Dumb argument for mandatory vaccination.

Here's a Dad that's cool with his young teen getting the new Gardasil vaccination, and discusses what's good for his daughter might also mandatorily benefit your son.

Basic argument seems to be, he knows his girl is going to screw around, and doesn't want your kids "free riding" by staying celibate in the teen years and avoiding the new vaccination before the costs and benefits are fully known.

Hilarious comments ensue on this libertarian-type blog, including discussion if circumcision of young men should be mandatory if it protects the womenfolk.

On the general question of requiring vaccinations, I am fully with Megan McArdle in believing that they should be mandatory and that people who decide to skip the vaccine for their kid on the basis that they can free-ride on others doing it, despite the (miniscule) risks, should not be allowed to do so. Actually, although anyone who has read McArdle on this issue knows she feels strongly about it, I might feel even more strongly. Free-riders of this kind are horrible people and the law should not just force their compliance, but penalize them in order to disincentivize their behavior. And I believe that a Just God would give the parents who do so facial blemishes permanently spelling out Free-Rider across their cheeks.

As for the religiously motivated – that’s a more complicated social question. A practice of accommodation could work so long as, but only so long as, it was limiting and indeed fairly self-limiting, to Christian Scientists without creating any implications for the social norms observed by the rest of us – that is, without altering the social expectations of the rest of us and without altering what is below described as “herd immunity.”

Wow, I wonder what he thinks of those who opt out of the herd and that kind of "we're all in it together / one size fits all mentality"?

Funny to read long posts like that on a blog formerly branded as libertarian and normally more respectful of individual rights...