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from the when-you-can't-make-them-see-the-light dept.
The Center for American Progress reports
The anti-vaccine sentiments that originated with a [completely] discredited British study linking the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) shot to autism have made their way to other western countries like Australia.
According to the government agency that tracks Australia's childhood vaccination rates, the rate of kids going without their shots has doubled over the past decade.
[...]Australia has announced an aggressive new approach in this area: Cutting off government benefits to parents who refuse to inoculate their children.
Under the proposal, parents who claim philosophical objections to vaccines will no longer be eligible for welfare payments and childcare rebates that can equal up to $11,500 per child in American dollars. Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced the policy change on Sunday, although it still has to be approved by Parliament.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:55PM
Unfortunately, it has been repeatedly shown that people who have a decided opinion are remarkably resistant to changing it. This is true for ant-vaccination people, it's true for creationists, it's true for pre-Semelweiss doctors, it's true for pre-relativity physicists, it's true everywhere there's good evidence. It's one of the reasons that a new "paradigm" in a science has to wait for the old practitioners to die off before becoming dominant. You could probably prove it theoretically if you assumed the people operate on Bayesian logic, and that all new evidence is judged against existing priors. (It has been proven for at least one special case.)
So education may well not work. Operant conditioning may. And since vaccinations work because of herd immunity, and most of the population is below the mean income level, it makes sense to put more pressure on the poorer. It should also, clearly be applied to everyone, however, and school attendance is a clear area of danger, so attendance at public schools should be included in the services requiring vaccination.
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