Vaccines, Maine court rules in support of immunization

Maine's legislature was unable to override a gubernatorial veto of an upgraded state vaccine law. Nevertheless, the state's supreme court subsequebntly provided guidance about the urgency of preventing vaccine preventale diseases.

Maine court rules state could order child’s vaccination against mother’s wishes By Jackie Farwell, Bangor Daily News Staff

PORTLAND, Maine — The state acted legally when it ordered immunizations for a child in its custody against the mother’s wishes, Maine’s highest court ruled Tuesday.

The Maine Department of Health and Human Services took temporary custody of the 1-year-old after learning that the father was abusive to the boy’s mother, according to court documents, which kept the family members’ names confidential.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court, which first heard the case in May, supported a district court ruling that DHHS was justified in taking custody of the boy. The mother failed to recognize that the father posed a potential threat and remained in a relationship with him, while also declining needed medical care for the child, according to the ruling.

The mother refused to vaccinate the child, saying “I do not believe in viruses,” and denied him antibiotics because she believes “the mind can cure all,” court documents state. She also sought no medical treatment for the child’s hernia, reporting that “when it bulges, she simply pushes it back,” according to the documents.

The mother’s Lewiston attorney, Erika Bristol, said in May that the woman’s choice to decline treatment resulted in no harm to the child, who was healthy when DHHS took custody. 

To get the child back, the mother must agree to the immunizations, she said at the time.

All but one of the justices also supported the lower court’s finding that DHHS was within its legal rights to order immunizations for the child.

In granting DHHS custody, the lower court specifically required the department to “make arrangements for the child to have a full medical evaluation, including an evaluation of his hearing and hernia, and approve such vaccinations as are deemed essential by the pediatrician,” the ruling states. The custodian of a child has the right to make medical decisions, including vaccination, the justices ruled.

Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice Joseph Jabar concurred that the child was in jeopardy but disagreed with the other justices that the district court could order DHHS to vaccinate the boy. While the law allows legal custodians to make decisions about ordinary medical care and emergency treatment, vaccination meets neither of those standards, he wrote.

Under Maine law, parents may opt out of vaccinating their children for medical, religious or philosophical reasons, Jabar noted. (This law was upgraded in LD 471, in the Maine 127th, but Governor LePage vetoed the vote of the legislature and there weren't enough votes for a 2/3 override.)

Most Maine parents vaccinate their children, but federal data show the percentage declining vaccines is on the rise. More than 750 kindergartners started public school in 2013 without receiving all of the required immunizations because their parents opted out, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Maine’s opt-out rate was the fourth-highest in the nation during the 2013-14 school year.

“Because Maine parents have an express statutory right to opt out of vaccinating their children, preventative vaccinations are not the type of ordinary medical procedures that the state may unilaterally authorize, at least so long as the objecting parent or custodian retains that statutory parental right,” he wrote.

The department’s decision to order that the child be vaccinated also forever prevents the mother from exercising her right to skip those immunizations, even though the jeopardy order is temporary and she may one day regain full custody, Jabar wrote.

“It is not up to us to determine whether the law giving the parents the right to opt out of vaccinations is wise or medically sound — the Legislature has given parents this right,” he wrote.

Perhaps Maine's coalition to improve immunization rates among children will attempt to reintroduce another bill, similar to LD 471, and it will succeed in the 128th legislature.

Vaccines now among the growing litany of anti-science movements

It's beyond belief to realize how many Americans are now falling victim to yet another anti-science movement. In fact, zealots who are "anti-vacccers" are employing scare tactics to push back decades of progress made by medical scientists who have saved countless numbers of lives because of the invention of preventative vaccines.

Yesterday's public hearings in Augusta Maine on May 11, 2015, heard a litany of testimonies from anti-vaccers who were roused by the daunting speech by Joesph Kennedy of Massachusettes. He took up time inciting anti-vaccers who want to push back the clock on the medical evidence in support of how vaccines prevent communicable diseases. Listening to Mr. Kennedy, one would take at face value that all vaccines are conspiracies by pharmaceutical companies to make money by adding deadly ingredients to their products so they will be cheaper, albeit dangerous. If his wrong minded allegations were true, none of us who were in the room yesterday would be alive today. Moreover, everyone who testified against the vaccine expansion bills told the Maine Health and Human Services Committee that they were vaccinated and their children were, also.

Here is testimony I helped to craft with Avanel Payne, R.N., B.S. C.P.N. (Certified Pediatric Nurse): Thank you Avanel.

(Right) Avanel Payne, a certified pediatric nurse with Dr. Norma Dreyfus a retired pediarician (left)in the Maine Cross Building Health and Human Services Committee Room they supported LD 471  (photo by Juliana L'Heureux0

May 11, 2015  Testimony of Avanel Payne, R.N., B.S.N. C.P.N. (Certified Pediatric Nurse) Washington Street, Bath, ME 04530

In support of LD471: An Act to Improve Vaccination Rates in Maine

Good Morning,

Chairman Senator Brakey

Chair Representative Grattine

Members of the Health and Human Services Committee

My name is Avanel Payne. I’m a practicing Registered Nurse living in Bath, ME.

I’ve been a nurse who cares for Maternal and Child Health and pediatrics patients for over 30 years. I work in Mid Coast Maine.

I’m supporting LD471: An Act to Improve Vaccination Rates in Maine.

This is an important piece of legislation. Let me tell you why I feel strongly about supporting vaccines for children and their effectiveness in protecting the public’s health.

I practiced nursing in the years prior to having vaccines available for contagious diseases like measles, mumps, and chicken pox. Frankly, I remember when the polio vaccine became available, when I was a student nurse at the University of Pennsylvania.

Before vaccines were available, when measles broke out in schools, not all the children recovered. I’ve seen children with measles encephalitis, which has a high rate of mortality. I have seen patients surviving in iron lungs because they became ill with the polio virus. Today, these diseases are entirely preventable because of the availability of vaccines.

I have cared for children who have compromised immune systems because they are receiving immuno suppressive therapy due to cancers or as recipients of organ transplants. It’s vitally important for these children to receive vaccines, especially the varicella vaccine to prevent chicken pox. Sadly, when a child becomes ill with chicken pox and has a weakened immune system, the disease is often deadly, but it can be prevented with the varicella vaccine. When all children receive the varicella vaccine, the cumulative effect protects everyone from the spread of this communicable disease.

Protecting the entire community with vaccines has the benefit of helping children who have suppressed immune systems.

I also support the policy of providing Hepatitis B for all newborns, because this vaccine prevents children from growing up with chronic liver disease.

Protecting the public from preventable infectious diseases is our first public health obligation. When we protect the public from becoming infected with preventable communicable diseases, we are also protecting the quality of life for all Maine citizens and the health of our workforce.

As a matter of fact, when the public is healthy and protected from the risk of preventable infectious diseases, like measles, mumps, pertussis, polio, hepatitis, meningitis and chicken pox, we can provide for a healthier education system, because the children will not miss school due to preventable illness and parents will not worry about missing work when their children are ill or at risk of becoming ill with infectious disease, during the epidemic outbreaks.

Moreover, in my experience, I have never seen any child with autistic syndrome that can even remotely be correlated with a vaccine.

On the other hand, I have cared for many children who were infected with vaccine preventable illnesses who suffered because there was no vaccine available or they did receive the benefit.

I urge you to support vaccine availability for all people, especially children. It’s proven to be a cost effective wellness policy that benefits everyone equally.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on a public health policy that I feel strongly about and I know will improve the wellness of Maine people.