Press Herald Staff Writer Scott Thistle, in a story published Jan. 31, wrote that Gov. Mills urges voters to uphold Maine’s new vaccine law. She argues that large pharmaceutical companies “hardly benefit at all from producing vaccines.”

It is disingenuous for Gov. Mills to assert that there is no profit motive behind vaccine policy. The World Health Organization says that the global vaccine market – valued at $5 billion in 2000 – is projected to rise to $100 billion by 2025, with vaccines “becoming an engine for the pharmaceutical industry” worldwide.

We have always had vaccine mandates in Maine, and we always will. What is at stake with L.D. 798 is “exemption rights” – the right to decline a mandated vaccine that is objectionable for personal or religious reasons –  or to choose alternative timing.

We’re seeing a nationwide onslaught of bills like L.D. 798 that aim to remove individual and parental rights. New York, one of the few states that has made the mistake of eliminating personal exemption rights, may become the third state to require HPV vaccination for seventh-graders starting in 2021. Another New York state bill under consideration will “codify permission for minors to receive the HPV vaccine without parental permission,” Gannett New York journalist Nancy Cutler has reported.

On March 3, Mainers will have a chance to resist this recent tide of aggressive, profit-driven vaccine policy by voting “yes” on 1.

Melissa Roberts

Freeport