HARTFORD – Today, in wake of the recent outbreak of measles, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, visited the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center to announce his plan to introduce legislation that would increase the amount of information provided to parents who choose to exempt their children from vaccinations for non-medical reasons. Murphy’s bill would incentivize states to require that parents who want a non-medical exemption from having their child vaccinated must first visit their physician and be informed of the risk of refusing vaccination. The information would be designed to counteract the false information that is being spread, leading parents to believe that vaccinations cause conditions like autism.

Murphy was joined today by the Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, as well as Connecticut Children’s Medical Director of Infectious Diseases & Immunology, and the Chairman of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Public Health Committee to highlight the critically important need for children to receive vaccinations against highly contagious diseases.

The full text of Murphy’s remarks is below:

It’s wonderful to be here with you all today to talk about an issue that is very personal to me as the parent of two young boys, ages 6 and 3. That’s the issue of the importance of vaccinating our kids.

It’s been in the news a lot over the course of the past two weeks because some really bad science that has been totally discredited in the course of the last 15 years is getting reborn in a number of different forums all across the country. That bad science has led some people to believe that there is some risk to vaccinating your child. That is totally untrue. The risk is leaving your child unvaccinated. We are seeing that play out in real time all across the country.

We have had the first serious outbreak of Measles in a number of years, some communities are seeing the rebirth of whooping cough, and these are diseases and conditions not to be treated lightly. Kids can die of complications related to the measles, and we need to nip this bad science in the bud right now before it gets too late. Because the trend lines, unfortunately, are working in the wrong direction.

Now, a law says that kids have to be vaccinated; that’s been a law for a long time in this country and all across the 50 states. But there are a growing number of ways that parents can get exemptions from those vaccinations. Here in Connecticut, you can get a medical exemption or you can get a religious exemption. But 20 states have something called a philosophical exemption, which doesn’t require you to provide any reason for keeping your kids out of vaccinations. And here in Connecticut - even though we don’t have philosophical exemptions – because our religious exemption doesn’t require you to do anything other than to sign the back of a piece of paper, it has become a philosophical exemption.

Now we’ve seen how this plays out in really nefarious ways. There are towns and neighborhoods in California where 60% of kids aren’t vaccinated because the word has gotten out amongst families that they should sign these exemptions and they’ll be better off. Some of these neighborhoods have lower vaccination rates than places like Chad and South Sudan.

Here in Connecticut, the trend is going in the wrong direction. Exemptions for vaccinations have more than doubled over the course of the last 5 years. Now we’re lucky; we haven’t had a measles case in 2015 and we’ve had less than 10 cases over the course of the last half a decade. But if that trend continues and more and more families keep their kids away from vaccinations, one case in Connecticut could quickly become ten, could quickly become 50, could become 100, and we could have an outbreak on our hands.

And so I’m really glad that Representative Ritter is here; he’s a good friend of mine and going to do a great job as the new chair of the Public Health Committee, and he can talk about some of the concepts that the Connecticut legislature is considering to try to make sure that the best information is out there.

But I’m introducing legislation at the federal level that will prompt states like Connecticut to rethink their exemption laws. Our legislation isn’t going to be heavy-handed; we’re not going to tell states what exemptions they should have. But we’re going to suggest and give incentives for states to require parents to at least get some good information before they fill out a philosophical or religious exemption. Our legislation would condition 5% of vaccination funds upon states, at least requiring that parents be given information about the importance of vaccinations or visit their doctor before they fill out a philosophical or religious exemption.

The irony is that if you get a medical exemption, you actually have to visit your doctor, and get your doctor to fill out a form. But if you want a philosophical or religious exemption, all you have to do is simply sign your name. We should just expect the same standard of information for a philosophical or religious exemption as we do of a medical exemption. And I think by simply making sure that the right information is out there, we’ll reverse this trend.