2018 – Law Street https://legacy.lawstreetmedia.com Law and Policy for Our Generation Wed, 13 Nov 2019 21:46:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8 100397344 France to Make 11 Vaccines Mandatory for All Children in 2018 https://legacy.lawstreetmedia.com/blogs/world-blogs/vaccines-mandatory-france-2018/ https://legacy.lawstreetmedia.com/blogs/world-blogs/vaccines-mandatory-france-2018/#respond Thu, 06 Jul 2017 19:25:29 +0000 https://lawstreetmedia.com/?p=61912

Only three are currently required.

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The French government announced on Tuesday that parents will be legally obligated to vaccinate their children starting in 2018.

Currently, French law makes vaccines for three diseases mandatory–diphtheria, tetanus, and polio–while the rest, including vaccines for hepatitis and whooping cough, are only recommended. This change will make all 11 vaccines that are universally recommended by health authorities compulsory.

France has fallen victim to a measles outbreak that the World Health Organization has warned will sweep across Europe. There were 79 cases of measles reported in January and February alone, mostly due to an outbreak of 50 cases in the north-eastern Lorraine region, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. From 2008 to 2016, more than 24,000 cases of measles were found in France, according to the country’s public health authority. Approximately 1,500 of those cases involved serious complications and 10 people died.

Other European countries have enacted compulsory vaccination measures to combat declining immunization rates. Italy–where cases of measles rose more than five-fold in April relative to the same month last year–recently made 12 vaccines mandatory for children attending school up to age 16 and banned all non-vaccinated children from attending state schools. Beatrice Lorenzin, the Italian health minister, said the legislation was in response to “an emergency generated by fake news.”

The “fake news” that Lorenzin refers to is misinformation about vaccinations. Italy’s populist Five Star Movement was recently blamed for the outbreak of measles cases in the country because of its outspoken opposition to vaccines. Even as recently as 2012, a court in Rimini awarded damages to a family claiming its son had become autistic because of vaccines, though the decision was eventually overturned on appeal. A recent survey even found that more than three in 10 French citizens don’t trust vaccines, and only 52 percent of those vaccinated said the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks.

Fears surrounding vaccines are typically linked to a discredited study by disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield, who claimed to show a link between the inoculation and autism. In the United States, for example, these fears still persist. A 2015 Gallup poll found that 6 percent of Americans believe vaccines cause autism and that the number of people who believe it is “extremely important” to vaccinate their kids has gone down 10 percentage points over the last 14 years.

Recent attempts to put compulsory vaccination into law are the latest developments in what has been a longstanding campaign. In the 20th century, many countries enacted such measures as the first few vaccines became available to the public. In 1905, the Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that states could compel vaccination for the “common good.” At the same time, Brazil attempted to enforce compulsory vaccination laws that allowed government workers to force vaccination on citizens in lower income areas of Rio de Janeiro, which ultimately led to the Vaccine Revolt.

Gabe Fernandez
Gabe is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a Peruvian-American Senior at the University of Maryland pursuing a double degree in Multiplatform Journalism and Marketing. In his free time, he can be found photographing concerts, running around the city, and supporting Manchester United. Contact Gabe at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Mars by 2018? SpaceX’s Ambitious Plan for Interplanetary Expansion https://legacy.lawstreetmedia.com/blogs/technology-blog/mars-2018-spacexs-ambitious-plan-interplanetary-expansion/ https://legacy.lawstreetmedia.com/blogs/technology-blog/mars-2018-spacexs-ambitious-plan-interplanetary-expansion/#respond Fri, 06 May 2016 18:25:05 +0000 http://lawstreetmedia.com/?p=52295

It's certainly a possibility.

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"Mars" courtesy of [Kevin Gill via Flickr]

SpaceX recently announced that its Dragon spacecraft, designed to deliver both cargo and people, could be touching down on Mars as soon as 2018. Mars has long fascinated space agencies, and the U.S., Russia and the EU have all landed spacecraft on the planet, but SpaceX would be the first private company to complete a mission to Mars.

SpaceX is seeking to land its Dragon using rocket power alone, as opposed to the system of parachutes and airbags that are usually involved in landing spacecraft. In April, SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket ship on a platform at sea, following up a successful landing on a ground-based site in 2015. SpaceX is conducting another rocket launch and landing this week, but the company expects the landing to be unsuccessful, citing “extreme velocities and re-entry heating, making a successful landing unlikely.” Even if this week’s landing is unsuccessful, SpaceX engineers are still confident in the feasibility of launching their product within a few years rather than a matter of decades.

SpaceX may be a private company but it is not looking to keep NASA out of the loop on its Mars project. SpaceX has agreed to gather data for NASA and will utilize technical support from NASA, including use of the Deep Space Network for communications. SpaceX will be the financial power behind the project but the Dragon launch is a collaboration rather than a competition with traditional space agencies. This type of cooperation marks a new era in space exploration. Whereas the initial space race of the past century was defined by U.S.-Soviet competition, we are now seeing space travel as a team effort that brings creative minds together rather than setting them up as mortal enemies. Rocket launches in the private sector are concerned with the goals of the company and its engineering staff rather than a victory for the nation.

National space agencies are not extinct and may even be revived to rival their boom years in the future, but at this moment they are taking on a support role and perhaps making space exploration more cooperative by doing so. Instead of framing the journey to Mars as a race, we need to construct it as a project that all the brightest minds can contribute to, no matter where they come from. The 2018 launch date for the Dragon may come and go without a successful launch, but if SpaceX keeps up its open collaboration with NASA (or expands it to include other space agencies and companies), then the company and its engineers will have made a substantial contribution to the future of space travel on Earth–even if they don’t make it to Mars.

Jillian Sequeira
Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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