From the December 2007 Idaho Observer:

NJ first state to require flu shots for daycare and school

On December 10 the Public Health Council in New Jersey voted 5 to 2 in favor of requiring four new vaccines for daycare and school attendance beginning in September 2008. On December 14, final approval for the proposed amendments to the State’s immunization rules was given by New Jersey’s "soon to retire" Health and Senior Services Commissioner Fred M. Jacobs, M.D., J.D. The administrative rules will require children attending licensed daycares and preschools to receive annual flu shots and a pneumoccocal vaccine. In addition, children born after January 1, 1997 and enrolled in grade six or transferring into a New Jersey school from another state or country will be required to receive a booster dose of the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP) vaccine as well as the meningococcal vaccine.

New Jersey’s Public Health Council and Department of Health and Senior Services relied upon recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the CDC as well as state public health and education officials, the American Academy of Pediatrics and vaccine manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur, which markets three of the new vaccines that would be required (DTaP, influenza and meningococcal vaccines), among others. NJ health officials are claiming that the added vaccine requirements will help bring down the total number of sick children, hospitalizations and parents having to stay at home to care for a sick child.

New Jersey’s incidence of autism is 1 in 94 children (1 in 60 boys), the highest rate of autism in the country. Parents of autistic children have noted that their children regressed into autism shortly after receiving a triple antigen vaccine, usually the MMR vaccine given between 12 and 15 months of age.

The additional nine doses of vaccines would be added to 26 doses of vaccines [diphtheria (4), tetanus (4), pertussis (4), HIB (3), measles (2), mumps (1), rubella (1), polio (3), hepatitis B (3), chicken pox (1)] the State already requires for daycare or school, bringing the total to 35 doses of 13 mandated vaccines.

Hundreds of parents flooded the offices of Governor Jon Corzine and Commissioner Jacobs with phone calls urging them to stop the added vaccine requirements noting the lack of science behind the Public Health Commission’s decision. Parents are upset by the fact that a philosophical exemption to the state’s vaccine mandates has been sitting in committee for four years despite the growing number of parents supportive of the bill. One of the biggest complaints by parents is the lack of citizen and legislative oversight since the new requirements are made by unelected officials who are now telling them what they must "inject into their children."

New Jersey currently has two exemption to vaccines: 1) a medical exemption that must be written by a medical doctor, and 2) a religious exemption that requires citizens to write a letter explaining how vaccination "conflicts with the pupil’s exercise of bona fide religious tenets or practices." The law further states that "religious affiliated schools or child care centers shall have the authority to withhold or grant a religious exemption" for students attending their schools "without challenge by any secular health authority."
The New Jersey state legislature gave the NJ Department of Health the power under rule making authority to mandate new vaccines after holding public hearings and taking public comments. A public hearing was held on the proposed new vaccine mandates on Jan. 26, 2007 and the public comment period ended on Feb. 16. 2007. A 125-page summary of the public hearing and public comments received by the health department reveals that the majority of the 103 comments from the public opposed the new vaccine mandates.

In a memo from NJ Commissioner of Health Fred Jacobs to Herbert Yardley, Chair of the NJ Public Health Council, Jacobs noted that, "Some parents rights groups, vaccine critics, autism advocacy organizations and alternative medicine practitioners will likely continue to oppose existing requirements, these recently adopted new vaccine requirements, and future immunization requirements as they have since the mid-1980s....There is increasing resistance from the public on new state vaccine mandates and a demand for more informed parental choice in vaccinations for children...."

As more parents are waking up to the dangers of vaccinations and are choosing to make an informed choice to abstain from state mandated shots, vaccine awareness groups across the country are being flooded with phone calls and emails from anxious parents concerned about their own state’s desire to mandate more and more vaccine requirements without citizen input or legislative oversight.