>>>But why should someone -- an adult, specifically -- have to lie to avoid taking a shot the government thinks is a good idea? If the government wants to do an information campaign saying we think this shot is a good idea for you to get, and here's why, that's one thing. But making it a requirement to attend college? Humbug.
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>>It's a public health issue, like requiring restaurant workers to wash their hands after using the bathroom. If the number of people immunized goes below a certain level, the system fails.
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>>FWIW, college dorms are well-known as incubators of all kinds of diseases. (Get your mind out of the gutter-not just those. <g>) Even without it being the law, our docs pushed very strongly for my boys to have certain vaccines before they went off to school.
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>>I'm curious, too, whether what Tracy posted is the law for all college students or for those attending a state college. IOW, is it the college's regulation and, in this case, the college happens to be the state? I know Yale definitely had some rules about what vaccinations we had to prove. (Can't remember for Amherst--it was too long ago.)
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>I think it's quite an extension to equate this with requiring restaurant workers to wash their hands. (Which they don't always anyway, as any fan of Seinfeld knows <g>).
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>We don't need to debate this. I am pretty sure that as good Democrats we have an honest difference of opinion about the proper roles of government.

I'm fine with not debating it, but there is a whole interesting question about where public health ends and private choices begin. It overlaps with the smoking ban question, which can certainly be framed as an issue of protecting workers.

Tamar