Judges have ruled that a man cannot claim a religious exemption from an employer's rule that required him to get a vaccination. The man had argued that being ordered to get a mumps vaccination would illegally violate his vegan beliefs, since chicken embryos are used in the production of the vaccine.
Jerold Friedman, a computer programmer who lives in Hawthorne southwest of Los Angeles, said accepting the vaccine would have violated his religious belief that all animal species are equal and deserve equal treatment.
"I no longer believe," he said Friday, "that because somebody is born as a frog or a human, one of them gets preferential treatment." Religion, Friedman said, "means that selfless dedication to something that we believe is right."
From an article in the San Francisco Chronicle September 14, 2002.