Previous post: Should You Live PURE?
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A weekly blog based on PodMed, Johns Hopkins podcast looking at the top medical stories of the week for people who want to become informed participants in their own health care.
Previous post: Should You Live PURE?
Next post: Drug Costs
This blog gives additional details on one of multiple topics in PodMed, a weekly podcast found at Hopkinsmedicine.org/ podmed. It looks at the top medical stories of the week for people who want to become informed participants in their own health care.
PodMed is created by Elizabeth Tracey, director of electronic media for Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Rick Lange M.D., professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, president of the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center and dean of the Paul Foster School of Medicine.
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Avoiding Vaccination
September 7th, 2017|Medical News Commentary|By Elizabeth Tracey
Prior to the 2016-17 school year, California bill (SB)277 eliminated the personal belief exemption from school vaccine mandates, which had allowed parents to cite religious or philosophical objections to required vaccines but enroll their children in school. The exemption for medical reasons remains, and was in fact expanded somewhat under the bill. The authors examined data from 1996 to 2016 from incoming kindergartners and tallied statewide medical and personal belief exemptions over the time period. In the first year under the new law, medical exemptions increased from 0.17% to 0.51%, while exemptions for personal beliefs dropped from 2.37% to 0.56%. Clearly, while there was an overall decrease in exemptions it appears that some have shifted to a medical exemption. And as Rick opines, that's gaming the system, with physician collusion. It's well known that herd immunity depends upon a large number of us being immunized, so choosing not to do so has potentially deleterious or even deadly consequences for others. We both agree that exemptions need to be closely scrutinized for the good of all.
Other topics this week are all from NEJM: Third Dose of MMR Vaccine, Tiotropium in Early-Stage COPD, and Tezepelumab in Adults with Uncontrolled Asthma. Until next week, y'all live well.