Don’t listen to school vaccine-deniers’ vitriol
Why are we arguing about vaccines? They are one of the medical marvels of the last century, ridding the world of devastating diseases like smallpox, eliminating the risk posed by six HPV-related cancers, and preventing grave consequences to infants born to mothers with rubella.
For those who lived during widespread outbreaks of polio or measles, there is no debate about the effectiveness of vaccines. But a new generation of vaccine deniers, having never experienced the horror of a world with such diseases, is leading a campaign of misinformation that can do great damage to our community health.
If you end up on the receiving end of a vaccine-denier’s vitriol, you will quickly learn they claim their own facts and their own science. Films like “Vaxxed,” based on research that has been discredited, and a researcher who fled the United Kingdom due to the fallacious uproar he created, are quoted as science. They misinterpret data about vaccine injuries, such as their claim of a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism, which has been debunked and disproven thoroughly.
The effects of their pseudo-science risk the health and safety of our schoolchildren while providing the breeding grounds for contagious events, such as the measles outbreak at Disneyland two years ago in California or the mumps outbreak in Texas in the past few weeks.
Deniers make their arguments under the guise of parental rights and personal liberty. In claiming a right to not vaccine their children, they rob other parents of the right to protect the health and safety of their children by exposing them to harmful diseases. For responsible citizens, there is a recognition that personal liberty ends where harm to another begins.
The state mandates childhood vaccines for enrollment in our schools because all children should have the opportunity to be educated in a safe and healthy environment. A twisted concept of parental personal liberty should not risk the health and safety of millions of schoolchildren. Nonetheless, the state does allow parents to seek non-medical vaccine exemptions from school vaccine requirements on the basis of religious or personal beliefs. These exemptions would not be a problem if such exemptions were granted so rarely as to not compromise herd immunity. This concept is achieved when the general immunity to a pathogen in a population is based on the acquired immunity to the pathogen by a high proportion of members over time.
But recent data are concerning. The number of schoolchildren exempted from school-required vaccines has increased 19-fold since 2003. I filed four bills that will help improve public awareness about the benefits and safety of vaccines, and help prevent six HPV-related cancers.
HB 126 will require parents to take an online education class in order to receive a non-medical exemption for their child. This kind of information campaign has proven effective in other states that have sought to stop parents from opting out of vaccine requirements out of convenience instead of personal conviction.
I have also filed legislation, HB 120, that clarifies that exemptions of “conscience” or those based on religious belief will simply be categorized as non-medical exemptions, getting the state out of the business of providing moral high ground to parents who risk exposing us all to vaccinepreventable diseases.
My other two bills deal with HPV-related cancers. As a young cancer survivor, I want to do everything in my power to prevent another Texan from experiencing the pain I went through for close to a year.
HPV has been linked to several cancers, including cervical cancer and head and neck cancers, and is the cause of 5 percent of cancers worldwide. Cancer experts say HPV kills about 1,000 Texans every year. My primary concern is not how the HPV virus is transmitted, but how we can save lives. If parents neglect the future health of their child, I believe a minor should be able to legally offer their own consent to receive the HPV vaccine.
Lastly, I have written legislation to study and report HPV vaccination rates at the county level. Current data has been rendered useless due to the change in dosage by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making a new data set a vital piece of information to public health professionals and researchers. We need better information to deploy limited resources in a more cost-effective manner.
Cancers that are preventable should be prevented. Viruses that are preventable should be eradicated. And the safety and efficacy of vaccines are no longer subject to serious debate. They work, and Texas must make sure more of our citizens are immunized against preventable diseases.
Davis represents Houston-area District 134 in the state House of Representatives.