The purpose of publishing all of the affidavits, constructive notices and events involving the interaction between our friends and the Ministry of Health and PANI in Puriscal, Costa Rica is strictly for the transparent documentation of facts. However, there have been several anonymous comments left to one blog post in particular which dwell on opinions, fairies in the clouds and other off point topics. Curiously, the comments focus on my own editorials and are ripe with conviction; yet no one has uttered a peep regarding the work that James has submitted to the courts and ministries. Admittedly, my writing demands very little and is much easier to attack. I do hope that thoughtful readers as well as off point, anonymous individuals are taking the time to absorb James' research and presentation of law and facts.My objective in writing today is not to partake in virtual opinion ping pong, but to hopefully establish more facts. An anonymous commenter has claimed to be living in Costa Rica with their family and publicly choosing not to vaccinate their children or send them to public school. Still another anonymous commenter has claimed to know hundreds of families in Costa Rica who are openly foregoing vaccinations for their children and choosing to home-school. I do not understand why anyone with such valuable information would choose to publish opinions and experiences anonymously. I urge the commenters to present the laws and facts that support the claims they have made. This information may not help our friends, but would undoubtedly aid other families living in Costa Rica who are struggling with these same issues.
The suggestion that the Ministry of Health and PANI are in accordance with hundreds of families living in Costa Rica without injecting their children with mandatory vaccines contradicts the testimony of Dr. Cerdas who, in the driveway of our friends on June 30, 2011, read from the General Law Health book the exact articles which require contracted residents under the age of 15 to vaccinate and re-vaccinate. It is difficult to believe that Costa Rica is in any way disregarding its own mandates. Inside Costa Rica published an article on January 26, 2010 regarding the mandatory H1N1 vaccine for selected high risk groups in Costa Rica. According to that article:
"The vice-ministra de Salud, Ana Morice, explained that the CCSS will be compiling a list from medical records of persons that are required to be vaccinated,...The vice-ministra said that those people on the list who do not want to receive the vaccine, will be obligated to do so. "The idea is not use force, even though we have the right to go with the police to pull people from their homes and take them to a medical centre to be vaccinated", explained Morice. The mandatory vaccination is based on government decree 35703-S of the Ley General de Salud published on January 21, 2010 in the official government publication, La Gaceta."
What an eerie contemplation that you too may be obligated to be injected with a substance that you may or may not philosophically agree with and that your eligibility to be on the list is based on your personal medical records. If we ask the government to protect us, we can't cry when we don't like their approach.
I suspect that the numerous anonymous comments which suggest that our friends are only having trouble because they have not contracted with the state of Costa Rica and that it is possible to refuse that which public ministries deem mandatory and necessary is only a repeated desperate attempt to divert the focus away from the fact that not only is it impossible to refuse the mandated gifts from the State, but should you ever have trouble in Costa Rica, don't count of due process of law either.
Perhaps these numerous anonymous comments are made by individuals who have financial interests which are dependent on a positive image of Costa Rica. My opinion, your opinion and other irrelevant references to mythical creatures do not dilute the fact that our friends have not committed a crime; there is no habeas corpus. If anyone believes that our friends did harm by not soliciting social contracts with the state of Costa RIca, just ask yourself why our friends have yet to be presented with any charges against them; why, if they were not contracted with the state, it was the ministry of health and not immigration to storm our friends' sanctuary; and why due process has been completely denied to our friends?
Our friends understand and follow the laws. Without lying or cheating or doing any harm to anyone, our friends live, committed to personal responsibility so as to never add to the great burden of so many needy people who choose to contract and benefit from the generous social entitlements of a struggling, developing nation. Our friends are not jealously demanding that anyone think or live as they do. It is shortsighted to protect fragile interests by trashing victims. Why not, instead, stand tall and demand due process to prove that the product you are selling lives up the glorious image you promote? Pura Vida.
4 comments:
history shows that regimes that use this kind of math are very frightening:
doctors + police = run like hell
You know, I don't believe in NOT VACCINATING your kids because even IF vaccines do cause whatever illnesses people believe they cause, they prevent a whole lot more. And personally, I would rather my child not hang around unvaccinated children and people. Vaccines effectiveness wanes with time, herd immunity is the reason there are so few cases of polio, measles, mumps, etc. And as far as being indebted to the government for any medical procedures, vaccination is a social good that prevents a lot more illness (and thus prevents medical costs) than it creates. So it is in a governments best interest, perhaps not immediately, to keep it's population vaccinated, be they legal or non legal residents. That said, everyone has the right to believe whatever they want to believe. As tawdry and insipid those beliefs may be. But that doesn't mean not complying with the law.
Your friends seemed to have really irked some people for whatever reason. Of the several thousands of illegal residents in Costa Rica, I'm sure quite a few don't send their kids to school (and not because of homeschool), and I'm sure many more don't comply with the vaccination schedule (and not because of the seriously mistaken western belief in no vaccinations).
If your friends really wanted to fight the system, they would have either hired a lawyer, or really made a concerted effort (not just sent ramblings about their beliefs coupled with excerpts within the law that they believed backed their beliefs) to show the legal system that a particular administrator at a particular clinic was singling their family out.
What I see and understand from your posts is a family trying to battle the legal system within their frame of belief as opposed to what is already within the system. Their arguments are based on their religious beliefs and that way, they will never win and will forever consider themselves martyrs to a harsh system.
The death of a child is always a tragedy, and I am quite sure it was not the parents intention that their child die. But it certainly was not the fault of the Costa Rican government. It was a tragedy plain and simple. I feel for the family, but these posts keep entangling that tragedy with the parents legal battle.
If these people wanted to be totally free of a government, they could have chosen a different country. One with little or no government, like Somalia. But the reason families like these don't go to those countries is that they want to benefit from the social calm that comes from a country with a stable government. Like a relatively low crime rate, or basic and manageable property rights. Yet at the same time, they want to be above or beyond the law.
Costa Rica is by no means perfect and has a long way to go. But if you think Costa Rica is a sort of tyrannical regime? Well, you certainly have a very small view of the world and would be in a bit of a shock if you scooted just one country up.
Thew views of anyone who won't put their name to a comment are not worth considering.
We were one of the "many" who chose not to vaccinate our children here in Costa Rica where we have lived for ten years.
The reason we chose not to was that we are convinced they do more harm than good (http://www.arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/articles/vaccinations.html). And we thought that we could make that decision as the parents and caretakers of our own children based on knowledge of the fundamentals of health that we have accrued over the past 30 years.
We were wrong. In fact, our children are not ours after all here in Costa Rica. They belong to the State. Vaccination is mandatory here with no exemptions allowed. We found out that, as Costa Rican law dictates, it is a criminal offense to not vaccinate our children. We could literally have had our door kicked in by the police (accompanying the ministry of health and PANI), arrested, ended up in jail, our children taken from us and placed in the State's care and forcibly injected with whatever the State deemed necessary.
We are friends of James and Birgitte and know of hardly another set of parents who can compare to their calibre of child rearing. These are the kind of people one would want as neighbors and friends. We support them in their search for a peaceful existence in this world.
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