Speaking at a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said too many parents are “turning away from sound science” when it comes to vaccinating children against preventable diseases.
The hearing was sparked due to the recent re-emergence of diseases, such as measles, that have been preventable by vaccines for many years.
“From smallpox to polio, we have learned in the United States that vaccines save lives,” Alexander said. “And yet a troubling number of parents are not vaccinating their children.”
The Senator compared Tuesday’s hearing to a similar one held last September on the outbreak of the Ebola virus and how rapidly it was spreading.
“The number of people being infected with Ebola was doubling every three weeks, and many of those infected were dying—because for Ebola there was and is no cure, and there was and is no vaccine,” Alexander said. “This produced a near panic in the U.S.—it changed procedures in nearly every hospital and clinic. The impact of efforts to fight Ebola is that the number of Ebola cases is declining.”
Alexander said the current measles outbreak was preventable.
“Here in the U.S. we are now experiencing a large outbreak of (measles), for which we do have a vaccine,” Alexander continued. “Measles used to sicken up to 4 million Americans each year—and many believed that it was an unpreventable childhood illness—but the introduction of a vaccine in 1963 changed everything.”
Alexander went on to explain how measles was declared officially eliminated—meaning the disease was not transmitted for a period of 12 months—from the United States in 2000, and that the median number of annual cases in the nation from 2001 to 2012 had dwindled to 60.
“Today is the 41st day of the year and we already have seen more cases of measles than we would in a typical year,” Alexander said. “One outbreak in Palatine, Illinois, has affected at least five babies, all less than a year old. Measles can cause life-threatening complications in children, such as pneumonia or swelling of the brain.”
Lawmakers have been reminded that 20 states allow parents to claim personal belief exemptions from vaccination requirements. Research indicates that in areas such as Los Angeles, California, for example, 60 to 70 percent of parents have filed such an exemption.
“In these elementary schools, vaccination rates are as low as those in Chad or South Sudan,” Alexander said. “The purpose of this hearing is to examine what is standing between healthy children and deadly diseases. It ought to be vaccinations. But too many parents are turning away from sound science.”