Anti-Vaccination Legislative Win In California

California anti-vaxxers, while relatively few in number, continue to wield outsize influence in the state. Over the winter, California suffered an outbreak of measles after an unvaccinated person visited Disneyland, prompting lawmakers to draft legislation designed to increase the state's vaccination rates.

But on Wednesday, state legislators could not answer a key question raised by the bill—should unvaccinated children be denied access to public schools?—after hundreds of parents opposed to mandatory vaccines for school children, according to the San Jose Mercury News, appeared before the Senate Education Committee to protest the bill, SB 277.

The bill would have done away with California's controversial 'personal belief exemptions,' which allow parents to choose not to vaccinate their children on the basis of their own personal beliefs. California is one of 20 states that allow such exemptions. More than a quarter of California schools have measles vaccination rates lower than those recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to The New York Times.

The bill's author, State Senator Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician, was forced to delay a vote in the Senate Education Committee after some of his fellow lawmakers said they would not vote for a bill that excluded unvaccinated children from public schools. Proponents of the bill spoke for about seven minutes, according to The Sacramento Bee, while opposed parents spent more than two hours arguing against it. “I think maybe some of the senators were taken aback by the ferocity of passion that they saw there, and that might have been impactful,” State Senator Ben Allen, a co-author of SB277, told the Bee.

The issue of mandatory vaccinations is contentious in California, where, according to the Contra Costa Times, more than 13,000 kindergartners are unvaccinated for personal or religious reasons. Perhaps hoping to sway public opinion, Pan and Allen penned an op-ed in The Fresno Bee titled "SB 277 protects children from horrific diseases."

Meanwhile, Pan is speaking with various stakeholders to try to find a path forward for the legislation. If he is unable to craft a compromise in one week's time, his bill will likely die in committee—a fate similar bills in Oregon and Washington suffered after facing similar opposition.

Source

"take the warning labels off and let the problem solve itself"?

I'm a bad person, please forgive me.

This is pathetic, certain portions of the social contract are non-negotiable. If you choose not to vaccinate your kids, you are choosing to endanger the health of everyone else's kids. Rights to personal beliefs do not trump everyone else's rights to not be infected by your special little Typhoid Mary.

If you are vaccinated how are you in danger?

i feel obligated...

Edit: since it doesnt want to play anywhere else.. ><
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gku93laoec

I think you should look at this site good sir.

http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/

If you are vaccinated how are you in danger?

/facepalm

If you are vaccinated how are you in danger?

If only disease worked the way you seem to think it works!

one is a carrier regardless of one having a vaccine or not.

They do. Or do you honestly believe you can't transmit a disease to others even though you've had a vaccine against it?

I don't see anyone saying "immune" for the record, no ones saying its will guaranteed save you, but if someone said "take this it'll increase your chance of winning he lottery by 10x" you'd probably do it.

As I said, its resistance to, not immunity, Vaccinations do decrease the chances of you even becoming a carrier.

But someone having no resistance can have a far greater chance, influenza being anywhere up to 5x more likely to get sick as a result.

Look at it this way.

Stop signs stop traffic, now imagine thers 5 drivers, and one almost hits me.

You remove the stop signs (or vaccines) then 5 cars nearly hit me... my chances of not getting hit, just dropped by a ***tonne.

That's literally the best way I can explain it, if people still don't get why everyone being vaccinated helps, maybe they should go see why ebola is like kicking an entires countries *** that doesn't believe in vaccinations.

But you *are* endangering others.

AS has been pointed out in every single anti-vax thread, there are people who *can not*, for one reason or another, receive the vaccine that would boost auto-immunity resistances, particularly against virulent strains of diseases that should have, or have at one point been eradicated.

Which is why, those that *can* be vaccinated, *should* be vaccinated, to prevent the unnecessary and uncontrollable spread of diseases like measles.