Herd immunity

I've been seeing a lot of articles about vaccinations over the last week, so I've been thinking about the issue of herd immunity as an argument to have one's children vaccinated. (I'm not addressing the separate issue of unethically-derived vaccines in this post.)

With the 3-parent baby issue, topical at the moment, you get supporters of the procedure talking about how children with mitochondrial diseases suffer and die, while simultaneously dismissing the arguments of opponents as being emotive. With vaccines it's that children might get diseases, suffer, and maybe die if they're not vaccinated, but if opponents say children sometimes experience adverse reactions to the vaccines, suffer, and maybe die, they too are being emotive!

Both sides use emotive arguments. Understandably so. To vaccinate or not to vaccinate: either way there are risks.

Another motif that keeps recurring in arguments between pro-vaxxers and anti-vaxxers is the matter of herd immunity.

Someone declares that she (it is usually a she in these discussions!) has refused to have her children vaccinated, owing to concerns about possible reactions.

Then someone else argues back that she should have her children vaccinated, to contribute to herd immunity.

Now hang on a minute! What this argument is effectively saying is, you should be willing to sacrifice your child for the sake of the common good!

In my opinion, the only reason to vaccinate one's child should be to protect the child being vaccinated. If a parent decides vaccination is too risky, she (or he) is hardly going to decide to do it for the herd. Would any parent who had concerns be persuaded to vaccinate his child because the herd could use some more contributors?

It is one thing for an adult to decide to take that risk for the common good himself. That would be a selfless decision. But to decide that someone else (specifically an infant) should take that risk is another matter altogether.

Here is something that Pope Pius XII said on the subject of Medico-Moral Problems in 1952, not specifically about vaccination but I think the principle is applicable to this issue too:

"In support of their view they appeal to the fact that the individual is subordinate to the community, that the good of the individual must give way to the common good and be sacrificed for it....
... It must be pointed out that man as a person, in the final reckoning, does not exist for the benefit of society; on the contrary, the community exists for the individual man."

 Guide For Living