an employee of mine was bullied into giving his son multiple vaccines as a child… his son is now autistic.  his sone was fine before the vaccine, but had a bad raction for 48 hours afterwords.. after he settled down, he wasn’t the same.  later he was diagnosed as being autistic.   of course the MD and pharmacutical companies wont admit wrong doing.  but the vaccine is now off the market… things that make you go hmmmmm.

i agree, the govt should stay out of this.  if the 13 year old wants to pick his therapy, let him.   of course on the other hand, if the 13 year old wants the treatment but the parents wont allow it, yeah, Big Brother should step in and protect the childs rights.  but this isn’t the case so they should focus on other things.

Thank you for this, rocky rocky.  There really does seem to be significant cause for concern here regarding how much power we want to invest in the government.
Our country cannot afford to fights its wars, to create a universal health care system, to stop teachers from being laid off, to provide adequate foster care and supervision, to protect children from malicious abuse (at home or in school), to secure its borders, to safeguard its ports, to maintain (much less build) infrastructure, etc.  Now the government is borrowing staggering amounts of money not only to continue fighting its wars, but also to keep the financial system and the rest of the economy from falling off a cliff.  And yet, somehow, it can or should be able to pay to have bureaucrats second guessing parents?  I just don’t see how that could possibly be the case.

There is an epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes in this country.  Just a few of the complications / ramifications of such conditions are diminished eyesight / blindness, neuropathy (nerve damage), amputations (loss of limbs), poor wound healing, higher risk of infections, kidney damage, endothelial dysfunction, acceleration of heart disease and a greatly shortened lifespan.  Yet I have never heard of a child being taken away from its parents on this account so that the child could receive proper treatment and be restored to health (where that is even possible).  Why is that, I wonder?

I have questioned the wisdom of making the government into a parent over here: [ http://www.wowowow.com/cl/301636 ].
Having the government running people’s lives may seem benign enough in cases where we approve of the particular outcomes, but the government has the capacity to bankrupt most individuals and families which might find the need to oppose it.  That, it seems to me, is a monster which we should not willingly create.

There are numerous opportunities for governmental intervention as it is, including:
> where malicious / malevolent abuse is alleged,
> where spouses cannot agree on a course of treatment, and
> where a child seeks emancipation.

Is this not sufficient?
If we cannot trust government to micromanage businesses, how can it trust it to micromanage families?

We are more concerned about money than giving health care coverage to all.  No one should have to be turned away because of no insurance, it’s a disgrace in the richest country in the world and people die because of greedy insurance/drug companies.