For those of you who have been following the recent legislative activity regarding the removal of the physiological exemption to vaccines, here is the way it has all turned out so far...

If you would like to read the complete bill as it was voted in by both house and senate, go to this link:

Here is my hit on it:
In the end the philosophical exemption was preserved, however, objectionable language was included that qualifies it somewhat.

Parents with children in school must file exemptions every year, whether it is for all vaccines or just one. When filing you are required to read state dept info about vaccines and admit that you may be putting your child or other children in danger by choosing not to vaccinate. (this is the objectionable part) (see the vaccine liberation website for suggestions on how to address this kind of language that you may disagree with: http://www.vaclib.org/legal/donotsign.htm )

Each school must keep a tally of how many philosophical exemptions they have. All parents have a right to keep their child's health records private, including any philosophical exemptions.

If you cannot vaccinate your child due to medical reasons and feel your child is in danger, because your child's school has a high number of unvaccinated children, you may move your child to a different school where the numbers are more favorable. No comment is made about whether the reverse is also true; whether you can move your child to a school with less vaccinated children if you believe this is healthier for your child.

You may be interested in how this whole process unfolded. Here's the way I understand it.

The bill was originally introduced with the claim that Vermont's vaccination rates were too low due to philosophical exemptions. Although, it rushed through the senate and was voted in, the Vermont chiropractic association and vaccine choice of Vermont folks were hard at work taking the time to actually due some investigating and finally just doing the math on the numbers that the states statistics did show when they weren't being artificially manipulated.

In the house, time was actually taken to hear about these facts, rather than just the emotional stories being presented from both sides, which was all the senate heard before their vote.

The claims of the low rates were based on counting children who had not completed their vaccination schedule, as well as children whose parents chose to omit chicken pox (a non-mandatory vaccine) or vaccinate at a slower pace than the routine schedule. All these children were counted as if they weren't vaccinated at all, as well as doing the count at the beginning of the school year before some even had the chance to be up to date.

The main argument against the philosophical exemption was that the unvaccinated children would put at risk the few children whose parents wanted to vaccinate but couldn't because of compromised immune system function or poor health of their child which would put their child at greater risk to any diseases. The weakness of this argument comes when one examines what the research tells us about the effectiveness of vaccinations: that epidemics occur in 100% vaccinated populations; that receiving a vaccination doesn't guarantee that the recipient even titers from it (meaning creates antibodies against it) and that even if a titer occurs, may still get the disease.

As Dr. Eric Hemmett suggested to the committee, testing children to even see if they are titered is inexpensive, and would provide a closer to realistic picture of which children had immunity and which did not, whether it was from natural or artificial immunity.

The last part of the bill included instruction to a working group to look into the feasibility to have all school personnel receive mandatory vaccinations starting in January 2013. Oh boy, get ready for more excitement when that comes up...

If you have questions about any of this or other vaccine related questions, go towww.thetruthaboutvaccines.com to download my 46 page report of 30 years of my personal research into the subject distilled down to the important questions to be answered and the resources for further investigation if you desire. Also, when questions come up, go to www.askdrrice.com to submit your questions so I can answer them live on my next teleseminar on vaccinations, coming soon. Check the events page for a schedule of all our upcoming workshops.

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