Battle for Informed Consent Rages in California

In the Children’s Health Conference held in Sacramento, California on Sept 13, vaccination took center stage.

Before 2015, California allowed personal and religious exemptions for all vaccinations in order to attend public school, and now thanks to California SB277, exemptions may be granted only on the basis of medical necessity.

Still there are areas of the state that have low vaccination rates, many of which consist of affluent and well-educated populations such as Marin County and Santa Monica.

Senator Richard Pan, a former pediatrician and the legislature’s leading vaccine proponent, said that there is a risk of infection spreading from these pockets of unvaccinated people to the broader population. “It’s confined to pockets, but because we live in such a mobile society, a carrier leaving a pocket can spread infection to new pockets. The solution is to shrink the pockets.”

But others disagree.

Dr. Shira Miller started Physicians for Informed Consent after SB277 passed with the mission to “unite doctors for informed consent in vaccination, and educate the public on infectious disease, the immune system, and informed consent.”

In a letter to the Children’s Health Conference, Dr. Miller wrote:

The scientific evidence shows that the vaccination status of a child is not a significant risk to immuno-compromised schoolchildren. Therefore, it is both unscientific and unethical to use coercive measures to increase vaccination rates.

From the Physicians for Informed Consent website: