Why Pennsylvanians Do Not Have a Philosophical Vaccination Exemption

By Theresa O'Brien

I recently attended a breakfast meeting hosted by our area’s representative to the State House in Harrisburg. Representative Craig Dally, who serves the 138th district in Pennsylvania, invited us for a briefing on the state budget proposals and an opportunity to discuss issues that are important to us.

In advance of this meeting, I sent Rep. Dally a letter, letting him know that I planned to attend the meeting, and that an issue that is important to me is providing Pennsylvanians with a philosophical objection to Department of Education immunization requirements. (PA already has a religious exemption and a medical exemption.) Here is an excerpt from my letter:

… any drug or biological product will have an adverse effect on some percentage of the population—consider, for example, the portion of our population who are allergic to penicillin—making universal vaccination mandates tantamount to state-sponsored assault, Russian roulette-style, on our citizens.

Thousands upon thousands of unsuspecting vaccine-injury victims are listed in VAERS (the Department of Health and Human Services Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, located HERE).

In light of the undeniable health risk, I ask you to consider every parent’s right to raise a child as he sees fit, regardless of that parent’s religious beliefs.

After the breakfast meeting, I spoke with Rep. Dally’s aide, who said that Dally’s office had considered my request, but was unlikely to act on it. She seemed sympathetic, but shook her head in that “We really can’t do anything” manner that so many of us arguing for vaccine modifications have seen over and over. I’d like to highlight three of the objections that Rep. Dally’s aide shared with me, as they seem to me to strike at the core of why every parent doesn’t write letters like the one I did.

First, she said, “There are some people who would never take their kids to the doctor if they didn’t have to [get shots].” Then, she asserted, “People are sue-happy today. If your unvaccinated child gave their child the chickenpox, they could sue you.” Of course, she kept coming back to the old favorite, “We’re afraid diseases would come back.”

The aide’s response made me realize how difficult it will be to get philosophical exemptions to vaccine requirements in the thirty-three states that do not already have them. Maybe it would be easier to get these states to adopt a “greener” vaccine schedule. Yes, children on the 1983 schedule are still susceptible to injury and death, but fewer vaccines on the schedule mean fewer insults to young bodies and a reduced risk of injury. (Parents still have the right to religious exemptions, unless they live in West Virginia, where somehow the separation of church and state has never really caught on.)

In order to make any changes in public health policy where vaccines are concerned, we’ll have to address the views expressed by Rep. Dally’s aide. If we can change people’s prejudices and misconceptions, then we stand a chance of changing the law—be it to permit philosophical exemptions or to change the vaccine requirements themselves.

Let’s examine her first comment, which smacks of racism. In our area of Pennsylvania, there is a large (and largely economically disadvantaged) Hispanic population. I’ve heard many people in my community (in private, of course) say things like, “They [Latinos] don’t believe in doctors” and “Well, you know they never take their kids to the doctor.” First, the mere fact of not taking your child to a well-baby visit every two months does not make you a bad parent, and does not (in and of itself) put your child at risk for poor health outcomes.

People in many communities are skeptical of allopathic medicine, which is understandable in our pill-popping age of seven-minute pediatrician visits and easy access to prescription medication. I wonder how much Nebraska Representative Chuck Grassley trusts the average pediatrician, for example. However, even if some families in our area do not seek appropriate care when their children become sick, the fact remains that our laws cannot be predicated on fears of what minority socioeconomic or political groups would do to “the rest of us.” If they were, Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode’s 1985 bombing of the MOVE compound would have been applauded, not reviled as the violation of human rights that it was.

Americans have freedom of choice regarding our own bodies, and we cannot take that freedom away, no matter how much we disapprove of the choices others make. Outlawing sugar would eliminate Type II diabetes as a disease in this country, but we cannot make such a ban because it violates the sovereignty we have over what we put into our bodies.
To force someone to consume something is, to my mind, even more reprehensible than to forbid consumption—forced vaccination frightens me far more than a ban on sugar.

Now, let’s think about the lawsuit angle. The case of chickenpox is particularly ridiculous, because even the CDC’s own estimates place the pre-vaccine number of deaths associated with chickenpox around 100 per year. Obviously, these deaths were not all school-age children, but even if they were, the aide’s assertion is ridiculous.

To place every Pennsylvania child’s health at risk, and to force certain, serious illness on a certain percentage of Pennsylvania children, in order to prevent one possible lawsuit (100 deaths divided by the percentage of the US population represented by Pennsylvanians ages 0 to 17) is a ludicrous error, one that simple math shows is incorrect. Additionally, schools already have the ability to require medically-exempt and religiously-exempt children to stay home from school during outbreaks of disease; it would be simple for this practice to be extended to philosophically-exempt children.

One wonders, of course, if the vaccines are so effective, why someone else’s vaccinated child has anything to worry about from my unvaccinated child. Finally, it’s rather sad to note that parents could sue other parents over a simple childhood disease when families like the Cedillos, the Hazlehursts, and the and the Snyders have had to jump through hoop after hoop in the kangaroo court that is the US Court of Federal Claims—and some families, because of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program statutes, have no legal recourse at all for their vaccine-injured children.

Finally, we have the oft-repeated slogan of “Diseases will come back!” This statement lies at the heart of why the vaccine program does not work, and why it will be so difficult to scale back. Everyone knows someone who received the full recommended dose of vaccines, only to catch one or more of these “vaccine-preventable” diseases. The only way that the vaccine program reduces the incidence of these diseases is to force everyone to receive vaccines, thus reducing the chances that vaccinated people will catch diseases. This is what is known as “herd immunity.”

Circulation of these particular diseases decreases, and the diseases may eventually die out. This may be a laudable goal for a disease like smallpox; I don’t know enough about smallpox to make that call. I do know that herd immunity is a completely unreasonable goal for nuisance illnesses like the chickenpox, and is the result of a dim view of our ability to make good choices when it comes to blood-borne pathogens like hepatitis B: there are other, better ways (than vaccination) of preventing the spread of hepatitis B in a population.

However, the fear of disease, illness, and death is strong in most people, especially parents. That’s why pharmaceutical companies and politicians cling so strongly to the mantra of “If we remove vaccination requirements, diseases will come back.”
As a society, we need to be less afraid of disease. Disease, in and of itself, is not a serious problem. Think of all the colds and stomach bugs you’ve had in your life—you got sick, your body fought the bug, and you got better, and you were stronger for the struggle.

What we as a society should focus on changing is our population’s ability to fight disease. That means taking better care of our food supply and water supply: enacting perchlorate regulations for our drinking water (currently not in place), supporting farming practices that provide better nutrition to livestock, eating more fresh fruits and vegetables and fewer packaged foods, and countless other practices. Just imagine how much food we could buy for disadvantaged socioeconomic groups—you know, the ones we’re so afraid will give our kids the dreaded chickenpox—if we spent money on feeding our poor instead of vaccinating them against nuisance illnesses. Yes, those shots are covered by public dollars, be they Medicaid or S-CHIP.

We also have to come to terms with the fact that viruses and bacteria are part of our ecosystem. They evolve in order to survive. It is well documented (and was even reported in the New York Times (HERE) that Wyeth’s original version of Prevnar, the so-called pneumonia vaccine, reduced nuisance strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae, which allowed the more lethal serotype 19a to become more prevalent. Reducing or eliminating the incidence of a particular disease can alter the viral and bacterial ecosystem in ways that we can’t predict—ways that can be incredibly damaging to public health. (Of course, Wyeth’s new Prevnar 13, which includes serotype 19a, is now being fast-tracked by the FDA, but there are 91 strains of bacterial pneumonia, so it’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen next, but it’s not likely to be good.) What we should learn from the Prevnar experiment—because that’s what it was, a massive public health experiment—is that we should leave at least some diseases alone.

Another thing we have to keep in mind is that preventing one type of death at all costs is not always a desirable end. For example, between 35,000 and 45,000 Americans die in traffic accidents every year. We could prevent every single one of these deaths if we outlawed the use of motor vehicles. The reasons we don’t make this choice are numerous: from commerce to emergency vehicles, we need our cars and trucks. (We might not need all of them, but that’s another issue entirely.) We have, as a society, decided that we need to have motor vehicles, even if some people die in traffic accidents, and we’ll do what we can to reduce the number of auto accident fatalities as we continue to drive our cars and trucks. This is a reasonable approach to vaccination as well: we have a right to decide not to inject pathogens and toxic adjuvants into our bodies, and we should avail ourselves of that right while we work to reduce the number of deaths from disease. Pennsylvanians deserve this right, no matter what the racists and the lawyers tell us. We’ll just have to fight a little harder to get that right made into law.

Theresa O'Brien is a freelance technology analyst and a mom. She is disappointed in our legislators' grasp of civil liberties.

Comments

[PhillyMom]

Anyone catch the latest issue of Philadelphia Magazine (June 2009)? Dr. Offit ponders "Is it child abuse not to vaccinate a child against meningitis". Parents of children with autism are made out to sound like a bunch of nuts. Really bad article. No discussion of autism itself. Just - vaccines don't cause it. Period. One of the most biased and inaccurate articles that I have ever read. Sad.

[mom in PA]

We already have a philo exemption here in PA..its written into the religious exemption...a 2 for 1 so to speak. *LOL*

The reasons they cited are as flawed as the rest of the states who won't do one. What is even sadder is they should have corrected you by knowing the law that PA already has one. *ROFL*

[PhillyLisa]

It's not that I don't have any religious beliefs (I'm a practicing Catholic), it's just that my understanding of vaccine injury was always independent of my religion. It's becoming pretty evident that my daughter has mitochondrial dysfunction. We're still waiting for all the test results to come in, but even now I think that should be enough to get a medical exemption. Has anybody found a pediatrician brave enough to authorize such an exemption? Barring that, I think it's imperative that we get true philosophical exemptions. If everyone suddenly starts to claim religious exemptions, I can easily see the state stepping in. Children have at times been harmed in the name of religion, and it would not be too difficult for authorities to take children away from their "nutty" religious freak parents and forcibly vaccinate them.

[LJ Goes]

Theresa,

So well written. I believe the philosophical exemption starts to raise questions for the masses...how do you not "believe" in vaccines unless it's against the tennants of your faith? How could someone not believe in such a good thing that benefits ALL mankind?

Well, John Q Public, I would be more than happy to tell you...then an open dialogue starts and all of a sudden it's not just "those people" who don't take their kids to the doctor anymore. It's upper middle class, master degreed professionals alerting the rest of their own to the truth.

Plus, if you keep it to religious exemption there's always the stigma of those "whacko Jesus freaks", which the secular mainstream media can easily put into a tidy little category for the rest of the public to snicker at. I have heard it repeatedly at my daughter's preschool, "What is wrong with the stupid mothers who don't vaccinate? They are so SELF CENTERED! religious nutjobs..."

Nope, the legitimacy of philosophical exemption is just too darn real and smart. And too close to getting the truth to non believers who are willingly and joyfully spoon fed pharma science. PLEASE PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME HAVE TO THINK FOR MYSELF after you've been doing it for me all these years big pharma!!

Thanks for your wonderful piece...lj goes

[Libby]

Although PA doesn't have a formal philosophical exemption, their religious exemption is written in a way that basically allows for exemptions for philosophical reasons.

Here is a quote from the PA statute - an exemption is allowed "on the basis of a strong moral or ethical conviction similar to a religious belief."

I have also found PA to be one of the more lenient states for opting out of vaccines without difficulty or repercussions (except for some obnoxious doctors).

I know this is a much bigger issue than just PA and that a true philosophical exemption is the best way to ensure health freedom, but I did want to pass this information on about the PA law.

[Angie]

I live in PA, have two sons on the spectrum, and would be in support of a philosophical exemption as well, but until then I am more than willing to take the religious exemption. Although our practicing faith does not have a stance on this issue, I have come to face the fact that Autism and its various causes (with particular emphasis on vaccine injury) have become my religion. Webster’s defines religious as "relating to or manifesting to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity" The ultimate reality for our family is that sure as I KNOW my savior is Jesus Christ, I KNOW my sons were vaccine injured. I live this daily and have had to come to believe and learn these personal truths through reading, just as someone has to be taught scripture or the Torah or the Koran. I practice dietary guidelines the way that some religions do and I congregate with those seeking like information, guidance, and sometimes inspiration. There isn't much that I can think of that doesn't qualify us for a religious exemption. It will be a long road to a philosophical exemption in PA, and sadly I have heard people say that they felt that taking the religious exemption would be immoral. A church bishop one told me that omitting the truth is only a sin when the person that you are keeping out of the loop is entitled to know the information. I will do WHATEVER is necessary to keep my boys from being further injured, and I will not risk having that injury challenged by using a medical exemption. By the way, LOL we are Latino and took our kids to the doctors....maybe the other Latinos knew something we didn't!

[Jenny Webster]

Not to take anything away from what you are saying --but know our religious exemption is worded in a way that brings philosophical objection in:

"on religious grounds or on the basis of a strong moral or ethical conviction similar to a religious belief."

similar to a religious belief.
--that is opening a whole can of worms!
There is a LOT of info out there on what is a religious belief.. does it have to involve the belief of a god, etc etc etc.

I found this tidbit that I like (from: http://atheism.about.com/od/religionnonreligion/a/theism.htm) :

In the article on religion, it lists some characteristics of religions rather than simply declaring religion to be one thing or another. The more markers that are present in a belief system, the more “religious-like” it is; below is a slightly modified version of it:

* Belief in something sacred (for example, gods or other supernatural beings).
* A distinction between sacred and profane objects.
* Ritual acts focused on sacred objects.
* A moral code believed to have a sacred or supernatural basis.
* Characteristically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, sense of guilt, adoration), which tend to be aroused in the presence of sacred objects and during the practice of ritual.
* Prayer and other forms of communication with the supernatural.
* A world view, or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place of the individual therein. This picture contains some specification of an over-all purpose or point of the world and an indication of how the individual fits into it.
* A more or less total organization of one’s life based on the world view.
* A social group bound together by the above.

------
to me, a clean body is sacred! I can go on and on here, but you get the picture.
--and if we are not a social group bound together by that... well then, I don't know of one!

oh for about two years now I have promised to get my online church back online! I got ordained online! and I have wanted to set something up officially --where one can download the mission stmt of the church and a religious exemption. My life has been too hectic. I will try to get on this ASAP... those of you who know me... start nagging me!!!

[PhillyLisa]

My daughter's DAN doctor told us to just get a religious exemption when she's due for more vaccinations. He knows absolutely nothing about my religious views, but he obviously knows the game we parents have to play in order to protect our children from further damage. It angers me that I have to fake a religious belief I don't have when I should have the right to make decisions for my child without question. What's even more ridiculous is that she is required to have certain vaccinations even though she doesn't actually physically "attend" school. She's educated at home through a public cyber charter school, but the state still demands that she be vaccinated. What do they plan to do when suddenly parents in PA become very religious? Sincerity tests for all?

[Cindy Stolten]

Thank you Theresa for standing up for philosophical exemptions in our state. We do need many people from all of the districts to listen. Maybe, then they will educate themselves. In the last few months there have been two very contradictory articles from Gregory Poland, I would love to have him explain how he isn't contradictory. Here are some quotes from, Trends affecting the future of vaccine development and delivery: The role of demographics, regulatory science, the anti-vaccine movement, and vaccinomics.

"The reality is that people get vaccines for at least one of three reasons: fear, bandwagoning, or coercion (i.e. the vaccine is required). Bandwagoning deserves some elaboration. Streefland and colleagues have demonstrated that vaccine uptake is heavily dependent upon the sense that those around you, whom you respect, are also taking the vaccine themselves [21]. To the extent that concerns arise, controversy exists and media question safety,etc. this causes people to doubt and by default not receive vaccines. It is the job of HCWs, public health authorities and others to convince the public, using tools and information foreign to how we normally communicate, that recommended vaccines are safe and effective."

And..."As a result we attempt to deliver a series of vaccines to every living human on earth but it has been a “one size fits all” approach, or population-level public health approach. In view of the advances in individualized medicine, we need to ask the question “is such an approach informed by the new science”? For example, currently a 1-year-old child and a 40-year-old 120 kg construction worker get the same dose of MMR vaccine. Up to 40% of the adolescent population will respond after 1–2 doses of hepatitis B vaccine—does everyone really need 3 doses? Of HPV vaccine? Who will develop Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) after influenza vaccine? Or neurologic complications after vaccination or yellow fever vaccine? Such questions cannot currently be answered at the individual level, but with advances in genetic and individualized medicine, may soon be answered. For those readers interested in more detail, we have recently published comprehensive reviews of vaccinomics and personalized predictive vaccinology [22–24]. In our work,we have demonstrated that viral receptors (e.g. SLAM, CD46), innate receptors (e.g. TLRs), class I and II HLA genes, cytokine and cytokine receptor genes, signaling molecule genes and others have significant associations with variations in immune responses to viral vaccines [25–31]."

And..."Despite the best technology available and the development of the best vaccine imaginable, such vaccines are worthless if not used and trusted by the public and health care providers. Public health officials and vaccine developers alike would be wise to engage in a process where such temporal and secular trends are regularly monitored, understood, and addressed. We also believe that the new biology provides an unprecedented opportunity that will usher in a new golden era of “Predictive and Personalized Vaccinology”. Such an era might allow us to abandon a “one size and dose fits all vaccine approach”, predict whether to give a vaccine based on likelihood of response, predict the likelihood of a significant adverse event to a vaccine, predict the number of doses likely to be needed to induce a response to a vaccine (HBV and measles examples), and design/develop new vaccines. Such a concept would improve vaccine safety by allowing screening for adverse event susceptibility and improve confidence in vaccines and public health strategy."

I apologize for putting this quote at the bottom when it was in the beginning of the article. I don't take kindly to this kind of wit! "As opposed to parents and individuals with legitimate questions and concerns, the
radical anti-vaccine lobby have become “weapons of mass distraction” in trying to educate the public and legislators about the risks and benefits of vaccines.

Here is a recent article on Poland from ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFluNews/story?id=7680468

He carries quite a lot of weight on many review committees for major journals. Pity it doesn't mention any conflict of interest in this article? In an unrestricted journal supplement for the The American Journal of Medicine from last year, (July 2008) he did just that.

http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(08)00575-5/fulltext
Gregory A. Poland, MD, provided consulting advice and/or performed clinical research trials for Novavax, Merck & Co., Protein Science, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis Vaccines, CSL Limited, PowderMed, and Avianax.

I just cannot understand why our legislators won't listen. My two sons had vaccine injuries. My sister's children had vaccine injuries, and, still it is not allowable on the contraindications list for vaccine injury in the immediate family. Are we really “weapons of mass distraction”, or, just the future of the personalized medicine business?

Thank you Age of Autism for giving us a venue!

[Benedetta Stilwell]

I signed a religous waver twice; once in Michigan and once in KY. Neither time was I allowed to sign the real reason I refused, it might make him ILL. They are playing the game that all people antivaccine are these wild eye religous nuts. Killing two birds with one stone, put down religion and put down people that have been harmed by vaccine.

[John Gilmore]

One challenge you have in Pennsylvania is that along with New Jersey and Maryland it is home to more drug and vaccine companies and support insdtitutions like the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (home of Offit)than any other state.

You presented your representative with your problem. If ten parents from his district do the same thing and keep up the pressure then he has a political problem. He will be thinking that all of you have families, spouses, friends and like-minded people who haven't called him but vote. He wants to get re-elected, you don't do that by ignoring groups, especially organized groups of people, from his district.

Keep going back to him, and bring others. We are in a marathon not a sprint so be prepared to keep at it if you want results.

[Gatogorra]

As far as resistance to disease, how interesting that the vast majority of people getting swine flu, for instance, are under age 25-- not the over-fifty group that were assumed to be as susceptible as infants. Put this together with the Dartmouth study on arsenic burden and H1N1 suspectibility that Kent Heckenlively posted and doesn't it seem as if our most hypervaccinated and mercurialized demographics are the most at risk?

I read an editorial in "The Week" magazine (some new industry-embedded mag we get for free as they try to hook us into subscription) in which the 50-something editor surmised that a "lifetime" of building immunity in the older generations has a protective effect. This editor, whom I assume is pro-vax-everything because of the magazine's obvious slant in that direction, inadvertantly points out that our younger gens have never been allowed to build that immunity.

That chickenpox lawsuit threat that the official brought up is empty. The plaintiff would have to prove their child had no contact with anyone with shingles. With the shingles rate skyrocketing among Varicella-vaccinated children and young adults, it's impossible to pinpoint a single "carrier".

[Bob Moffitt]

"Finally, we have the oft-repeated slogan of “Diseases will come back!”

Public health officials have been very effective in warnng legislators that "preventable diseases" may "re-emerge" should vaccinates rates continue to fall...and...this scare-mongering has paralyzed legislators into doing absolutely nothing to change the status quo.

Unfortunately, this generation of children has experienced the "emergence" of chronic autoimmune disorders...that has caused the CDC...NOT PARENTS....to report that 1 in every 6 American child suffers some type of early childhood development problem, such as, autism, allergies, asthma, juvenile type 1 diabetes, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, ADD, ADHD, etc.

The same public health officials who worry over the "re-emergence" of measles, chickenpox or mumps....cannot explain what is "causing" the "emergence" of chronic autoimmune diseases in, without doubt...the most heavily vaccinated generation in our nation's history.

Somehow, someway, legislators must understand they have a responsibility to require public health officials stop looking in the rear view mirror...worrying over the re-emergence of diseases that, for the most part....have treatments and expectations of cure....while the emerging chronic "life-long" autoimmune diseases that have replaced them..remain for the most part without effective treatment or expectations of cure.

Legislators must be reminded that today's parents are sending their children to school each day, knowing their autistic child cannot express his most basic wants and needs..or..their child may suffer a "life-threatening" diabetic or allergic attack. Until public health officials can offer the scientific evidence that vaccines are not "causing" these autoimmune diseases...parents deserve their right of "informed consent" to protect their child by exercising a "philosophical exemption".