Posted on 12/07/2007 2:59:40 PM PST by Malacoda
TRENTON, N.J. -- Parents concerned about possible vaccine dangers and government intrusion are trying to block New Jersey from becoming the first state to require flu shots for preschoolers.
The Public Health Council on Monday is set to consider whether New Jersey should require flu shots as well as three additional vaccines. If approved, New Jersey would become the first state to require annual flu shots for children attending licensed preschool or day care centers.
State health department officials also want to require a pneumococcal vaccine for preschoolers, a booster shot to fight whooping cough for sixth-graders, and meningitis shots for school children as young as 11.
According to deputy health commissioner Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, the new requirements already have been approved by the state health department and Gov. Jon S. Corzine; they are expected to be rubber-stamped by the Council on Monday.
Bresnitz said the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supports the new requirements and that public health officials in other states are watching and likely to follow suit.
Bresnitz said he's convinced the vaccines will reduce the incidence of the diseases, preventable hospitalizations, and the need for parents to stay home with sick children.
"It's a great day for public health in New Jersey," he said.
But some parents say there is inadequate proof the vaccines are safe and effective.
At a Statehouse news conference Friday, about a dozen parents protested the new requirements and urged people to call the governor's office to ask him to stop Monday's vote.
"This will be the first jurisdiction anywhere in the world to make the flu shot mandatory" for school attendance, said Jon Gilmore, a board member of Advocates for Children's Health Affected by Mercury Poisoning, or ACHAMP. He blames his 7-year-old son's autism on vaccines.
Bresnitz said he didn't know whether jurisdictions outside this country have required flu shots for school kids.
Parents on Friday also urged support for a bill that would give parents a right to "philosophical objection" to vaccine mandates. The bill has been sitting in a committee for four years without action.
"It is not right for the government and unelected councils to dictate what we put into our children," said Sue Collins, co-founder of the New Jersey Alliance for Informed Choice in Vaccination.
Corzine, asked about the mandates Friday, said he didn't "want to speak to the specifics."
Several parents noted that unlike other common vaccines, most of the influenza vaccine available contains mercury, a toxic heavy metal that has been widely blamed by parents as a cause of autism, despite the lack of any such evidence.
A few speakers also said there's no research showing that it is safe to give children all the vaccines required today -- more than 30 for New Jersey children.
"They're really being treated as guinea pigs, and not all children can handle all vaccines," said Assemblywoman Charlotte Vandervalk, R-Bergen, sponsor of the philosophical objection bill.
The new vaccines New Jersey backs are recommended by the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups.
Ping. I’ve been out of the loop and didn’t know if you saw this.
Baloney.
“Sorry, this is a public health measure. The vaccinations will save many lives.”
The only time that I have ever gotten the flu was when I took the flu shot. I come from the deep end of the gene pool. I don’t even get colds.
I wish you the best in your family matters.
Along with the Flu fight, there is also the staph infections which are disproportionately affecting high school students.
Public education can be bad for your medical health, as well, it seems.
As if any more were needed.
Even you can't possibly believe that hogwash.
There are no studies that statistically support the idea that any lives have ever been saved by any vaccine. The damage that the sloppily manufactured vaccines cause is far in excess to the claimed benefit, especially to children.
We dearly need to restore the wall of separation between child and state.
Can you imagine how often the gym locker rooms, lockers and bathrooms are disinfected...
Odds that the next pandemic will be some nasty airborne staph infection borne out of a public school in America?
And the cause of this is the anti-bacterial soaps that are now used in the restrooms. They have made the schools just as dangerous as the hospitals. The best defense from staph is the normal, beneficial bacteria that exist on the skin, and killing them leaves one very vulnerable to infection.
Remove those soaps and the danger disappears.
ping
Some people will stop at nothing in their efforts to attain government control of our lives, and use any excuse to do so; even the *it's for the chiiiillldrruuunnn* one.
There is no justification for mandatory ANYTHING, especially when common sense hygiene and health care can be effective.
Exactly. The soaps kill the helpful bacteria and allows the bad bacteria to get stronger and multiply. Anti bacterial soaps are one of the stupidities of our time. The tv comercials on fighting bacteria are on all day long.
Thanks.
Back around 1990 in Jim Florio’s New Jersey, the state tried to ban “runny eggs”. You couldn’t go to a diner and get eggs “over easy” or “sunny side up”. You couldn’t get a real Caesar salad. Around the same time Florio rammed through the biggest tax increases in the state’s history (to pay off the education mafia) and then immediately did what Nazi brownshirts always do to protect themselves - - instituted some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation.
New Jersey is a tyrannical, socialist toilet - - and it’s exactly what the voters want.
Obviously.
So why in God’s name those same voters are now jumping up and down and hollering about forced flu shots for preschoolers is beyond me. What did the morons expect?
Sure he can. Look at his screen name.
Facts aren’t going to matter to anyone not sufficiently removed from the Matrix.
Public health, my ass. Thank fate that I will not let The State touch or indoctrinate my children, that I homeschool them, and that I live in a state far removed from from the People’s Republic of New Filthy Jersey.
Its a shame that folks who never look at the data and the history of mass death and pandemics make such statements.
Folks with no knowledge between the links of childhood diseases and devastating diseases that are worse than death are ill equipped to discuss them.
Take a walk through an 1800s cemetary and look at the number of children people had to have in order to have 2 live.
That alone should make such a person hesitate.
It is discouraging that our failure to educate people in the sciences allows such nonsense.
That being said, the state should stay out of our business.
You make some gargantuan leaps with that statement. A return to Levitical standards for public sanitation has stopped the pandemics, not vaccines. Many vaccines have caused extensive death and suffering, such as the Salk polio vaccine of the 1950s that contained live virus, that killed hundreds, and crippled thousands. Civil suits don't restore life, but they are the victim's only recourse with medical misadventure.
We don’t get a flu shot, we don’t need to, we rely on a healthy immune system. I’m not AGAINST getting one, we could get them for free, on base, but we just don’t need it.
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