House File 187 — Anti-vax, Pro Ignorance, and Pro Cancer.

House File 187, by Shipley, is a bill designed to increase human papillomavirus infections — an illness known to cause increased risk of cervical cancer in women. This bill strips information on the availability of HPV vaccines from health and human development curricula in public schools. If it passes, it will ensure that more young Iowans remain ignorant of a simple, safe, and effective way to prevent a life threatening disease later in their lives.

Most human beings with at least a modicum of empathy and compassion want to decrease cancer rates and preventable infections. But not Jeff Shipley, the Representative from Van Buren. He believes that if teenagers learn about the HPV vaccine, it will make them all want to run out and have sex. That nonsequitur fails even the slightest scrutiny. Science makes it abundantly clear that knowledge of the HPV vaccine does not increase anyone’s desire for sex. But Jeff Shipley doesn’t know or care, as long as he can throw another slab of culture war meat to his hungry voter base.

 Current law requires that the human growth and development or health curriculum provided to students enrolled in school districts, accredited nonpublic schools, and charter schools be both research-based and age-appropriate. Within those limitations, current law also requires that the human growth and development or health curriculum include information regarding the availability of a vaccine to prevent human papilloma virus. The bill strikes this requirement.

Two Senate Files: Pro Covid, Pro Ignorance, Anti Public Health

Two bills have been filed in the Iowa Senate related to Coronavirus and pandemic mandates, Senate File 45 and Senate File 91. Both bills would make it harder for Iowa to enforce science-based public health measures promoted by the Federal Government. 

Over the last three years, conservatives enthusiastically embraced the conspiracy that common sense measures to reduce death and sickness of a deadly pandemic are really leftist attacks on personal freedom and liberty. If liberals are for it, they must be against it. Covid has killed over a million Americans so far. The death toll should never have reached that level, but it did —  thanks at least in part to the conservative anti-vax obsession.  I just don’t understand.

And they aren’t done yet. Brad Zaun sponsored Senate File 45, a bill “prohibiting the labor commissioner from implementing, enforcing, or conforming to certain federal occupational safety and health standards relating to COVID-19.” The health and safety standards in question are those involving Covid testing and vaccinations in the workplace. Employers would be 1) prohibited from requiring Covid tests or vaccinations and 2) prohibited from determining whether an employee is vaccinated, has had a Covid test, or has ever had the viral infection. 

Senate File 91, by Senator Salmon, is “an act relating to powers and duties applicable to state of 2 disaster emergencies and public health disasters.” According to this bill, after the Governor declares a public disaster, only the General Assembly would be allowed to rescind, extend, or amend the state of emergency. 

This bill includes explicit religious exemptions for vaccines. It would make it easier for medical practitioners to promote quack medicine. Emergency measures shall not infringe on a fundamental constitutionally protected right unless the measure is justified by a compelling state interest, is narrowly tailored to achieve its specific purpose, and is achieved by the least restrictive means possible. The bill interferes with contact tracing, quarantine measures, and social distancing requirements. Basically, it would reduce the state’s ability to impose most of the common sense measures used to reduce the spread of Covid 19 over the last three years. 

If this bill becomes law, the State’s responsibility to reduce the health risk of deadly pandemics and other emergencies will take a back seat to conspiracies, ignorance, science denial, and religious dogma. 

Please click on the links and read these bills. Or at least the final section labeled “EXPLANATION.” I know, they are all hard to read, written in dense legalese. But there is so much more detail. As hard as I try, I always feel like my brief summaries and explanations still miss too much.

Senate File 99: An Anti-Vaxxer's Dream

Senate File 99, “an act relating to immunization information requested on a medical examiner investigation form,” is an anti-vax dream. This bill would require medical examiners to document recent vaccination history every time they investigate the death of a child age 0-3. 

The CDC recommends that every child receive ten different vaccinations — sometimes multiple doses — before age three. Literally every child age 0-3 who dies will have multiple recent vaccines in their medical records — and all that information will go into a publically available spreadsheet. Every vaccine conspiracist out there will gleefully point to that list and say, “all those innocent children were given vaccines, and then they died!”

You all know which fallacy that is, right? T

his bill is a gift to the purveyors of ignorance and science denial. Contact you legislators and tell them to vote no on Senate File 99