Ours is a tribal species, prone to racism and other forms of intolerance. Thankfully, racism is no longer accepted among “educated” people (although many don’t take the trouble to get educated about what to count as racism).
However, human tribalism will out, and in recent years a new form of us-versus-them thinking has taken the place of racism: intolerance of creed. By creed I mean the central beliefs people use to steer their own lives and to make important decisions on behalf of their children. These beliefs might be religious, scientific, pseudo-scientific, or whatever: all they amount to are beliefs. They issue in behavior, of course, as do all beliefs, but they remain mere beliefs.
Although disagreement is a valuable thing, and we should welcome attempts to rationally persuade others that their beliefs are mistaken, creed-intolerance takes the form of treating the offending beliefs not simply as false but as immoral, and indeed so severely immoral as to oblige the rest of us to overrule them. You can see the difference in the language used to condemn an offending creed: not the epistemological language of truth and falsity, knowledge and ignorance, reasons and evidence, but the moralistic language of shame and disgrace.
Racism and religious intolerance have always masqueraded as “concern for defenceless women and children”. White women supposedly needed protection from the advances (and allure, one suspects) of sexually voracious men of other races. Children had to be sheltered from the corrupting influence of various “great infidel” types, from David Hume to Salman Rushdie. And so on.
And today, creed-intolerance does the very same. For example, those who are sceptical of climate change catastrophe are not treated as simply having a different or factually erroneous opinion: they are condemned for committing future generations of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren (etc.) to the fires of hell. Oh yeah, and climate change is going to be worse for women, we are given to believe. See the pattern?
Another classic example of creed-intolerance is the current “scientific” attitude to vaccination. Anyone with an inkling of science knows that vaccination is a good idea, that measles is a very unpleasant and possibly life-threatening disease with life-damaging complications, and that the MMR vaccine is very unlikely to do any sort of harm. You’d be doing your children and other people’s children a favour if you had them vaccinated.
Yet others think differently. Some people honestly – although erroneously – think vaccination may do more harm than good. By all means let us try to persuade them rationally that they are in error, but let us not make any attempt to overrule their judgement, even though we disagree with it.
Why? – Because we should encourage or at least allow “experiments in living”, and parents must have the final say in what is done in their children’s interest, unless it is obviously and very seriously harmful. But the science of vaccination is science: therefore it is attended by uncertainty, and some doubt is appropriate. If that surprises you, you have misunderstood the nature of science.
Many other practices might be considered harmful. For example, I consider the circumcision of boys to be harmful, but not so seriously harmful as to overrule parents’ decisions to have it performed on their sons. (The so-called “circumcision” of daughters is a different matter.)
It is often said that opting out of vaccination is harmful “to society”. To which I reply: there is no such thing as harm to society apart from harm to the individuals who constitute society. And as JS Mill argued, society (so understood) must be prepared to absorb a limited amount of harm for the greater good of individual freedom. In the present case, the harm occurs to those who do not have immunity, meaning mostly those who have not been vaccinated. As long as a significant proportion of the population do get vaccinated, or acquire immunity by actually getting the disease, there is little danger of an epidemic.
What is a “significant proportion”? – It depends how infectious the disease in question happens to be. Suppose the average carrier of a disease infects two other people: then a potential epidemic is in the offing. To ensure that that disease has a downwards trajectory, more than half of the population would have to be made immune. As long as this proportion is maintained, the disease will eventually become extinct. These proportions change with range of factors, of course, but no disease is so virulent that the entire population would have to be vaccinated.
Despite that, people often talk as if everyone had to be vaccinated to curb a disease, and about those who shun vaccination as if they were treacherous “fifth columnists” who let society down by making us all vulnerable. But nearly all of the vulnerable ones are those who avoid vaccination.
“But they expose their own children to risk!” is the next plea of the creed-intolerant. To which I reply: OK, but so what? We all expose our children to risk, knowingly or otherwise, as well as taking risks ourselves, knowingly or otherwise. It is up to us as individuals and as parents to judge whether the risks are acceptable. Most of us drive cars, and bring our children along as passengers. Some of us smoke cigarettes in houses where our children live. Personally, I wouldn’t take the risk of sending my own children to a Catholic school, but I accept that other parents deem this to be a wise decision or an acceptable risk for their own children. Fine, that’s (mainly) their business.
Let’s be honest. Most people don’t like other people to express different opinions from their own. Some don’t like others to even have different opinions from their own. And they tart up their own narrow-mindedness and intolerance to look like “concern for children”. As per usual.
I’m not religious, but one thing must be said in favor of religion. Anyone whose creed is honestly religious cannot but admit the simple fact that others have other creeds. I have my religion, and you have your religion, and we live in different ways as a result. Occasionally, an admirable pluralism springs up where these differences are routinely acknowledged and tolerated.
I wonder where you got your figure of 50% from? This paper from 1990 calculated 95% of children would need to receive the measles vaccine to eradicate measles in Ireland. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/2081673/
As for effects, you have left out the danger to other unvaccinated children, such as those too young (under 12 months for measles, mumps and rubella) and those whose health precludes vaccination (immune disorders, leukaemia). Also, vaccinations do not guarantee 100% immunity. So a vaccinated child might still catch measles if the disease is circulating in the community.
There is still an argument against forcing immunisation or vaccination, but it must be recognised that it is not only the child whose parents choose not to vaccinate who is put at risk. It is also the baby next door, the sick kid down the street, the vaccinated cousin.
As soon as I get access to this paper I’ll answer it properly, but my claim is completely simple and obvious. Suppose in a wholly non-immune community of individuals one infected person infects two other people. Then if half of them are immune, and everything else stays the same, one infected person infects only one other person, so the infection rate does not rise. No doubt things get more complicated when other factors are introduced, such as that disease carriers tend to mix with other non-immune people.
The subject of the paper you cite is immediately suspicious: “eradicating measles from Ireland”. That is a completely hopeless cause, as it would require “sealing the borders” and other nonsense that no one would bother with for a disease that is usually non-lethal. “Keeping measles a minority disease that most people can avoid” is a much more realistic aim, and one that has largely been achieved already.
I don’t think I “leave out” the danger to non-vaccinated people, as I do take care to use words like ‘mostly’, ‘nearly’, etc. Diseases are always going to be a danger to wholly innocent people, like death on the roads. It’s always going to be a matter of balance how much effort and expense should be put into avoiding them. I think preventing poor people from driving their cheap little cars altogether would be a step too far in road safety. Similarly, I think interfering with parents’ judgement on what’s best for their children is a step too far, unless the judgement is obviously flawed and the consequences are seriously harmful. But neither of those applies here. There is always room for reasonable doubt where science is involved.
Again, your argument is flawed. In the case of vaccination the science is really precise and parents who refuse to get their children vaccinated are taking a decision that is “obviously flawed and the consequences are seriously harmful”.
To take your traffic analogy, it’s like believing that it’s fine to drive around town during the school run in a Range Rover while doing your morning email on your phone. I don’t care what you believe. However, it is valid for me and my kids and the law to care that you not do that.
If you wish to not vaccinate your kids or to drive around like that, then you may well be free to do so in a place where you won’t meet anyone else but not on a crowded street. If you refuse to vaccinate your kids then you should also not bring them to town.
I’m afraid the logic is faulty here. I’m not worried about whether people believe that vaccination is more dangerous than not being vaccinated, I’m worried about what they do.
Similarly, I don’t really care if people believe that pooing in the street is healthy or unhealthy. I’d be rather worried if they actually did it.
Public health is one of the few places where “society” has meaning. If you consciously decide to take an entirely unnecessary, unpredictable and unrewarding risk with other people’s health then there may be an argument whether or not it should be possible to force you to stop, but not much of a one.
If you want to carry nasty diseases around in the street then I’m sorry, but that’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of action. I don’t believe that you’re entitled to do that.
There have been nasty outbreaks of measles (far more dangerous and lethal than people seem to remember) and mumps (rather nasty if caught by adult males) because people didn’t get their kids vaccinated.
That’s GBH, not religion.
I’m trying to make two points here. The main point is that a special kind of intolerance is resurgent: the intolerance of false beliefs. It is only a secondary point, originally made by JS Mill, that society ought to be prepared to absorb a limited amount of harm (to others, which is really the only sort of harm there is) for the greater good of individual freedom.
Perhaps we can agree to differ on my specific illustration of the secondary point, that opting out of vaccination is the sort of harm (to others) that we should be prepared to countenance. Personally, I think the case is compelling, because nearly everyone who is harmed by non-vaccination are the non-vaccinated themselves, or their own children. Children are always vulnerable to their parents’ bad decisions, but the alternative is worse.
Even if we can comfortably differ on that secondary point, I would maintain my main point, about the intolerance of false beliefs. It strikes me that the proliferation of opposed opinions and different, “experimental” lifestyles is absolutely essential to the pursuit of truth, knowledge and human happiness. These lifestyles will obviously involve decisions that we don’t approve of.
Unfortunately, a new sort of evangelism has taken the place of mainstream religion, an evangelism for anything that has the superficial appearance of being “scientific”. As often as not, this movement calls itself “scepticism”, although it is anything but. Its adherents seem to know little about the history or methods of science, and practically nothing about the way science involves bold – i.e. risky, doubtful – conjectures. Personally, I think vaccination is both safe and strongly advisable, but a genuine science always leaves room for doubt.
Vaccination is the product of genuine science, of course, but as often as not what the new evangelists treat as “certain” is no better than pseudo-science: I would argue that climate-change futurology is a good example.
As I said, public health is one of the places where “society” has real meaning. In others it doesn’t and people should be free to do and believe whatever the heck they want.
Personally, I’m tolerant. I don’t mind what your sexuality is, nor your sexual preference, nor whether you believe in a bearded old Judaeo-Christian God or a multi-armed Hindu one, nor whether you wish to live with like-minded people in a hippie commune, nor whether you believe that nor even if you want to support an English Premier League football team.
“Society”, to be free, has to tolerate both the beliefs and some of the actions of others that people might not agree with or approve of. Absolutely. Most states and societies are far too controlling. True.
However, there are limits and vaccination is a REALLY bad example to pick to make the point. As I said, it’s fine for you to believe that you should poo in the street. It is NOT fine for you to do it. At least not unless it’s your own street in your own community and you won’t make a public health issue for everyone else. Similarly with vaccination. If you chose not to vaccinate, then you should have the moral integrity to stay the heck away from people who do vaccinate. If you mingle with the rest of the population then no-one can see the choice you have made, but its effects can include serious health implications for your neighbours. That’s not ok. That’s not a valid personal lifestyle choice.
As for comparing the science of vaccinations with “climate change futurology”, that’s a complete nonsense. The science of vaccinations, their benefits and their risks, is solid.
You may chose not to vaccinate against say – non infectious heart disease or something like that. That’s a lifestyle choice. To not vaccinate against something infectious is not a lifestyle choice you can make unless you also exclude yourself from society and live apart. You **can** chose to do that. Most people who don’t vaccinate don’t make that second, linked, and necessary choice.
Hmmm… a sentence has gone wonky in that. What I meant to type was “nor whether you believe that homeopathy can cure stupidity”, but the last four words got lost somewhere.
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