As California Senate Bill 277, which would end personal belief exemptions for early-age vaccines required by California schools, makes its way through the state legislature, some in West Marin have begun to speak out in opposition. Last week, the Light sat down with Sarah David, a San Geronimo Valley resident who believes that the DTaP vaccine contributed to the cause of her son’s autism.
The valley is home to schools with some of the highest kindergarten vaccine opt-out rates in the state, and has served as ground zero for the debate over whether or not parents should be required to vaccinate their children in the wake of a measles outbreak that swept across California and beyond. Below, Ms. David discusses her son’s autism, her views on vaccines and the stigma she feels around them, the source of West Marin’s skepticism of vaccines in general, and her fears about the bill.
Point Reyes Light: Can you tell us your son’s story?
Sarah David: When my son was not quite 2 years old, he was hospitalized with a stomach virus, rotavirus. He was very sick—let’s not get too graphic. It’s standard, if you’ve had an emergency room visit, to follow up with your pediatrician afterwards. So we did that. He was released on Monday morning, and on Thursday we went to see the pediatrician. At that visit, he was given the DTaP [Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis] vaccine. We’ve talked to a lot of doctors since then, and they said he probably shouldn’t have been given the vaccine that day. He probably should’ve waited until he was totally over the illness, and then get vaccinated.
Within 24 hours, my son was seizing. He had never had a seizure prior to then. It’s my feeling that the illness, the seizures and the vaccine all culminated in this illness so that, subsequently, he regressed into autism. He lost skills that he prevously had. He was globally developmentally delayed. He stopped speaking.
It took a really long time before he was diagnosed with autism. Doctors are not handing out autism diagnoses left and right. They’re fairly hesitant, and you have to go through evaluations and assessments before they can say, for sure, that this is autism.
PRL: Did doctors come to the conclusion that there was a link between the vaccines, your son’s previous [health] issue and the autism?
SD: No. Those doctors, at the time, did not. I’ve seen doctors since that have. Another factor at play was that we were in the military system, and you don’t see the same doctor twice in the military system. It’s not like we were followed by a doctor who was completely familiar with every aspect of his case. Then there are a whole lot of doctors that don’t even believe in regressive autism. In my son’s case, I have proof because I have assessments and evaluations of his developmental progress prior to the regression. When you say, “Look, I have this child who was in the 99th percentile for all areas of development, and now he’s in the 0.1 percentile,” it’s pretty clear that he regressed.
PRL: Have you done a lot of research into this?
SD: Yes, I have. I first found out that I wasn’t the only person who felt this way. It’s very frowned upon to hold this belief about this thing that happened to my child, but it’s personal for me. This is my family. There’s a lot of fear involved in saying that this is what I feel happened, and this is why I don’t feel like I want to follow the vaccine schedule anymore. A lot of families, a lot of mothers, are hesitant to go to their doctors and say that because some people think they’ll get their kids taken away. Now, we think they might not be able to attend school. I know there are many parents out there who have made this decision, or the decision to follow an alternate schedule for a number of other reasons. And I think that they should have the right to do that.
I do think that it’s a scary world when the state can decide what medical procedures your child gets, instead of the parent making that decision. The way [S.B. 277] is written, it leaves it open [so that] they could introduce new vaccines next year, or the year after, or after. And if it passes—once that passes—you don’t have a choice anymore. It’s 100 percent, across the board: you have to get each vaccine on time, and you have to get all of the ones that they recommend. And if you don’t agree with a component or with a vaccine that’s introduced in the future, you will already have lost the right to say no.
PRL: A lot of people might think it’s scary to have schools where many children are not vaccinated for these diseases. What would you say to a parent who is adamant that all children should be vaccinated on schedule?
SD: For one thing, there are things called “titer tests” that people can take to see how immunized their children are to specific diseases. Although my children are not fully vaccinated, they are fully immunized to measles, mumps and rubella. They’ve taken the titer test, and their immunization is high. Most children who have these exemptions on file are actually vaccinated. If they wanted to, they could go and get these titer tests to see how immune they are to each disease. Right now, people are very nervous about measles. If you want to take your child to the doctor and get a titer test to see how immune they are to measles, you’re entitled to do that. As the law is, right now, a titer test is legally equivalent to a vaccination record. There’s no language in this bill, the way it’s written, that specifies what will happen to that in the future. It’s one of those unknowns, and there are a lot of unknowns with this bill.
PRL: Do you think the bill infringes on the rights of citizens?
SD: Yes. Absolutely. And I think there’s been a lot of talk about there not being any religions that don’t believe in vaccines. The fact is that some vaccines contain porcine components. That’s genetic material of pigs. If you’re a Muslim or a Jewish person, you’re not supposed to partake in any pork. So these people would disagree with certain vaccines that contain those porcine components. And then there are people who are pro-life who will not get the MMR [measles, mumps and rubella] vaccine because the mumps component is grown on aborted fetal cells.
Also, a lot more people would be vaccinated if they had more faith in the process. I think the way to increase public faith in vaccination is to improve the vaccination program, not to force people to do things against their will.
PRL: Why do you think there is a lack of faith?
SD: I’m going to talk specifically about MMR because that’s the concern right now. The Merck MMR vaccine is the only licensed measles vaccine in the United States. You don’t have the option to get separate vaccines if you just want to get measles and rubella vaccines. You don’t have the option to do that. You don’t have the option to get an MMR vaccine from a different vaccine manufacturer in the United States. In a perfect world, a free market regulates itself. When consumers don’t agree with a product, they don’t buy it or don’t use it. Then, the makers of the product say, “Hey, they aren’t using our product. We should improve upon it.” That’s what should be happening.
PRL: What is it about the San Geronimo Valley in particular that makes it a location where lots of parents are electing to opt out of vaccinations?
SD: That’s a very interesting question. It’s such an interesting area. A lot of the parents in the San Geronimo Valley—and in Marin in general—are older parents. They chose to not have kids until they were, maybe, 40. I don’t fit into that boat, but a lot of them do. A lot of the parents of the kids at my daughter’s school—actually, most of them—are older than I am, but our kids are the same age. Most of them are college graduates, and many of them, in fact, are stay-at-home moms who have master’s degrees. When you get an education and you go to college, you learn that you should research things. That’s one of the things they really drill into you, in college, that you should know what you’re getting into. You should research things. So when older, more educated parents have children, I think they’re more inclined to do the research and find out what exactly it is they’re doing when they vaccinate their kid. What it is that’s going into their kids, and what the potential risks are.
PRL: Are parents concerned with what’s in the vaccines, like Thimerosal?
SD: Yes. I think, generally, people are. There’s a misconception that all the Thimerosal has been taken out of all the vaccines. That’s not true. When your child turns 4—and your doctor may not necessarily tell you this—they’re not getting childhood vaccines anymore. They may be getting vaccines with Thimerosal in them, unless you specifically say otherwise. Furthermore, all the vaccines wherein Thimerosal has been removed still contain it in trace amounts. The Centers for Disease Control’s definition of trace amounts is up to one microgram of Thimerosal per vaccine, per shot. However, this can vary because sometimes there are multi-dose vials that the nurse, or whomever administers the vaccine, pulls from before they give the vaccine to the child. If the vial hasn’t been mixed, things separate. One shot may have a little bit more mercury than the next. So it’s still in there. It’s much less, but it’s still in there.
Another thing I would add is that when they made the decision to take Thimerosal out of vaccines, they also added more aluminum. Aluminum is not a preservative. It’s an adjuvant: something that’s designed to provoke the immune system, to get an immune response. For aluminum and mercury, there haven’t been any synergistic safety studies. There are potentially very harmful effects of using them at the same time, injected into a person.
PRL: What could be done to close the gap between people who choose personal belief exemptions and people who are adamantly opposed to them?
SD: People who are adamantly opposed to personal belief exemptions? That’s like saying people who are opposed to personal beliefs, isn’t it? Why would you be adamantly opposed to someone else’s beliefs? Furthermore, if parents believe they should get their kids fully vaccinated, and then believe that because my child hasn’t had all the vaccines in the schedule (although I’ve had them tested), then how much faith do they really have in the vaccines that they’ve been getting for their children? If you believe that they work, then why is a child who’s under-vaccinated—or unvaccinated—a threat?
PRL: Do you feel scared by this bill?
SD: To be honest, I do. I’m scared not just for my own kids, but for the future of children in general. If we’re going to give up our right to make this decision for our children, if we’re going to give up our informed-consent right, here, on this subject—then where else will we give up our informed-consent right? What’s going to be happening next? What are they going to be giving your kids without your permission next? That really concerns me.
PRL: Do you think your opinion on this subject would be different if it didn’t hit so close to home?
SD: It absolutely would. I was adamantly pro-vaccine before my family went through these issues. In fact, my brother chooses not to vaccinate his kids, and we argued about it before. I was adamantly pro-vaccine, and I berated him. And then this happened in my family. I learned more about vaccines, what they do and don’t do. How efficacious they are. For example, the pertussis vaccine has been shown to be not more than 60 percent efficacious. You can’t be that confident in it. I’ve learned a lot since the effect on my family has caused me to start thinking about it more and researching it more.
PRL: What would you like parents of immune-deficient children to know about the risks of their children being around unvaccinated students?
SD: I would point out that herd immunity is 95 to 97 percent. It’s different for every disease. They have a different assessment for every disease. Some are as low as 85 percent. For measles, I think, herd immunity is supposed to be about 95 percent. As I said before, kids with exemptions on file at their schools, most of them are actually vaccinated. They may be under-vaccinated, but most of them are vaccinated. It’s the very few, totally unvaccinated kids: that’s what happens the least. I would tell them that, by and large, they don’t have to worry about it because most of the kids are actually vaccinated.
The next point is that the personal belief exemption rate in California is something like two percent, I think. That means that 98 percent of kids in California are fully vaccinated. Most of that two percent with the exemptions on file are also vaccinated. So, really, that leads to a very, very small percentage of children who are totally unvaccinated for these diseases. I wouldn’t be that concerned about it.
PRL: What do you think about that very small percentage?
SD: I think they have a right to live their lives as they see fit.