The swine flu shot was reportedly given to some Brooklyn school children without parental consent. From the story:
School nurses mistakenly gave the swine flu vaccine to two students who didn’t sign up for it – including a Brooklyn girl with epilepsy who wound up in the hospital. “I was outraged,” Naomi Troy, 26, told the Daily News after her 6-year-old daughter, Nikiyah Torres-Pierre, had a possible allergic reaction to the shot.
Officials at Public School 335 in Crown Heights called an ambulance to take Nikiyah to SUNY Downstate Medical Center when she fell ill following the arm jab. “My stomach was hurting, and I was itching,” Nikiyah said after she was released from the hospital. The snafu and a similar mixup at a Staten Island school came in the first days of the city’s in-school H1N1 vaccination program. City officials have stressed the vaccine is safe and urged parents to sign up for it – though less than half have sent in permission slips.
Well, mistakes happen: But, I am not sure why this is a story. We increasingly allow school nurses and others to medicate our children without parental consent in the areas of contraception and mental health. In California, minors can even get surgical abortions without their parents’ knowledge. I mean, who are parents to think they have the right to decide what medical care their children receive?
November 2nd, 2009 | 1:36 pm
The arrogance of bureaucracy in action.
November 2nd, 2009 | 6:33 pm
Well, being a civil rights freak who also works in the periphery of health care, this is a nasty tough one. Yes, people should determine their own health care, but what happens when their choices put other people at risk? The Jenny McCarthy anti-immunization crowd in my opinion is insanely irresponsible and a legitimate threat to public health.
And when they put their kids’ health at risk, that really steams me. Christian Scientists with kids with diabetes or cancer who refuse to allow the kids to get treatment, for example. That’s the other side of your minors getting abortions without parental consent, Wes. Told you this was a tough one.
In my opinion, if you don’t want to act in the interests of public health, fine. But then you should also forfeit public benefits like free public schools.
November 2nd, 2009 | 7:56 pm
If parents were parents these days, Obama wouldn’t be President. A lot of them voted for him. What do you expect? They want somebody else to take care of everything. Of course they’ve let the schools do this stuff. They let people who voted for Obama be teachers and school nurses, for God’s sake, what do you expect?
November 3rd, 2009 | 7:27 am
Ianthe: You wrote: “They let people who voted for Obama be teachers and school nurses, for God’s sake..”
Are you suggesting there should be a political test in order to hold a teaching or nursing position? Are parents not parents because they voted for Obama? How do you deal with these issues where your own children are concerned — if, indeed, you have children of your own. Or are you just talking about the qualities of parenthood in a purely philosophical sense?
November 3rd, 2009 | 7:33 am
kurto: Tell me, how do two errors at separate locations, involving two students, among hundreds of schools and tens of thousands of school children in New York City, demonstrate “the arrogance of bureaucracy in action”?
November 4th, 2009 | 1:26 pm
To padraig:
Are you kidding me? If you shoot your kid up with the dangerous vaccines, why the hell would you be worried about mine that doesn’t have them? Must be you are admitting they are not effective.
To the author of this article: If you can’t comprehend why giving a vaccine to someone’s kid without permission is a problem (especially after you posted that it sent them to the hospital), then nothing I can say will get through your thick skull.
To Kirto: This is not limited to 2 cases. The only reason we are hearing about it is because something bad happened.
November 4th, 2009 | 1:28 pm
Sorry, I meant to HistoryWriter, not Kirto.
November 4th, 2009 | 3:33 pm
Richard M: “To padraig:
Are you kidding me? If you shoot your kid up with the dangerous vaccines, why the hell would you be worried about mine that doesn’t have them? Must be you are admitting they are not effective.”
OK, I’ll respond to what I think you’re trying to say.
First, my kids have had pretty much every vaccination available and are ridiculously healthy and anything but autistic. They will have the H1N1 vaccine when it’s available. So obviously I do think it’s effective.
You seem to assume all vaccines, or at least the H1N1, are dangerous. It is true that any vaccine, in fact pretty much any medical treatment, will have a certain number of adverse events. You can see the statistics on most of them at the CDC’s web site if you like. It’s up to you to decide whether the risk of adverse reactions is greater than the risk of getting H1N1. Life is a gamble. I know kids who have had confirmed H1N1 and bypassing immunization looks like a sure loser to me.
And unfortunately, if you don’t get your kid(s) immunized, they’ll be sick and spreading disease and keeping the disease in circulation. Then again, my kids will be immunized, so I guess it really isn’t my problem.
November 4th, 2009 | 10:48 pm
HW: I’m talking about something that’s on a much deeper level than that.
November 6th, 2009 | 5:42 pm
Ianthe: Care to elaborate on “much deeper”? I may have missed something.
November 6th, 2009 | 5:48 pm
Richard M: You say:”This is not limited to 2 cases. The only reason we are hearing about it is because something bad happened.” But if we only hear about this sort of thing when something bad happens, how did you know that there were more than two such cases?
December 4th, 2009 | 9:49 am
Sure, accidents happen. But some accidents, as Richard M. pointed out, send a child to the hospital — which from the sound of it could have been avoided with a little more care. I’d be outraged too.
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