vaccine exemption

Father sues New York to obtain religious vaccination exemption for son

According to the New York Daily News, a Staten Island father has sued the City and State of New York to block his four year old son from being tossed out of school because their parents refuse to vaccinate him:

A Staten Island father is suing the city and the state after his 4-year-old son was booted from pre-K class because of the parents’ objection to vaccines.

The father, identified only as P.R. in the lawsuit over the contentious issue, is a Catholic who had sought a religious exemption to the state law requiring that every child attending a public, private or parochial school must be immunized from 11 communicable diseases.

His son was removed from his public school classroom on Dec. 23 after city Department of Education officials rejected the father’s appeal of an earlier decision. The city concluded the paperwork he submitted “does not substantiate … that you hold genuine and sincere religious beliefs which are contrary to immunization,” according to the suit.

Last month, the city added a requirement that children under 5 who attend preschool or day care must get flu shots.

The boys’ parents filed an affidavit Monday stating they believe that “immunization demonstrates a great lack of faith in the gift of health and the promise of protection that we are given at birth and through baptism we put our child in the hands of the Lord … God wants us to put our faith for disease prevention in him exclusively.Read More »Father sues New York to obtain religious vaccination exemption for son

Court decides parent’s refusal to vaccinate kids is not “free exercise of religion”

©friendlyatheist.com, 2012

For New Year’s Day, I’m republishing the top 10 articles I wrote in 2013. Well, actually top 9, plus 1 from 2012 that just keeps going.

#9. This article was published on 13 May 2013, and has had over 5000 views. A Federal court decided that refusing to vaccinate one’s children is not a constitutionally protected right covered by the First Amendment.

The US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio has ruled (pdf) that a parent’s refusal to vaccinate her children against diseases is not a “free exercise” of religion, and is tantamount to neglect.

In April 2010, the Tuscarawas County (Ohio) Jobs and Family Services (TCJFS) took custody of the children of Charity and Brock Schenker as a result of a domestic violence matter between the parents. TCJFS determined that the children were “neglected and dependent” and worked out case plans for the parents which included psychiatric evaluations, drug testing and supervised visitation of their children. When TCJFS asked about the children’s immunizations, according to Secular News Daily, “Mrs. Schenker claimed she had religious objections to immunizations. The court informed her that the immunizations would be ordered.”

As a result of recommendations of court-ordered psychiatric evaluations and positive random drug tests, Mrs. Schenker (who subsequently divorced her husband) visitations were terminated, and TCJFS filed a motion for permanent custody of her children in August 2011. According to the Secular News Daily, “the county laid out as evidence a number of instances in which Schenker did not comply with orders, refused home inspections, and more. But Schenker sued with eight claims, including conspiracy claims and, most significantly, claims that her First Amendment right to free expression of religion was violated.”Read More »Court decides parent’s refusal to vaccinate kids is not “free exercise of religion”

Vaccine exemptions contribute to outbreaks of preventable diseases

Once again, a new study is published in a peer reviewed journal that shows that exemptions to proper and recommended levels of vaccination for children before entering public school are harming the general population. I’ve talked about the issue of exemptions causing outbreaks or epidemics previously in New York, Washington, and other places.

Over the past few years, there have been several outbreaks of whooping cough (Bordetella pertussis), including one that reached over 9000 individuals in California in 2010, considered one of the worst pertussis outbreaks in the USA during the past several decades.

The original DTP vaccine (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) became available in the USA in 1948 and was critical to dropping the number of cases of whooping cough from 260,000 in 1934 to less than a few thousand per year in the 1990′s. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends (pdf) that children should get 5 doses of DTaP (the replacement for the original DTP vaccine), one dose at each of the following ages: 2, 4, 6, and 15-18 months and 4-6 years. Those children who are not completely vaccinated according to these ACIP recommendations for pertussis are considered to be “undervaccinated.”

Whooping cough is a serious disease that has significant complications for children:

1 in 4 (23%) get pneumonia (lung infection)
1 or 2 in 100 (1.6%) will have convulsions (violent, uncontrolled shaking)
Two thirds (67%) will have apnea (slowed or stopped breathing)
1 in 300 (0.4%) will have encephalopathy (disease of the brain)
1 or 2 in 100 (1.6%) will die. In 2012, pertussis killed 18 infants in the USA.

Even in adults, there are substantial complications from whooping cough, such as broken ribs from coughing, that can have a significant impact on the overall health.Read More »Vaccine exemptions contribute to outbreaks of preventable diseases

Despite activities of vaccine refusers, nearly all kids immunized

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that most kindergartners in the United States received their recommended vaccines for measles and other diseases during the 2012-2013 school year. However, the CDC also mentioned concern about unvaccinated clusters of children that are at risk from vaccine preventable diseases, and may pose a health risk to the community at large.

Overall, 48 states and DC (as well as 8 US jurisdictions, including Guam, Puerto Rico and other territories) reported 2012-13 school vaccination coverage. Approximately 94.5% of kindergartners had received their complete MMR vaccinations, an insignificant drop from the 2011-12 level of 94.8%. DTaP coverage was 95.1%, above Healthy People 2020 target of 95%. For the varicella vaccine, 93.8% of American kindergartners received both necessary doses.

Easy vaccine exemption rules lead to lower vaccination rates–shocking

Recently, there have been a few peer-reviewed articles published analyzing the effects of non-medical vaccines exemptions. There are usually two types of non-medical exemptions, philosophical, where the parents just don’t like vaccines because they’ve bought into the pseudoscience of vaccine denialism, or religious, where they use the cover of fake religions (only one tiny mainstream religion is opposed to vaccinations) to deny the huge health benefits of vaccinating their children. I reviewed one article that described that as a result of these exemptions, rates have increased quickly in whooping cough infections, is non-trivial disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pertussis (whooping cough) can cause serious illness in infants, children and adults. The disease usually starts with cold-like symptoms and maybe a mild cough or fever. After 1 to 2 weeks, severe coughing can begin. Unlike the common cold, pertussis can become a series of coughing fits that continues for weeks. In infants, the cough can be minimal or not even there. Infants may have a symptom known as “apnea.” Apnea is a pause in the child’s breathing pattern. Pertussis is most dangerous for babies. More than half of infants younger than 1 year of age who get the disease must be hospitalized. Approximately 1-2% of infants who are hospitalized from pertussis will die.

Inconvenience (that is, the parents can’t be bothered to get their children immunized), bogus religious beliefs, and increased concerns, based on little actual evidence, about the risks of vaccination, are leading more US parents to refuse to vaccinate their children. A recent article, which investigated the rates of vaccination by state (while analyzing the ease of obtaining non-medical exemptions), showed that parents are increasingly able to refuse vaccination in states that have relatively simple procedures for immunization exemption. Some states, fearing a public health crisis, have responded by putting in place more burdensome procedures for parents of school-aged children to opt-out.Read More »Easy vaccine exemption rules lead to lower vaccination rates–shocking

West Virginia occasionally gets it right

West Virginia isn’t frequently lumped together with the more progressive states in the country. But sometimes, there are surprises.

I admit that I keep up with all kinds of news articles dealing with vaccines and vaccinations; especially since the new health care reform tax credit was enacted. I read about new vaccines in development. I read about new vaccine technologies that might prevent autoimmune diseases, like Type 1 diabetes. And I read articles about vaccinations from community newspapers, like this story in a local West Virginia newspaper, where I’m reminded of how advanced West Virginia is, at least with respect to vaccines:

Beginning last year, and continuing every year after, older students entering the seventh and twelfth grade will have shot requirements that must be met before the start of the school year.

Seventh and twelfth grade students will not be allowed to attend school this fall without proof of these immunizations. It is important that once you receive the vaccines and the providers update your immunization record, that the school nurse is sent a copy of the vaccines for their records.

The Mason County Health Department recently sent out a reminder that seventh grade students must show proof of a booster dose of Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis) vaccine and one dose of meningococcal/meningitis vaccine. Twelfth grade students also must show proof of a dose of Tdap (ususally obtained at age 11-12 years) plus at least one dose of meningococcal/meningitis vaccine after the age of 16 years. If the student received a meningococcal vaccine prior to the age of 16, a second meningococcal vaccine will be required for the twelfth grade.Read More »West Virginia occasionally gets it right

Federal Court says NO to a religious exemption to vaccination

Dina Check, a practicing Roman Catholic who vehemently opposes immunization, sought a temporary injunction in February 2013 to allow her daughter to return to PS 35, a New York City school in Sunnyside, Staten Island. The first-grader was barred from coming to school by the school’s and district’s administrators in February for failure to be vaccinated. She believed her religion states that the body is a temple, and contends injecting vaccines into it “would defile God’s creation of the immune system … [and] demonstrate a lack of faith in God, which would anger God and therefore be sacrilegious.”

Setting aside this ridiculous belief, since natural selection was the mechanism that caused the evolution of the immune system in all animals, the Catholic Church specifically and clearly supports the use of vaccines, even those that are manufactured with fetal cell lines. Once again, another vaccine denier, one who has no clue on how vaccines work and how they help make the immune system be prepared for deadly pathogens, decided to invent her own theology to avoid having her child protected against deadly diseases.Read More »Federal Court says NO to a religious exemption to vaccination

New Mexico removes fake religious objections from vaccine exemptions

by Michael Simpson
2019-08-24
93 Comments
Andrew Wakefield, Religion, Skepticism, Vaccines

As I discussed previously, the pendulum is swinging against the so-called “philosophical exemption” against vaccination, which allows parents to not vaccinate their children based on the “just because I don’t want to” principle. They don’t even have to support their exemption with a discussion with a healthcare worker who might explain the risks of their decision.

According to an article in the Las Cruces Sun-News, New Mexico state law says that residents can exempt their children from immunization for two reasons: 1) medical issues that might make the vaccination unsafe (often called medical exemptions) or 2) vaccinations conflict with the family’s religious beliefs (religious exemptions). Apparently, according to the article, “the New Mexico Department of Health wants to keep it that way.”Read More »New Mexico removes fake religious objections from vaccine exemptions

Court says that fake religious vaccine exemptions are not protected by the First Amendment

In April, 2010, a Federal District Court in New York denied a mother’s bid for a religious exemption to New York state’s mandatory vaccination rules. According to the article in the New York Law Journal, “Martina Caviezel, a self-proclaimed pantheist, sought a preliminary injunction allowing her to enroll her 4-year-old daughter in a Great Neck, N.Y., pre-kindergarten without getting the shots the state says the child needs. Caviezel relied on Public Health Law §2164(9), which exempts children from the requirement whose parents or guardians “hold genuine and sincere religious beliefs which are contrary” to vaccination.”

Around September 2009, Caviezel submitted the New York exemption form to the school requesting that her youngest child be exempt from the requirement that children be vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella and other diseases. The school principal told her that her request would likely be denied. Caviezel declined to meet with school superintendent to further discuss the exemption. She then sued after her request was denied, alleging civil rights violations.Read More »Court says that fake religious vaccine exemptions are not protected by the First Amendment

Religious exemptions to vaccines elevates whooping cough rates

©Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012

According to a new study published in Pediatrics, the number of New York state parents who skipped at least one required vaccine for religious reasons has increased over the past decade. And New York counties that had this increase in religious exemptions to vaccinations also had more whooping cough (Bordetella pertussis, or simply pertussis) cases, even among children that had been fully vaccinated.

For this study, the researchers tracked data from the New York State Department of Health on both religious exemptions and new whooping cough cases. Children were reported as having a religious exemption if they had been allowed to skip at least one required vaccine for non-medical reasons.

The key results from the study were:

The overall state annual mean rate of religious exemptions increased significantly from 0.23 % in 2000 to 0.45% in 2011, almost doubling the rate over the decade.
The prevalence of religious exemptions varied greatly among counties with no obvious trends, although all of the counties around New York City showed large increases in religious exemptions.
Counties with mean religious exemption rates of >1% reported a higher incidence of pertussis. For counties with higher exemption rates, the rate of pertussis was 33 per 100,000 compared to counties with lower exemption rates, which had a pertussis infection rate of 20 per 100,000. The researchers determined that this difference was statistically significant.
In addition, the risk of pertussis among vaccinated children living in counties with high exemption rate increased with increase of exemption rate among exempted children, also statistically significant.

The increase in whooping cough rates is particularly troubling since unvaccinated children not only put themselves at risk, but also those who have been vaccinated (as result of the lower effectiveness of the currently available pertussis vaccine). Also, as the exemption rate increases and there is a lower than expected effectiveness of the vaccine, the herd immunity becomes weaker.Read More »Religious exemptions to vaccines elevates whooping cough rates