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New York Health Care Workers Resist Flu Vaccine Rule |
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| New York Times |
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| September 20, 2009 |
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| "When she cleans the rooms of
patients with swine flu symptoms, Jana Newton, a housekeeper at Maimonides
Medical Center in Brooklyn, has to suit up for her own protection in a mask,
gloves, gown and hairnet. Jana Newton, an aide at Maimonides Medical Center
in Brooklyn, said she has not been sick and sees no reason for a shot. But
she still does not want the one thing that would give her a far better
defense — a flu shot. 'Some people's immune system is good, like me,'
Ms. Newton said. 'I've been here five years and never been sick. Why mess
with something that's not broken...'" |
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Metro Health Nearly Mandates Health Care Workers Receive Flu Shots |
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| Cleveland Leader |
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| September 19, 2009 |
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| "Metro Health workers that
don't receive a flu shot will be sticking out like sore thumbs this year.
The hospital system is urging their workers receive a vaccination as Swine
Flu threatens to wreak havoc on the United States. Metro sent an email to
staff saying whoever does not receive a flu shot this year will be forced to
wear surgical masks while working with patients..." |
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Hospitals Pushing Workers to get Flu Vaccines |
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| St. Petersburg Times (FL) |
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| September 17, 2009 |
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| "Health care workers usually
don't follow their own advice. Every year, fewer than half of them get
vaccinated... Hospitals here and nationally are stepping up efforts to
vaccinate workers against both seasonal flu and H1N1. One state - New York -
is even making flu vaccinations mandatory for health care workers..." |
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Hospitals to Require Flu Shots for Worker |
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| Des Moines Register |
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| September 10, 2009 |
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| "Des Moines' two main health-care companies will require most of their employees to receive flu shots this fall. Mercy Medical Center and Iowa Health-Des Moines told workers this week that they must be immunized against seasonal influenza unless they have a medical or religious reason not to be. If they receive an exemption, they will be required to wear masks when treating patients after Dec. 1..." |
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Emory, Grady Make Seasonal Flu Shots Mandatory |
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| Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
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| September 3, 2009 |
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| "Emory Healthcare and Grady hospitals are requiring employees to take the seasonal flu vaccine, officials said Thursday. The new mandates reflect increasing concern that metro Atlanta is headed into a bad flu season, in which the seasonal flu could circulate along with the swine flu. Usually, hospital officials urge staffers to take the vaccine but don't require it. Emory officials said about 70 percent of Emory staffers usually take the vaccine but the national average is much lower. Grady officials said about 30 percent took it last year. Several factors led Emory officials to make taking the seasonal flu vaccine mandatory — protecting patients and providing a safe environment for workers; the fact that the seasonal flu and swine flu will be circulating at the same time; and the successful implementation of mandatory flu vaccinations in other healthcare systems..." |
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State Requires Flu Vaccination for Caregivers |
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| New York Times |
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| August 18, 2009 |
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| "The State Health Department is requiring tens of thousands of health care workers across the state to be vaccinated for flu, amid fears that swine flu will return in the fall. The new regulation, quietly adopted as an emergency on Thursday, affects workers at hospitals, in home health care agencies and in hospice care, but, because of a technicality in state law, not in nursing homes. The regulation raised protest Tuesday from New York's largest health care union, 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, whose president, George Gresham, said that the policy was 'completely unprecedented' and could become punitive if the religious or cultural beliefs of workers prevented them from being vaccinated..." |
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Litigation, Regulation, and Education - Protecting the Public's Health
through Childhood Immunization |
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| New England Journal of Medicine |
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| June 11, 2009 |
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| "Recently, three special masters of
the U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued carefully reasoned, strongly
worded opinions rejecting claims that medical and scientific evidence
could demonstrate causal links between thimerosal-containing vaccines or
measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccination and the development of chronic
health conditions such as autism, immune dysfunction, and
gastrointestinal dysfunction..." |
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When Vaccine Injury Claims Go to Court |
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| New England Journal of Medicine |
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| June 11, 2009 |
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| "In February 2009, the National
Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) released decisions for the
first three test cases heard under the program's Omnibus Autism
Proceeding. In each of the cases - Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and
Human Services, Hazlehurst v. Secretary of Health and Human Services,
and Snyder v. Secretary of Health and Human Services - the petitioners
alleged that a child's autism spectrum disorder was caused by the
combination of the measles– mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccine and
thimerosal-containing vaccines. The decisions will have a substantial
effect on vaccine policy and practice in the United States and will
influence the analysis of more than 5300 similar, pending claims..." |
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Supreme Court Interested in Vaccine Lawsuit Shield |
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| Bloomberg |
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| June 8, 2009 |
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| "The U.S. Supreme Court expressed
interest in an appeal by Madison-based Wyeth and units of
GlaxoSmithKline Plc that seeks to give the pharmaceutical industry a
broader shield from lawsuits over injuries allegedly caused by vaccines.
The justices sought the Obama administration's views on a Georgia
Supreme Court ruling that allowed a lawsuit by the family of an autistic
boy injected with vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative
thimerosal. The state court said a 1986 federal law that protects
vaccine makers doesn't preclude suits claiming that a manufacturer
should have used a safer formulation..." |
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Fear of Vaccines Spurs Outbreaks, Study Says |
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| Wall Street Journal |
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| May 7, 2009 |
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| "Parental doubts about the safety of
childhood vaccinations are leading to outbreaks of largely eradicated
diseases like measles and whooping cough, doctors warned in a new
report. A U.S. measles outbreak last year -- almost exclusively among
unvaccinated people -- has sparked concern about places where many
parents opt out of having their children vaccinated. In Ashland, Ore.,
more than a quarter of kindergartners aren't vaccinated, leading the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to hold a town-hall
meeting on vaccination there earlier this year. 'A lot of folks are
counterculture-type independent thinkers [who] do not have faith in all
the modern medicine-type stuff," said Myles Murphy, city editor of the
town's newspaper, the Ashland Daily Tidings. Too many abstainers can put
a town at risk, wrote Dr. Saad Omer, of Emory University in Atlanta, the
lead author in the report in this week's New England Journal of
Medicine..." |
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Op-Ed:The Autism/Vaccine Myth: Parents who refuse to have their children
vaccinated are putting them, and other children, at risk |
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| Los Angeles Times |
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| May 3, 2009 |
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| "A mother gently places her beautiful
1-year-old boy on the examining table, unwrapping his soft, blue
blanket. To my opening question, his mother says "No," she has no
concerns. A thorough exam confirms the boy's good health. His heart and
lungs are clear; his growth and development right on target. Even his
crying as we screen his blood for anemia and lead are signs of a normal
child..." |
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Letter to the Editor: Immunize Children |
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| Contra Costa Times (CA) |
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| April 8, 2009 |
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| "I read the Times story about parents
choosing not to immunize their children and wanted to make sure readers
know of the local risks. Though your story focused on a measles outbreak
in San Diego, we had a similarly disturbing outbreak of whooping cough
right here in Contra Costa County last year. The Contra Costa Public
Health Department had to temporarily close a private school in El
Sobrante after at least 21 children contracted whooping cough, a highly
infectious and serious lung infection. The outbreak had already spread
to another school and two childcare facilities. Fortunately, all of the
children recovered but the outbreak might have been avoided if the
children had been immunized. Like the events in your story, most of the
children with whooping cough in the Contra Costa outbreak were in
kindergarten, and their parents had decided not to immunize them for
various reasons, including the concern over whether immunizations are
linked to autism. There is simply no scientific link between
immunizations and autism. However, there is ample evidence that parents
who do not immunize their children put their children, the school and
the larger community at risk for serious, sometimes life-threatening,
diseases. Erika Jenssen, MPH Martinez Jenssen is immunization
coordinator of Contra Costa Public Health Department." |
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Immunizing Children Philadelphia Mission |
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Philadelphia Inquirer |
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April 8, 2009 |
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"At each of these addresses, in theory, is a baby who is behind in
childhood immunizations.
Velazco-Miranda's job: Find the parents. Get the kid into a clinic for
shots. With several recent
outbreaks of preventable diseases traced to unvaccinated children,
public health officials say it
is more important than ever to maintain the high immunization rates that
provide an extra layer of
protection for everyone. Philadelphia has among the highest vaccination
rates in the nation, often
topping all other big cities and most states..." |
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Op-ed: Vaccinations Are a Public Health
Success, and a Responsibility |
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| Bay City Times (MI) |
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| April 7, 2009 |
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| "Lined up in school gymnasiums like little soldiers in some states,
millions of U.S. school kids
did their part in a decades-long public health crusade. Many of them
sniffing back tears of fear, a
few crying openly, the vaccinations they received - at school or at a
doctor's office - vanquished
smallpox and polio from the North American continent, and sent measles
packing. Now that those
diseases and others are beaten back, though, some parents are pushing
back against state laws
requiring vaccinations for school children..." |
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Why Do Anti-Vaccinationists Believe? |
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| Huffington Post |
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| April 2, 2009 |
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| "At the end of last week, I wrote an
article which was eventually titled 'Vaccine Denial =
Scientific Illiteracy.' The article was posted on Monday and has since
received a lot of feedback
on either side...More confusion came when I started actually reading
through the comments. I tried
to understand the anti-vaccination thought process. From my point of
view, vaccines are good
things..." |
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Editorial: Vaccine Fear is Harmful for
Children |
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| Contra Costa Times |
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| April 1, 2009 |
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| "A misguided fear that some vaccines may cause autism has persuaded a
growing number of parents to
decline to have their children inoculated against childhood diseases
such as measles, mumps and
whooping cough. These are illnesses that had been eradicated in the
United States years ago after
the implementation of a federal program paying for vaccines for those
who could not afford them.
Unfortunately, unfounded fears that vaccines are more dangerous than the
diseases they prevent have
led to an increasing number of children who are not vaccinated before
they enter school..." |
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Concern over Vaccination Rate in N.J.; Responding to a reported drop, a
doctors' group says parents and government must do more |
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The Philadelphia Inquirer |
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March 30, 2009 |
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"Both parents and government must do more to ensure timely
vaccination of children, a New Jersey doctors' group says, pointing to a
new national survey that suggests the state may have dropped from the
top 10 in the country to the bottom 10 in less than a year. "We live in
the most urban state in the nation," Robert Morgan, a pediatrician and
member of the Medical Society of New Jersey, said in an interview. "When
you choose not to vaccinate your child, you are making choices for every
other child as well." It is not clear that the latest National
Immunization Survey results in New Jersey accurately reflect actual
vaccination rates. The survey, conducted from July 2007 through June
2008, found that 70.5 percent of children in New Jersey had received the
standard series of vaccines - down from 80.5 percent during the
January-to-December 2007 period..." |
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Immunization Laws and Attitudes Vary |
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| Los Angeles Times |
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| March 29, 2009 |
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| "States have long been able to require students to be vaccinated before
entering school, a power
upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1922. But how strictly immunization
laws are enforced varies,
with tougher requirements leading to higher rates of compliance. A study
published in the Journal
of the American Medical Assn. in 2006 found that states that made it
easiest to opt out of mandated
vaccinations were nearly twice as likely to have cases of whooping cough
as states with more
difficult procedures. The authors, who noted that California was among
the most lenient, urged all
states to "balance parental autonomy with the tremendous public health
benefit of vaccines" and
consider tougher standards for exemptions..." |
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California Schools' Risks Rise as Vaccinations Drop |
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Los Angeles Times |
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March 29, 2009 |
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"Parents fear shots more than measles or mumps. A rising number of
California parents are choosing to send their children to kindergarten
without routine vaccinations, putting hundreds of elementary schools in
the state at risk for outbreaks of childhood diseases eradicated in the
U.S. years ago. Exemptions from vaccines -- which allow children to
enroll in public and private schools without state-mandated shots --
have more than doubled since 1997, according to a Times analysis of
state data obtained last week. The rise in unvaccinated children appears
to be driven by affluent parents choosing not to immunize. Many do so
because they fear the shots could trigger autism, a concern widely
discredited in medical research. But with autism rates rising, some
parents find that fear more worrisome than the chance that their child
could contract diseases that, while now very rare in this country, can
still be deadly..." |
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Sonoma County at Center of Anti-vaccine
Debate |
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| Santa Rose Press Democrat (CA) |
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| March 28, 2009 |
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| "Whether it's a decision of the well-informed, non-traditional,
alternative or paranoid,
vaccinations are not considered a must-do by many North Bay parents.
Long gone are the days when
vaccinating infants and toddlers prior to kindergarten is done as a matter of course and without
question. Especially in western Sonoma County. A study conducted by the
Los Angeles Times reveals
that the North Bay, and Sonoma County in particular, is a hot bed of
anti-vaccine sentiment..." |
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Health Dept. Prepares for Immunization Week |
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| Moultrie Observer (GA) |
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| March 28, 2009 |
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| "During the 1950s, nearly every child
developed measles, an easily spread virus known for causing a rash,
fever, cough and watery eyes — and feared because it can also cause
pneumonia, seizures, brain damage or death. Today, thanks to childhood
immunizations, the disease is extremely rare in the United States..." |
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Conference Takes on Autism, Vaccines; But Unlike Many such Gatherings,
Support for Vaccinating Is Strong Florida Times-Union |
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March 12, 2009 |
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"A bill before Florida lawmakers that would relax the state's
childhood vaccination mandate may make more children vulnerable to the
measles, chicken pox and other potentially life-threatening diseases,
disease experts warned Wednesday. The bill would allow parents to object
to having their children immunized on 'philosophical' grounds, opening a
door to parents worried about the controversial link between vaccines
and autism. Many already bypass the state's vaccine mandate, using
existing medical and religious waivers to do so, observers say. Paul
Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia and an outspoken vaccine proponent, told a medical group in
Jacksonville that the 21 states with philosophical exemptions are seeing
higher rates of measles..." |
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Contagious Disease's Spread Highlights Dilemma over Unvaccinated Kids |
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| Los Angeles Times |
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| February 23, 2009 |
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| "Parents who opt out of or delay
getting their children immunized may run a higher risk of them catching
and passing along diseases that once were nearly eradicated. An old
childhood disease reared its head in Minnesota last year, infecting five
young children and killing one of them, according to a recent report by
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention... Measles, like Hib, has
been virtually eradicated from the U.S. thanks to vaccination..." |
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How the Middle-Class MMR Refuseniks Are Putting Every Child at Risk |
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| Daily Mail (UK) |
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| February 18, 2009 |
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| "Sipping a sludgy-looking concoction
of herbs and mashed mung beans, Joanne offers me a beige lump which I
have no trouble declining. It's an organic biscuit from Guadeloupe, she
tells me. Chewing on her biscuit, she shakes her head. 'I don't
understand it,' she says. 'Hardly anyone can come to Silas's birthday
party next month.' For a moment, I almost feel sorry for her. Looking at
three-year-old Silas playing on his own with his bricks, I'm tempted to
tell her why. I could spell it out for her why he did not get an
invitation to George's bouncy castle bash last weekend and won't be
asked to come on the swimming trip that several mums are organising next
week. But in the end I simply make my excuses and leave. My
three-year-old daughter Nancy won't be going to Silas's party either. In
fact, I'd come round to drop off his present because we aren't going to
be seeing any more of Silas and Joanne. They are not the only families
we are cutting out of our lives. There won't be any more coffee mornings
with Megan and her son Toby. We won't be going on play dates with Esther
and her daughter Mimi either. Quite simply, I don't want Nancy to have
contact with Silas, Mimi and Toby because they haven't had the MMR jab,
which protects against measles, mumps and rubella. Nancy has had her
jab, but she won't be fully protected until she has a booster just
before going to school. The parents of Silas, Mimi and Toby are middle
class and university educated, but they are behaving like morons and
turning their children into pariahs..." |
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| Parents Question Vaccine Mandate |
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| Times of Trenton (NJ) |
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| October 17, 2008 |
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| "Hundreds of impassioned parents rallied outside the Statehouse yesterday demanding legislation that would allow them to decide when -- and if -- to vaccinate their children against disease. Touting signs declaring ‘Parent Power’ and ‘My Child, My Choice,’ they voiced support for a ‘conscientious objector’ bill that provides an out from New Jersey's childhood vaccine mandates -- including the new preschool flu vaccine. Many parents fear that ingredients in some vaccines, particularly mercury and formaldehyde, are responsible for autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other increasingly common neurological problems in children. However, the State Department of Health said the vaccines are important measures in improving public health and oppose laws allowing parents to opt out of the program..." |
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| Thousands of Unvaccinated Children Enter Schools |
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| Scripps News Service |
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| August 27, 2008 |
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| "Hundreds of thousands of children are going to school this fall without protection from deadly diseases. More parents are deciding not to vaccinate their children against mumps, measles, rubella, polio and other dangerous diseases. The parents are refusing to vaccinate because of concerns that the vaccinations themselves are harmful, or because of the growing cost and complexity of getting the shots..." |
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| Oregon's Low Vaccination Rate Causes Health Concerns |
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| The Oregonian |
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| August 27, 2008 |
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| "Vaccine skeptics have plenty of company in Ashland. There, doubts about the necessity and safety of immunizations are as much a part of the community as its embrace of naturopathic medicine, environmental ethos and counterculture roots..." |
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| Faith Lets Some Kids Skip Shots |
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| Washington Post |
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| June 10, 2008 |
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| "In public health circles they are known as "exempters" -- parents who for reasons of faith or philosophy choose not to immunize their children against diseases such as measles and whooping cough..." |
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| Immunization Roulette |
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| Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (IN) |
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| March 25, 2008 |
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| "A 7-year-old boy traveled to Switzerland with his family early this year and returned to his San Diego home Jan. 13. He developed a fever and sore throat about a week later but went to school. When his condition worsened, he was taken to the family doctor’s office. By Feb. 1, the boy – who was not vaccinated – was diagnosed with measles. He infected five children at his school and four more at the pediatrician’s office..." |
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| More Families Are Shunning Inoculations |
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| New York Times |
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| March 2, 2008 |
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| "As states move to require more vaccines for school-age children, an increasing number of parents are saying no to some of the inoculations. They are seeking exemptions from the state in growing numbers, citing religious reasons or saying that they believe the vaccines will do more harm than good..." |
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