Today will no doubt be gut-wrenching for you, as you watch the hearing and merely state your name and opposition to the latest iteration of SB 276. Regrettably the nature of the hearing does not afford you the opportunity to relate your stories of prior vaccine injuries to your child There will be opportunities to do so, in different contexts, after the bill passes through the Health Committee and the Appropriations Committee (and let’s be realistic, that’s most likely going to happen).

Because this is essentially a new bill (in form anyway), I am told it has to go back to the Senate for reconsideration. So theoretically, there is another opportunity to make the case in opposition to the Senate. But let’s be realistic. SB 276 passed the Senate under the version which removed the physician’s ability to make medical vaccine exemption decisions. The new version, in form at least purports to give the decision back to them. But as I’ve shown in my last post, it really doesn’t.

It seems obvious that the national context right now is against exemptions of any kind, at least in states which have experienced measles outbreaks. Any state which has some kind of PBE or religious exemption is just one outbreak away from legislation removing the exemption, and that’s assuming there is no national movement (some might call it a conspiracy) to remove these exemptions everywhere.

Because of this, and the extremely limited scope of CDC based medical exemptions, I think the whole exemption issue needs to be rethought. In California, it needs an immediate rethink, because it could positively impact the SB 276 debate.

What I have learned from talking to the families of Ken Stoller’s patients (and the families of other broad exemption writing physicians) is that most of you vaccinated one of your children, and that child was seriously and, in many cases, permanently injured. As I pointed out in many prior posts, Congress recognized that vaccines would cause such severe and permanent injury is a small group of children. You are the families of those children, and something needs to be done to protect these kids and your other children.

One of the reasons why people like you are so vilified by the press and the authorities is because they think you are selfishly endangering other people. There are two asserted bases of this belief. First, herd immunity. Second, the children who cannot be vaccinated under CDC guidelines because of age, or being temporarily immunocompromised, most often from cancer chemotherapy. In other words, the greater good and need to sacrifice argument.

That got me thinking. Isn’t one child sacrificed to the greater good enough? Why shouldn’t that be reason enough to get an exemption, one based on humanitarian considerations.

Think “Saving Private Ryan”

In WWII, because so many families were losing multiple sons, the Army developed a rule protecting a family’s other children.

Maybe there should be a humanitarian exemption added to SB 276, for the vaccine injured families.

The natural question would be how does a family prove that the injury was caused by vaccines?

Well I have an answer for that which is grounded in current vaccine law.
They don’t have to. There should be a presumption that the injury was caused by the vaccine if the symptoms or injury occurred in a close temporal proximity. The state would have the burden of proving to an administrative law judge that there was some other specific cause of the injury, based on published studies. That is the way it works currently in the majority of vaccine court cases. So there shouldn’t be a problem with the burden shifting approach. Congress and the he vaccine court and immunity act recognized, that it’s impossible to show a causal connection in any one case. An injury in some circumstances and some proximity is proof enough for the vaccine court, in some illnesses. There is no reason why it should not be the case in an exemption context.

The humanitarian exemption would not protect all children who might suffer an adverse event from a vaccine. Protecting them is going to require defeating SB 276. But if there was a humanitarian exemption added to SB 276, it would protect the most vulnerable families and from what I can tell, these are most of the families who are receiving medical exemptions from the few physicians still writing them.

So how do we get there?

First, a bill has to be drafted. I’ve reached out a bit and I think that can happen.

Second, potential sponsors have to be approached. It would be nice if sponsors could come from both parties in both houses.
And then comes the stories, and that will be your chance to make yourself heard.

If any of you read this in line to speak today, maybe tell the Members that you support a humanitarian exemption for the vaccine injured, and let them know what’s coming.

Rick Jaffe, Esq.
rickjaffeesquire@gmail.com