Health officials in Canada have found a way to vaccinate children even when parents refuse their permission – and even when there is a family history of allergic reactions and death.
A public health nurse was able to give a 14-year-old girl several vaccines even though her parents opposed inoculation, by getting the girl to sign a consent form.
“They jeopardized my child’s life,” the girl’s father, Dean Bootsma, told CBC News. “They just didn’t check her history, they didn’t call us, we received no consent form.”
Bootsma’s daughter was taken out of class by the nurse and then was asked to sign a consent form. After she signed it, the nurse vaccinated her for tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough.
“I didn’t really know what to do and she didn’t really didn’t give me an option not to get a vaccine,” the daughter who didn’t reveal her first name said of the nurse. “She tried explaining it to me I guess but I couldn’t really hear her over everybody else.”
Father Outraged Because Of Family History
The vaccination outraged the father, who believes an allergic reaction to a vaccine might have caused the death of his first daughter. That girl died after a lengthy illness, and Bootsma blames the death on a vaccine.
“She was a fine bouncy little baby and then she, after receiving the shot just noticeable difference within 12 hours, [she] couldn’t lift her head up, she started fevering,” Bootsma told the CBC. The daughter died of a brain malformation called cerebral dysgenesis. Doctors didn’t think the vaccines caused his daughter’s death.
“This is the reason we don’t vaccinate,” Bootsma said while holding a picture of his late daughter. He said fear of an allergic reaction to vaccines had kept him from getting his younger daughter inoculated. Doctors didn’t think the vaccines caused his daughter’s death.
Official: Children Can Make ‘Informed Decisions’ About Vaccination
Bootsma’s 14-year-old daughter said she would have told the nurse about their family history if she had been asked. The father contends that a 14 year old is not mature enough to make decisions about vaccinations but provincial health officials in British Columbia where he lives think otherwise.
“Children can make informed decisions if they are sufficiently mature enough, and I think we have to respect that,” Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall told the CBC. “The courts have said very clearly they have the right to do that.”
Kendall acknowledged that the province has a policy of trying to get children to sign the forms in order to vaccinate them. The CBC reported that it is a legal doctrine called mature minor consent.
“Nurses will, in fact, go and look for the unvaccinated kids to see if they can get them vaccinated,” Kendall said. Officials in Canada are worried because 16 percent of the children in the country have not been vaccinated.
The lesson here? Parents should make it clear to their children and to school officials that they don’t want their child vaccinated – and that they want to see any forms before the child is asked to sign them.
Off The Grid News recently posted a first-person account from a parent who opposes vaccination. Read it here.
What do you think? Should parents have the right not to vaccinate their children? Tell us in the comments below.