Controversial vaccine bill moves forward

The Senate Eucation Committee voted in favor of a vaccine bill 7-2, that would ban most california children without their vaccinations from attending private and public schools.

The controversial bill seeks to remove California’s personal belief exemption vaccination loophole, which allows parents to opt their child out of school vaccine requirements.

Before Wednesday’s vote, lawmakers amended the vaccine bill to allow those not vaccinated to complete their education in multi-family home schools in publicly sanctioned independent courses. The issue has drawn heated debate from parents on both sides. Some parents have expressed concerns for the public health risk from having non-vaccinated children attend public schools.

Other parents visited lawmakers against the bill, after they voted. Many are pledging to continue their fight against the vaccine bill. They’re asking for more tests to be taken on children beforehand to prevent a negative reaction to vaccines.

Jennifer Aleksic is a mother to a vaccine damaged child and says, “this is not vax.. versus unvax.. this is pro-vaccination people in the interest of public health who we suspect are not looking at all of the science objectively versus parents of vaccine injured children who are in the best interest of personal health because we have vaccine injured kids. All we are asking is that let’s look at this issue. Let’s come to the table objectively. We all have the same goal, we don’t want to bring back measles. We don’t want to bring back polio, but we want to protect our children and the eradication of those. So let’s come to the table objectively. Let’s talk about how to move forward with safer vaccinations.”

Lawmakers had their say as well. Republican Senator Jeff Stone of Temecula says, “So it’s going to the judiciary, where it will face it’s next step. Where it’s going to obviously go on the Assembly side where it’s probably going to face 6 or 7 hearings. So, the bill has got a long way to go, it’s going to be a rocky road. I think we have to do our best to educate the public about the benefits of what immunizations are and put out the misinformation that has been propagated and expanded throughout the state of California.”

Some of the bills sponsors have received threats to their Capitol offices and security at the Capitol has been stepped up due to those threats.

Stone went on to say. “As a healthcare professional and dealing with immunizations all my life, I have been a co-sponsor of the bill because if one wants to use a personal exemption to not have their child immunized and that is their right, the problem is we have too many children in public schools in daycare centers that are less than a year old that can’t be immunized yet. You are putting these children at risk of fatal diseases, measles is a virulent disease that can kill.”

But Aleksic counters, “I’m here because I believe there is a large body of science, evidences that there are certain children who are susceptible to the damages of toxic load. And we are not doing biological testing on those children to determine who or who isn’t going to be damaged before the vaccination.”