Senate Bill 277
ICAC membership has reported concerns over the passage of SB 277 mandating vaccines for all school children attending public schools. Experts in science continue to debate the safety and efficacy of vaccines with widely differing interpretations of the data on the subject. The ICAC Board Members are awaiting some resolution to this scientific debate so that we can advise our members in regards to this issue, being a public health issue that affects our membership and the patients that they serve. Many are equally or even more concerned about the scope of the bill and the legal mandates imposed to all children attending public school, in consideration of the continued scientific debate regarding this issue.
The recommendation at this time is to analyze the science openly and objectively, considering that each vaccine must be studied individually with gross generalizations in regard to being Pro-vaccine or Anti-vaccine likely being somewhat premature at this time. The objectively reviewer should analyze all available evidence in consideration of parameter that include:
- Relative risk/benefit analyses vs. absolute risk/benefit analyses.
- Bias within each study.
- Herd immunity as opposed to individual vaccine protections.
- Numbers needed to treat analyses.
- Potential bias based on funding and other factors of association.
- Relative risk of contracting a disease of an individual that is vaccinated as opposed than one that is unvaccinated.
Many instructive articles are available, including one named "Why Research is False", written by John Ioannidis, MD, to help one interpret research and can be found at this link:
http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/RSS2015NegativeResults/pmed.0020124.pdf
The language of SB 277 is provided below for the reader's convenience. Those suspecting that children should be exempted from vaccines due to a genetic or other substantial familial risk factor should contact medical physicians with expertise in this area to determine if a medical exemption is appropriate for a particular child.