Credit: PA Internet News Service
Pennsylvania’s secretary of health this week waded into the latest national debate over the safety of commonly used vaccines, explicitly framing her stance in opposition to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s remarks that questioned government requirements for vaccinations.
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In a news conference in Harrisburg, Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine proclaimed in clear terms that vaccines are safe, effective and essential to public health.
“[The comments by] Rand Paul, that immunizations should not be required … seems to me, and I think my fellow pediatricians, to be completely wrong,” Levine said at a news conference at the Capitol. “The idea that these immunizations shouldn’t be required doesn’t make any sense.”
Paul, much like his father, former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, famously has a libertarian bent and is a noted skeptic of government power. The Kentucky Republican is a medical doctor as well as a senator, and during a congressional hearing this week he said that while he supports the use of vaccines, he doesn’t think government should be requiring it.
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“It is wrong to say that there are no risks to vaccines,” Paul said, according to The Washington Post. “Even the government admits that children are sometimes injured by vaccines. … I still don’t favor giving up on liberty for a false sense of security.”
Paul’s comments reignited the argument over the safety and efficacy of vaccines. A since-discredited medical study in the 1990s appeared to show a link between the use of vaccines and onset of autism in children. Internet-fueled “anti-vaxxer” groups have argued that large pharmaceutical companies are suppressing information about the dangers of vaccinations, and some skeptics have even argued that the side effects of vaccines are worse than the symptoms of the diseases they prevent.
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On the other side of the argument are healthcare professionals and historians who point out that before the widespread use of vaccines in the U.S., childhood mortality rates were significantly higher than they are today, plus a number of studies have been published in recent years that appear to debunk the link between vaccines and autism.
Three U.S. government officials – the assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the surgeon general – jointly published an opinion piece in The New York Times this week pointing to the dangers of skipping vaccinations.
“The World Health Organization estimates that measles vaccination prevented more than 21 million deaths worldwide since 2000,” Brett Giroir, Robert Redfield and Jerome Adams noted in the opinion piece. “Although routine childhood vaccination for measles remains high in the United States (greater than 91 percent for preschool children), localized dips in vaccination coverage have resulted in a recent resurgence of measles in parts of the country.”
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At this point, Pennsylvania has not emerged as one of the hotspots for anti-vaccination efforts, and Levine is hoping that it will remain that way.
“Right now, our immunization rates for measles in kindergarten is greater than 96 percent,” she said. “One of the reasons that’s key is that it’s above the threshold of 95 percent, which is what is called herd immunity. Herd immunity means that enough of the population in an area is immunized that it’s unlikely to spread and lead to an outbreak.
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“I want to make it very clear that childhood immunizations, adult immunizations such as the measles vaccine are safe and they are effective in preventing very serious illnesses, and they have been a public health victory,” she said.
Comments on a Pennsylvania Department of Health posting on Facebook about Levine’s news conference illustrated the deep divide that still exists on the issue.
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“Dr. Rachel Levine needs to be replaced,” wrote one commenter. “The fact that she can say they are ‘safe and effective’ proves that she is not educated and is just an agenda pusher for big pharma. How can we remove her?”
“Not to vaccinate is your right,” another commenter wrote. “To be protected from your unvaccinated children is my right. Keep your unvaccinated children out of the general public so that children too young, or too ill to be vaccinated are protected from the diseases your unvaccinated children are spreading.”
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