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Oregon Makes it More Difficult to Refuse Vaccination. And That’s a Good Thing.


Last week, the Oregon senate passed a bill that would make it more difficult for parents to refuse to vaccinate their children. This is a very good thing.

Of all the states in the country, Oregon has the worst vaccination rate. In the state, 6.4 percent of parents get a vaccine exemption, and that’s up from 5.8 percent last year. This number was less than two percent in 2001. Right now, state law requires that children be vaccinated to go to public and private school, as well as to use certified child care facilities. But parents can seek an exemption based on either a medical or religious concerns. Lots of Oregonian parents are choosing to forgo vaccinations because they erroneously believe that vaccines are dangerous.

For the uninitiated, this entire problem started back in 1998 with the publication of a study by Andrew Wakefield that purported to link the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study was, however, not just shoddy, but downright fraudulent. Studies conducted since Wakefield’s have found no link between vaccines and ASD, but that hasn’t kept the myth from growing roots in the minds of parents around the world.

This new bill targets the non-medical immunization exemptions. Parents who want a religious-based exemption would have to consult directly with a doctor or watch an educational video about the risks and benefits of vaccines. Then, if the parents choose to withhold the vaccinations from their children, they will have to provide proof of that of the educational consultation to schools and day cares before they enroll their child.

To be honest, I’m unconvinced that any amount of accurate education about immunizations will make a difference with the hardcore anti-vaccination crowd. But hopefully this will scoop up the parents who have been seduced by the unabashed fear-mongering and save some lives.

There is the predictable outrage coming from people who are oh-so concerned about the rights of the parents to raise their children. According to state senator Jeff Kruse, “I’m getting very tired of this legislative assembly and this body taking away the choices of parents as to how they raise their kids.”

I do understand the complaint. Here it is, the state, telling you, a parent, that you must inject some mysterious liquid into your precious baby. I empathize. Last year Congress held hearings on the increase in autism, and those long ago debunked myths came up. When a misinformation campaign gets that far, I understand how it could make parents a little skittish.

Here’s the thing, though. This isn’t about any one parent’s right to vaccinate or not vaccinate their child. This is about the right of the immunocompromised to live relatively healthy lives. This is about giving children a better chance of living to adulthood (which modern medicine has done a very good job at, by the way).

This is a public health issue. If you doubt that, all you need to do is look over the border to Washington state. Or Wisconsin. Or the United Kingdom. All of these places have had to deal with their own public health crises involving diseases that could have been prevented with vaccines. Anti-vaccine hysteria has even reached the developing world. Refusal to vaccinate based on specious evidence has caused over 100,000 preventable illnesses and over 1,000 preventable deaths.

As you can see, this goes way beyond what one parent decides to do with one child. If Oregon succeeds, it will protect us all.


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6:51PM PDT on Aug 1, 2013

I posted this on another vaccination topic, but it works here too:

What it really comes down to, the irrational fear of vaccines, is what do you find dangerous and having long term health consequences

Are you afraid to have your child get vaccinated but allow them to stay in a room full of cigarette smoke?

Is Aluminum dangerous in shots (bonus for just how much Aluminum is in a single vaccine dose) but okay when your kid eats dirt or scrapes their knee, breaking the skin and getting dirt in the wound?

Do you drive your kids around without seat belts on but are afraid they'll have an allergic reaction to eggs (which they've never shown before) from a vaccine?

Have your kids ever gotten a sunburn on top of a recent sunburn or a 2nd degree sunburn ever but the possibility (and nobody has shown any case of actual cancer from a vaccine) of minute carcinogens in a vaccine scare the crap out of you?

Do you stay far away from vaccinations but go outside in a thunderstorm with cloud to ground lightning?

If you've said "Yes" to 1 or more of those things, well, I think you may need to rethink what are real risks and what are not worth worrying about

3:23PM PDT on Aug 1, 2013

If the chance of serious medical consequences or death is higher without the treatment than with the treatment, then it's foolish not to accept treatment. Statistically vaccines have been a public health boon and have spared a very large number of people from everything from brain damage to death from a variety of illnesses.

And it's certainly smart to look at each individual vaccine to see if its known benefits will outweigh its known risks for you personally. In the days when I worked hands-on with a fair amount of wildlife and shelter animals, I always got the rabies vaccine. These days I have far less contact with likely carriers, so I don't get the vaccine any longer. And when it comes to the major culprits in serious disease outbreaks (like mumps, measles, etc.) we as a society have such a strong interest in preventing those outbreaks that I feel, absent specific medical reasons, everyone should get the vaccines.

6:58AM PDT on Jul 22, 2013

Oh yeah Kendra, you've stated that Vaccines lower the IQ of kids. Can you back that up or is that just a scare mongering talking point of "just so data that if you look at it sideways with a predisposition to read things backwards" it makes sense?

Why is it that the same tactics used by those the espouse Anti-Global Warming, Creationism, Flat Earth and other such nonsense are in full display by the Anti-Vax crowd?

4:24AM PDT on Jul 22, 2013

Let me be clear: Nothing is 100% safe, nothing

But to reject or accept your own reality is not conducive to living very long

How many of you wear seat belts? I do but do you understand that there is a slight chance that in an accident where every second counts, you could be trapped by your own seat belt and burn if the car explodes?

However, the actual number of deaths and serious injury has gone way down due to seat belts

To the contents of vaccines:

1: What is the dose of your typical vaccine?

2: What is the % of {insert stuff you don't want in it here} in the vaccine?

3: Have you ever used drugs from say a friend you had a "party"? What was in those drugs?

Complaining about miniscule amounts of "X" in a vaccine while blissfully ignoring all the other sources is well, not smart. Saying vaccines don't help when we have the evidence that vaccines saved millions of live EVERY year (no? Go find what the death rate was for Diphtheria before the vaccine or how many babies have died since people stopped vaccinating for Whooping Cough over the last 5 years) is saying "We'd rather watch children die of Whooping Cough, scared for life after Scarlet Fever hits them, have them be sterile when the Measles gets to them when they're older and such

People complain about vaccinations because they've never seen what life is without them

4:09AM PDT on Jul 22, 2013

So Kendra, want to use something as a "source"? Then show the URL such as the one to Forbes about the Vaccines and how much money they produce.

At $5 profit for each vaccine or $100 for each dose of other medicine for when a person gets really ill, say from Whooping Cough (oh yeah, how many children died of that over the last 5 years compared to the 50 years prior to that?), what is more profitable for Pharma?

4:04AM PDT on Jul 22, 2013

I note you don't post your evidence Kendra, I do, a few URLs would be great

I also noted you didn't once post anything on the deaths that came before vaccinations. How places were left with no babies when the Whooping Cough went there

As to "drugs" being a factor, just how many drugs and what type, who made them, etc, did the mothers of children with autism do before they became mothers?

Last is the better diagnosis of Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder, of which I can be considered having a bit of Asperger's Syndrome myself. 100 years ago I'd just be "a bit off", but otherwise fine. How has that contributed to the cases of Autism

Let us not forget other environment factors. I see you say things about Gardisal, such as Aluminum. Any idea how much Aluminum is in dirt children eat everyday?

3:57AM PDT on Jul 22, 2013

Well Kendra, let's start with the Verstraeten study:



http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/112/5/1039.full - does require a subscription

Why is it that Verstraeten himself stated that the study was neutral and did not find for or against Thimerosal?

5:16PM PDT on Jul 21, 2013

The we have the Eli Lilly rider stuck into the Patriot Act in the middle of the night to protect Eli Lilly from law suits regarding thimerisol.
Then we have the VSD data, used for the Verstraeten report that was refused to be made available for peer review, and to ensure that never happened they sold it to a private entity, so it could not be accessed even through the Freedom of Information Act. You want science, peer review is a pillar of science, but not allowed here.
Then we have the cases awarded in Vaccine court for children damaged by vaccines with the ultimate outcome being Autism. But they were awarded for encephalopathy which resulted in autism not for the autism itself. Symantics and word games.
Then we have the CDC announcing that Hannah Poling was an anomaly and not a precedent because she had a mitochondrial disorder. In the mean time they are meeting with mitochondrial experts from around the world because they did not know the prevalence of mitochondrial disorders, but were told that it is 1 in 50, just coincidently the current rate of autism. They never came back out and publicly announced that little tidbit of information. Leaving the public mislead about the potential for harm in 1 in every 50 children vaccinated.

5:07PM PDT on Jul 21, 2013

The Danish study looking at Thimerisol. Probably the easiest one to debunk and even show that they willfully and knowingly presented false evidence. You remember that one, the one that states according to their findings that the mercury based preservative thimerisol, may actually have a protective effect, preventing neurological damage. But if you actually read the study you will see a note from the authors that the statistics may be confounded by the fact they counted all diagnosis after the removal of thimerisol from vaccines but before its removal they were only counting kids diagnosed in hospital, which accounts for only about 10% of all diagnosis. So after thimerisol was removed they started counting the other 90% and tell us that this “might” have messed up the numbers. Ya think?????
Please, if they cannot do any better than that. Yes the IOM accepted the Danish Study, accepted the Verstraeten study and a few others paid for by the CDC, yet refused to consider 18 studies from independent scientists that showed there was a problem, that there was a correlation and almost all of those studies were real science, laboratory testing, not epidemiology which is all the CDC had to offer and easily manipulated.
Science? Really? Or do you mean manipulated epidemiology? The real science is clear and there are over 60 studies proving there is a huge problem.

4:58PM PDT on Jul 21, 2013

There is no logical nor scientific justification for these generational changes, except to cover up an iatrogrenically caused epidemic of neurological disorders.

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