It was NOT an easy opt-out provision. An easy opt-out is a simple signed note from the parents. Period. This provision required either (1) a notarized physician’s excuse of a particular type, (2)an affidavit from the parents sworn before a notary, that they had a conscientious objection at the level of a religious objection, or a religious objection.
Many legitimate parental objections to the vaccine did not rise to the somber level of such a formal objection. So if such parents had the kind of moral scruples parents should have, Perry’s policy would require them to essentially swear to a lie about the nature of their objections. YOU AND PERRY MAY MAKE LIGHT OF SUCH REFINED SCRUPLES. I and many do not.
It was most definitely NOT an easy opt-out. I have not even mentioned thus far in this reply the social and psychological compulsion associated in general with opt-out schemes. This is why good marketers try to avoid them — they can produce backlash and induce bad reputations for those who use them.
Here also at this time on this issue we are seeing the energetic and nasty kind of backlash opt-out can generate.
It will NOT go away. Gardasil’s marketing effort was potent and overpowering. Combined with legal compulsions and the near-compulsions of opt-outs it leaves an lasting and equally potent bitterness and sense of vengeance on those who were forced into the program and felt trapped by it.
Gardasil’s hyper-marketing—abusive and disrespectful of parental authority—has thus angered the kind of people you’d want least to have working against you. The most scrupulous. The most conscientious.
“So if such parents had the kind of moral scruples parents should have, Perry’s policy would require them to essentially swear to a lie about the nature of their objections. “
It is generally the case that government likes to define our conscientious objections for us: you may say you object to this if you object under these grounds, but not on these. This essentially denies the role of conscience for the individual, unless he has enough money and or will to fight the entire system.
You may object to Social Security if you are a minister, and if you believe that ministers should not be beholden to the governing authority, but for no other reason (such as an ethical objection to participating in a Ponzi scheme).
You may not object to vaccination on the grounds that many of them require you to submit your children to a greater individual risk in order to provide possible benefit to the whole.
You may object on religious grounds if you know that many vaccines are grown in cell culture lines from aborted babies (not avian eggs as we were misled to believe) - specifically HEK-293, WI-26, RA-273, MRC-5, WI-38 - but not in some cases if you are Catholic, because some writings from some Catholic sources seem to justify their use in such circumstances.
Courts have used the acceptance of Polio Vaccine as an indication of acceptance of the practice of using Fetal Cells, while ignoring the fact that the public at large, and many doctors, is unaware of what it is “accepting.”
Freedom of conscience, indeed.
Additionally, off topic:
There are court cases (!)and studies disproving an autism-vaccination link based upon mercury, but the following article raises the question of a link between vaccination and autism based upon dramatic spikes in incidence coinciding with introductions of new vaccines containing fetal cells, and questions of whether they may contribute (in combination with genetic factors) to the condition.
Journal of Immunotoxicology, January-March 2011, Vol. 8, No. 1 : Pages 68-79
Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes—A review
Helen V. Ratajczak
(doi: 10.3109/1547691X.2010.545086)
of relevance:
The human DNA from the vaccine can be randomly inserted into the recipient’s genes by homologous recombination,a process that occurs spontaneously only within a species. Hot spots for DNA insertion are found on the X chromosome in eight autism-associated genes involved in nerve cell synapse formation, central nervous system development, and mitochondrial function (Deisher, 2010). This could provide some explanation of why autism is predominantly a disease of boys. Taken together, these data support the hypothesis that residual human DNA in some vaccines might cause autism.
This article is available in several places on the web, but being unsure of the copyright of any of them, I’ll cite it and let you follow it up (access at the source is 43 per day).