3/24/2003

Immediate Action needed on Texas S.B. 342

This bill would gut parental rights and medical privacy provisions in the current law and require that all doctors and insurance companies release EVERY child's private immunization record and identifying information, WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT, to the Texas Department of Health to be permanently tagged and tracked in either an immunization surveillance database or a database of "non-consenters" to the registry.

There will be a public hearing on Monday, March 24, at 1:30 p.m., the State Affairs Committee.

Please contact the members of this committee and your own senator, and urge them to oppose SB 342.

These are the Committee members:

Tel. FAX

Senator Bill Ratliff, chair (512) 463-0101 (512) 475-3751
Senator Todd Staples, vice-chair - (512) 463-0103 (512) 463-1526
Senator Kenneth Armbrister - (512) 463-0118 (512) 475-3736
Senator Robert Duncan - (512) 463-0128 (512) 463-2424
Senator Rodney Ellis - (512) 463-0113 (512) 463-0006
Senator Troy Fraser - (512) 463-0124 (512) 475-3732
Senator Chris Harris - (512) 463-0109 (512) 463-7003
Senator Frank Madla - (512) 463-0119 (512) 463-1017
Senator Jane Nelson - (512) 463-0112 (512) 463-0923

If you would like to read the bill for yourself, you can link to www.capitol.state.tx.us and enter SB 342 and click on the bill text selections.

If you are new to this issue and don't fully understand why killing this bill is so important, please visit www.vaccineinfo.net/txregistry/outline.htm and www.vaccineinfo.net/nationalregistry/nationalindex.htm for a complete history of the abuses and dangers of the Texas Immunization Tracking system and government immunization tracking systems in general.

This is the letter sent by AAPS:

Dear Senator « 2»:

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a nationwide organization of physicians in all specialties, opposes SB 342 because it violates the rights of parents, patients, and physicians.

Physicians have an ethical duty to preserve the confidentiality of their patients' records and also to advise patients about medical treatments according to the best of their ability and judgment.

Requiring the entry of all immunization records, so that parents have to be identified in a separate "non-consenters" database as a condition of removing the records, violates patients' privacy. Moreover, the Texas Department of Health has a record of disregarding the law with respect to the use of patient information.

There is no good public health reason for a centralized immunization database. Parents and physicians should keep these records. The only purpose for which such a database is necessary is to support coercive measures against parents or physicians who may disagree with one or more of the State's medical recommendations for their children or patients.

Even if current officials are vigilant in guarding the data, there is no way to guarantee protection against future abuses.

Only physicians are licensed to practice medicine; the State is not. Thus, only the physician, or a facility licensed to provide treatment, is the proper custodian for the patients' medical records. No patient should be forced to submit to government surveillance because of either obtaining or declining medical treatment.

Sincerely yours,

Jane M. Orient, M.D., Executive Director