Government Vaccines – Bad Policy, Bad Medicine
posted by Josiah Garber on April 30, 2009
in Health
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
“Simply put, it is not ethical to give a medicine that will kill and maim persons for no demonstrable benefit. Assuaging fears about vulnerability to a potential disease is not a benefit any physician should accept.”
~ Dr. Jeffrey S. Sartin, MD
A controversy over vaccines, specifically the smallpox vaccine, is brewing in Washington. The administration is considering ordering mass inoculations for more than one million military personnel and civilian medical workers, ostensibly to thwart a smallpox outbreak before it occurs. Yet dangerous side-effects from the vaccine – ranging from mild flu symptoms to gangrene, encephalitis, and even death – cause many to question the wisdom and need for such inoculations.
As a medical doctor, I believe mandated smallpox vaccines are bad medicine. The available vaccine poses significant risks, even though the more serious complications affect only a statistically small number of people. As with any medical treatment, these risks must always be balanced against the perceived benefit. Remember, not a single case of smallpox has been reported, despite the near-hysteria that characterized recent news reports. Even if some individuals became infected, smallpox spreads only with very close contact. Those in the surrounding community could then decide to accept vaccines based on a much more tangible risk.
As a legislator, I believe mandated smallpox vaccines are very bad policy. The point is not that smallpox vaccines are necessarily a bad idea, but rather that intimately personal medical decisions should not be made by government. The real issue is individual medical choice. No single person, including the President of the United States, should ever be given the power to make a medical decision for potentially millions of Americans. Freedom over one’s physical person is the most basic freedom of all, and people in a free society should be sovereign over their own bodies. When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.
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