THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 1908. AN ANOMALOUS LAW.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9040, 5 March 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 1908. AN ANOMALOUS LAW.

Perhaps nothing more illogical than the exemption from vaccination of children because of the "conscientious objection" of parents was ever inserted in an Act of Parliament, intended for the protection of the people. Either vaccination is beneficial to the community, or it is not. If the former, it is a manifest absurdity to consider "conscientious objections" on the part of parents or others; if the latter, it is equally absurd to insist upon vaccination. In any case the law of the dominion in regard to the matter is anomalous. It provides that conscientious scruple may be valid objection to the innoculation of a child, providing notice to that effect is officially given within a specifically limited time, after which it does not count. Up to that time thy safety of the country may legally be placed in jeopardy—if there is any jeopardy involved. A single hour's delay after the specified time involves upon parent or guardian a penalty, which is imposed as a public safeguard. Medical authorities generally admit that the virtue of vaccination becomes exhausted after seven years, yet the law does not require re-innoeu-lation except where an outbreak of smallpox occurs, and then the "contacts" have the option of undergoing the process of vaccination or being quarantined. 1 Thus it romes about that the bulk of the people of this dominion are allowed to become a source of serious danger to the whole community—if vaccination produces immunity from sfnallpox for seven years only, or of it is not enforced simply because of "conscientious objection" within a certain number of weeks. These reflections have been induced by the penalising of a Civil

Servant in Wellington for refusing to have his child vaccinated. Hj pleaded "conscientious objection," but he pleaded it after the limitation psriod for such a plea. For years past much has been said and written for and against vaccination, and the dangers attached to it appear to be more in evidence than the benefits. That may be because the dominion is thinly populated, and the habits of the people are cleanly. But whatever advantages oc disadvantages are deriveable from the innoculation with calf lymph, the law regarding vaccination is an eccentricity.