Pushing New Bill, Barbara Boxer Slams Anti-Vaccination Parents

By Doug Oakley
doakley@bayareanewsgroup.com
EMERYVILLE -- Sen. Barbara Boxer pummeled parents who refuse to vaccinate their children during a tour of a YMCA Head Start school Wednesday where she promoted her bill requiring children in the program nationwide to be immunized. 

Boxer made the comments in the midst of a national measles outbreak that started in California. She criticized parents who are not vaccinating their children because of unfounded concerns spread by people outside the medical establishment. 

"All I'm saying is, we have doctors we can trust and you should listen to them and not some quack who comes up with a theory that is disproven," Boxer said. "I say to all those people who have a theory that has been disproven, you are not acting in the right way for your family or for society. People don't understand how dangerous this disease is. It blows my mind. You are not only endangering your child, but others and that is not right." 

Last week Boxer introduced the Head Start on Vaccinations Act with Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto. She chose the Emeryville Head Start program to advertise the bill she introduced Feb. 12 because of the program's 100 percent immunization rate, she said. 

"We're not forcing anybody to get vaccinated," Boxer said. "If you want to get into Head Start and you don't want to get vaccinated, bye, bye, go somewhere else." 

Head Start has about 1 million preschoolers in the federally funded program that gets kids ready for kindergarten. 

Boxer was joined by state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, who will introduce a law Thursday abolishing the state's personal belief exemption that allows parents to avoid vaccinations when they enter public schools. 

This year, the measles outbreak has affected 113 people in California and 143 nationwide, according to the California Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, there were 644 cases of measles nationwide, a huge spike from the 200 or so reported in 2013. Officials are blaming the spike partly on parents who are afraid the vaccinations cause autism and other dangerous side effects and partly on parents who just don't know it's important to be immunized. 

While last year's measles numbers were a huge increase compared to the year before and 2015 is off to a fast start, the outbreak is small so far compared to a three-year epidemic that started in 1989. That one peaked in 1991 with 27,672 cases, according to the CDC. 

Pan, a pediatrician, said he was working in Philadelphia that year when 900 cases were reported and six children died, many because their parents did not believe in vaccinations. 

He also criticized those who are afraid of getting their children vaccinated. Since they have had no experience with the disease, they are not afraid of it, he said. 

"Vaccines have become a victim of their own success because people have not seen the lives they save," Pan said. "There have been people who have shared misinformation about vaccinations. You can look on the Internet and see someone who says 'look at all these dangerous things vaccines can do,' but it's not true." 

Pan said in the most recent outbreak, one in five have been hospitalized and 10 infants under age 1 have gotten it because they are not old enough to be vaccinated. The death rate, he said, is 1 in 1,000. 

The fear or ignorance of vaccines runs especially deep in the Bay Area. Almost 5,000 kindergartners enrolled in Bay Area schools are without proof they've been fully vaccinated, according to the state Department of Public Health. 

And a study using Kaiser records found an East Bay cluster in El Cerrito, Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda in which parents rejected vaccines for 10.2 percent of children. 

By comparison, there was a 2.6 percent rate of vaccine refusal among Kaiser Northern California members outside of these clusters. 

Boxer said California should not have a personal exemption. 

"Refusing to vaccinate not only puts your own family at risk, but it endangers other families as well," Boxer said. 

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