Vaccines & Viruses: Shaming schools and students?

Full disclosure. Should schools be required to post the vaccination rate of their student bodies? Legislators in Texas and Michigan have introduced bills that would do just that. Some parents claim the bills are a way of singling out families who don’t get vaccines, whether for medical, religious, or philosophical reasons. Others say it would help parents of immunocompromised children pick a school where the risk of an outbreak is low. Tom Reeder, a public-school superintendent in Michigan, said he was concerned that publishing vaccine exemption rates could create backlash toward certain students “As soon as you post them, people are going to want to know who it is, and you can’t do that to a child,” Reeder said. In Michigan, some counties have vaccine waiver rates that exceed 15 percent, although the average is 6 percent across the state. Among Christian schools in western Michigan, waiver rates vary widely, ranging from as high as 40 percent to as low as zero.

Meningitis jab. The United Kingdom will become the first nation in the world to provide universal meningitis B vaccine coverage for all infants. The move came after a yearlong standoff over the price of the vaccine, Bexsero. The dispute resolved after GlaxoSmithKline bought Bexsero from Novartis and, according to The Independent, cut the price by two-thirds to about $30 per shot. The government runs the healthcare system in the UK, so although vaccines are “free” for patients, it’s up to officials to decide which ones to provide. Unlike the United States, however, the UK does not mandate vaccines for school attendance or otherwise. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends meningitis shots for preteens. The FDA just approved Bexsero for use in the United States in January.

A real vaccine mandate. Parents in North Carolina are protesting a bill that would give the state one of the strictest vaccine requirements in the country, eliminating the religious exemption for childhood shots. North Carolina’s law is already stiff: The state requires all kindergarteners—even homeschoolers—to get six required vaccines, or sign a medical or religious exemption form (philosophical objections aren’t allowed). By eliminating the religious exemption, the bill would make vaccines truly mandatory in North Carolina and add two more vaccines to the required schedule. One of the sponsors, Democratic Sen. Terry Van Duyn, said that as a compromise the bill includes an exemption for homeschoolers. Only two other states, Mississippi and West Virginia, prohibit both religious and philosophical exemptions.

In vaccine research. The U.S. government is funding the development of an improved anthrax vaccine in case of a bioterror attack. And it’s funding development of a vaccine to prevent bird flu outbreaks on chicken farms.