Limit vaccination exemptions

The Des Moines (Iowa) Register: Like Iowa, Colorado is one of 48 states that allow parents to cite personal or religious reasons to exempt their children from vaccinations required to attend school. Amid a national outbreak of preventable diseases like whooping cough, Colorado officials are working to make it more difficult for parents to do this. One proposal being considered would require them to receive counseling or education related to vaccinations before they can opt out for nonmedical reasons.

Iowa should consider a similar measure. If government doesn’t bring some common sense and truth to the thoroughly debunked idea linking vaccines to autism, who is going to do it? Children can’t pick their parents, and they are left vulnerable to illnesses that can cause serious health problems. Just as troubling, unvaccinated children put other children at risk for communicable diseases.

And there are no shortage of these children in Iowa. According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, 2,184 Iowa children were granted an exemption from vaccinations for medical reasons in the 2012-13 school year. More than twice that number, 4,958, were granted an exemption for religious reasons. In 2012, there were 1,700 cases of pertussis in the state, an illness that is preventable with a routine vaccine.