Pols Push End To Religious Vaccine Exemption Amid Measles Woes

NEW YORK — King Singh is only old enough for kindergarten, but he's already afraid to go to school.

The 5-year-old has been battling blood diseases since he was 2. The conditions are triggered by viruses like measles, which has sickened hundreds of people in New York City, so he's being homeschooled for his own protection.

"We don't want to put him in an environment where he can basically die from picking up something that's preventable," said King's father, Michael Singh of Queens Village.

As New York's measles outbreak persists, state legislators want to protect kids like King by nixing a state law that lets parents exempt their kids from vaccines for religious reasons.

Such religious exemptions are common across the country. But lawmakers worry that vaccine skeptics are using New York's as a loophole to avoid vaccinating their children, which puts kids with compromised immune systems in danger.

"We should not wait for more children to be sickened or a tragedy to occur before we act," state Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat who's sponsoring a bill to repeal the religious exemption, said at a Tuesday news conference.

New York City's Health Department had recorded 535 cases of the disease as of last week, a figure accounting for more than half the 940 cases across the country. That's despite an April emergency order threatening people in parts of Brooklyn with fines if they don't get vaccinated.

The state public health law requires parents to vaccinate their kids against measles and other diseases in order for them to attend school. But parents don't have to follow that mandate if they have "genuine and sincere religious beliefs" that go against the law's requirements.

Hoylman's bill would remove that exemption, meaning every child in the state would have to get vaccinated unless there was a medical reason they could not. Lawmakers argue the change would improve New York's vaccination rate, which would protect kids with health problems that prevent them from getting immunized.

California ended its religious exemption after a measles outbreak stemming from Disneyland sickened at least 131 people in 2014 and 2015. The statewide vaccination rate there subsequently rose from 90 percent to 95 percent, which is high enough to protect even people who have not been immunized, said Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, another sponsor of the bill. Maine also reportedly ended all non-medical vaccine exemptions just last week.

"Whooping cough, measles, so many other diseases don't have to happen in the 21st century," said Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat. "But there are people who apparently are living in the 18th century who don't seem to understand that."

The bill faces uncertain prospects in the state Legislature, which has less than a month left in session. While its supporters are hopeful that it will pass, it has not advanced out of committee in either house.

While Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reportedly expressed legal concerns about the measure, he said Tuesday that he thinks "the public health crisis overwhelms the religious exemption interest."

"This is a public health crisis, and it's worse in New York than any other state, and I think we should pass a bill," Cuomo said on WNYC. "You have a right to your religious beliefs. You don't have a right to infect my child."

Hoylman's news conference drew protests Tuesday from at least a dozen vaccine skeptics, who said it would coerce parents into giving their kids potentially dangerous shots despite their religious beliefs.

"This is an attack on religion and freedom, period. This is an attack on bodily autonomy," said Stefanie Mihairas, a Bronx mother who said her son got measles from the vaccine.

But kids who have battled various forms of cancer, like 15-year-old Toby Pannone, said their lives are at stake when it comes to vaccine requirements.

Pannone was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare cancer affecting the nervous system, when he was younger than 4 years old. The treatment he underwent over about the next five years left his immune system dangerously vulnerable, he said, so he had to go to the hospital whenever he so much as sniffled, coughed or got a fever.

"I've gone through a lot — through blood transfusions and experimental treatments, through years when I could not live a normal life, through my hearing loss and all other side effects of my treatment," Toby said. "But I made it in part because those around me protected me by simply getting a shot. It shouldn't be that hard."