Talk:Vaccination and religion

NPOV/Weasel
Theres a line in there somewhere that has weasel words or something like that. I cant remember where it is. maybe someone deleted it already. If it isn't there, please delete the NPOV tag and disregard this message. —Preceding unsigned comment added by User: (talk • contribs)

I'm not seeing a POV problem (although it's hard to tell amidst the style problems). There are a lot of unsupported statements, marked as needing citations, but there's not enough flow to result in a bias, I think.Lisamh 01:40, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Religious views favoring vaccination
The article has NPOV problems in that it currently focuses on religious opposition to vaccination. Needs more coverage of religious views favoring vaccination. I am not up on theology and religious history enough to know where to find cited examples. (However some of the missionary health care activities might be a source?) Zodon (talk) 19:29, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know of any religion that favors vaccination on doctrinal grounds. Most religions accept vaccination. I suppose one could argue this means they favor vaccination indirectly, on humanitarian grounds. However, I don't know of any reliable source that makes this point. To some extent it's a dog-bites-man story to write that a religion accepts vaccination, which may explain why I couldn't easily find a source. Eubulides (talk) 20:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Timothy Dwight Quote
I have searched around to find the location of the Dwight quote. It is certainly present in a number of other works but none of these texts has a direct reference that I can see. I am now seriously thinking that the quote was either false, or that it was out of context.

I have a feeling that Dwight may have really said it... but said it in a way as to be sarcastic or satirical. He was probably quite supportive of vaccinations, but may have also been quite against theological fatalists. His quote was thus designed to critique fatalists.

The reason I point this out is that Dwight was not strictly Calvinist. That is, he did not necessarily agree with the standard Calvinist line of the day. Moreover, there seems to be evidence that he had quite a high regard for science and reason.

Certainly Nathaniel William Taylor, one of his proteges, completely abandoned fatalism and embraced "common sense" and "scientific reasoning".

But, as yet, I have found no hard evidence. If anyone else can please modify the article and link it. Thanks.

--One Salient Oversight 15:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Susan Jacoby, a very reliable source, records this story on p. 49 (trade paperback edition) of Freethinkers. Markjoseph125 (talk) 01:06, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Against God's will?
How do we know it wasn't God's will for someone to be saved by vaccination? Maybe he wanted that person to be saved. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 17:46, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Christian Science
"Christian Scientists care about their neighbors and fellow community members and gladly abide by city and state laws or mandates regarding quarantines, vaccinations, and the like." http://www.christianscience.com/questions-christian-science-faq.html

Is this a valid source? It seems to contradict what is written in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.132.6.17 (talk) 19:03, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The page is linked from Christian Science, but not used as a reference and it gets very few links on Google. If it is a reliable source, it is only as a reference for the organization's opinion. I do not doubt their statement that Christian Scientists care about their friends, neighbors, and children, but they do not cite any examples of compliance. I will see if I can dig up a reference for the currently uncited sentence on their support or opposition to vaccination as a doctrinal tenet and as level of action in the community. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 23:57, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * That sounds reasonable. In the meantime I removed the claim. It's been unsourced for over a year, which is plenty long already. It can be put back once we find a reliable source for it. Eubulides (talk) 03:13, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

FRC's opposition to vaccination
This change introduces POV by reproducing the Family Research Council's point (in its letter) that they support the availability of HPV vaccine. But this paragraph is about mandatory vaccination. It is not about whether vaccines should be available; I don't know of anybody seriously arguing that HPV vaccines should be illegal. If there were serious dispute over whether these vaccines should be available, it might be relevant to mention the FRC's position on that issue. However, as things stand, the article, by repeating the FRC's disingenuous statement that it is not opposed to the availability of the vaccines, is repeating the FRC's spin, which is a POV violation. Let's omit the irrelevant POV-ish stuff and keep the paragraph on point. Eubulides (talk) 20:24, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * No further comment, so I undid the change. Eubulides (talk) 20:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Please explain how the change introduces POV? It is not at all obvious. As I noted under NPOV heading above, this whole article has considerable POV problems (almost all the views represented are anti-vaccination.)  As such, introducing one item that indicates support for vaccine availability by a religious organization is a small step moving towards NPOV.  (If the article had a more balanced coverage, then this would be a minor matter, but until that happens, at least this seemed like a small step toward NPOV).
 * Given the other sorts of things that conservative groups advocate in matters of sexuality, it would not be at all surprising for them to oppose HPV vaccines altogether. (It would certainly be consistent with the efforts to limit access to birth control, promoting abstinence-only, etc.)  I was mildly surprised to read that the opposition in this case was just to mandatory vaccination, rather than to the whole idea.  As such, I thought that clarification of the stance made sense, so I copied the citation from another article.
 * How do we know there is no serious debate about whether these vaccines should be available? I certainly didn't know that.  Some of the anti-vaccination material on the HPV vaccine and Gardasil  pages does not lead me to the same conclusion.  (But I am more up on the medical end of things than the politics.)
 * Why do you say that the FRC's statement is disingenuous? Aside from what I have read here (i.e. that it is a conservative religious group) I know nothing about them.  I could certainly be persuaded that it is so, but in absence of other information just took the statement at face value.
 * As to where to put the idea. It seems better (and more consistent with Wikipedia style guidelines) to try to integrate the views of a particular group all together, rather than to have them separated into pro/con sections.  Therefore I put what I regarded as a clarification of their stance in with the stance.
 * Coming against the background of this article, which has nothing good to say about vaccination, and against the general advocacy of such groups against sex education/safer sex/birth control/etc., I think that clarification of their position (that it is specifically mandatory vaccination they oppose) was not unreasonable. If there is reasonable doubt about the genuineness of the statement I of course withdraw the suggested edit, and would be interested to know about it so I can better edit similar items on other pages.  Thanks.  Zodon (talk) 18:48, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It is not notable that the FRC supports the availability of vaccines. That is like them saying the FRC supports the availability of seat belts in automobiles. Nobody seriously opposes the availability of seat belts, either, so the FRC's support for their availability would not be notable. The only thing that is notable is that the FRC opposes mandatory vaccination.
 * The FRC's statement does not establish notability of their support for the availability of vaccines. Their main point is that they want their members to have the freedom to not vaccinate, on religious grounds, with the clear indication that many of their members will refuse to vaccinate; and they want to support that. That part is notable, and that's why news organizations covered their statement.
 * Their statement was disingenuous because they were attempting to establish themselves as part of the vaccination mainstream by stating their agreement with availability of vaccines (a matter over which there is no controversy).
 * In this article, even mentioning the FRC at all is a bit of a stretch. We should be relying on reliable secondary sources on vaccination and religion, instead of citing press releases by individual organizations ourselves. Please see WP:MEDRS on why secondary sources are preferable.
 * I suggest looking in places like Google Scholar and Pubmed for reliable reviews. If we can't find reliable sources on the subtopic of religious organizations favoring vaccination, we shouldn't cover it here. Certainly the FRC's statement about availability of vaccinations doesn't qualify as a reliable source on that overall subtopic.
 * Vaccination and religion's natural organization would be the topics that come up when one discusses vaccination and religion. Such topics would include, I suspect, religious restrictions on the use of animal products, or embryos, or of animals, or on the ethics of testing, or about God's will in disease, etc. I wouldn't expect such an article to be structured by religious group, as the topic is not Hinduism or Islam per se.
 * Eubulides (talk) 01:18, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Original research in religious support for vaccination
This set of changes has introduced a considerable amount of text that is dubious because it appears to constitute original research. Apparently what is happening is that Wikipedia editors are going through historical records looking for instances of Christians supporting vaccination. That's not how Wikipedia is supposed to work: it's supposed to rely on secondary sources, on history of vaccination or history of religion, that show the relationship between vaccination and religion.

A good chunk of the text, for example, cites a quote that says nothing about religion; apparently it is included because the quote is about vaccination and was originally published in a newspaper called The Christian Observer. But that is like saying that Christian Scientists favor Musharraf resigining because The Christian Science Monitor has an article entitled "Musharraf resigns". In other words, this isn't even good original research.

For now I will just tag the section in question, but a better fix is to replace the newly-added text with text that relies on reliable secondary sources. Eubulides (talk) 22:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Claim about places of worship
The first claim in question is "In the 1700's and early 1800's churches were used as places for inoculation after ministers preached the value of vaccinations." But the cited source (p. 608) does not say that the sermons preached the value of vaccinations, nor that the vaccinations were done after the sermons; this is an inference that is not made by the source. Nor does the source say when the vaccinations were done (whether in the 1700s, or in the early 1800s). Furthermore, the source is not about vaccination and religion; this is merely an offhand remark in an 1839 letter, quoted in the Notes section of a history about something else. This is clearly WP:OR in the context of vaccination and religion. I removed the claim in question. We need much better sources if we want to have a claim like that in the article. Eubulides (talk) 20:17, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Citation to Missionary Magazine
This citation: is to a page that doesn't seem to have anything to do with vaccination. Here's a more-accurate citation to the article which doesn't have anything to do with vaccination that I can see: I removed the citation for now. Eubulides (talk) 20:36, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. 1850. The Missionary magazine. Boston: American Baptist Missionary Union]. p 358.


 * see http://books.google.com/books?id=dQMPAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA358&dq=churches+and++Vaccination&lr=&ei=YbKoSNPiCIzaigGsqaD7BA&client=firefox-a  Hardyplants (talk) 21:26, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, OK, I see the problem. You are citing the 1864, not the 1850, volume. But this citation is extremely weak: it mentions vaccination just once, in an almost offhand comment, in a volume that's hundreds of pages long. It is citing a primary source (a letter from a missionary who vaccinated 20 children), and the missionary himself gives only a single short paragraph to this incident (and he constrasts vaccination to preaching, which tends to undermine the claim that vaccination promotes his main work) in what is a multipage letter. Using a primary source like this, to support a claim that missionaries used vaccination as part of their work, is WP:OR, and we shouldn't do that. We should be citing a secondary source, ideally a review or a major work by a historian, which makes the point in context. Eubulides (talk) 21:36, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Citation to This is Our China
This citation was added to support the claim that vaccination was part of Christian mission work since the early 1800s: But the cited source says only this about vaccination (I have only a snippet view): "co-operate with mission hospitals, schools, and country churches in conducting vaccination campaigns in near-by villages." and says only this about vaccines "vaccine available for use in country districts. The New Life Movement was appealed to, and through its medical adviser, Mrs. Shepherd, and she immediately arranged with local New Life Movement...". The New Life Movement was not a missionary (nor a Christian) organization, and that page says nothing about missionaries, according to Google Books. This seems a very weak source to support the claim, so without further info I'm inclined to remove it as well. We need far better sources than this to support the claim that vaccination was a part of Christian mission work since the early 1800s. Eubulides (talk) 20:50, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Chiang, Mei-ling Sung. 1940. This is our China. New York: Harper & Bros. p 172.

Citation to Boyd
The citation to Boyd is a good one, but it doesn't support the broad claim about Christian missionaries and vaccination in general. I made this change to try to rewrite the claim to match the source better. Eubulides (talk) 21:17, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Christian Observer and unsourced text
As mentioned above, citing articles about vaccination in the Christian Observer in support of claims that missionaries viewed vaccination as part of their missions work is fairly weak; it's a bit like citing articles about vaccination in The Christian Science Monitor in support of claims that Christian Scientists support vaccination as part of their mission. Furthermore, even if the sources were relevant, this would be citing primary sources, i.e., doing historical research, which runs afoul of WP:OR. We need stronger sources, that directly speak to the claim that missionaries viewed vaccination as part of their mission, and which are not primary historical sources.

Also, along with this citation, some unsourced text has been added on why vaccine safety was an issue of concern. The relevance of this is dubious, as this article is about vaccination and religion; at any rate some sources would be needed.

For now, I removed the citations in question, the claims they support, and the unsourced text. Eubulides (talk) 05:49, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Vaccination, religious exemptions, and chiropractic
Here is the text that is being discussed:

The historical resistance to vaccination in the chiropractic profession has been noted in a New York Times article, which documents the Congregation of Universal Wisdom's   position on vaccinations and its provision of exemptions to its members. Lawsuits in which this church has been mentioned have been the subject of news reports.

"Barbara Loe Fisher, the president of the private anti-vaccination organization, 'National Vaccine Information Center', has written an article, 'The Religious Exemption to Vaccination', for the chiropractic journal, Today's Chiropractic."

NOTE: the following question was posted on my user page, since it related to an edit to this page, I thought it was more appropriate here, where it would form part of the history for this page. Zodon (talk) 07:47, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Zodon, I'm wondering why you reverted my additions here with the edit summary that "chiropractic is not a religion".

While chiropractic does contain metaphysical elements, your edit summary is quite right, and that was never claimed in my contribution, IOW your summary is a straw man.

The section is about religious exemptions, and the properly sourced content I added was about religious exemptions. In this case it involves a controversial church started by a chiropractor which gives religious exemptions. It could have been started by anyone and it would still be relevant to the section. Likewise Barbara Loe's article about religious exemptions is relevant to the section. What gives?

BTW, DD Palmer, the founder of chiropractic, actually did suggest that chiropractic be classified as a religion. After all, according to him it originated "from the other world." He was an avid spiritualist. That's just an interesting bit of history:


 * D.D. Palmer's Religion of Chiropractic

-- Fyslee / talk 06:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The article is about vaccination and religion, therefore material on the page should be about religion and/or vaccination. Hence material about "The historical resistance to vaccination in the chiropractic profession ..." is out of place, unless chiropractic is a religion.  Although some of the sources mentioned were religious, the material written using those sources was about chiropractic.  So the point of the edit summary was that the material was out of place since it wasn't related to the subject of the article.
 * If some of this material relates to religion, than it should be clarified/reformulated so the connection to religion & vaccination is clear. Material relating to chiropractic and vaccination is more appropriate on Vaccine controversy. Although there is already a fair bit there, I imagine it could be refined.  (It probably can't bear much expansion because questions of weight would be likely to arise.)
 * Other suggestions for improvement: The topic of several of the sentences was the references themselves. Rather than talking about attitudes to vaccination, it was talking about the writers/publishers.  (e.g. part starting Barbara ...).  This did not appear to be relevant encyclopedic content for this page (looked more like bibliographic notes).  The fact that somebody wrote an article about something does not tell the reader anything about the relation between vaccination and religion.
 * And of course primary sources (like the church website) must be treated with caution
 * Hope this gives you some ideas how this could be improved.  Zodon (talk) 07:47, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

[outdent]

Zodon, thanks for the suggestions for improvement! I have no illusions about any of my edits being perfect, but I really do believe the content is relevant to the section. It appears to need improving, since I seem to have taken it for granted that the connection between chiropractic's historical opposition to vaccination, and this chiropractic church's provision of religious exemptions, was apparent, but obviously not. I guess it needs to be reworded. I provided what was needed context to help readers understand why a straight chiropractor would start such a church, but I see I haven't made it abundantly clear to all. His actions are motivated by the history of the whole profession, and the current positions of influential organizations in his profession.

Maybe this part of the New York Times article should be included to explain what it's all about:


 * "Dr. Schilling's church was founded in 1975 to defend straight chiropractors like himself, who regard Western medicine as paganism or Satanism. Now he claims 5,520 members, mostly families wanting to avoid vaccination, in 28 states."

Besides mentions in lawsuits, recommendations on various chiropractic and other alternative medicine websites, and other places it is mentioned, it is mentioned on the American Academy of Family Physicians's website, which is rather odd. . The American Academy of Pediatrics also mentions it, and of course is against such religious exemptions. 

A scholarly publication entitled:


 * VANISHING VACCINATIONS: WHY ARE SO MANY AMERICANS OPTING OUT OF VACCINATING THEIR CHILDREN? - Steve Calandrillo, University of Washington - School of Law, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Vol. 37, p. 353, 2004 another source

can be downloaded from several major institutional and university sites and it mentions the church.

The NY Times article is quoted several places, including here:


 * Scheduled Follow-up After a Pediatric Emergency Department Visit for Asthma: A Randomized Trial - Grunstein, et al, Pediatrics, 2003;111;495-502

These are all relevant subjects for the section and are Reliable Sources.

What really surprised me is that here at Wikipedia we even have a request for the creation of an article about this church! Requested_articles/Social_Sciences_and_Philosophy

While notability is not a requirement for inclusion in articles, only about the creation of articles, I have still provided information above showing that it is notable, but that's really irrelevant. It is published in V & RS and it easily meets those requirements, which should be enough.

This section is abominably thin and needs more content, and I've tried to do what I can. Please enable efforts to improve this section. Please help me bring this content up to par and in line with what is needed to include it. It's only a tidbit about a much larger subject, as this is an important subject in chiropractic history that is still alive to some degree, especially among straight chiropractors. It isn't some fringe subject, but happens to be the expression of a larger issue that relates directly to the subject of this section about religious exemptions. DD Palmer's religious exemption ideas are still alive! That's why he suggested classifying chiropractic as a religion in the first place. That way everything chiropractors did and taught would be protected.

Chiropractors happen to form the largest single group of healthcare professionals who oppose vaccination, and many chiropractors still warn against vaccinations and either provide religious exemptions themselves, or recommend that such be obtained, all depending on the state. NOTE that I'm NOT saying that the majority of chiropractors actively do this, but it's not a small minority either. I provided two RS refs to give context to this fact, and thus to show the relevance of even including this subject in the section. NPOV's requirement for attribution makes the inclusion of material showing context quite relevant.

While the church itself should be the focus here (maybe that's where I've failed?), the context is based in straight chiropractic's opposition to vaccinations, and attribution is a requirement for such material. The profession's opposition is itself worthy of a whole section, but maybe not here.

Of course the National Vaccine Information Center recommends the Congregation of Universal Wisdom, hence the mention of Barbara Lowe Fisher's article about religious exemptions, that just happens to be published in - guess what - a chiropractic journal. The ring is complete.

BTW, I have corrected a typo I made. I had written " Church of Universal Wisdom", but " Congregation of Universal Wisdom" is the proper name, which gives 353 Google hits. I have also tweaked the heading to reflect the content here more accurately. Hope you don't mind. -- Fyslee / talk 04:00, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Haven't had time to look at references, but quick feedback. Bear in mind questions of weight, a church with 5,000 members (in world of 6 billion people) - not obviously a significant factor.  (Sure, a small number of people can have a major impact, but this isn't obviously one of the major theological bodies.)  So if it is worth including at all, it would need to be brief.
 * The problem was mostly relevance and weight, not verifiability or RS. Zodon (talk) 00:02, 22 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Religious "exemptions" is a rather small topic, so I don't expect much from this anyway. Two sentences is pretty short. Any less and we're down to nothing ;-) The coded version, with all the text from refs makes it look much larger than the end result. I do think it needs revision and will try to provide a suggested revision which we can discuss. Fair enough? I am surprised that there aren't specific mentions and documentation for other religion's provision of such exemptions. This section could be expanded. We already have a pretty short article. -- Fyslee / talk 01:03, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Missing LEAD
We need to create a short lead that sums up some of the content in each section. Here are some tips. -- Fyslee / talk 01:15, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Claims of population contro/abortion conspiracy, and incentive to premarital sex
I've found a few interesting things regarding religious opposition to vaccination, originally posted on the "vaccine controversy"'s talk page. Basically some pro-life activists claim that some vaccines have hidden abortive/sterilizing components, added with the intent of mandatory population control; that some vaccines are abortion-based and shouldn't be used; and that some diseases were created by God to discourage premarital sex, thus vaccination, at least in these cases, isn't a good thing. --Extremophile (talk) 22:52, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This search returns many ".gov" sources for sexual disinhibition in this context. -- Zigger &laquo;&ordm;&raquo; 00:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * …And I saw you've Eubulides already started to incorporate the re-published Christianity & Pharmacy article on the abortion issues — thanks. I'm undecided about including the population control scaremongering and its impact, as objections to "surreptitiously" imposed abortion and sterilisation, and to medical trials without informed consent, have a much broader basis than specific religions! It would be relevant if the misinformation was promoted with a religious motivation, but it would of course need reliable sources showing that. -- Zigger  &laquo;&ordm;&raquo; 02:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Another resource: NNHI has a webpage listing nine journal articles on Vaccination and religion topics, three of them hosted. -- Zigger &laquo;&ordm;&raquo; 07:46, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Penn and Teller
On their Bullshit program, P&T said the Catholic Church was at one time opposed to the Smallpox vaccine. Is this true? Paul, in Saudi (talk) 12:01, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

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Dutched Reformed Church
See

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/religion-vaccination-confusion

...only the Church of Christ, Scientist (whose adherents are known as "Christian Scientists") and the Dutch Reformed Church are the two religious groups that openly discourage vaccination. Zezen (talk) 17:25, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Vaccination and religion
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Vaccination and religion's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "WHO2016":<ul> <li>From Chikungunya: </li> <li>From Jonas Salk: </li> <li>From Polio vaccine: </li> <li>From Yellow fever vaccine: </li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 18:07, 18 November 2021 (UTC)