Natural Health Protocol
  • Home
  • Josephine
  • Hair Mineral Analysis
    • Testimonials
  • Nutritional Balancing
    • Nutritional Balancing Basic Diet
  • CONTACT
  • Blog
    • Articles

Measles Outbreak: California Bill Would End All Vaccination Loopholes Except Medical 

2/22/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
In a move that could give California one of the nation's toughest vaccine laws, two state senators Thursday introduced legislation that would eliminate most exemptions that allow parents to avoid requirements to vaccinate their children.
If enacted, California would join only two other states -- Mississippi and West Virginia -- that permit only medical exemptions as legitimate reasons to sidestep vaccinations.

The clamor around the elimination of the "personal belief exemption" has been growing in California since a measles outbreak started in mid-December, when 39 people who visited or worked at Disneyland contracted the virus. Currently, California is one of 19 states that allow exemptions based purely on parents' personal or religious beliefs.

Senate Bill 277 does not specifically address the religious exemption. But if passed as now drafted, the bill would end all "personal belief exemptions," including religious exemptions, said Sen. Richard Pan, a Sacramento Democrat and pediatrician who co-authored the bill with Sen. Ben Allen, D-Redondo Beach.

"There is no religious exemption in the statute," Pan told this newspaper Thursday. But he indicated that might change as the debate over the legislation plays out over the next several months. "I'm certainly open to the discussion about the necessity and the nature of any proposed religious exemption." That could come through "the legislative process or the governor himself, if he wishes to be engaged early on," Pan said. "It's up to him."

Picture
In this Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015 photo, a pediatrician holds a dose of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine at his practice in Northridge, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) ( Damian Dovarganes )
When Pan, then an assemblyman, carried a bill in 2012 aimed at tightening vaccine policy, Gov. Jerry Brown signed it. But he directed state health officials to maintain the ease of religious exemptions.

Asked if Brown believes that the issue of religious exemptions needs to be revisited, Jim Evans, a spokesman for the governor, would only say that "the governor believes that vaccinations are profoundly important and a major public health benefit and any bill that reaches his desk will be closely considered."

The highly infectious measles virus -- once virtually eliminated in the U.S. -- has now infected 162 people in 17 states, including at least 119 Californians.

The current struggles over vaccine policy have raised tensions between advocates of public health and individual liberty. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, an Arizona-based libertarian doctors' group, says that compulsory vaccination overrides the rights of parents.

Keith Howe, 59, a San Jose chiropractor, has long opposed efforts to impose vaccinations requirements. He said when Pan introduced his legislation in 2012, "I sent him a scathing letter saying this is not Communist China and he is not Mao Zedong. He is violating the Constitution and the Bill of Rights."

But Dorit Reiss, a professor and vaccine law expert at UC's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, said eliminating both religious and personal belief exemptions "would be a dramatic improvement over what we have now."

Courts, she said, have established the right of a state to compel individuals to receive a vaccination -- and they've also upheld local government mandates that require vaccinations as a prerequisite for enrolling in school, she said.

Lawyers and vaccine experts caution against preserving the religious exemption while eliminating personal belief exemptions.

"It would be a terrible mistake," Reiss said. "We don't allow religions to put children at risk for other reasons."

She added that courts have also ruled that there is no constitutional right to offer exemptions based on religious grounds. Indeed, Reiss added, lower courts have ruled that such exemptions may be constitutionally suspect if they discriminate against people who have non-established religious beliefs against vaccination.

Critics of religious exemptions to vaccination also argue that parents could easily transform their secular anti-vaccination sentiment into a religious belief. They note that numerous websites offer relevant biblical quotations to include in letters of petition for exemption. Others offer mail-order religious groups, such as the Congregation of Universal Wisdom, headquartered in New Jersey.

Both Pan and Allen said they are aware of the potential to abuse a religious exemption. Pan said there is no major religion that "actually explicitly prohibits vaccination that we are aware of," although he said some leave the decision to individual ministers.

The call to consider eliminating the religious exemption has also been pushed by California's two U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

Along with other colleagues, they recently introduced legislation to ensure that all children in Head Start and Early Head Start programs nationwide are fully vaccinated unless they have been exempted for medical reasons.

Vaccine exemptions have been available since 1961, when California first required all public school teachers and students to be inoculated against polio. But there has been a surge in their popularity in recent years. From 2000 to 2014, the rate of parents seeking exemptions tripled, from 0.77 percent to 2.5 percent -- or one in every 40 kids.

Contact Tracy Seipel at tseipel@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5343. Follow her at Twitter.com/taseipel. Contact Lisa M. Krieger at lkrieger@mercurynews.com or 650-492-4098.

Sources:  San Jose Mercury News

Picture
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2023
    May 2022
    January 2022
    January 2020
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    November 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012

    RSS Feed

Join me on the Road less travelled by seeking the truth,
​through a system that will begin to set you free!
​

    Get email Updates
    Subscribe Here!
     

Submit
Mineral-Nutritional Balancing and Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis
Contact Josephine Here!
Nutritional Balancing
100% Customer Service



​

 
​
In the beginning there was the Logos  and the Logos was with God, and the Logos  is God. (John  1:1)

It is  the Logos that ultimately bring you  HEALTH, DEVELOPMENT and HAPPINESS! 
​

​
​A Way of Life for Life -Copyright © 2014-2022 Josephine  Certified Holistic Nutrition, CHN, FDN

NINE SERVINGS OF VEGETABLES 
​
Please note that there is only one nutritional balancing science, developed by Dr. Paul Eck. All other claims made by other practitioners, not approved by Dr. Lawrence Wilson on his site, have altered Dr. Eck's principles and as such have no in depth understanding of the science, which is very unfortunate.  

Further, altering even one aspect of a nutritional balancing program often ruins it rather completely.  This could be substituting different products that you like better, skipping an aspect of the diet or the supplements, or implementing other diets, such as GAPS OR PALEO, OR something else that people do all the time, such for example using other forms of meditation, other than what is recommended by Dr. Wilson.  In other words, using other products or diets, or meditation, conflicts with the entire program and it seriously reduces its effectiveness. Thus, nutritional balancing science is completely integrated, meaning that the sciences are used together in very unique way and should not be altered by yourself or other practitioners.  


Legal Notice and Disclaimer
Josephine Health and Wellness Weekly News Update Copyright © 2014 All Rights Reserved
Picture
Contact Josephine here

BACK TO TOP

Disclaimer