Mandatory Immunizations for Children

This study examines the issue of mandatory immunization for children in the State of California. The findings of this examination are presented in the form of a policy analysis within the contexts of the (1) social problem and its context, (2) current policies, practices, and outcomes, (3) and policy recommendation.

Immunization against preventable disease is one of the older social movements for children in the United States. The objective of the California School Immunization Law was to attain a 100 percent vaccination against preventable diseases for all children in the state's population. The objective was to be enforced through a denial of entry into public school of children were not immunized. In an effort to protect constitutional rights of citizens, however, the drafters of the law allowed children to be exempt from enforcement of the law for specific reasons such as religious beliefs against vaccination. Further, those children attending home schools were not covered by the law. Thus, the exemptions built into the law assured that the 100 percent vaccination objective of the law would not be met.

Parents object to mandatory vaccination for their children on a variety of grounds. Most of these reasons are philosophical or legal in character, i.e., freedom of choice, religious beliefs, logical interpretations of vaccine effectiveness, right of privacy, anti-government sentiments, and so forth. For some people, the costs associa

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quickly spread throughout the population, causing epidemics here. At the same time, the relatively few cases we currently have in the U.S. could very quickly become tens or hundreds of thousands of cases without the protection we get from vaccines. We should still be vaccinated, then, for two reasons. The first is to protect ourselves. Even if we think our chances of getting any of these diseases are small, the diseases still exist and can still infect anyone who is not protected. A few years ago in California a child who had just entered school caught diphtheria and died. He was the only unvaccinated pupil in his class. The second reason to get vaccinated is to protect those around us. There is a small number of people who cannot be vaccinated (because of severe allergies to vaccine components, for example), and a small percentage of people don't respond to vaccines. These people are susceptible to disease, and their only hope of protection is that people around them are immune and cannot pass disease along to them. A successful vaccination program, like a successful society, depends on the cooperation of every individual to ensure the good of all. We would think it irresponsible of a driver to ignore all traffic regula

Category: Government - M