The signs are going up all over the place – not, perhaps surprisingly, for the candidates who are contesting Maine’s first presidential primary since 2000, when Al Gore won the Democrats’ endorsement over Bill Bradley, and George W. Bush bested John McCain among Republicans. The news that Maine is having a presidential primary, rather than a caucus, is still spreading slowly.
The signs are instead the familiar “Yes on 1” and “No on 1” variety, as voters contend with a people’s veto attempt to scuttle a new law, enacted by the Legislature last June, that eliminated non-medical exemptions from the requirement that schoolchildren receive prescribed immunizations before enrolling in public school.
Vaccinations have prompted controversy ever since 1796, when Edward Jenner, a country doctor in Gloucestershire, England, injected an eight-year-old boy with cowpox, successfully immunizing him against smallpox – a virulent, disfiguring, often fatal disease that had killed millions worldwide.
Less than two centuries later, on May 8, 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated, largely as a result of immunization – a campaign still considered our greatest public health achievement and an unquestioned boon to humankind.
Still, vaccinations have their critics, from English parents who thought Jenner was practicing sorcery, to those who can’t quite accept the idea that deliberately creating minor infections can prevent much more serious ones.
Childhood immunization, however, seemed universally accepted. The near-eradication of polio, and the conquest of serious, sometimes fatal infections from measles, mumps, tetanus, diphtheria and others seemed to speak for itself – but not quite.
There were rumblings in the 1980s. Then came a now-infamous 1998 article in the leading British medical journal, The Lancet, by Andrew Wakefield, linking the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, rubella) with autism. Researchers failed to replicate Wakefield’s findings, then finally realized he’d faked the entire research project, for reasons still not entirely clear.
In 2010, the Lancet repudiated the article, and Wakefield was “struck off” the rolls of British medical practitioners. Yet the worries created for millions of parents have been harder to eradicate.
A growing distrust of public institutions, and – perhaps – complacency among the medical community has sent immunizations rates falling. Numerous parents think they know, or at least suspect, that various vaccinations may be harmful, and have decided to be “better safe than sorry.”
As long as overall immunization rates remain high, there’s little problem. But when they fall below a critical level – 95% for some childhood threats – outbreaks can, and do, occur.
Maine has a particular problem with whooping cough, and the nation’s highest rate. Measles has reappeared in numerous locations, notably American Samoa, where in 2019 there were 5,700 infections in a population of 200,000, and 79 deaths – mostly children – before being contained by emergency, mandatory vaccinations.
Maine’s Legislature responded, appropriately, by disallowing exemptions from the school requirements for all non-medical reasons, both religious and philosophical.
The fact is that immunization does harm some children. Some have allergic reactions; others have weakened immune systems. They can’t be vaccinated safely, yet will pay a fearful price if others, who can be vaccinated, aren’t.
It’s a clear instance where personal choice can conflict with the overall good of the community. Failing to vaccinate your child may not harm your own children – yet it incontestably can harm others.
This irrefutable logic is why the “Yes on 1” side isn’t campaigning on the issue itself. Instead, its signs advise us to “Reject Big Pharma.” This is another whopper, though not as easily refuted as the faked autism scare.
“Pharma” is a health care boogeyman, and, sometimes, the shoe fits. The outrageous misbehavior of certain companies that enabled the opioid epidemic, and the more routine, but still reprehensible price-gouging like that practiced against Medicare should indeed rouse public ire.
Yet vaccinations are not among those problems. The market is stable, and well regulated. When the first stirrings of American resistance began, directed against a different vaccine, companies were named in many lawsuits based more on emotion than science; the federal government stepped in.
It indemnified the vaccine makers, and created a compensation fund that has awarded, over three decades, about $4.2 billion to claimants – a reasonable amount. You may question the law, but it’s simply not true that “Big Pharma” is profiting unduly.
Maine voters have sorted out tricky referendum questions before, including many where the evidence was far more mixed. For those who advocate choice, there is one: If you don’t want your child vaccinated, they don’t have to attend public school.
To allow some to inflict disease on others, including those who can’t otherwise protect themselves, is not a difficult call. By March 3, one trusts that voters will have figured this out.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, opinion writer and author for 35 years, has published books about George Mitchell, and the Maine Democratic Party. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net
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