Public health comes before personal choice

A California bill regarding the personal choice to opt out of mandatory vaccinations among children in school was passed by the Senate Health Committee last Wednesday. Senate Bill 277 will only allow children who have been immunized for various diseases, such as measles and whooping cough, to be admitted to California schools. The bill is for the greater good, as opting out of vaccinations poses a greater risk to the health of the general public.

This debate was already resolved on a national level, as the Supreme Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination in the 1905 case Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The court’s decision articulated that the common welfare comes before  the freedom of the individual. Individual freedom is also subject to the police power of the state.

Even with prior litigation, many parents currently deny their children vaccinations by applying for “personal belief exemptions,” which are offered by California and 19 other states. These exemptions include philosophical, medical and religious reasons, among others. Though medical exemptions should remain permitted, no other exemptions should be tolerated. According to the Center for Disease Control, “use of philosophical exemptions and under immunization tend to cluster geographically, making some communities at greater risk for outbreaks.” Moreover, a geographic clustering of people without vaccinations is associated with an “increased local risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, such as pertussis and measles.” Ultimately, personal belief exemptions put other children at risk for preventable diseases.

Parents argue that mandatory vaccinations deny their ability to make a choice about their children’s vaccines, which violates their rights as parents. Some opponents of this bill cite faulty research that links autism to vaccines, but none of the nine CDC-funded studies since 2003 have found any link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. With rare exceptions due to medical conditions like allergies, the eight commonly administered vaccines are very safe.

Co-sponsor of the bill Democratic Sen. Richard Pan cites a recent measles outbreak in Disneyland and two whooping cough epidemics as reasons California should tighten vaccination rules. This past December the measles outbreak at Disneyland spread to 18 other states, infecting 159 people. According to state health officials, 57 of those who were infected were not vaccinated. Though this outbreak did not lead to any deaths, whooping cough epidemics in 2010 and 2014 resulted in the deaths of 10 infants.

Two leading medical institutions, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the California Medical Association, support this bill. Dr. Dean Blumberg, of UC Davis Children’s Hospital, said, “children vaccination has been so extraordinarily successful that it is easy to forget the bad outcomes.” Likewise, one of the reasons another co-sponsor of the bill, Sen. Bill Allen, signed on to the effort was because of his family history — his father had contracted polio while growing up. He recalls how he witnessed firsthand the debilitating impact of the disease and, similar to Blumberg, does not want outbreaks of long-forgotten diseases such as polio to return because of low rates of vaccination.

Ultimately, since vaccinations almost always pose no threats to one’s health, children must be required to have certain vaccinations to be allowed in school.

To the opponents — stop thinking about personal parental rights and start thinking about the safety of all children.