WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said it would be irresponsible for parents not to vaccinate kids, and that new legislation isn’t needed to force compliance.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest made the comments as a U.S. measles outbreak has spread to more than 100 people and potential Republican presidential candidates discussed whether vaccinations should be required.
“The president believes it shouldn’t require a law for people to exercise common sense and do the right thing,” Earnest said at a Tuesday briefing that was dominated by the topic. “It is irresponsible for people not to get their children vaccinated.”
The outbreak, centered in California and fueled by an increase in the number of unvaccinated children, has led to a political debate among potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates.
Two possible candidates, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul, of Kentucky, said in separate forums this week that vaccinations should be a matter of choice for parents. Paul, in a CNBC interview, said that while he thought vaccines generally are a good idea, he had heard of cases of “children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, another potential Republican candidate, said there is “a lot of fear-mongering out there” on vaccinations. He took an indirect shot at Christie and Paul.
“It is irresponsible for leaders to undermine the public’s confidence in vaccinations that have been tested and proven to protect public health,” Jindal said in a statement.
The debate prompted other office-holders to weigh in as well.
“I don’t know that we need another law, but I do believe that all children ought to be vaccinated,” House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters Tuesday in Washington.
Kaci Hickox, the nurse who was forced into quarantine in New Jersey, after returning from a tour treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders and who went on to challenge a quarantine order in Maine, also took a shot at Christie.
Hickox, appearing on MSNBC’s “All in with Chris Hayes,” accused Christie of “still ignoring science.”
“I think this is a good example of Governor Christie’s making some very ill-informed statements,” she told Hayes. “We heard it a lot during the Ebola discussion and now it seems to have happened again, making these statements about vaccines and sort of balancing parental choice.”
Her comments on MSNBC echoed statements she made in January, when Hickox told a group in South Portland that, “Politicians have decided they’re invincible, and that’s scary to me. Almost as scary as Ebola.”
Christie’s office later sought to clarify his comments, saying in a statement that “with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated” and “calling for balance in which [vaccinations] government should mandate.”
In January, 102 measles cases in 14 states were reported in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of those were related to an outbreak at Disneyland in California, the CDC said.
That was nearly one-fifth of the 644 U.S. measles cases reported in 2014, which was a record number in the country since measles was deemed eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.
While most states permit religious exemptions from vaccine requirements, 19 states also allow philosophical exemptions, including Arizona and California, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Maine is among 19 states that allow parents to opt out of vaccinating their children for philosophical reasons. New Jersey does not.
Public health officials have been pushing against a belief among some parents, backed by a discredited study, that vaccines can cause autism.
A Pew Research Center report released Jan. 29 found that while a majority of Americans — 68 percent — support requiring vaccinations for children, it also found that adults younger than 50 were more likely than older people to say vaccinations are a matter of parental choice.
The poll, conducted Aug. 15-25, also found partisan differences. Seventy-one percent of self-identified Democrats said vaccinations should be required while 65 percent of Republicans held that view.
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