Herb Conaway, also a physician, refused to hold a vote. He warned that allowing parents to prevent vaccinations could lead to outbreaks of preventable diseases.
A vaccine is given during the the Maplewood Township flu clinic for township employees and public health workers at the Town Hall on Jan.11, 2010.TRENTON — The impassioned debate went on for more than an hour — despite witnesses being limited to only 90 seconds per statement.
But a bill that would allow parents to claim a conscientious objection from having their children vaccinated was firmly shot down Monday by the chairman of the Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee, who called it a "recipe for disaster."
The debate marked the first time in seven years the controversial proposal was put up for formal discussion in the Assembly, and had appeared for a time to be gaining some momentum.
However, Assemblyman Herb Conaway (D-Burlington), who chaired the hearing, ultimately refused to hold a vote. Conaway, a physician, warned it could lead to outbreaks of preventable diseases.
The bill, A243, was introduced by Assemblywoman Charlotte Vandervalk (R-Bergen), in response to a growing national dispute over whether parents could decide for themselves whether their children should be vaccinated. More parents across the country are regarding vaccines with some suspicion, over concerns that vaccines may cause long-term neurological damage.
According to the Center for Disease Control, vaccines can cause severe allergic reactions and sometimes do have side effects, though usually minor . A fund set up by the federal government to compensate for vaccine-related injury and death has paid out about $2 billion to 2,580 claimants since it started in 1988.
In New Jersey, students who attend everything from childcare to college are required to have certain vaccinations, although their parents can claim medical or religious exemptions. The number of parents claiming the religious exemption has increased from 452 in the 2005-06 school year to 3,865 in 2009-2010.
At Monday’s hearing, several supporters attempted to link vaccines to serious illnesses. Few, however, argued for a link between vaccines and autism, which was made in a now-discredited 1990s study that helped fuel the movement against vaccines.
Dean Blumberg, a California pediatrician who specializes in infectious diseases, said some vaccines occasionally induce fevers, which can lower the threshold for seizures for children susceptible to them.
"That being said, you get fever from a cold or the flu," he said. Blumberg said California’s vaccination requirements are one of the easiest to opt out of in the nation and include "personal belief" waiver.
"In California we’ve had a whooping cough, or pertussis, outbreak over the past year. Areas where there was a high number of personal belief exemptions were hit hardest. So it does seem to correlate," he said.
Vandervalk said babies are given 35 doses of vaccines by the time they reach 15 months. "That’s a heavy burden on a little baby, and if parents want to space it out a little bit, there’s no other procedure that we mandate. You’re putting toxic substances into a child’s body," said the bill’s sponsor.
Conaway, though, said "this type of bill should not be passed."
Still, the committee chairman said he might be open to revisiting it in the future "as more evidence is brought to bear on the question."
Louise Kuo Habakus, leader of the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccination Choice, said she was disappointed.
"After seven years of being heard, given the incredible amount of emotion that exists, I think (Conaway) could have been a little more gracious," she said. "This is not over."