The 441st session of the Maryland General Assembly will convene on January 8, 2020. Based on legislation that has been taking place in other states, we are concerned that one’s personal right to choose to exercise religious or medical exemption from vaccinations for oneself or ones child will be threatened.
For decades, Maryland law has guaranteed the right of citizens to exercise religious and medical exemptions from vaccination. This has not deterred citizens from choosing to vaccinate and vaccination rates for school children in Maryland are at 99% compliance [2]. Thus there is no evidence that public health is compromised in any way by Maryland law which sanctions the right to choose. Most other states also allow families to claim religious exemptions to mandated vaccinations but that right is under attack and is fueled by lobby money from vaccine manufacturers.
Once a vaccine is FDA approved, the manufacturer has no liability for childhood vaccine related injuries and deaths and they cannot be sued. This special privilege was given to Pharma in 1986 as a result of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Act [3]. After being granted this complete liability protection, vaccine manufacturers found it very profitable to sell vaccines. The number of mandated childhood vaccines then increased enormously from about 6 prior to 1986 to the current 70 doses of 16 vaccines for children by the age of 18 and hundreds more are in the pipeline. Lobbying to increase vaccine sales through coercive legislation has reached new heights as evidenced by recent legislation to remove the religious exemption from vaccination in states like California, Arizona, W Virginia, Mississippi, Maine and New York.
[1] Fortune Business Insights. December 26, 2019. .https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/vaccines-market-101769 . Accessed 12/28/2019.
[2] vaccine compliance table in Maryland. Accessed 12/23/2019.
[3] National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, 42 U.S.C.300aa-300aa-6.