Washington State Makes It Harder to Opt Out of Immunizations
Washington State is home to Bill and Melinda Gates, champions of childhood vaccines across the globe. Its university boasts cutting-edge vaccine research. But when it comes to getting children immunized, until recently, the state was dead last.
“You think we’re a cut above the rest,” said Dr. Maxine Hayes, state health officer for Washington’s Department of Health, “but there’s something in this culture out West. It’s a sort of defiance. A distrust of the government.”
The share of kindergartners whose parents opted out of state immunization requirements more than doubled in the decade that ended in 2008, peaking at 7.6 percent in the 2008-9 school year, according to the state’s Health Department, raising alarm among public health experts. But last year, the Legislature adopted a law that makes it harder for parents to avoid getting their children vaccinated, by requiring them to get a doctor’s signature if they wish to do so. Since then, the opt-out rate has fallen fast, by a quarter, setting an example for other states with easy policies.
For despite efforts to educate the public on the risks of forgoing immunization, more parents are choosing not to have their children vaccinated, especially in states that make it easy to opt out, according to a study published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/health/washington-state-makes-it-harder-to-forgo-immunizations.html
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He stated 'religious reasons", about which I'm all out of fucks to give, and when I tried to convince him that it wasn't so much about his daughter as about the kids she could infect if she is not immunized, he got pretty nasty. I just about threw him out of the exam room. I told the scheduler not to put them on my schedule for any follow-ups. Fanatical dipshit... 
