Immunization Database Bill Provokes Outcry

Advocacy groups call proposed vaccination registry privacy violation
By RICK KARLIN, Capitol bureau
Times Union
Jul. 20, 2006

Two somewhat disparate organizations are raising questions about a bill passed by the Legislature earlier this month creating a statewide immunization database for children.

The measure, which hasn't yet gone to Gov. George Pataki for his review, would use federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants to set up the registry for those under 19 years of age.

While individual schools typically keep track of what immunizations their students have or don't have, the push for a statewide list was prompted in part by Hurricane Katrina. Countless families in Louisiana and Mississippi were displaced, and flooding destroyed medical records.

But, according to a memo on the registry bill, statewide lists in those Southern states allowed health officials to keep track of children's vaccinations. The memo noted that Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana have comprehensive immunization registries.

But anti-vaccination groups call such a registry intrusive with potential for government abuse.

"I don't know why all of the sudden it's become required," said Gary Krasner, director of Coalition For Informed Choice, a statewide group opposed to mandatory vaccines for public school students.

"Such record keeping of personal medical information by the state is an unnecessary and threatening invasion of privacy," added Thomas Schmidt, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association, a Virginia-based group that advocates for home-schoolers.

The bill's memo says the registry would be maintained in a confidential manner, and it would help eliminate unnecessary, duplicative vaccines that are given because a particular school or day care center didn't have immunization records for a child. The memo noted that an estimated 21 percent of children between 19 and 35 months old got at least one dose of a vaccine they did not need.

The measure was sponsored by Sen. Kemp Hannon, R-Garden City, and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan.
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Rick Karlin can be reached at 454-5758 or by e-mail at [email protected].