• Dr. Sean O’Leary, a CDPHE-affiliated pediatrician who testified in favor of SB20-163 misled legislators by telling them that vaccine injuries are “1 in a million, probably more like 1 in a billion.”  In fact, peer-reviewed science (examples listed below) shows that the ever-increasing vaccine schedule required for school entry is harming children by leading to increased risk of many chronic conditions including type 1 diabetes, asthma, allergies, ear infections and developmental delays.

• The entire premise of SB20-163 was a lie. Its House sponsor, Rep. Kyle Mullica, created unnecessary alarm by claiming that Colorado’s MMR kindergarten compliance rate was 87.4%, the lowest in the nation (even as similar crackdowns on exemption rights were/are occurring nationwide).  Mullica’s statistic ignores the fact that the CDC schedule does not require the second MMR until age 6 (first grade) and also that school records are simply incomplete in many cases.  Colorado school districts that followed up on missing records found that the K-12 MMR compliance rate for 2019-20 was 95%.

• Learning disabilities and neurological disorders are taxing the budgets of our local school districts, but CDPHE and the Colorado legislature have done nothing to address the root causes of those issues. Increasing rates of neurological disorders, autoimmune and hyperreactive immune system disorders are greater threats than mild childhood infections to the long-term health of Colorado children.

References

Lyons-Weiler, J. and P. Thomas, Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses Along the Axis of Vaccination, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020. 

Hooker, B. and N. Miller, Analysis of health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children: Developmental delays, asthma, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders, SAGE Open Medicine, 8:1-11, 2020.

​Mawson, A., B. Ray, A. Buiyan and B. Jacob, Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6- to 12-year-old U.S. children, Journal of Translational Science, 3(3): 1-12, 2017.

​Morgensen, S., A. Andersen, A. Rodrigues, C. Benn, P. Aaby, The introduction of diptheria-tetanus-pertussis and oral polio vaccine among young infants in an urban African community: A natural experiment, EBioMedicine, 17: 192-198, 2017.

​Classen, J.B. and D.C. Classen, Clustering of cases of type 1 diabetes mellitus occurring 2-4 years after vaccination is consistent with clustering after infections and progression to type 1 diabetes mellitus in autoantibody positive individuals, J. Pediatr. Endocrinol. Metab, 16(4): 495-505, 2003.

​Yon, D.K., E.K. Ha, S.Y. Lee, W.K. Kim, Y.M. Park, J. Kim, et al., Hepatitis B immunogenicity after a primary vaccination course associated with childhood asthma, allergic rhinitis, and allergen sensitization, Pediatr. Allergy Immunol., 29(2): 221-224, 2018.

​Leslie, D.L., R.A. Kobre, B.J. Richmand, S. Aktan Guloksuz and J.F. Leckman, Temporal Association of Certain Neuropsychiatric Disorders Following Vaccination of Children and Adolescents: A Pilot Case–Control Study, Front. Psychiatry, 8:3, 2017.