Over here in jolly ol' Blighty ... our ever-mighty NHS introduced, quite a few years ago now, the 'MMR' vaccine. 'MMR' stood for 'Mumps, Measles, Rubella'. The aim, as the name suggests, was to pack immunisations for all these three illnesses into one single shot.
The Almighty State then did its best to indoctrinate people into accepting that the MMR vaccine should be compulsory.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2088426.stm
This article pre-empts what I was going to suggest in this post .. that it'd only be a matter of time before people in the US were robbed of individual choice on the matter ! Seems that you already are .. ?A motion at the British Medical Association's annual meeting suggests that baby and childhood vaccination should be compulsory for all unless there are clear medical reasons not to.
Despite Government insistence that the MMR injection is safe, many parents have refused to give their child the vaccine after a study suggested it may be linked to autism.
The vaccine is already compulsory in some countries like the US, where children are not allowed to attend school unless they have had the jab.
Well ... there was a lot of debate over here as to whether the jab was responsible for some autism 'outbreaks' (I see that was a concern in the US as well). Many parents refused to allow the MMR vaccination in fear of that. I for one don't blame them !
My point is this: introduce a culture of accepted compulsion into issues such as this, and it can lead, even if only theoretically, to enforced catastrophes. The medical world is ever-evolving its knowledge, and a treatment thought through ignorance to be entirely safe might ultimately prove, years later, NOT to be. Add State-backed compulsion to the mix, and you've a situation where, if individual choice had only been possible, some kids might've been saved from having their lives blighted ... 'By Order'.
I say: yes, educate. Yes, encourage treatments, always have them available and backed by the fullest known data on them. But ... compulsion ? Definitely not. Sometimes mass treatment programmes can be a good thing, but I can't believe they always, unfailingly, are. ALWAYS permit individual choice - never trample on that.
The moment you do ... you invite the culture where it can keep happening, en masse. Whether you like it, or not.
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