Before the development of a vaccine to immunize against whooping cough in the 1940s, millions of people suffered from the illness with little means to prevent its spread. In the years that followed, compulsory vaccinations nearly wiped it out over the course of a few decades.
But in the last few years parents have increasingly exploited a loophole in the law by requesting and receiving, on the basis of “personal belief,” their childrens’ exemption from compulsory vaccination laws. Now whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is officially an epidemic, according to a Nov. 26 report by the California Department of Health. This year, the disease — which produces severe coughing spells, fatigue and vomiting — has struck 9,935 people in California.
The common view of professionals in the health field is that the rise in personal belief exemptions is coming from misinformation and lack of education.
“I really do think it has a lot to do with education,” said Dr. Cassandra Jobert, director of the Central California Children’s Institute and Fresno State public health professor. “I also think it has to do with people. On the one hand, it’s education and making sure people understand the facts and the risks if they don’t vaccinate. On the other hand, I think what we’re experiencing are people really wanting to make sure that their rights are protected. Their rights to do what they want to do with their children.”
The California Department of Public Health says that schools and care facilities with higher rates of non-vaccinated children are at greater risk of outbreaks. With rising numbers in personal belief exemptions state-wide, California has had an increase in whooping cough cases. The number reached a 60-year high in 2010 with over 9,000 cases.
“It’s extremely important, especially with pertussis,” said Lucas Sherman, a charge nurse of the immunization program for the Fresno County Department of Public Health. “It’s very important that they get all those vaccines to protect themselves and their fellow students.”
California law states that incoming kindergarten students must enter with all required immunizations. These immunizations cover the 17 vaccine-preventable diseases which include the likes of haemophilus influenzae and polio. Seventh grade students are also required to have the TDAP, which includes added protection against tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough.
Parents who do not wish to have their children receive these immunizations have a method of avoiding the shots through a personal belief exemption form, a recent trend that has helped in decreasing immunization rates.
“It’s a very complicated issue and it’s because, for parents, their primary concern is their kid,” said Dr. Setareh Tais, a Fresno naturopathic doctor. “It’s where individualized medicine clashes with community medicine.”
The percentage of students with personal belief exemptions has been low, yet trending upwards since 2007, from .56 percent to 1.62 percent of kindergarteners in Fresno County. Seventh graders are, most recently, at an even higher rate at 2.43 percent.
State numbers are higher at 3.15 percent of kindergarteners and 3.26 percent in seventh graders in the 2013 to 2014 year.
And it’s no surprise that the number increases as children get older. Parents sometimes have a bad experience with vaccination or change their overall opinion on them between kindergarten to seventh grade.
Personal medical exemptions and conditional entrants also factor in a percentage of students without all required immunizations. Conditional entrants include students who either have a temporary medical exemption or are in the process of receiving immunizations. That accounts for 4.23 percent of kindergarteners in Fresno County.
There are many reasons, experts say, why parents decide to choose the personal belief exemption. Links of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine to autism, though debunked, have been a factor in the growing trend of PBEs.
“There’s several things,” said Lisa Roberts, a nurse practitioner at the Fresno State Health Center. “Fear, concerns about safety, concerns about side effects — in really 60 to 70 percent of the concerns — come from these two main issues. There’s some religious objections where some people feel like it’s a violation of God’s will. Philosophical objections, that they aren’t natural. And then sometimes it’s cost or really even access to care.”
Tais, who treats patients who both want alternative means of health care and also patients who seek regular primary care, has had first-hand experiences with parents coming into her practice seeking counseling for the personal belief exemption. She said many concerns come from misinformation.
“I would say that there is a lot of skepticism and worry that vaccines will harm you,” Tais said. “A lot of suspicion that they don’t really work or they give you the actual disease. I do believe that a lot of this is misinformation.”
There are rare occasions that some vaccinations can cause an unwanted reaction. Doctors such as Tais will go through these risks provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to relieve some worries and to pinpoint exactly what vaccines they are concerned about.
“It’s always valid for a parent to be concerned if that flu shot has a one percent chance of giving their child a fever, of course that’s a valid concern,” Tais said. “I believe that every concern that a parent has about a vaccine is valid, with the exception of autism, just because there has been way too much research showing that that connection has been debunked.”
Providing education is something the government sought to do with a new law which went into effect on Jan. 1. To file for a personal relief exemption, parents receive a standard card in which the school keeps for shot records. Before, parents could just sign the card.
Now, parents must seek a medical professional to receive education and advising to learn more about the information on vaccines and the potential risks of choosing not to vaccinate. However, if the exemption is due to religious reasons, they are not required to obtain the signature.
State officials and medical professionals believe the law will help inform parents on their information and reverse the seven-year trend in rising personal belief exemptions.
“That’s what we hope,” Sherman said. “That was the goal of the state, I believe, and I think it will.”
At the end of the consultation, the parents have the ultimate decision, however. The medical professional only signs that they have provided the education to the parent before they made the decision to exempt their child.
On many occasions, the consultation is not enough to persuade parents.
“For the most part, patients will hear your spiel about vaccines and then they’ll go ahead and say ‘No, I want to be exempt from them,’” Tais said. “It’s so ingrained in that that certain things are really bad that they kind of go with it.”
If the law doesn’t have the desired effect and child immunization rates continue to decline over several years, there are concerns about the effects that could result.
“We’re going to see a resurgence of preventable illnesses, loss of work and some death,” Roberts said. “I think too that, because our vaccine programs have been so good, we don’t really see these diseases, and so parents don’t really realize how severe they can be.”
Vaccinations for children are not offered at the Fresno State Health Center, but students can get vaccinations for themselves and seek advice and consultation on vaccinating their children. Fresno State students with children are advised to be vaccinated to prevent possible outbreaks in schools carrying over to the university.
Medical professionals are concerned that the issue with childhood vaccinations isn’t just an issue with children. If parents are not vaccinated, they too can catch diseases that breakout in children and help create an epidemic just as what has become with pertussis.
“If the children get it and the parents haven’t been vaccinated, absolutely,” Roberts said.
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Bayareamom • Dec 8, 2014 at 5:20 pm
Here is an investigative article done by Joanne Faryon a few years back re: California’s whooping cough epidemic:
http://inewsource.org/2012/08/16/why-the-increase-in-whooping-cough-outbreaks/
SNIP:
“Certainly the major epidemics in 2005, in 2010, and now in 2012 suggest that failure of the DTaP vaccine is a matter of serious
concern,” Cherry writes in the commentary published yesterday. He also writes that, in addition to better observation and testing, the medical and scientific community “should consider the potential contribution of genetic changes in circulating strains of B. pertussis,” the bacteria that causes whooping cough.”
Bayareamom • Dec 8, 2014 at 3:24 pm
Our son, born in 1993, suffered horrendous vaccine reactions to each and every vaccine he received. When he had his four month well baby check up and received his shots, he immediately reacted with complete somnolence. The pediatrician tried telling us he was ‘just scared silly’ and thus, fell asleep, but this so-called ‘scared silly sleep’ lasted for well over a day and a half. We couldn’t awaken him when it was time for him to eat, nor would he awaken when we had to change him. And this was a baby who did NOT sleep much at all (we’d been warned about this by the nurses before I left home with him). So to see him change so completely in this manner was greatly troubling. Long story short, our son suffered complete somnolence for almost two full days/nights, and then upon awakening, he had this high-pitched screaming episode for over three hours. These reactions were immediately written into his medical file and he was exempted from the pertussis component of the whole cell pertussis vaccine he’d been given. At the age of six months, we tried one more vaccine, this time MINUS the pertussis component, only to see our son suffer yet again with complete somnolence. We quit vaccinating our son after the age of six months. When I asked our pediatrician just what had happened to our son during his reactions, he quite bluntly explained to me that we would most likely see learning issues with him, starting at the age of Kindergarten. And we did. Later, several years later, our son was diagnosed at Oakland Children’s Hospital as having severe dysgraphia, profound dysgraphia I might add, higher order speech language issues and a true inability to understand math concepts/principles. Our son also suffered with what appeared to be OCD issues by the time he was two years of age; he had extreme sensitivities to the sun and other forms of light. He would suffer with complete meltdowns, where no consolation could be had. In short, he was a mess, but with intensive therapies, intensive after-school tutoring and homeopathic treatment (referred to us by our allopathic pediatrician), our son slowly turned himself around health wise. Today, his health is robust, save for the seasonal allergy or two (treated homeopathically). He is taking college courses and maintains a 3.4 GPA. But our road to this end was certainly paved in hell. Our son suffered tremendously following his vaccinations. Here is what Dr. Russell Blaylock (Board Certified Neurosurgeon) has to say about vaccines:
This top secret meeting was held to discuss a study done by Dr. Thomas
Verstraeten and his co-workers using Vaccine Safety Datalink data as a project
collaboration between the CDC’s National Immunization Program (NIP) and four
HMOs. The study examined the records of 110,000 children. Within the limits of
the data, they did a very through study and found the following:
…”Exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines at one month was associated
significantly with the misery and unhappiness disorder that was dose
related. That is, the higher the child’s exposure to thimerosal the higher
the incidence of the disorder. This disorder is characterized by a baby that
cries uncontrollably and is fretful more so than that see in normal babies.
Found a nearly significant increased risk of ADD with 12.5ug exposure at
one month.
With exposure at 3 months, they found an increasing risk of
neurodevelopmental disorders with increasing exposure to thimerosal. This
was statistically significant. This included speech disorders…”
AND:
…”In fact, excessive, chronic microglial activation can explain many of the
effects of excessive vaccine exposure as I point out in two recently published
articles. One property of both aluminum and mercury is microglial activation.
With chronic microglial activation large concentrations of excitotoxins are
released as well as neurotoxic cytokines. These have been shown to destroy
synaptic connections, dendrites and cause abnormal pathway development in the
developing brain as well as adult brain.
In essence, too many vaccines are being given to children during the brain’s
most rapid growth period. Known toxic metals are beings used in the vaccines
that interfere with brain metabolism, antioxidant enzymes, damage DNA and DNA
repair enzymes and trigger excitotoxicity. Removing the mercury will help but
will not solve the problem because overactivation of the brain’s immune system
will cause varying degrees of neurological damage to the highly-vulnerable
developing brain…”
Christopher Hickie • Dec 8, 2014 at 4:11 am
There is nothing “complicated” about vaccines. Vaccines are safe, effective and protect against diseases that MAIM and KILL. FYI, you forgot to mention that 3 infants too young to receive whooping cough vaccine have DIED in California this year from whooping cough thanks to all the parents who aren’t vaccinating their children. Vaccination is not ” “It’s where individualized medicine clashes with community medicine.”–it is where ignorance and parents believing too much crap they read on Google searches gets believed over hard, factual science. FYI, when I talk, as a pediatrician, to parents about vaccines, I do not give a “spiel”–I speak to them in clear, hard, irrefutable facts. If they choose not to vaccinate their child, they are asked to find another pediatrician as I do not want unvaccinated children bringing whooping cough, measles or chicken pox into my waiting room-Chris Hickie, MD, PhD