Spillover Cards

Uniqueness booster – anti-vaccination brink

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Vaccination critics are gaining influence – can even sway anti-vax legislation.
Framing the debate in terms of rights is dangerous – the language of “choice” and “freedom” conveniently justifies anti-vaccination that endangers society as a whole.
The vaccination debate will come down to rights – SB 277 proves.
Making broad claims about the importance of civil liberties is hazardous – antivaxers will be making the same assertions – listen to how this “pro choice antivaxer” frames the debate
Anti-vaccination advocates see the debate as a civil liberties issue – protests prove.
The right to privacy becomes a tool for anti-vaccination parents to refuse vaccination – immunization is seen as an “intrusion”.
Anti-vaccination proponents base their arguments in the Constitution too – according to this anti-vaxer, it’s a “fight for inalienable rights to freedom”
There’s no getting out of the link – anti-vaccination advocates would love to get down with the 1AC and criticize utilitarianism together – listen to this deontological spiel by an anti-vaxer.
Yes spillover – anti-vaccination advocates use Court cases, pro-choice rhetoric, and even GMOs to justify their beliefs.
Spillover will occur – both politicians and advocates will make the connection between the plan and anti-vaccination rights – Roe v. Wade proves.
Link booster – rights key

Uniqueness booster – anti-vaccination brink

Anti-vaccination movement is gaining momentum now – that’s leading to outbreaks of preventable disease – case studies prove the long-term effects will be catastrophic.

Offit 14 – Paul Offit, American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology; co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that has been credited with saving hundreds of lives every day; Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania; Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases; member of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; Founding Board Member of the Autism Science Foundation, 2014 (“The Anti-Vaccination Epidemic”, Wall Street Journal, September 24, Available Online at http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-a-offit-the-anti-vaccination-epidemic-1411598408, accessed 7/20/15, KM)
Almost 8,000 cases of pertussis, better known as whooping cough, have been reported to California's Public Health Department so far this year. More than 250 patients have been hospitalized, nearly all of them infants and young children, and 58 have required intensive care. Why is this preventable respiratory infection making a comeback? In no small part thanks to low vaccination rates, as a story earlier this month in the Hollywood Reporter pointed out. The conversation about vaccination has changed. In the 1990s, when new vaccines were introduced, the news media were obsessed with the notion that vaccines might be doing more harm than good. The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine might cause autism, we were told. Thimerosal, an ethyl-mercury containing preservative in some vaccines, might cause developmental delays. Too many vaccines given too soon, the stories went, might overwhelm a child's immune system. Then those stories disappeared. One reason was that study after study showed that these concerns were ill-founded. Another was that the famous 1998 report claiming to show a link between vaccinations and autism was retracted by The Lancet, the medical journal that had published it. The study was not only spectacularly wrong, as more than a dozen studies have shown, but also fraudulent. The author, British surgeon Andrew Wakefield, has since been stripped of his medical license. But the damage was done. Countless parents became afraid of vaccines. As a consequence, many parents now choose to delay, withhold, separate or space out vaccines. Some don't vaccinate their children at all. A 2006 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that between 1991 and 2004, the percentage of children whose parents had chosen to opt out of vaccines increased by 6% a year, resulting in a more than twofold increase. Today the media are covering the next part of this story, the inevitable outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, mostly among children who have not been vaccinated. Some of the parents who chose not to vaccinate were influenced by the original, inaccurate media coverage. For example, between 2009 and 2010 more than 3,500 cases of mumps were reported in New York City and surrounding area. In 2010 California experienced an outbreak of whooping cough larger than any outbreak there since 1947. Ten children died. In the first half of 2012, Washington suffered 2,520 cases of whooping cough, a 1,300% increase from the previous year and the largest outbreak in the state since 1942. As of Aug. 29, about 600 cases of measles have occurred in the U.S. in 2014: the largest outbreak in 20 years—in a country that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared measles-free in 2000. Who is choosing not to vaccinate? The answer is surprising. The area with the most cases of whooping cough in California is Los Angeles County, and no group within that county has lower immunization rates than residents living between Malibu and Marina Del Rey, home to some of the wealthiest and most exclusive suburbs in the country. At the Kabbalah Children's Academy in Beverly Hills, 57% of children are unvaccinated. At the Waldorf Early Childhood Center in Santa Monica, it's 68%, according to the Hollywood Reporter's analysis of public-health data. These are the kind of immunization rates that can be found in Chad or South Sudan. But parents in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica see vaccines as unnatural—something that conflicts with their healthy lifestyle. And they have no problem finding fringe pediatricians willing to cater to their irrational beliefs. These parents are almost uniformly highly educated, but they are making an uneducated choice. It's also a dangerous choice: Children not vaccinated against whooping cough are 24 times more likely to catch the disease. Furthermore, about 500,000 people in the U.S. can't be vaccinated, either because they are receiving chemotherapy for cancer or immune-suppressive therapies for chronic diseases, or because they are too young. They depend on those around them to be vaccinated. Otherwise, they are often the first to suffer. And because no vaccine is 100% effective, everyone, even those who are vaccinated, is at some risk. Parents might consider what has happened in other countries when large numbers of parents chose not to vaccinate their children. Japan, for example, which had virtually eliminated whooping cough by 1974, suffered an anti-vaccine activist movement that caused vaccine rates to fall to 10% in 1976 from 80% in 1974. In 1979, more than 13,000 cases of whooping cough and 41 deaths occurred as a result. Another problem: We simply don't fear these diseases anymore. My parents' generation—children of the 1920s and 1930s—needed no convincing to vaccinate their children. They saw that whooping cough could kill as many as 8,000 babies a year. You didn't have to convince my generation—children of the 1950s and 1960s—to vaccinate our children. We had many of these diseases, like measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. But young parents today don't see the effects of vaccine-preventable diseases and they didn't grow up with them. For them, vaccination has become an act of faith. Perhaps most upsetting was a recent study out of Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington. Researchers wanted to see whether the whooping cough epidemic of 2012 had inspired more people to vaccinate their children. So they studied rates of whooping cough immunization before, during and after the epidemic. No difference. One can only conclude that the outbreak hadn't been large enough or frightening enough to change behavior—that not enough children had died. Because we're unwilling to learn from history, we are starting to relive it. And children are the victims of our ignorance. An ignorance that, ironically, is cloaked in education, wealth and privilege.

Vaccination critics are gaining influence – can even sway anti-vax legislation.

Gumbel 15 – Andrew Gumbel, foreign correspondent for The Guardian in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, 2015 (“US states face fierce protests from anti-vaccine activists”, The Guardian, April 10, Available Online at http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/10/anti-vaccine-protest-california-facts, accessed 7/20/15, KM)
Four months after a measles outbreak at Disneyland, state legislators seeking to tighten immunisation laws across the country are running the gauntlet of anti-vaccination activists who have bombarded them with emails and phone calls, heckled them at public meetings, harassed their staff, organized noisy marches and vilified them on social media. Three states blindsided by the activists’ sheer energy – Oregon, Washington and North Carolina – have either pulled back or killed bills that would have ended a non-specific “personal belief” exemption for parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children. Now the battleground is California, which bore the brunt of the measles outbreak at the beginning of the year and saw school closures, extraordinary quarantine measures and a vigorous public debate lamenting the fact that a disease declared eradicated 15 years ago is once again a public health threat. A health committee meeting in Sacramento, the state capital, on Wednesday turned into a tense showdown between lawmakers seeking to argue that the science is unequivocally on the side of universal vaccination, and activists accusing them of being in the pocket of unscrupulous big pharmaceutical companies. One activist, Terry Roark, told the state senate committee her child had died from a vaccine and feared others could be next if parents lost the right to decide what was in their best interests. “Innocent people will die,” she said tearfully. “Innocent children will be killed.” The meeting degenerated at points into yelling and screaming, and two activists were removed. Lawmakers promoting the new law were tenacious in their own way, challenging the claim that the bill would force vaccinations even on children with legitimate medical reasons not to have them. A doctor sympathetic to the anti-vaccination movement was ultimately forced to concede the bill contained no such language. “The danger I feel as a policymaker is that when assertions are made in public comment that aren’t fact-based, that’s irresponsible,” state senator Holly Mitchell said. She and the co-sponsors of the bill, a doctor from northern California and the son of a polio survivor from southern California, have become hate figures to the movement and they and their staff have been chased and shouted at. The southern California co-sponsor, Ben Allen, told the Guardian that while many of his detractors were respectful he’d also been bewildered by “Facebook memes of me as a Nazi doctor”. He added: “Some of them have definitely crossed a line.” The activists were boosted by the participation of a Kennedy: the environmentalist and civil rights activist Robert F Kennedy Jr, son of the murdered attorney general and nephew of the murdered president, who has written a book denouncing the use of mercury traces in a vaccine ingredient, which repeated peer-reviewed studies have found to be safe and which has now largely been phased out. Kennedy showed a documentary based on his book, spoke at a rally and likened vaccinations to the Holocaust. Medical experts and legislators supporting the bill say vaccinating as many people as possible is vital to provide so-called herd immunity – a degree of protection strong enough to cover infants too young for vaccinations or those too sick to receive them. The more alarmist, contrary story of an out-of-control medical establishment covering up the “truth” – that vaccinations are responsible for an alarming spike in children diagnosed with autism – is the view of a tiny minority, perhaps 5% of the population. But the minority is a strikingly vocal one. In North Carolina, state senator Terry Van Duynsa described the backlash to a bill she sponsored as “very swift and very furious”. “It created an environment that made it difficult to just even talk about it,” she told the NPR radio affiliate in Charlotte.

Link – Generic

Framing the debate in terms of rights is dangerous – the language of “choice” and “freedom” conveniently justifies anti-vaccination that endangers society as a whole.

Thornton 15 – Paul Thornton, Los Angeles Times’ letters editor, 2015 (“Opinion Vaccine skeptics and Chris Christie say it's about choice. They're wrong”, LA Times, February 2, Available Online at http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-chris-christie-vaccines-choice-20150202-story.html, accessed 7/14/15, KM)
Chris Christie and vaccine skeptics say they want choice. What about those who can't be vaccinated? Vaccine skeptics have exchanged autism for an appeal to choice as their cri de coeur "Choice" is a great word -- it has a universal, empowering appeal, and it's useful for winning a debate. Women's rights activists were smart decades ago to call their side of the abortion debate "pro-choice," asking us to ignore our feelings on the procedure itself and trust women enough to make their own medical decisions. So it's no surprise that vaccine skeptics have now changed the subject from their rightly ridiculed nonscientific claims on autism to the freedom to parent as they wish -- in other words, to make their own choices. And it appears they've convinced New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (or maybe not), who says that even though vaccinating children is crucial and that his own kids got their shots, choice is great too, and parents deserve to have some when it comes to stopping the spread of communicable illness. Yes, we can note the irony of this being the same governor who recently locked a nurse in a tent to protect New Jersey from an Ebola virus this woman wasn't carrying, but that's beside the point. What's important is that Christie's statement (you might even call it gaffe) represents the latest strategy for the vaccine skeptics: They're trying to win apologists for their cause, not an argument on the efficacy of vaccines. Whether you agree with them doesn't matter -- you could even ridicule their efforts to pass off fraud as science in linking vaccination to autism. But freedom is a core American value, and everyone deserves to make his or her own choices, especially when it comes to parenting. This is Christie's logic. Christie isn't the only one making this argument. As I've noted before, this appeal to choice has replaced autism as our letter writers' preferred anti-vaccine argument. In response an editorial last week calling for an end to California's personal-belief exemption for parents who would rather not vaccinate their children, a small handful of readers hyperbolically accused The Times' editorial board of favoring totalitarianism (one said, "Sorry, but we don’t live in Nazi Germany"). Previously, a reader from Nevada whose letter was published -- much to the dismay of at least a dozen others who sent us their own responses to their letter -- wrote that "freedom means choice. Plain and simple. Without choice, we are not a democracy." He continued: "It is my choice whether or not I want to be vaccinated. It is your choice whether or not to wash your hands or take basic public health precautions. It is an individual's choice whether he or she wants to gamble with their child's life. It is not your place to say what they have to do." Here’s the problem: This isn’t about choice, and vaccine skeptics' use of freedom instead of autism as their new cri de coeur exposes the joyful self-centeredness of their obstinacy. Any pediatrician (well, perhaps not all pediatricians) will tell you a parent's decision to vaccinate is as much about other children as their own. Parents who vaccinate their children not only protect their own kids as well as pick up some of the slack for the mothers and fathers who refused vaccination, they also help to protect those who cannot get immunized. It's sad for anyone to come down with a preventable disease, but lost in our focus lately on the children of vaccine-skeptical parents who have come down with measles are those who rely on the rest of us who can choose to immunize to make the right choice. These people -- organ transplant recipients, cancer survivors and infants, among others -- might not have the choice that Christie and others champion.

The vaccination debate will come down to rights – SB 277 proves.

Herbert 15 – Steven Herbert, Night Editor of City News Service, 2015 (“Opponents of new California vaccination law gathering signatures to overturn it”, LA Daily News, July 15, Available Online at http://www.dailynews.com/health/20150715/opponents-of-new-california-vaccination-law-gathering-signatures-to-overturn-it, accessed 7/16/15, KM)
Opponents of SB 277, a recently signed law requiring almost all schoolchildren in California to be vaccinated against diseases such as measles and whooping cough, received permission Wednesday to begin gathering signatures that would qualify a referendum to overturn it. “This referendum is not about vaccinations. It is about defending the fundamental freedom of a parent to make an informed decisions for their children without being unduly penalized by a government that believes it knows best,” said former Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, the referendum’s proponent. Valid signatures from 365,880 registered voters — 5 percent of the total votes cast for governor in the 2014 general election — must be submitted by Sept. 28 to qualify the measure for the November 2016 ballot, according to Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Q&A: What you need to know about California’s new SB 277 If the attempt to overturn SB 277 qualifies for the ballot, its provisions would be suspended. The bill, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on June 30, eliminates vaccination exemptions based on religious or personal beliefs. It will require all children entering kindergarten to be vaccinated unless a doctor certifies that a child has a medical condition, such as allergies, preventing it. The legislation was prompted in part by an outbreak of measles traced to Disneyland that began in late December and ultimately spread to more than 130 people across the state. Cases were also reported in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah and Washington state.

Making broad claims about the importance of civil liberties is hazardous – antivaxers will be making the same assertions – listen to how this “pro choice antivaxer” frames the debate—

Fisher 14 – Barbara Loe Fisher, Co-founder & President of the National Vaccine Information Center, 2014 (“Vaccination: Defending Your Right to Know and Freedom to Choose”, National Vaccine Information Center, November 13, Available Online at http://www.nvic.org/nvic-vaccine-news/november-2014/vaccination--defending-your-right-to-know-and-free.aspx, accessed 7/16/15, KM)
Following is a referenced excerpt from a keynote presentation given by Barbara Loe Fisher at the 2014 U.S. Health Freedom Congress in Minneapolis, Minnesota. View the video of her full 75 minute presentation here. The public conversation about whether we should have the freedom to choose how we want to maintain our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health has become one of the most important public conversations of our time. It is a conversation that challenges us to examine complex public policy, scientific, ethical, legal, philosophical, economic, political and cultural issues. This may appear to be a new conversation but it has been around for centuries. 1 At the center of this new and old public conversation about health and freedom, is the topic of vaccination. 2 3 What unites those defending an open discussion about vaccination and health is a commitment to protecting bodily integrity and defending the inalienable right to self-determination, which has been globally acknowledged as a human right. 7 8 9 Whether you are a health care professional practicing complementary and alternative medicine or specializing in homeopathic, naturopathic, chiropractic, acupuncture, or other holistic health options, 10 or you are a consumer advocate working for the right to know and freedom to choose how you and your family will stay well, many of you have a deep concern about health and freedom. Vaccination: Most Hotly Debated of All Health Freedom Issues The most divisive and hotly debated of all health freedom issues is the question of whether individuals should be at liberty to dissent from established medical and government health policy and exercise freedom of thought, speech and conscience when it comes to vaccination. 11 12 13 In the health freedom movement, there are some who will defend the legal right to purchase and use nutritional supplements, drink raw milk, eat GMO free food, remove fluoride from public water systems and mercury from dental amalgams or choose non-medical model options for healing and staying well, but are reluctant to publicly support the legal right to make vaccine choices. A Sacrosanct Status for Vaccination Vaccination is a medical procedure that has been elevated to a sacrosanct status by those in control of the medical-model based health care system for the past two centuries. Vaccination is now being proclaimed as the most important scientific discovery and public health intervention in the history of medicine. 14 15 16 Using religious symbols and crusading language, medical scientists describe vaccination as the Holy Grail. 17 18 19 20 Vaccines, they say, are going to eradicate all causes of sickness and death from the earth and anyone who doubts that is an ignorant fool. 21 22 23 24 25 In the 1970’s, pediatrician and health freedom pioneer Robert Mendelsohn, who described himself as a medical heretic, warned that medical science has become a religion and doctors have turned the act of vaccination into “the new sacrament.” 26 In the 21st century, if you refuse to believe that vaccination is a moral and civic duty and dare to question vaccine safety or advocate for the legal right to decline one or more government recommended vaccines, you are in danger of being branded an anti-science heretic, a traitor and a threat to the public health. 27 28 You are viewed as a person of interest who deserves to be humiliated, silenced and punished for your dissent. 29 30 31 32 Exercising Freedom of Thought, Speech and Autonomy “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” said Voltaire, 33 34 the great 18th century writer during the Age of Enlightenment, who was imprisoned several times in the Bastille for defending freedom of thought and speech before the French Revolution. As contentious as the public conversation about vaccination, health and autonomy has become, we cannot be afraid to have it. There has never been a better time to challenge those ruling our health care with an iron fist. We have the power and all we need to do is exercise it. Information is Power We have the tools in the 21st century to bring about a modern Age of Enlightenment 35 that will liberate the people so we can take back our freedom and our health. The electronic communications revolution has provided a global platform for us to access the Library of Medicine 36 and evaluate the quality and quantity of vaccine science used to make public health policy and create vaccine laws. The World Wide Web allows us to circumvent the paid mainstream media dominated by industry and governments and publicly communicate in detail on our computers, tablets and smart phones exactly what happened to our health or our child’s health after vaccination. 37 38 39 40 We are connected with each other in a way that we have never been before and it is time to talk about vaccines and microbes and the true causes of poor health. It is time to face the fear that we and our children will get sick and die if we don’t believe and do what those we have allowed to rule our health care system with an iron fist tell us to believe and do. Who Will Control the Multi-Trillion Dollar U.S. Health Care System? What is at stake in this debate between citizens challenging the status quo and those resisting constructive change is: Who will control the multi-trillion dollar U.S. health care system? 41 If people have the right to know and freedom to choose how to heal and stay healthy, a free people may think independently and choose to spend their money on something different from what they have been carefully taught to spend their money on right now. 42 A free people may reject sole reliance on the expensive and, some say, ineffective pharmaceutical-based medical model that has dominated US health care for two centuries. 43 44 45 A free people may refuse to buy and eat GMO foods. 46 A free people may walk away from doctors, who threaten and punish patients for refusing to obey orders to get an annual flu shot or decline to give their children every single government recommended vaccine on schedule – no exceptions and no questions asked. 47 The most rational and compelling arguments for defending health freedom, including vaccine freedom of choice, are grounded in ethics, law, science and economics. The human right to voluntary, informed consent to vaccination is the best example of why Americans must not wait any longer to stand up and defend without compromise the inalienable right to autonomy and protection of bodily integrity.

Anti-vaccination advocates see the debate as a civil liberties issue – protests prove.

Mara 15 – Janis Mara, covers education for the Marin IJ and has won many awards for business coverage, live-blogging, and investigative work, 2015 (“Vaccination law critics hold protest at Golden Gate Bridge”, Marin Independent Journal, July 3, Available Online at http://www.marinij.com/health/20150703/vaccination-law-critics-hold-protest-at-golden-gate-bridge, accessed 7/16/15, KM)
Corte Madera chiropractor Donald Harte addresses protesters about the new California school vaccines law before demonstrating on the Golden Gate Bridge on Friday. Alan Dep — Marin Independent Journal About 200 opponents of California’s new law mandating vaccination for nearly all the state’s schoolchildren protested at the Golden Gate Bridge on Friday, wearing bright red and vowing, “We’re not going away.” The protest took place three days after Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 277. The law requires immunization against diseases including measles and whooping cough in order to attend public or private school. Before the bill passed, parents could cite personal or religious beliefs to decline vaccination. Some medical problems, such as immune system deficiencies, will still be exempt under the new law. “We are large, we are powerful and we are going to be heard,” said event organizer Brandy Vaughan of the Council for Vaccine Safety during the rally. Adults, children and even one German Shepherd dog wore bright red T-shirts, many of them emblazoned with anti-vaccine slogans and images of syringes. “All of the nation of Islam are sincerely concerned about any law that imposes needles into the arms of men, women and children,” said Minister Keith Muhammad, an official speaker at the event and a local student representative of Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the religious group Nation of Islam, in Oakland. “Autism in black children increased with the MMR,” Muhammad said, referring to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. VACCINE, AUTISM In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and 11 other co-authors published a study in The Lancet, a respected medical journal, suggesting a link between this vaccine and autism. Subsequently, the study was retracted by The Lancet and Wakefield’s medical license was revoked. “Study after study has not found a link between vaccines and autism,” Marin Public Health Officer Matt Willis said at a March vaccination forum in San Rafael held by Marin’s public health department, the Marin County Office of Education and Kaiser Permanente. “The incidence of measles in California is very small and many of those who suffered were vaccinated,” Muhammad said. The speaker was referring to an outbreak of measles that started in Disneyland in December and eventually sickened more than 140 people. Of the California measles cases reported in January in which vaccination status was known, 80 percent weren’t vaccinated, according to Dr. Gil Chavez, state epidemiologist. “The majority of people who got measles were unvaccinated,” according to the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The assertion was referring to the 178 measles cases reported in the United States between Jan. 1 and June 26 of this year. “Are you ready to fight for your rights?” asked Rachelle Emery, who lobbied against the bill. The crowd roared back, “Yes!” Emery called for “an investigation of our legislators,” specifically Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, a pediatrician and an author of the bill. Joshua Coleman of Roseville, who lobbied in Sacramento against SB 277, said, “We need to recall Senator Richard Pan.” He also urged the audience to educate the public on the issue. “Is not injecting poison into a child, child abuse? Think about this!” Donald Harte, a Corte Madera chiropractor, told the group. PROCESSION After the speakers held forth, the group marched across the bridge, carrying signs with slogans such as ”No forced vaccination,” and, “In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place” — Mahatma Gandhi.” A wagon with a bright red canopy holding three children was part of the procession. Two of the children belonged to Megan Fleming. “I have a background in Ayurvedic medicine and I read a lot of studies on holistic healing modalities before I had children,” the Mill Valley resident said. “I had a different perspective of what it means to create health. I did my research. I had an instinct that I did not want to just go along with what I was being told,” Fleming said. “Medical choice is a human right. One of the issues with this is that vaccine studies are done by the companies that manufacture the vaccines. It would be good to have independent studies,” Fleming said.

Link – Privacy

The right to privacy becomes a tool for anti-vaccination parents to refuse vaccination – immunization is seen as an “intrusion”.

Friedersdorf 15 – Conor Friedersdorf, staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs, holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from New York University and BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Pomona College, 2015 (“Should Anti-Vaxers Be Shamed or Persuaded?”, The Atlantic, February 3, Available Online at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/should-anti-vaxxers-be-shamed-or-persuaded/385109/, accessed 7/14/15, KM)
While anti-vaxer ignorance has caused great damage, the vast majority are not, in fact, especially selfish people. But I part with the commentators who assume that insulting, shaming, and threatening anti-vaccination parents is the best course, especially when they extend their logic to politicians. For example, Chris Christie is getting flak for "pandering" to anti-vaccination parents. He said, "We vaccinate ours kids, and so, you know that’s the best expression I can give you of my opinion. You know it’s much more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official. That’s what we do. But I understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance the government has to decide." Those remarks could be improved upon. Indeed, Christie's office released a clarifying statement after his original comments came under criticism. But isn't Christie's approach more likely to persuade anti-vaccine parents than likening their kids to bombs? Let's emulate the New Jersey governor. If I could address any anti-vaccine parents reading this article: Like you, I looked into the scientific evidence with an open mind. When I regard conventional wisdom or the ruling establishment to be wrong, I'm always eager to publicly dissent. In this case, I came to the same conclusion as my own hyper-cautious mother: Not only would I definitely vaccinate my own kid if I had one—the case is so strong that, were standard vaccinations more expensive, I'd spend 20 percent of my income to get my kids their shots. That's how high my confidence is in their safety and importance. And if you're surprised by this measles outbreak, you underestimated the costs of your choice, which you'd be smart to reverse as soon as possible. Testimony from people who actually have kids is, of course, going to be more credible. (See Roald Dahl's story about his daughter for a particularly affecting testimony.) I'd urge parents with the impulse to shame and insult to try that approach instead, not just because it strikes me as more likely to persuade the typical anti-vaccine parent, but due to the conviction that while anti-vaxer ignorance has caused great damage, the vast majority are not, in fact, especially selfish people, and characterizing them as such just feeds into their mistaken belief system. Put another way, the parents I know who vaccinated their children, mine included, were not acting selflessly or sacrificially to protect the herd. They were appropriately confident that vaccinating their kids would significantly increase rather than reduce their chances of surviving and thriving in this world. Well-informed selfish people get vaccinated! Like Chris Mooney, I worry about this issue getting politicized. As he notes, there is presently no partisan divide on the subject. "If at some point, vaccinations get framed around issues of individual choice and freedom vs. government mandates—as they did in the 'Christie vs. Obama' narrative—and this in turn starts to map onto right-left differences ... then watch out," he writes. "People could start getting political signals that they ought to align their views on vaccines—or, even worse, their vaccination behaviors—with the views of the party they vote for." As a disincentive to this sort of thinking, folks on the right and left would do well to reflect on the fact that the ideology of anti-vaxers doesn't map neatly onto the left or right, with the former willing to use state coercion and the latter opposing it. For example, consider some of the standard language used to talk about abortion. If you're a progressive who believes in both a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy and a moral right to autonomy over one's body, do you also believe that choices about vaccinations ought to be between patients and doctors, and that the state has no right to intrude on such a sensitive matter? If you're a conservative who believes that the community has a role in safeguarding innocent babies, even when that infringes on a parent's choices and bodily autonomy, do you also believe vaccinations can be compelled by the state? I don't mean to suggest that the abortion and vaccination debates map onto one another perfectly—only to illustrate that legally compelling vaccinations would be both consistent with and in tension with other positions taken by both the left and right. Personally, I can think of hypothetical situations where I'd support compelled vaccination and others where I'd staunchly oppose them, based not only on specific facts about the world, a given disease, and the vaccine against it, but also on the question of whether such a law would really improve public health outcomes.

Link – Constitution

Anti-vaccination proponents base their arguments in the Constitution too – according to this anti-vaxer, it’s a “fight for inalienable rights to freedom”

Fisher 14 – Barbara Loe Fisher, Co-founder & President of the National Vaccine Information Center, 2014 (“Vaccination: Defending Your Right to Know and Freedom to Choose”, National Vaccine Information Center, November 13, Available Online at http://www.nvic.org/nvic-vaccine-news/november-2014/vaccination--defending-your-right-to-know-and-free.aspx, accessed 7/16/15, KM)
NVIC: Defending Ethical Principle of Informed Consent I and the more than 100,000 followers and supporters 48 of the non-profit charity, the National Vaccine Information Center, take an informed consent position with regard to vaccination. Since our founding in 1982, we have defended the ethical principle of informed consent to vaccine risk-taking because vaccines are pharmaceutical products that carry a risk of injury, death and failure, 49 and because informed consent to medical risk taking is the central ethical principle guiding the ethical practice of medicine. 50 We support the “first do no harm” precautionary approach to public policymaking, which focuses on how much harm can be prevented from a policy or law and not how much harm is acceptable. 51 NVIC Supports Your Health Choices & Vaccine Exemptions We do not advocate for or against use of vaccines. We support your human and legal right to make informed, voluntary health care decisions for yourself and your children and choose to use every government recommended vaccine, a few vaccines or no vaccines at all. 52 NVIC has worked for more than 30 years to secure vaccine safety and informed consent provisions in public health policies and laws, including flexible medical, religious and conscientious belief vaccine exemptions. We are doing this in an increasingly hostile environment created by an industry-government-medical trade alliance that is lobbying for laws to compel all Americans to use every government recommended without deviation from the official schedule or face a growing number of societal sanctions. 53 Although historically, children have been the target for vaccine mandates, authoritarian implementation of federal vaccine policy is not just for children anymore, it is rapidly expanding to include all adults. 54 55 Californians Stood Up for Personal Belief Vaccine Exemption In 2012, many California residents traveled to Sacramento to protest a law introduced by a pediatrician legislator to make it harder for parents to file a personal belief vaccine exemption for their children to attend school. They responded to Action Alerts we issued through the online NVIC Advocacy Portal and lined the halls of the state Capitol building, many with their children, and waited for hours and hours to testify at several public hearings. Mother after mother and father after father, grandparents, nurses, doctors and students of chiropractic, came to the public microphone. Some talked about how vaccine reactions left their children sick and disabled but they can’t find a doctor to write a medical exemption so their children can attend school; others talked about how their babies died after vaccination; and others simply opposed restriction of the legal right for parents to make medical decisions for their minor children. It was a remarkable public witnessing by articulate, courageous citizens pleading with their elected representatives to do the right thing. The right thing would have been for lawmakers to vote to leave the personal belief vaccine exemption alone so parents could continue to make vaccine decisions for their minor children without being forced to beg a hostile doctor or government official for permission to do that. That didn’t happen. 56 Today, parents in California are forced to pay a pediatrician or other state-approved health worker to sign a personal belief vaccine exemption and the doctor can refuse to sign and parents are reporting many pediatricians ARE refusing to sign. Californians Inspired Colorado Citizens to Stand Up in 2014 Yet, because in 2012 California citizens made a powerful public statement by participating in the democratic process and taking action with calls, letters, emails and personal testimony, in 2014 Colorado citizens were inspired to do the same when the personal belief vaccine exemption was attacked in that state. Because in 2012 enough people in California did not sit back and assume the job of defending health freedom would get done by someone else, in 2014 enough people in Colorado did not assume it would get done by someone else. 57 And this time, we were able to hold the line and protect the personal belief vaccine exemption in that state from being eliminated or restricted. 58 This time, there were enough lawmakers in Colorado, who listened and carefully considered the evidence. 59 They did not cave in to pressure from drug industry, government and medical trade lobbyists labeling a minority of citizens as “ignorant,” “selfish,” “crazy” and in need of having their parental and civil rights taken away for defending the human right to self determination and informed consent to vaccine risk-taking. The Right to Make a Risk Decision Belongs to You I do not tell anyone what risks to take and never will. The right and responsibility for making a risk decision belongs to the person taking the risk. When you become informed and think rationally about a risk you or your child will take - and then follow your conscience - you own that decision. And when you own a decision, you can defend it. And once you can defend it, you will be ready to do whatever it takes to fight for your freedom to make it, no matter who tries to prevent you from doing that. Einstein: “Never do anything against conscience” Albert Einstein, who risked arrest in Germany in the 1930’s when he spoke out against censorship and persecution of minorities, said, “Never do anything against conscience even if the State demands it.” 64 It takes strength to act independently. When the herd is all running toward the cliff, the one running in the opposite direction seems crazy. People who think rationally and act independently even when the majority does not, may be the only ones to survive! Gandhi: “Speak Your Mind” Gandhi was often persecuted by the ruling majority for challenging their authority and using non-violent civil disobedience to publicly dissent. He said, “Never apologize for being correct, for being ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.” 65 Sharing what you know to be true empowers others to make conscious choices. Jefferson: “The Minority Possess Their Equal Rights” The authors of the U.S. Constitution made sure to include strong language securing individual liberties, including freedom of thought, speech and conscience. They did that because many of the families immigrating to America had personally faced discrimination and persecution in other countries for holding beliefs different from the ruling majority. In his first Presidential inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson warned: “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority posses their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.” 66 Getting Vaccinated Is Not A Patriotic Act There is no liberty more fundamentally a natural, inalienable right than the freedom to think independently and follow your conscience when choosing what you will risk your life or your child’s life for. And that is why voluntary, informed consent to medical risk taking is a human right.

Link – Util

There’s no getting out of the link – anti-vaccination advocates would love to get down with the 1AC and criticize utilitarianism together – listen to this deontological spiel by an anti-vaxer.

Spillover

Yes spillover – anti-vaccination advocates use Court cases, pro-choice rhetoric, and even GMOs to justify their beliefs.

McGough 15 – Michael McGough, Los Angeles Times’ senior editorial writer that writes about law, national security, politics, foreign policy and religion, holds a Master’s degree in law from Yale Law School, 2015 (“Opinion: A Supreme Court quote anti-vaxxers will love”, LA Times, February 5, Available Online at http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-vaccines-supreme-court-parents-20150203-story.html, accessed 7/14/15, KM)
The Supreme Court has recognized the right of parents to make choices for their children The anti-vaccination movement has an interesting connection to the judicially created right to abortion Vaccination is the latest test of parental authority The refusal of many parents to vaccinate their children against measles has become a political story. Some (but not all) Republican presidential hopefuls are giving aid and comfort to anti-vaxxers. Meanwhile, some have argued (unpersuasively) that President Obama is guilty of the same sort of pandering. Outside the realm of electoral politics, a debate rages over whether credulity about the “dangers” of vaccination is primarily a feature of right-leaning libertarians or liberals who also harbor ridiculous fears about genetically modified food. No one to my knowledge has mentioned that the anti-vaccination movement also has an interesting connection to the Supreme Court and the judicially created right to abortion. In 1925, in Pierce vs. Society of Sisters, the court struck down on constitutional grounds an Oregon law that required children to attend only public schools. Ruling in favor of an order of Catholic nuns and a military academy, the court held that the law “unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children.” The decision includes this famous sentence: “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” This ringing affirmation of parental authority continues to resonate in conservative and libertarian circles. The website of the Home School Legal Defense Assn. says it was established “to defend and advance the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children and to protect family freedoms." In American law as well as in American culture, parents rule. - But does the Constitution really give parents the power to decide how their kids will be educated? Not explicitly, but the court located such a right in the 14th Amendment, which says that no state may “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In a previous decision, the court had said that liberty “denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint” but also a constellation of other fundamental rights. Now for the abortion connection. The landmark Roe vs. Wade decision cites Pierce vs. Society of Sisters. Like the right to shape your child's education, a woman’s right to abortion (rooted in a larger right of privacy) is derived from a broad reading of “liberty.” Many Americans are offended by the idea that abortion rights are fundamental; but some of those same people would enthusiastically agree with the court that parents have a constitutional right to shape the upbringing of their children -- whether the issue is education or medical care. I’m not saying that the Supreme Court necessarily would strike down a law requiring vaccination with no exemptions. But the court’s statement that “the child is not the mere creature of the state” isn’t that far removed from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s insistence in his vaccination comments that “parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well.” A reader complained that I "said, basically, that the U.S. Supreme Court supports parents' rights over health concerns on vaccinations, citing a parochial school case from 1925. The analogy is incorrect; the Supreme Court clearly stated in 1905 that health concerns justify mandatory vaccinations." Actually I didn't say that the Supreme Court would strike down a requirement that children be vaccinated. In fact, I wrote: "I'm not saying that the Supreme Court necessarily would strike down a law requiring vaccination with no exemptions." My point was the Supreme Court had used very expansive language about parental rights similar to that employed by opponents of vaccination (and supporters of home-schooling). But I should have mentioned the 1905 ruling, which involved the prosecution of an adult who declined to be vaccinated for smallpox. (Here's the court's ruling in Jacobson vs. Massachusetts.)

Spillover will occur – both politicians and advocates will make the connection between the plan and anti-vaccination rights – Roe v. Wade proves.

Napolitano 15 – Andrew Napolitano, former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written nine books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty, 2015 (“To Vaccinate or Not To Vaccinate? Why We Should Consult Roe v. Wade”, Reason.com, February 5, Available Online at http://reason.com/archives/2015/02/05/to-vaccinate-or-not-to-vaccinate, accessed 7/16/15, KM)
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie unwittingly ignited a firestorm earlier this week when he responded to a reporter's question in Great Britain about forced vaccinations of children in New Jersey by suggesting that the law in the U.S. needs to balance the rights of parents against the government's duty to maintain standards of public health. Before Christie could soften the tone of his use of the word "balance," Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul jumped into the fray to support the governor. In doing so, he made a stronger case for the rights of parents by advancing the view that all vaccines do not work for all children and the ultimate decision-maker should be parents and not bureaucrats or judges. He argued not for balance, but for bias—in favor of parents. When Christie articulated the pro-balance view, he must have known that New Jersey law, which he enforces, has no balance, shows no deference to parents' rights, and permits exceptions to universal vaccinations only for medical reasons (where a physician certifies that the child will get sicker because of a vaccination) or religious objections. Short of those narrow reasons, in New Jersey, if you don't vaccinate your children, you risk losing parental custody of them. The science is overwhelming that vaccinations work for most children most of the time. Paul, who is a physician, said, however, he knew of instances in which poorly timed vaccinations had led to mental disorders. Yet, he was wise enough to make the pro-freedom case, and he made it stronger than Christie did. To Paul, the issue is not science. That's because in a free society, we are free to reject scientific orthodoxy and seek unorthodox scientific cures. Of course, we do that at our peril if our rejection of truth and selection of alternatives results in harm to others. The issue, according to Paul, is: WHO OWNS YOUR BODY? This is a question the government does not want to answer truthfully, because if it does, it will sound like Big Brother in George Orwell's novel 1984. That's because the government believes it owns your body. Paul and no less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court have rejected that concept. Under the natural law, because you retain the rights inherent in your birth that you have not individually given away to government, the government does not own your body. Rather, you do. And you alone can decide your fate with respect to the ingestion of medicine. What about children? Paul argues that parents are the natural and legal custodians of their children's bodies until they reach maturity or majority, somewhere between ages 14 and 18, depending on the state of residence. What do the states have to do with this? Under our Constitution, the states, and not the federal government, are the guardians of public health. That is an area of governance not delegated by the states to the feds. Of course, you'd never know this to listen to the debate today in which Big Government politicians, confident in the science, want a one-size-fits-all regimen. No less a champion of government in your face than Hillary Clinton jumped into this debate with a whacky Tweet that argued that because the Earth is round and the sky is blue and science is right, all kids should be vaccinated. What she was really saying is that in her progressive worldview, the coercive power of the federal government can be used to enforce a scientific orthodoxy upon those states and individuals who intellectually reject it. In America, you are free to reject it. Clinton and her Big Government colleagues would be wise to look at their favorite Supreme Court decision: Roe v. Wade. Yes, the same Roe v. Wade that 42 years ago unleashed 45 million abortions also defines the right to bear and raise children as fundamental, and thus personal to parents, and thus largely immune from state interference and utterly immune from federal interference. Paul's poignant question about who owns your body—and he would be the first to tell you that this is not a federal issue—cannot be ignored by Christie or Clinton or any other presidential candidate. If Paul is right, if we do own our bodies and if we are the custodians of our children's bodies until they reach maturity, then we have the right to make health care choices free from government interference, even if our choices are grounded in philosophy or religion or emotion or alternative science. But if Paul is wrong, if the government owns our bodies, then the presumption of individual liberty guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution has been surreptitiously discarded, and there will be no limit to what the government can compel us to do or to what it can extract from us—in the name of science or any other of its modern-day gods.

Link booster – rights key

The defense of personal freedoms are the largest internal link – outweighs any other anti-vax defenses.

Earl 15 – Elizabeth Earl, citing Nadja Durbach, a professor of history at the University of Utah, 2015 (“The Victorian Anti-Vaccination Movement”, The Atlantic, July 15, Available Online at http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/victorian-anti-vaccinators-personal-belief-exemption/398321/, accessed 7/20/15, KM)
After germ theory was expanded upon and researchers developed vaccines, the British government outlawed variolation, which still carried some risk of killing the person it was meant to protect, in the Vaccination Act of 1840. Safer vaccines, which contain a weakened form of a particular disease, replaced variolation, which was a controlled exposure to a disease by injecting a healthy person with some of the infected pus or fluid of an ill person. To encourage widespread vaccination, the law made it compulsory for infants during their first three months of life and then extended the age to children up to 14 years old in 1867, imposing fines on those who did not comply. At first, many local authorities did not enforce the fines, but by 1871, the law was changed to punish officials if they did not enforce the requirement. The working class was outraged at the imposition of fines. Activists raised an outcry, claiming the government was infringing on citizens’ private affairs and decisions. Many of the concerns of the 19th century, such as the role of government in personal choices, have reemerged. Over the course of a decade, multiple prominent scientists threw their support behind the anti-vaccination movement as well. “Every day the vaccination laws remain in force parents are being punished, infants are being killed,” wrote Alfred Russel Wallace, a prominent scientist and natural selection theorist, in a vitriolic monograph against mandatory vaccination in 1898. He accused doctors and politicians of pushing for vaccination based on personal interest without being sure that the vaccinations were safe. Wallace cited statistics from a report by the Registrar-General of deaths from vaccination from 1881 to 1895, showing that an average of 52 individuals a year died from cowpox or other complications after vaccination. Wallace pointed to the deaths to assert that vaccination was useless and caused unnecessary deaths. Pro-vaccinationists cited other statistics from London, where the number of deaths from smallpox fell significantly between the 18th and 19th centuries, after the discovery of vaccination. The National Vaccine Establishment figures claiming that nearly 4,000 people died in the city each year from smallpox before the discovery of vaccination, which Wallace and other anti-vaxers claimed was a grossly inflated figure. The Statistical Society of London noted in its journal in 1852 that “smallpox has greatly prevailed,” saying that vaccination was insufficient but that the registrars of the various counties were optimistic that it could work in the future. British government chose not to answer, staying silent behind the law as protests mounted. Epidemic disease was a fact of life at the time. Smallpox claimed more than 400,000 lives per year throughout the 19th century, according to the World Health Organization. Nadja Durbach, a professor of history at the University of Utah and the author of Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853-1907, says a major difference between the 19th century movement and today’s is that anti-vaxers in the past were more aware of the consequences of their choice: Disease was still rampant. Despite the existence of vaccines, thousands still died of infectious disease every year. Today, in most developed countries, large-scale epidemics are confined to the annals of history or to flash-in-the-pan flare-ups such as MERS in South Korea. By the time of the Leicester protest, public opinion was souring toward vaccination. The injections were not completely without risk, with a percentage of those who received the vaccination becoming ill, and riots broke out in towns such as Ipswich, Henley, and Mitford, according to a 2002 paper in the British Medical Journal. The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League launched in London in 1867 amid the publication of multiple journals that produced anti-vaccination propaganda. Another chapter cropped up later in the century in New York City to spread the “warning” about vaccines to the United States. Under this pressure, the British government introduced a key concept in 1898: A “conscientious objector” exemption. The clause allowed parents to opt out of compulsory vaccination as long as they acknowledged they understood the choice. Similar to today’s religious exemptions in 47 U.S. states and the personal belief exemptions in 18 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the parents signed paperwork certifying that they knew and accepted the risks associated with not vaccinating. Modern vaccination activists come from a different world than those in the 19th century. While anti-vaxers today are largely upper middle class, the crowd opposing vaccination in the 19th century was largely composed of lower- and working-class British citizens, according to Durbach. “They felt that they were the particular targets, as a class group, for vaccination and for prosecution under the compulsory laws,” she says. “This was part of a larger expression of their sense of themselves as second-class citizens who thus lacked control over their bodies in the way that the middle and upper classes did not.” Unless the root issues are addressed, the anti-vaccination movement will continue to resurface with different faces. By the close of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th, the protests had come to a head. The anti-vaccination sentiment had spread to the U.S., garnering support in urban centers such as New York City and Boston. The British government ceded its stringent line to the protests of the people. The law was amended yet again in 1907 to make the exemptions easier to obtain—because of an extensive approval process, many parents could not obtain the necessary paperwork to claim the exemption before the child was more than four months old, past the deadline. The U.S. government, however, took a harder tack. In the 1905 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the court upheld the state government’s right to mandate vaccination. The Massachusetts Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Society lobbied hard for the court to rule in favor of the plaintiff, but all they won from the decision was the provision that individuals cannot be forcibly vaccinated. The protests quieted after these two decisions, but small pockets of unease have now bubbled up again. Durbach said that unless the root issues are addressed—the boundaries of personal freedom versus social obligations—the movement will continue to resurface with different faces.

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