New vaccine policy prohibiting non-medical exemption announced by The American Medical Association

The AMA hopes to enforce vaccinations because of risk of disease outbreak.

The American Medical Association (AMA) is one of the biggest and most influential institutions of medical practitioners in the country. Now, they have approved to put an end to religious exemptions to immunization requirements.

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - The AMA works with other organizations to battle against religious and dispositional exemptions for vaccines. In a press release statement, AMA explained that "Under [the] new policy, the AMA will seek more stringent state immunization requirements to allow exemptions only for medical reasons."

Among those who have already openly opposed these non-medical or non-scientific exclusions is a group of California legislators. This group recently advocated a bill designed to eliminate personal belief exemptions in the state.

The said bill, known as SB277, has however faced many criticisms, nearly being trashed in committee and besieged incessantly by those who are against childhood vaccinations, known as "anti-vaxxers." To make matters worse for the legislators, protesters gathered outside the state legislature in Sacramento and tried to get the state legislators to abolish the bill.

The bill is a reaction to an outbreak of measles in Anaheim, last year at Disneyland. AMA noted this epidemic during their policy announcement.

The AMA board member, Dr. Patrice Harris said, "As evident from the recent measles outbreak at Disneyland, protecting community health in today's mobile society requires that policymakers not permit individuals from opting out of immunization solely as a matter of personal preference or convenience."

The AMA issued recommendations to state health departments and physicians designed to rule out non-medical discharges from the scene of American medicine. However, because the AMA is not a government legislative body, it cannot not create policies. The organization will still be looking to state legislators to remove non-medical exemptions to immunization.    

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'

Copyright 2021 - Distributed by Catholic Online