Take This Waiver And Call Me In The Morning

Why are doctors helping patients skip their shots?

- Joanna Nix

IN DECEMBER 2014, an 11-year-old visited a Disney theme park in California and afterward got a rash. It was measles, and over the next several weeks the disease spread to at least 136 Californians, as well as people in seven other states and two foreign countries.

This was no fluke case. Though measles was supposedly eliminated in the United States in 2000—thanks to the highly effective measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR)—it has come roaring back, with 667 confirmed cases nationwide in 2014 alone.

Among the California patients in the Disney outbreak, at least 36 percent hadn’t received their MMR vaccine. Some were too young to have gotten their shots, but more than half were unvaccinated by choice. Despite school requirements, it was easy to skip immunizations: All parents had to do was sign a form stating that “immunization is contrary to my beliefs.” From 1996 to 2014, the rate of kindergartners with personal-belief exemptions more than quintupled. And this wasn’t just a California phenomenon: 47 states allow religious or personal-belief exemptions.

But California is no longer among them. The Disney outbreak propelled state lawmakers to pass SB 277, which eliminated the personal-belief exemption. It has been an immunological home run: In the 2016-17 school year, 95.6 percent of Californian kindergartners received all their required vaccinations, the highest rate since current immunization requirements began in 2001.