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On Tuesday, the Assembly Health Committee heard testimony on a radical proposal that would exempt from immunization requirments children whose parents have "conscientious objections" to vaccinations. The bill, introduced by Charlotte Vandervalk and cosponsored 20 other members of the Assembly, would undermine New Jersey's current and longstanding policy requiring immunization of children attending a school or child care facility in the state.
A the hearing, committee chairman Herb Conaway blocked the bill by refusing to hold a vote on it. Conaway, a physician, called the proposal a "recipe for disaster." Dr. Conaway is right.
Currently, New Jersey permits only religious exemptions from its vaccine requirements. This bill would allow an exemption to children whose parents sign a form that says that they "understand[] the potential benefits of immunization and the risks in not immunizing." The statement accompanying the bill reveals its true implications:
This bill would allow New Jersey to join with other states that grant individuals the right to manage their health or their children's health as they deem appropriate. (emphasis added)
This statement is utterly incompatible with a policy of mandatory immunization. If we allow parents to evade immunization requirements on the grounds that they are "manag[ing] their ... children's health as they deem appropriate," we will subordinate the state's vaccination requirement to each parent's decision about whether getting their children vaccinated against a particular disease is worth the costs and the percieved risks. The very purpose of a mandatory vaccination policy is to take this decision out of parents' hands.
The biggest supporters of the bill back it because they believe that the medical consensus on vaccines is incorrect. They believe that vaccines cause, or at least contribute to, autism. Scientists, doctors, and public health officials overwhelmingly reject this conclusion, and the vast majority of studies have found no link between vaccinations and autism. The anti-vaccine movement has caused vaccination rates to drop, which may be linked with recent outbreaks of pertussis (whooping cough).
What the supporters of the bill are asking for is truly extraordinary. They want the state to exempt from a regulation those who disagree with the policy findings behind that regulation. Needless to say, we rarely allow people to avoid regulation simply because they they think it is bad policy. Schoolchildren who refuse to take the state standardized test are not allowed to graduate, even if they refused because they think the state's test is flawed. If a zoning board denies you a variance to build a shed on your property, you cannot build the shed anyway simply because you think the policies underlying the zoning ordinance is dumb. "I'm a skilled driver who can travel safely at 100 MPH," is no defense to a speeding ticket. No lawmaker would seriously propose that the schoolchild, the property-owner, and the speeder should be exempt from regulation because they disagree with the policy.
While the bill's supporters may portray the bill as a narrow exception, in reality, the bill undermines the state's mandatory immunization policy. Make no mistake, the debate over this bill is really a debate over whether we should require immunizations to begin with. New Jersey's mandatory immunization policy has served the state well, and I think we should keep it. If we do change the policy, we should not change it based on the misinformation spread by the anti-vaccine movement.
Below the fold, I explore the policy rationales for immunization requirements and present a more detailed description of the anti-vaccine movement.
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