Update on the 2009 Vaccine Story

When AB 2109 became a law, it stated that parents had to wait until the June before January 2014 before they could start getting a doctor's signature in order to opt out of vaccines.  My daughter and I went back to the doctor she had seen in order to get into kindergarten.  The doctor was very nice.  He came out to the waiting room and showed me in my daughter's still very thin file where I had signed off that he'd given me a chat on vaccines.  Therefore, all we had to do was to write the present date and both of us signed it.  I used that paper in order for my daughter to remain in public school.  It cost me nothing.  Nice.

"By the way," he said to me as we were fixing to leave.  "We have a new policy here now where we no longer see new patients who are not vaccinated.  Your daughter is a continuing patient, so we won't turn her away.  But, if she ever comes here when ill, please enter through the back door."

(Awe.  He doesn't want them making her sick.  He sees her as unprotected.  How thoughtful!)

"I don't want her making my patients sick."

!!!!!!

????

If they are vaccinated, then why does he fear her making them sick?  Is this an admission that vaccines don't really protect his patients from illnesses?

By the way, his talk to me all those years ago about vaccines was a simple ploy to make me fearful so I'd vaccinate her.  He never informed me about what vaccines supposedly do, what the ingredients supposedly are, or any other information that the state of California might think is helpful.

Please Help to Stop AB 2109

 Dr. Pan has amended his AB2109 brain-child.  He has included nurses in his short list of who will be able to sign a vaccination waiver allowing a child to be exempt from having vaccines.  I cannot even imagine asking a school nurse to sign my vaccination waiver.  Dr. Pan obviously has had no experience with schools.  For one thing, he is unaware of the constant phone calls that go out stating that our children will not be allowed in school without their shots.  A friend told me she had to escort a kid to the nurse on the first day of school because he did not have his Tdap.  Schools do not inform parents that they can sign a waiver right now and opt out of shots.  Instead, they make it seem mandatory already.  What makes Dr. Pan think a nurse would gladly sign the paper when they are calling home saying, "Sorry.  Your child is not allowed in school until you show me proof that he had his shots."? 

When my daughter started kindergarten, her school staff claimed they could not find the present waiver.  What kind of tricks and lies will occur if waiver-signing is placed in the nurse's hands?  Dr. Pan, how about allowing licensed health care practitioners for the state of California sign them.  Acupuncturists should be included.  You know why we are not included in the amendment?  Because many of us would not only sign it for free, we would advertise that shots are not REALLY mandatory if you know how to play the game. 

It is positive for us that he feels AB 2109 will not pass without an amendment.  Let us keep the pressure on.  The following is a call for help from Dawn Richardson, the director of the Advocacy Portal.  Please call the Assembly members as Ms. Richardson recommends.  Thank-you.

8/22/2012 UPDATE
Don’t Be Fooled by Dr. Pan’s Amendment Adding School Nurses
California Bill to Restrict Vaccine Exemptions ReScheduled for Senate 3^rd Reading Today

ACTION: Contact Senators NOW to OPPOSE AB2109 and Tell Your Senator Dr. Pan’s School Nurse Amendment DOES NOT FIX THIS!

Dear California NVIC Advocacy Team Members,

AB2109, was amended by Dr. Pan to add school nurses to the short restricted list of providers allowed to sign off on the exemption form.  This does not address the problems with this bill and ignores the fact that with over 10,000 schools in California, less than one out of four (2,474) have school nurses. 

This new version is scheduled to be voted on by the California Senate today. 

Even if you have already contacted your senator before, we need your calls and faxes AGAIN now asking  that they vote NO on AB2109

Senator Contact Information can be obtained by clicking on http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html and entering your zip code to lookup who your senator is and then finding their contact information on http://senate.ca.gov/senators or you can log into the NVIC Advocacy Portal at http://NVICAdvocacy.org, select your California State Team Page,  and click on your senator’s name displayed on the right side.

Ask Your Senator to Vote NO on AB2109 because

·         There is no language in AB2109 compelling a provider to sign the form and most won’t based on their current behavior of already denying care to families using vaccine exemptions.

·         Too many medical offices already deny medical care, harass and bully, and even dismiss patients for making informed and educated vaccination decisions.  It is extremely difficult if not impossible for many families to find medical providers who will even see their children if they are electing to delay or decline a vaccine. 

·         Dr. Pan’s recent amendment adding school nurses DOES NOT fix the access problem that concerned parents and the Senate Health Committee.  There are approximately 10,000 public schools in California and there are only 2,474 school nurses.  School nurses don’t have time to have lengthy conversations about vaccines.  Three out of four schools don’t have a school nurse. Also, what about day care, private schools, pre-school, and home schools?  In committee, Dr. Pan opposed including pharmacists who give vaccines - there are over 300,000 in California  - because this is not about vaccine education, it is about how to remove access to the exemption by only including who is more likely to refuse to sign the form.   

·        Dr. Pan has misled the legislature by giving false information about Washington State’s new exemption law. In testimony he has claimed a hotline set up to take complaints about a provider required signature has not received many calls.  That is because that hotline does not exist according the Washington Department of Health. In a personal email note to NVIC dated June 28^th, 2012, the Washington Department of Health Immunization Department stated, “I’m not aware of an 1-800 number to call in to report providers not willing to sign an exemption. As far as I know there is no number to do this.”  Also, Washington has a religious exemption that DOES NOT require a doctor signature, and California Law DOES NOT have a religious exemption at all.

Also, if this bill passes it will go back to the Assembly and that could happen today. PLEASE CALL AND FAX YOUR ASSEMBLY MEMBER after you’ve contacted your Senator stressing that Dr. Pan’s school nurse amendment does not fix the problems with this bill and they NEED TO VOTE NO ON AB2109.  You can look up your Assembly member, obtain their contact information and determine who they are with your address at http://assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers.  Or you can just log into the NVIC Advocacy Portal at http://NVICAdvocacy.org and your legislators are displayed automatically on the California State Team Page for our members.

Please let us know what you learn from your calls and faxes by sending a quick email to myself Dawn Richardson and our California State directors Dawn Winkler and Michelle Gutierrez by writing to CADirector@NVICAdvocacy.org.

Sincerely,

Dawn Richardson, Director of Advocacy
National Vaccine Information Center
http://NVIC.org and http://NVICAdvocacy.org
Dawn@NVICAdvocacy.org

Vaccine Hoax

 After years of becoming breathless explaining about vaccinations and the scams involved with them, it's so nice when I can just refer you to a link.  The lies about Gardasil and the laws in place in order to promote Gardasil are overwhelming the public.  Please use this link and listen to Mike Adams.  After that, continue your research before you ever allow a whited coated god or anyone to put that poison into your system, or to that of your child.

http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=4D703FEAA094BED0DB02BEDC4507765C

Also, see my article, "Protect Our Children", here in the November, 2011 section for ideas on how to protect your child when the law allows children to make medical decisions for themselves.  This knowledge is important, because school nurses can pull your child from class, ask if he or she wants the Gardasil shot, and can give it if the child says, "I don't know.  I guess so."  Should he or she hesitate, or say, "No way," the nurse may try to bully them into it saying that the child's parents wouldn't mind, and other such manipulations.

When a doctor suggests a vaccination, please research it thoroughly before you consent.  If you should decide to allow it, please have just one vaccination at a time.  It's easier to report the vaccination in question when injury or death has occurred if you know exactly which one it is.

Comments on Richard Pan’s Presentation of AB 2109

For those of you who are new to the subject, California Assembly Member Richard Pan introduced AB 2109, which will require California parents to visit an MD to have them sign the parent’s exemption waiver as well as the parent.  AB 2109 passed the Assembly and went to the Senate.  If it passed there, then our California governor just has to sign it, and it will be legislation that we have to follow.  For many parents, that will mean home schooling rather than paying money to visit an MD when the family normally doesn’t visit an MD.  What Pan doesn’t mention is that many pediatricians are coerced to not sign medical exemptions for kids to not be vaccinated.  My daughter was even turned away from an MD because she is unvaccinated.  (I had found the female MD's father and had him as my daughter’s official MD even though we did not go to Western Medicine.  He died.  Then my daughter needed to get an MD’s ok in order to attend public school and the MD’s daughter, who took over his practice, refused to see us.)  How easy will it be to get MD’s to sign something which is against their beliefs or pay-offs even though they all seem enthusiastic at the end of this video at the link below?  We shall see.

Just so you know, when Pan says that we can exempt our children from vaccinations under AB 2109, we already can do that without AB 2109.  Also, it is built into the law that we cannot get an MD to sign our exemption until six months before this law takes effect in January, 2014.  That means if I have found a co-operative MD willing to sign it right now, I cannot do it yet.  That gives Big Pharma and the AMA a whole year to implement bullying techniques on the MD’s to assure co-operation that they will not sign exemptions. 

Pan says that the MD’s can inform parents about the importance of vaccinations and the up to date research on them.  I can guarantee you they will not give you the numbers on how many kids have died of Gardasil, for example, or Atypical Measles, which is worse than Measles and only occurs in vaccinated people.  If Pan has a list of MD’s who will sign the exemption, then why can’t things just stay the way they are?  Why do we need to fork out cash to get someone to sign something that I can sign myself right now?  It just sounds fishy, doesn’t it?  Is Pan truthful?  Will it really be that easy?  My personal experience with MD’s begs to differ.

Pan assures us that Naturopathic doctors UNDER SUPERVISION can sign an exemption.  Under an MD’s supervision?  Geesh!  Some of us do not want to visit a health care practitioner who is under the watchful eye of an MD.

A doctor in the video of the first link below says vaccines are safe.  Vaccines are not safe.  I know many people whose health has been impaired by vaccines.  We wouldn’t have the vaers.hhs.gov/ (the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) or hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/ (the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program) if vaccines were safe. 

I do not know how these doctors can say AB 2109 is not infringing on my right not to vaccinate.  If I am being forced to do anything other than what I already do, which is to sign a waiver, then AB 2109 IS infringing on my rights.

 It sounds like doctors want to have power over parents and to have a captive audience.  Parents who do vaccinate are usually the ones who have done no research.  Not the other way around.   Back in about 1987, I started researching the subject without any emotions.  I was far from having children.  I just wanted to know what I would be putting into my child and had to be convinced that it was worth it.  (Thank goodness I did this before having a vaccine injured child as is often the case with parents not for vaccines.)  Most MD’s and parents who vaccinate probably have not studied vaccinations as extensively as parents who have chosen to avoid them.   MD’s would just try fear tactics as the ones in my experience have.  You have to be educated so you can recognize what is happening as the MD’s give you the pro-vaccine talk.

I do not understand how Ms. Castro can think my decision to not vaccinate can harm her kids if her kid’s vaccines are so effective.  I wonder if her special needs child was always that way, or just since all the injections since birth.  Of course she doesn’t think AB 2109 doesn’t deprive her of making health care decisions for her child.  She would never exercise her right to sign a parent belief’s exemption and not vaccinate.  It only deprives us, those who have or will sign it.  By the way, Ms. Castro, I have often seen flyers informing us parents and school staff that our children and we have been exposed to a disease in the school.  I’ve logged in about a lifetime of being associated with schools and have never seen one closed down due to disease.  How is the bill crucial to the safety of the community any more than now?  I still will not vaccinate my daughter.  She still could attend school with your children.

Katherine, if parents supposedly can still sign a waiver after the talk, then how is the community protected any more than if I sign the waiver without the talk?

Here is the link to just one video in support of AB 2109.  Please research this topic and others about California and its vaccination legislations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bCRurhUtvs

This one is in opposition to AB 2109.  One quote is “Vaccines are the foundation of the pediatric industry.  Without vaccines, they lose millions in office visits.” Another is “They lose the opportunity to inculcate the idea of a lifetime of dependency on organized medicine.”  It is very good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HWnK--SlXs&NR=1&feature=endscreen

Here is another.  “My health is too important to leave in the hands of a doctor.”  Out of the mouths of babes!  “I’m an educated parent.” “I don’t believe that these pediatricians are going to sign the forms.”  I agree.  Notice how Pan doesn’t answer the question unless he is implying we have to go from doctor to doctor until we find one who will sign the form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIaaHZn7kyg&NR=1&feature=endscreen

Friends Shouldn’t Let Friends Drive Their Lives

I wanted to let you know about an experience I had many years ago.  I was rising in love with a man named A. R., a man with whom I worked.  We'd get together for meals, go miniature golfing and do other fun activities together, and he'd even take me to visit the homes of various relatives.  One evening after dinner, I asked him if he’d ever take me on a date.  He looked at me as if I’d just asked him to eat a live worm!  Surprised by his reaction, I explained that because we spent so much time together, I felt like I was dating him already.  I explained that I also felt I was deterring other men from asking me out because it energetically as well as physically looked as if something was going on between us.  (Between you and me, at one point I had wondered if he was gay and I was the girl on the arm to convince those around us that he was straight.  Except for one thing, I was never on his arm.  He never even tried to hold my hand!)  Well, he finally scoffed and said, “I really like you a lot, but you’re white.”  I was so confused.  What does my skin color have to do with anything?  So what if he's Mexican and I'm not.  He explained that his family was already giving him a hard time because he had a white friend who was a girl, yet alone if I was his girlfriend.  He explained that he needed a good “Hispanic-Catholic girl who’ll meet with my friend’s and family’s approval."

Boy, you think you know someone when you’ve spent so much time with them.  I thought people who were prejudiced simply wouldn’t associate with a person of that particular color, culture, or heritage.  I had no idea people could have levels where they could be a friend in a limited way, but, ultimately, you weren't good enough in their eyes.  Wow, I figured I must’ve hurt somebody in a similar fashion in a past life and now the same kind of energy must be coming back to me.  But, I couldn’t believe that in the 1990’s there would still be humans out there who’d be willing to offer up this kind of karma.  Don’t people know about community yet?  Humans need to stand together, or we’ll fall. 

I took a deep breath knowing exactly how I felt.  If I wasn’t safe to be with this hater due to my packaging, how was there even a friendship to salvage?  Still, I kicked the feelings I had for him out of my cells, which was a process I could do, and we continued on as working-friends without seeing each other outside of work.  One day, he left that job-site, and we didn’t keep in touch.

A few years later, we found ourselves at a mutual friend’s retirement party.  He sat with me recounting all the wonderful things I’d done.  He finally said, “I don’t know why I can’t find a girl like you.”  I said, “That’s easy.  You’re not going to find someone like me in the outside package you want unless she’s completely Americanized and going to LRT meetings rather than to church.”  I stopped to let him think about that, and I turned to my own thoughts.  Fancy giving friends and family authority over your life!  He missed out on all the gifts we could have had for each other, and, most of all, he missed out on the very real possibility of interest just fading away naturally rather than stamping out a fire because it wouldn’t meet with approval.  What’s life for his future wife going to be like when it’s his friends and family members to whom she’ll really be married?  He is a shell.  They’re the ones dictating how things are to be run in his life.   Boy, was I pleased I found out when I did that I wasn’t good enough for him and that he wasn’t man enough for me.

Still, I couldn’t resist.  I leaned in toward him and said, “I’m single.  If you think I’m so wonderful, we could still go on a date.”  It was possible that in years of searching for a girl like me that he could’ve concluded that maybe we should go on a date, right?  He scoffed again, just like the first time.  “You’re still white.”

Happiness is something only you can embrace.  Community with fellow humans is something only we can create.  Just because an old, longstanding belief and practice was acceptable for our ancestors, it isn’t any reason for us to keep moving it forward into tomorrow.   Friends who insist on driving your life and making you wrong for following your heart and curiosity need to be examined themselves.  Is this person really being a friend?  Is the one you’re throwing away the true friend?  I think about A. R.  He may be married to the right package right now, but how happy is he when the qualities he so loved about me aren’t to be found in his community?  Marriage, as in all relationships, has its smooth sailing and its rough seas.  I can’t even imagine what that must be like when you marry who your friends think is acceptable and you sacrifice the one who interests you.

Just think about some of the complicated issues of our time.  Nano-particulates are raining down on us, intending to change us to a more robotic type of human.  GMO’s are altering our DNA.  Vaccinations are sacrificing our health and lives.  Governments are basically establishing slavery with some of their legislation.  Wouldn't it be nicer to face the struggles of life with the one you love?  Would you rather pass love up because your friend or relative said you should do so?  Friends shouldn't let friends drive their lives.  

AB2109

					California Pediatrician Legislator Pushing Bill to Make Parents Pay For a Dr. Appointment to TRY to Obtain a Personal Belief Exemption Contact California Legislators NOW to Oppose AB2109 Dear California NVIC Advocacy Team Members, Your rights to make informed independent vaccination choices for your family are under attack by forced vaccination proponents in California who want to profit from restricting your independent access to a personal belief exemption to mandatory vaccination. We need your timely help to contact California legislators to oppose Assembly Bill 2109. AB2109, introduced by Assembly Member Richard Pan, who himself is a pediatrician, would impose these additional costly and time consuming burdens on parents wanting to use a personal belief exemption to: 1) pay for an expensive appointment at a medical doctor’s office to be given vaccine risk and benefit information that is already available online for free; and 2) jump through the bureaucratic hoops of obtaining yet additional new forms provided by the Department of Public Health which state that the health care practitioner has provided risk and benefit information to the parent; and 3) find a health care provider actually willing to take the appointment and then sign the new forms within 6th months of starting school for the exemption to be valid. This raises many questions legislators need to answer including: · How will the state pay for all these extra required office visits for families on public assistance and for the kids of state employees who have their health coverage provided by the state? · What happens to a parent who can’t find a provider willing to make these types of appointments and then sign the form? · What will stop doctors from using this law to deny access to philosophical exemptions? It is already hard enough for families to find providers who are willing to just treat children in their practice at all when they deviate from the required vaccination schedule. The bill has been referred to the Assembly Committee on Health. Text of the bill can be found here: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_2101-2150/ab_2109_bill_20120223_introduced.html. We will let you know as soon as we know the hearing date. In the meantime, we need you to take the following actions to help oppose this bill: 1) Contact members of the Assembly Committee on Health and ask them to oppose AB 2109 (suggested phone call outline below). Assembly Member Phone and Fax Link to Contact Form William Monning (D) - Chair Tel: (916) 319-2027 Fax: (916) 319-2127 Contact Assembly Member William W. Monning Dan Logue (R) - Vice Chair (P) 916-319-2003 (F) 916-319-2103 Contact Assemblyman Dan Logue Tom Ammiano (D) Tel: (916) 319-2013 Fax: (916) 319-2113 Contact Assembly Member Tom Ammiano Toni Atkins (D) Tel: (916) 319-2076 Fax: (916) 319-2176 Contact Assembly Member Toni Atkins Susan Bonilla (D) Tel: (916) 319-2011 Fax: (916) 319-2111 Contact Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla Mike Eng (D) Tel: (916) 319-2049 Fax: (916) 319-2149 Contact Assembly Member Mike Eng Martin Garrick (R) (P) 916-319-2074 (F) 916-319-2174 Contact Assemblyman Martin Garrick Richard .S Gordon (D) Tel: (916) 319-2021 Fax: (916) 319-2121 Contact Assemblyman Richard S. Gordon Mary Hayashi (D) Tel: (916) 319-2018 Fax: (916) 319-2118 Contact Assembly Member Mary Hayashi Roger Hernandez (D) Tel: (916) 319-2057 Fax: (916) 319-2157 Contact Assembly Assistant Majority Whip Roger Hernández Bonnie Lowenthal (D) Tel: (916) 319-2054 Fax: (916) 319-2154 Contact Assembly Member Bonnie Lowenthal Allan R. Mansoor (R) (P) (916) 319-2068 (F) (916) 319-2168 Contact Assemblyman Allan R. Mansoor Holly J. Mitchell (D) Tel: (916) 319-2047 Fax: (916) 319-2147 Contact Assembly Member Holly J. Mitchell Brian Nestande (R) (P) 916-319-2064 (F) 916-319-2164 Contact Assembly Member Brian Nestande Richard Pan (D) – sponsor Tel: (916) 452-0505 Fax: (916) 452-5525 Contact Assembly Member Richard Pan V. Manuel Perez (D) Tel: (916) 319-2080 Fax: (916) 319-2180 Contact Assembly Member V. Manuel Peréz Jim Silva (R) (P) 916-319-2067 (F) 916-319-2167 Contact Assembly Member Jim Silva Cameron Smyth (R) (P) 916-319-2038 (F) 916-319-2138 Contact Assembly Member Cameron Smyth Das Williams Tel: (916) 319-2035 Fax: (916) 319-2135 Contact Assembly Member Das Williams Additional contact information for district offices is available by clicking on the assembly members name here - http://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/membersstaff Emails are listed as assemblymember.lastname@assembly.ca.gov , however most assembly members prefer to be contacted via the online contact form linked in the table above. 2) Contact your state senator and state assembly member and ask them to oppose AB2109. If you log in to the NVIC Advocacy Portal at http://NVICAdvocacy.org and view this alert on the California state page, we will automatically lookup who your legislators are and display them to the right of this alert. You can click on their names to open up their contact information. This free confidential service requires your registration and login in order for us to be able to calculate who you legislators are. 3) Let us know if you can help with the hearings by contacting NVIC CA State Directors, Dawn Winkler or Michelle Gutierrez, at CADirector@NVICAdvocacy.org or call Dawn Winkler at (530) 283-1018 if you a) are willing to attend the committee hearings and/or testify against the bill; or b) have a family member who has suffered an adverse reaction to a pertussis containing vaccine and are willing to provide written or oral testimony against the bill while describing that reaction; or c) you have been thrown out of your doctor’s office for delaying or declining a vaccine and are willing to share your story with legislators; or d) you are a health care provider who is willing to provide testimony against the bill. 4) Send this to as many friends and family in California that you can and ask them to please register for the NVIC Advocacy Portal at http://NVICAdvocacy.org so they can get added to this state email list and receive updates how they can help fight this bill during this session. TO LIKE AND SHARE THIS ALERT ON FACEBOOK, link to http://nvicadvocacy.org/members/Resources/CAOPPOSEAB2109RestrictingVaccineExemptions.aspx and click on “like” or “send” by the Facebook tag on the top of the page. Sample Phone Plan: · Call the office number and introduce yourself and ask to talk to someone about AB 2109. If this is your assembly member’s office, let them know you are a constituent and what town/city you are from. · Let the appropriate person know you are opposed to AB 2109 because it requires you to have to pay for an extra medical office visit you don’t want or need, it requires additional bureaucratic paperwork, and as a parent if this passes, you have no guarantee you will be able to find a provider who will take these appointments or sign the form. (If you’ve ever been harassed by a doctor before or denied care, this is a great place to talk about this). · Let the legislative office know that this bill wastes your time and money because you are already well educated on vaccine risks and benefits (explain the steps you have taken to educate yourself above and beyond any handout could provide). · Let them know about your personal story what got you involved in this issue and why an unrestricted personal belief exemption is important to your family especially if anyone in your family has had a vaccine reaction. Additional Talking Points Against AB 2109 to be used in your written letters/email: · Forcing parents into a paid contractual relationship with a health care provider they wouldn’t otherwise utilize for their children’s health care is not only a violation of basic parental rights, it creates distrust and resentment towards public health programs run by the state. · Especially in California, many families utilize health care providers not reliant on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and only practitioners part of the pharmaceutical paradigm or medicine are allowed to provide the information and sign the form under this bill. · AB 2109 discriminates against families utilizing complementary and alternative medicine by forcing them into paying money to a medical practitioner they wouldn’t otherwise use who is already philosophically opposed to the parent’s personal and religious convictions regarding vaccination. · Parents who utilize vaccine exemptions are typically more educated regarding the risks and benefits of vaccination than both the parents who choose vaccination and aren’t required by this bill to receive this information and the health care providers who would be required to sign the exemption in order for it to be valid. · Many doctors’ offices throw families out of their practice for delaying or declining a vaccine. There is nothing in this bill to prevent a doctor’s office from refusing to take these appointments to begin with or for refusing to sign the form once a family pays for a visit. These real obstacles will restrict or deny access to the personal beliefs exemption for some families currently using it. · The state is not in the financial position to pay for all these extra required office visits within 6 months of school starting for families on public assistance and for the kids of state employees who have their health coverage provided by the state and who want to delay or a decline one or more vaccines. · The information required by this bill is already available to parents online for free and coercive measures like this bill do nothing but create and further distrust and resentment towards public health programs run by the state. · There is NO current crisis that would indicate that CA needs to make it more difficult to obtain exemptions from vaccination. · Most vaccination rates in CA for children 19 to 35 months old for individual vaccines are at or above the CDC Healthy People 2020 goal of 90%. (http://www2a.cdc.gov/nip/coverage/nis/nis_iap2.asp?fmt=v&rpt=tab03_antigen_state&qtr=Q1/2009-Q4/2009) · Vaccination rates for children entering kindergarten in California have increased from 2010 to 2011 and are at or above the CDC Healthy People 2020 goals of 90%, except for one category, which is at 89.4%. (http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2011SelectiveReviewResults.pdf) · Bill Sponsor Assembly Member Dr. Richard Pan, claims in a press release that his bill will help prevent outbreaks of pertussis. It is important for legislators to understand that the pertussis outbreaks in CA are due to waning immunity of the vaccine, and not because of families taking the exemption. Here are some references to back this point. o "The rise in pertussis doesn’t seem to be related to parents’ refusing to have their children vaccinated for fear of potential side effects. In California, pertussis rates are about the same in counties with high childhood vaccination rates and low ones. And the C.D.C. reports that pertussis immunization rates have been stable or increasing since 1992."(http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/vaccination-is-steady-but-pertussis-is-surging/ ) o Children can be susceptible to pertussis even if they are completely vaccinated. (http://www.inewsource.org/2011/03/28/experts-zero-in-on-waning-immunity/ ) o The acellular pertussis vaccine’s failure to deliver durable infection protection to children aged 7-10 years led to the 2010 California pertussis epidemic. (http://www.internalmedicinenews.com/news/conference-news/infectious-diseases-society-of-america-conference/single-article/acellular-pertussis-vaccine-s-waning-immunity-caused-california-epidemic/71de9826f4.html) o The pertussis vaccine has been found to wane after only 3 years, leaving a much larger population of fully vaccinated children susceptible to pertusssis than unvaccinated children. KPBS and the Watchdog Institute performed a joint investigation into the recent increasing pertussis rates in California and found the majority of cases of pertussis were occurring in fully vaccinated populations of children in the 8-12 year old age group. They went on to show that the vaccine wanes after only 3 years. (http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/sep/20/whooping-cough-vaccine-wanes-after-three-years/) · Bill supporters claim that vaccines are safe. The reality is there is real risk. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was established by Congress in 1986 to protect vaccine manufacturers and doctors from liability for vaccine injuries and death. As of Jan. 3, 2012, there have been 14,073 claims filed for vaccine injury and 1077 death claims. The total dollar amount of vaccine injury and death awards granted and paid to families of vaccine victims by our government is $2,366,649,931.96. (http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/statisticsreports.html#Claims) · Just for pertussis containing vaccines alone administered in the state of California, 11,516 reports of Vaccine Adverse Events have been filed with the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System where 77% of the reports of adverse events are for children 6 and under. There have been 5,775 disorders of the nervous system reported and 172 deaths. 96% of the deaths reported were in children three and under. (http://www.medalerts.org/) Sincerely, Dawn Richardson, Director of Advocacy National Vaccine Information Center http://NVIC.org and http://NVICAdvocacy.org Dawn@NVICAdvocacy.org The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) works diligently to prepare and disseminate our legislative advocacy action alerts and supporting materials. We request that organizations and members of the public forward our alerts in their original form to assure consistent and accurate messaging and effective action. Please acknowledge NVIC as originators of this work when forwarding to members of the public and like-minded organizations. To receive alerts immediately, register at http://NVICAdvocacy.org, a website dedicated to this sole purpose and provided as a free public service by NVIC.