Arizona lawmaker’s anti-vaxxer bill is crazy

With just a month until the Arizona Legislature returns to the Capitol (sad, but true), now would be a very good time to inoculate yourself against crazy.

Already, our leaders are proposing all manner of important bills addressing the critical issues of the day. Already, there’s a bill to require students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and another to define “meat.”

And now, a proposal to bar schools from requiring that students be immunized against disease.

Rep. John Fillmore, who filed the bill on Wednesday, says he doesn’t buy into the belief among anti-vaxxers that immunizations cause autism or other health problems.

You won't hear him spouting conspiracy theories about the government teaming up with big pharma to force toxic chemicals into our kids — not to save lives but to score profits.

And yet here comes House Bill 2050.

“A lot of people have come to me and they’ve expressed their concerns,” Fillmore, R-Apache Junction, told me. “While I think a lot of them are unfounded in my reasoning, it’s their decision. … Those people have a right to decide what goes into their children’s bodies.”

I actually agree with Fillmore. They do have the right to decide whether to expose their children to polio and measles and all manner of other wholly preventable diseases.

They don’t, however, have the right to endanger other people’s children — the ones who for medical reasons can’t be immunized.

The Centers for Disease Control flatly states there is no link between vaccines and autism. Not a shred of scientific evidence.

The World Health Organization has designated the anti-vaxxer craze as one of the top 10 global health threats of 2019.

"Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease," WHO wrote. "It currently prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.5 million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved."

At a time when U.S. and Arizona health officials are increasingly worried about measles outbreaks due to declining vaccination rates among children, here comes the Arizona Legislature.

Earlier this year, a pair of anti-vaxxers, Sen. Nancy Barto and Rep. Kelly Townsend, pushed bills aimed at making it easier for parents to opt out of vaccinating their school children. The bills were approved by the House Health and Human Services Committee on a party line vote.

Townsend, who like Fillmore represents the far East Valley, believes vac

cines led to her daughter's Asperger's syndrome and epilepsy and doesn't buy the various scientific studies that have debunked the autism-vaccine link.

Earlier this year, she took a dive off the deep end, likening a requirement that school kids be immunized with government-imposed tattoos.

Fortunately, sanity won the day as Gov. Doug Ducey vowed to veto any bill eroding vaccination.

“We are pro-vaccination in the state of Arizona,” Ducey said in February. “Vaccinations are good for our kids and helpful for public health.”

Fillmore discounts the notion that children could be endangered by their non-vaccinated classmates, noting that vaccines aren’t 100% reliable. If there is an outbreak of disease, he says his bill would allow schools to exclude kids who hadn’t been inoculated against that particular disease.

Fillmore says it’s not a matter of public health but a matter of parental liberty. And the threat to that liberty, he says, is far greater than the threat of measles.

“From what I am hearing and reading, California is up to 30-some vaccines they’re starting to require,” he said. “From a conservative viewpoint, we look at California as the antichrist coming our way and you can’t stop it. There’s so much of this to be pushed and I’m grasping for parents to have some rights with their children.”

California law r equires five vaccines for school children, a total of 16 shots. Arizona requires five vaccines, for a total of 15 shots plus another when a child reaches 11. Unlike California parents, Arizona parents can sign a document opting out for reasons of personal belief.

Fillmore’s bill would eliminate the immunization requirement.

As for those kids endangered because they can’t be immunized for health reasons and thus must depend upon the “herd immunity” that exists when everybody else has their vaccinations? “I can’t protect your child," he told me, "that’s your responsibility to protect your child."

Fillmore discounts the notion that children could be endangered by their non-vaccinated classmates.