Vaccine exemption bill moves forward
A state Assembly Health committee approved an embattled vaccine exemption bill Thursday following a heated, fivehour hearing dominated by testimony from emotional parents opposed to mandatory shots and worried about not being able to get exemptions for their children.
In the end, the committee voted 9-2 in favor of Senate Bill 276, which aims to bring medical vaccine exemptions under oversight of the state public health department.
“You’re going to kill more children!” one audience member shouted after the last vote was cast.
Many experts, including bill co- sponsor Sen. Richard Pan, D- Sacramento, a medical doctor, argue that a handful of doctors began writing illegitimate medical exemptions in the wake of a 2015 bill banning exemptions based on personal beliefs.
A Bay Area News Group investigation into vaccine medical exemptions this week found five doctors wrote over half of the 180 forms filed in eight school districts, all with ties to groups opposing SB276.
The exemption practices of three doctors in the records already have come under investigation by California authorities, and many are on lists of “vaccine- flexible” pediatricians circulated online by anti-vaccine parents. Three exemptions were signed by a doctor in New Jersey, and a fourth by one in Florida.
“The result of these fake medical exemptions was a quadrupling of the percentage of medical exemptions in the state and the decline in the state vaccination rate below 95% this current school year,” Pan said during his opening statement at the hearing. “California cannot allow a handful of unscrupulous physicians to put our children in danger.”
Hundreds of opponents stood in a blockslong line waiting to voice their opposition. Others sat in the audience, where some hissed, muttered and waved hands covered in yellow duct tape on which they’d written “LIES!”
Several public comments were delivered by young children sent up to the microphone by parents, despite Committee Chair Assemblyman Jim Wood’s repeated requests that only adults speak.
Medical experts generally agree at least 95% of children in a given school must be vaccinated to protect so- called herd immunity for children for whom vaccines pose a genuine health risk, including kids on chemotherapy and immunosuppressants. There have been 53 reported cases of measles in California so far this year, and more than 1,100 across the country.
Under the bill, every exemption would be entered into a database, allowing public health officials to flag signs of bad behavior. Doctors who aren’t a child’s primary care physician, or haven’t been seeing the child for a year, must notify the child’s primary doctor about the exemption.
Originally, the proposed legislation called for a state public health department review of every exemption. After Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed concern about the state getting between doctors and patients, the bill was revised to limit state review to schools with dangerously low vaccination rates and doctors who sign more than five exemptions in a year.
Notorious anti-vaccine doctor Robert Sears of Orange County answered legislators’ questions on behalf of the opposition. The Medical Board of California placed his license on probation last year because he exempted a 2-year- old child without taking a medical history.
One woman who was invited to speak at the hearing by Sears said her child had suffered a severe reaction to vaccines, and she worried about whether there could be a hereditary reaction to vaccines and what would happen if she had another child who was given vaccines.
“Not one medical expert could pinpoint what component of which vaccine he received caused the reaction,” the woman said of her child’s reaction to the shots. “I found out it could have been a reaction to the fetal cells that are in vaccines, it could have been the other toxins like formaldehyde.”
Pan clarified that vaccines do not contain fetal cells and have less formaldehyde than an apple.
As the hearing came to an end, a few tired committee members thanked the audience for their participation,