Ontario’s health minister Deb Matthews announced this week
that she is adding three further diseases to the list of illnesses against
which children in the province must be vaccinated. It’s mandatory. Her move has
been widely lauded by public health experts and medical ethicists. We have seen
in recent months outbreaks of preventable illnesses in communities with
unusually low vaccination rates. You might recall the most
recent outbreak of measles in BC’s Fraser Valley where more than 200
children came down with the measles. The situation seems directly linked to a
community objecting to vaccines on religious grounds. Don’t think of measles as
a harmless kind of infection. More than 100.000 children die each year
worldwide of this entirely preventable disease.
Why on earth would parents not wish to protect their
children against a serious infectious but preventable disease? Well, some parents
likely will simply forget, or think that it’s not that important. After all, if
we have herd immunity you can with reasonable confidence become a
non-vaccinated free-rider on your responsibly vaccinated fellow citizens.
However, if lots of us choose to become such free-riders the risk of a disease
outbreak increases quite dramatically. It’s simple maths really. In any case,
it is probably fair to say that not getting your children vaccinated simply
because you were too lazy or too selfish, aren’t terribly good ethical justifications
for your omission to get your kids vaccinated.
Another possibility is that you belong to those misguided
parents out there who have decided, typically based on conspiracy websites that
I won’t even be mentioning here, that vaccines do all kinds of evil things and
really you mean to protect your child from these evils. No doubt you’ll mention
autism as an example of the evils caused by vaccines. Well, let me just tell
you that the only peer reviewed research output supporting these claims has
since been withdrawn by the journal that published it initially. The researcher
who wrote the piece was found guilty of misconduct by a statutory medical
council. Shown to be a fraudster he was barred from ever
practicing medicine again in Britain. He still remains the posterboy of current-day
anti-vaccine activists. What better hero than a medical researcher ‘censored’
by the ‘establishment’. In light of this, to my mind, it makes perfect sense
for governments to protect children from parents prone to listening to
conspiracy theorists. This is so because if you choose to run with the views of
one convicted fraudster against the rest of the biomedical and public health
research establishment you haven’t quite done your due diligence. It is that
simple.
Let’s assume you’re neither too lazy to have your kids
vaccinated nor prone to buying into, however ludicrous, conspiracy theories.
What’s left? Funny enough, there is a reason left to you that our health
minister (no doubt based on good legal advice) thinks is an acceptable reason.
Deb Matthews notes that it could be acceptable for you to object on grounds of
conscience, or, as she describes it: religious or philosophical reasons. Fair
enough, you need to make your case and apply for an exemption. But, what kind
of religious reason could that be? That your god kind of had it in for your
kids and that if they catch the measles (and pass them on), it’s ‘God’s will’? Or
is the idea that because your imaginary friend in the sky is defined as
‘perfect’ by you, and that that perfect being would not create us as anything
other than perfect. So, why bother with vaccines then? Is that it?
I’m flabbergasted about the tolerance we show toward folks
objecting – against all the available evidence – to the compulsory vaccination
of their children on religious grounds. They are not only risking their
children’s health, they are also risking other people’s children’s health.
There are always kids who suffer from a weakened immune system or who suffer
from illnesses (such as cancer) that do not permit us to vaccinate them. They
are put at grave risk by conscientiously objecting anti-vaccine parents.
What’s bothersome here is that, as a society, we ultimately
prioritize the value of the parents’ religious convictions over their
children’s well-being. I cannot see how that could possibly be ethically
defended. Are we really saying that people’s clearly mistaken views about the
universe matter more than the well-being of their children – and, indeed, that
of other children? That’s what Minister Matthews’ religious and philosophical
exemption clause ultimately boils down to. It is one thing to permit legally
competent adults to make such choices for themselves, provided they are the
only ones seriously affected by the consequences of their actions. Adult Jehovah’s
Witnesses come to mind. If they wish to refuse life-preserving blood
transfusions and bet on their imaginary friend in the sky, we should respect
their choices, however, if they wish to place that bet for their vulnerable
children, then surely society needs to step in and protect those children. The
same holds true for children whose health is gambled with by their anti-vaccine
parents. We should not tolerate religious cop-outs anymore than we tolerate
parental convictions based on nonsensical conspiracy theories. Irresponsible
parental conduct that is putting their children’s well-being at risk does not
deserve societal accommodation.
Udo Schuklenk teaches bioethics at Queen’s University, he
tweets @schuklenk.
