Activists in California announced this week that they were not able to garner enough signatures to put the new, tighter school vaccine requirements on the 2016 ballot, in an effort to overturn them. This is a significant win for public health, but it also reveals something about how thin California's anti-vax movement really is.
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We ve been avidly following the progress of California s vaccine law, and we are pleased to note that it is slated to take effect in 2016.
California gets a lot of criticism from us for often not being on the side of science. But in the past few months, they ve done some serious good for the public health.
At last: we in public health have been awaiting an expert opinion on vaccine safety from media celebrity Jim Carrey for such a long time and now he has spoken! He has strong opinions, but each one is Dumb and Dumber than the last. And his words can do much harm.
Although it may seem that when California legislators and governors relate to public health they get it wrong (for example with Proposition 65), but sometimes they really do the right thing.
An op-ed in Forbes.com by James Conca notes the benefits of nuclear power in helping to ameliorate, to some extent, the disastrous drought now gripping California (and to a lesser extent, Oregon and Washington). Specifically, he notes the nuclear reactor at Diablo
Follow-up on two of our recent, important Dispatch items. California s Assembly has cleared the next-to-last legislative hurdle toward removing the state s non-medical exemptions for children s vaccinations. And an FDA panel has approved overwhelmingly a new type of cholesterol-lowering medication.
California seems to get all the attention when it comes to the anti-vaxx movement, but the epidemic of non-medical exemptions exists in other states too, and in many cases it s worse. In fact according to data from 2012, Cali
Tomorrow (April 24th) begins World Immunization Week, a campaign started by the World Health Organization (WHO) to increase worldwide efforts to immunize children against a variety of life threatening
Hundreds of people, reportedly standing in line for hours, showed up in Sacramento to voice their baseless fears over the bill, which if passed will force many to either submit to protecting their kids or home school them. The committee listened to a spattering of
After a four-hour hearing, California lawmakers approved Senate Bill 277, which prevents most exemptions (opting out) for parents trying to avoid vaccinating their children due to personal beliefs. The bill was proposed in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak that began in December. The final vote on the bill was 6-2. However, it must pass through several more hearings before a possible Senate floor vote, and then go through the state Assembly, and then to Gov. Jerry Brown (whose vaccine beliefs are