti-vaxxers would switch to “WHY ARE YOU DENYING US OUR RIGHTFUL JABS?” inside a fortnight.
dearieme:
Perhaps it does. If you’d like to help me with it; I wouldn’t take offense.
I hate the idea of the state forcing parents to do things to their kids. On this I believe they would be right but then how often are they not? At the same time people who don’t vaccinate their kids are selfish idiots putting not only their own children (which is bad enough) but others at serious risk.
D. John
“This creates a conflict in my libertarian views with which I have difficulty.”
If you make individual liberty the value that trumps all others in all circumstances – the meta-value that makes all other values possible, or some such guff – then I can see why you might feel conflicted. (Ian B and Ecksy seem to take this position, and it is amusing to see the knots in which they tie themselves on occasion – e.g. on trade union legislation.)
The alternative is to hold that liberty is the value with the highest priority but allow it to be trumped when the trade-off is obviously a winner. This is my position, and it may well be Squander 2’s position, above: “Libertarianism doesn’t work on vaccines. They should be compulsory.”
***
By the way, on a different tack, an editorial in ‘The Times’ this morning mentions that Jeremy Corbyn believes in homeopathy. Just sayin’…
Theo:
Thanks. Gives me something to think about. 😀
For me vaccinations are a ‘no brainer’ and should be compulsory. However, who is to decide what a ‘no brainer’ is? What if it’s Richard Murphy’s ‘no brainers’ that become compulsory. That’s what frightens me. Is the gain of compulsory vaccinations worth the risk? I guess we must already accept that in other matters and just have to stay vigilant against the Murphys of the world.
If you told these people they were selfish, ignorant free-riders they would be genuinely shocked and outraged. The gap between the image they hold of themselves and their actual behaviour is immense.
“At the same time people who don’t vaccinate their kids are selfish idiots putting not only their own children (which is bad enough) but others at serious risk.” Theo makes the general point I was going to make. On assessing desirable but incongruent political policies you might like to read some of the writings of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Oakeshott
The vaccination conundrum seems almost easy to me: if, on other than medical grounds, you refuse to have your child vaccinated you are imposing a needless, uncontroversial, and serious risk on others’ children.
It even passes a cynic’s test: do doctors and the like have their own children vaccinated? I’ll bet they do. (It’s not a trivial test: German oncologists, it turns out, overwhelmingly prescribe mammography for their symptomless patients, but not for their wives (or selves, as appropriate). See Gigerenzer’s book on Risk. (Actually see it anyway: brilliant bloody book.)
DJ: good point. Happily Murphy fails the cynic’s test, doesn’t he? He made a living from from tax “mitigation” and uses his wife for the same end. Therefore all his rabbiting on the subject is just worthless hypocrisy.
Come to think of it, Al Gore fails the cynic’s test when it comes to Global Warmmongering. Bloody handy test, that.
DJ,
> However, who is to decide what a ‘no brainer’ is?
Yes, this is a big problem. I have no answer to the question of how we persuade our lords & masters that vaccination should be compulsory but that a lot of other stuff shouldn’t. Scientific evidence? Fuck that. That’s just another way of saying that scientists should be in charge. The pre-eminence of scientific evidence is what killed Sally Clark. And yet it is scientific evidence that persuades me that vaccination should be compulsory. How to distinguish between scientific evidence that should shape policy and scientific evidence that shouldn’t?
Like I said, I have no answer.
the alternative is for the sainted Mum to bloody grow up.
Heh!
If you’re imposing a cost by your actions (or inaction) on other people then that’s an externality and we know how to deal with that: Coasean bargaining. So sure, you don’t have to vaccinate your kids, that’s your prerogative, but you have to compensate everyone else for the risk you are imposing on them. Add a small extra section to the tax form. Charge the yoghurt-knitters $10,000 a year per unvaccinated child. Sorted.
It wasn’t so much Andrew Wakefield as Tony Fucking Blair refusing to reveal whether he’d had his own whelp innoculated. Had he shown some fucking leadership and said “Yes, yes I have. It’s safe, you morons” instead of mumbling about his privacy (which didn’t seem to worry him when he was parading the brat around for approval points) then Wakefield’s idiocy would have been tempered.
Dongguan John – lol
Speaking of idiocy, dingo-dodging Green Party leader Natalie Bennett is tweeting in support of racial segregation:
Natalie Bennett @natalieben
A festival of social justice coming up in London: http://buff.ly/1Gp3BsO
Which brings you to “The Spark”, which is apparently a shindig for SJW’s. Here’s where it gets a bit apartheidy:
http://www.thesparkspace.org/timetable/#ffs-tabbed-421
Africa Intergenerationally
The African Diaspora in Britain is currently faced with several profound challenges: Adults of African descent are disproportionately out of work, in prisons, in the mental health system and under-employed in relation to our talents.
(Please note this is an event for African Diaspora Family only)
Then there’s this not-to-be missed session:
Can I touch your hair? A workshop on tackling every day sexism and racism for women of colour
WHO IS IT FOR? This workshop aims to create a safe space for self-identifying Women of Colour to share our own experiences of racism, sexism and other oppressions. ‘Women of colour’ is a political term originating in the US. Other terms used in the UK can include Black women and BAMER women (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee women). This includes trans women.
No penises allowed! Unless they identify as vaginas. But definitely no white penis-vaginas allowed!
So the Green Party supports colour bars. Whodathunkit?
Of course, they have other events which even (spit) white men can presumably attend:
Palestine 101
The workshop is thus aimed primarily at those who are seeking a foundational understanding of the situation of Palestine and how the struggle in/ for Palestine is relevant to their work and lives.
I can honestly say it isn’t.
Facilitated by Black Feminists for Palestine, naturally.
@Dearieme
Which of the Gigerenzer books do you recommend?
@S2
It wasn’t really science that killed (or even jailed) Sally Clark but scientism – in the shape of a fairly obvious misunderstanding of statistics, and the failure of the defence to challenge the use of those statistics, and the general pusillanimity of the court in the face of a ‘scientist’ talking outwith his own area of expertise.
Steve: is Godfrey Elfwick organising that event?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reckoning-Risk-Learning-Live-Uncertainty/dp/0140297863/ref=la_B001IGOI3K_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437137883&sr=1-2
I haven’t read his other books. Probably I should.
Sally Clark: effing disgrace. The defence failed to ask the the elementary question of the expert witness “How can you possibly know that?”
Interested,
> It wasn’t really science that killed (or even jailed) Sally Clark but scientism
I didn’t say it was science; I said that it was scientific evidence. Yes, it was bad scientific evidence, but then that’s my point: it still doesn’t answer the question, does it?
Besides, there are plenty of other examples. CAGW, for instance. Lobotomies. The Swedish mass sterilisation program. The banning of wooden chopping boards in professional kitchens. The new 20% tax on lemonade. There is no effective difference between saying something should be compulsory because science proves it should be and saying we should all have to do whatever scientists tell us.
Yet I do still believe that vaccination needs to be compulsory.
Effectively barring that evil, incompetent arsehole Roy Meadow from acting as an expert witness is a shining high-point in the career of Harriet Harman
GlenDorran – I would be disappointed if Godfrey isn’t involved. They need xir input.
Poetry Writing Workshop: Exploring the Personal as Political
The workshop will explore social injustice through delving into personal narratives in order to explore the personal as political. Participants will be encouraged to express themselves without fear of censorship or negative, unconstructive criticism.
I’m tempted to go along and heckle.
Bring open hearts, minds and ears because everyone’s story matters.
Even Iain Duncan Smith’s?
Exhibition making with Sorryyoufeeluncomfortable
This will be an interactive performance where the audience will create a large artwork. There will be hundreds of justice-themed images displayed as a slide show. The audience would be provided with paint pens, inks, and fabric pens and encouraged to pause the slide show, reposition the projection and trace images onto the fabric.
Now I’m definitely going along, to draw cocks and swastikas.
In the US polio is vaccinated using injections. Maybe a return to the oral version would improve vaccination rates.
Perhaps uptake of vaccines would also recover if governments made it plain that there *is* a risk to vaccination but and that there are compensation schemes in existence acknowledging that risk.(There is or was a similar one in the USA) Comparisons are often made to the debilitating effects of the diseases in that the incidences of side effects is lower in the vaccine than in the diseases but this is possibly misplaced. Far more people a year are vaccinated than would have got those diseases if the vaccines were not being given.
Wakefield crap aside, the UK government did not exactly cover itself in glory over MMR, particularly in withdrawing the option for separate jabs seemingly through bloody mindedness. How effective is vaccination if a government looks shifty in how it presents options to parents to the point where some are put off getting their children vaccinated?
Reading the Merck MMR-II (pdf) data sheet there are a number of people with various forms of compromised immune systems who should not be given it. I wonder if many of those reporting permanent adverse effects to that and other vaccines are patients who should not actually have been given them.
Curiously, the MMR scare (Wakefield) had nearly no effect in France.
Yet France is the world capital of the precautionary principle.
As a precaution, I will vaccinate my child. As a precaution, I won’t vaccinate my child.
Some precautionary principle!
Not science that killed Clark, just a phoney expert witness quoting a draft of a report. True, the scientists later published it without having protested against its use. Amendment would have been embarrassing.
MMR is one thing (Measles never did us any harm etc etc).
Polio is quite another.
These people are indeed idiots.
Gareth,
> the UK government did not exactly cover itself in glory over MMR, particularly in withdrawing the option for separate jabs seemingly through bloody mindedness.
They didn’t withdraw it. I know people who got their kids the separate jabs. They just didn’t offer them on the NHS. Mainly for cost reasons, I seem to remember. (There was also the argument about people being more likely to miss apointments for their third jab than their first, but ultimately that’s a cost reason too.)
All those people who claimed they were denied the separate jobs were actually just complaining that the NHS was offering them the cheap option instead of a luxury good that they refused to pay for. You know, the same way the NHS does with every single other treatment. And their precious children who could not be allowed to face even the slightest imaginary risk weren’t worth a few quid.
There is no “precautionary principle”. In fact, adopting the notion that there is a “precautionary principle” violates any possible precautionary principle. QED.
Squander Two said: “They didn’t withdraw it. I know people who got their kids the separate jabs. They just didn’t offer them on the NHS. ”
Thanks for that.
If herd immunity is a major public good I wonder why the NHS didn’t simply offer the combined jab free or the separate jabs for a fee.
The more ‘Science’ is put on a pedestal, the more phoney science will be presented and accepted. The only way this can be guarded against is free public access to scientific papers and data. If someone publishes some science which will influence public policy, then all of the data, assumptions etc which led to the conclusion must be freely available for ANYONE to reconstruct (or more likely deconstruct). This is real “peer review”.
dearieme:
“In fact, adopting the notion that there is a “precautionary principle” violates any possible precautionary principle.”
I’m no fan of the precautionary principle; but, if I understand you correctly, your argument above is invalid because you are equivocating between two senses of ‘precautionary principle’, one of the uses being of a high order. Much as the class of all classes is not a member of itself because it is a higher order class.
DJ:
” However, who is to decide what a ‘no brainer’ is?”
As others have said, there is no easy answer to that. But for scientific findings to be the basis of public policy, they need to be confirmed and re-confirmed, thoroughly debated and with the evidence publicly available. Vaccination has been around since at least 1796 and the science is probably as clear as it can be. A majority probably already supports compulsory vaccination; and I could see a campaign for it being successful through the usual democratic channels.
” What if it’s Richard Murphy’s ‘no brainers’ that become compulsory. That’s what frightens me.”
His ‘no brainers’ would only appear so socialists. If the Labour Party adopts them, they might be implemented. In any event, his notions hardly scientific, even by the weak scientific standards of economics.
“we must already accept that in other matters and just have to stay vigilant against the Murphys of the world.”
The price of liberty etc…
In many places in the USA proof of vaccination is required before a child can enroll in a public (government-run) school. No one is forced to vaccinate their children…
I assume that many have seen this?
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/07/17/outstanding-contribution-the-jurys-out/
Oh god, the false modesty can scarcely hide the straining as his massive ego threatens to burst with smug
When time came to vaccinate our youngest it was at the height of all the anti-vax stuff, but even if you believed it it was still a very small unknown risk against some pretty major known risks. Still as the saying goes you can fool some of the people all of the time
I remember some libertarian theorist making a point that children hold a special place in libertarian thinking because they cannot make a rational decision and that meant that some State intervention was acceptable.
The point was also made, as has been here, that that excuse is used by all political persuasions often to the detriment of everyone.
I have no problem with the State stepping in and limiting the options for parents. As ZT says, in the USA some States don’t allow those without vaccinations in to State schools and I’d tempted to limit hospital treatment as well, maybe insisting they’re kept separate from other children and insisting that the parents hang around to provide basic care given the imposition they are voluntarily putting on the system.
dearieme:
” On assessing desirable but incongruent political policies you might like to read some of the writings of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Oakeshott”
Perhaps ‘Rationalism in Politics’ is the place to start? In any event, your point is a good one. Most here are ‘libertarians’, while I’m a conservative with a bias towards liberty.
Sorry, I don’t get the dilemma. The main tenet of libertarianism is that you can do what you want as long as you don’t harm others. You are e.g. allowed to drive without a seat belt because you will harm only yourself but you are not allowed to drive your car into pedestrians. The same principles of coursepplies to vaccines; if not taking them (or making your offspring take them) causes harm to others then government intervention is per se not wrong. (The knowledge problem still applies though)
Emil:
“The main tenet of libertarianism is that you can do what you want as long as you don’t harm others.”
Agreed. But it turns on what is meant by ‘harm’ — which is a very slippery term…
“You are e.g. allowed to drive without a seat belt because you will harm only yourself ”
Nope. And certainly not in a system of socialised medicine: we all bear the cost of the extra treatment, greater injuries, more cripples…
“You are e.g. allowed to drive without a seat belt because you will harm only yourself but you are not allowed to drive your car into pedestrians.” I wonder. There must be a non-negligible risk of a driver without a belt getting killed or knocked out, and thereby causing the deaths of others in a way that could have been avoided had he been belted up. Similarly, it must surely be wise to demand the belting up of any passenger in a rear seat who might otherwise become a missile killing someone in a front seat.
I suspect the hardest case to make is for the compulsory belting up of the front seat passenger. Which is ironic, since he is probably the person most at risk without causing substantial extra risk for others.
Calling…Calling…
Libertarian nutters? Are you there, please?
This thread is missing is you!
The seat belt thing’s interesting on a couple of levels. First there’s risk compensation, so that people tend to drive more carelessly when they are wearing seatbelts. Second there’s the fact that abdominal and thoracic injuries increase even as deaths come down. That’s an easy call, you might say, but it appears the threshold for injury is lower when you’re wearing a seat belt i.e. injuries are incurred in crashes that would have let an unbelted occupant escape unharmed. There are questions of agency, accurate risk assessment and so forth. Like everything in the real world, it’s complicated.
Nowadays polio vaccine in the UK is a component of the 5-in-1 vaccine. The oral vaccine is no longer used here because it’s a live vaccine with a (slight) risk of vaccine-derived polio outbreaks.
do doctors and the like have their own children vaccinated? I’ll bet they do
My firstborn had his MMR vaccine during the scare. My wife, a doctor, was the primary decision maker.
This is why it is so sad that the state is so deeply involved in science. By politicizing science they make it suspect. If state funding can do so much damage as to make something with such weak evidence as anthropogenic warming look, on the surface, like real science, I can’t help but have some sympathy with those who question the vaccine consensus.
Only a little sympathy, though. Vaccination withstands close scrutiny.
Gut reaction is with S2.
However, I do dislike the compulsory element. How about having that sort of information publicly available – letting social pressure deal with it?
As an individual, I have/should have the right to know if someone endangers my health, as a parent it is my responsibility to protect my child against the consequences of idiocy. I would have no problem calling them out publicly and loudly asking them what gives them the right to endager my children and future grand children.
dearieme,
> There must be a non-negligible risk of a driver without a belt getting killed or knocked out, and thereby causing the deaths of others in a way that could have been avoided had he been belted up.
Yes, there is. I find the libertarian anti-seatbelt arguments particularly weak. They assume an extremely simple set-up that doesn’t generally happen in real-life accidents. Firstly, most accidents are actually very minor, and the car can keep moving after them. Seatbelts prevent drivers knocking their heads on the steering wheel and so enable them to keep control of their vehicle, which may still be moving, or which may need to start moving again in order to avoid further accidents (for instance, maybe it’s been jolted onto the wrong side of the road). Secondly, people who are thrown through the windscreen in more serious crashes are usually thrown into the road, where they can become an obstacle to other traffic which might well not otherwise have been affected by the crash.
The way I always put it is that you don’t have the right to suddenly leap out in front of moving cars, and having just crashed through a windscreen is no excuse.
If Andrew Wakefield does not repent he will briefly burn (those who think that sinners burn eternally fail to understand the nature of fuel which is swiftly consumed).
@ S2
I find that there is an argument for seat-belts/airbags for everyone in the car EXCEPT the driver. Either from the knowledge of the danger or from Darwinian evo9lution, motor accidents wouold reduce – including those killing innocent pedestrians.