Philadelphia School District Threatens Exemption Holders with Misinformation
On Wednesday of last week, the Philadelphia School District sent out a robocall and an email to the 15,000+ families of children who have exemptions from vaccines. The action appears to be related to a small outbreak of measles that occurred in Philadelphia in early January. The Philadelphia Department of Public Health reported that they had identified nine people who tested positive for measles. They could not confirm that all these cases developed in unvaccinated people.
The robocall message and the email notified parents about a measles outbreak and that if they did not bring proof of an MMR vaccination to their school by February 16, their child would not be allowed to attend school. This was clearly an attempt to use misinformation and coercion to force parents who, following state law, had chosen for reasons that were either medical, religious, or personal to not have the MMR shots administered to their child.
Dear School District of Philadelphia Parent or Guardian,
Our records indicate that your child does not have their measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Recently, there have been cases of measles among unvaccinated children in Philadelphia. Measles is a serious disease that is caused by a highly contagious virus. Having 2 doses of the MMR vaccine provides the best protection against measles. Pennsylvania law requires all students (K-12) be vaccinated while attending school.
Therefore, your child will not be able to attend school if documentation showing proof that your child received the required vaccine is not provided by Friday, February 16, 2024. Submit documentation to your school nurse as soon as possible. If your child is not vaccinated, contact your child’s healthcare provider to schedule a vaccination appointment as soon as possible. Philadelphia children can also get vaccinated at any City health center. Contact the City health center at (215) 685-2933 to make an appointment. Visit bit.ly/PhilaMeasles for more information.
Learn more about the School District of Philadelphia’s vaccination requirements and opportunities for exemption here .
Sincerely,
Dr. Kendra B. McDow
School District Medical Officer
(Bolded text is from original email)
The Pennsylvania Chapter of Children’s Health Defense reached out to the school district’s legal office for clarification and demonstration of statutory authority for such a rule. We were told that this appears to have been a mistake and that no child would be barred from their school unless the Department of Public Health announced the detection of an outbreak at the child’s particular school. The representative for the legal office also mentioned they had received a good number of calls concerning the deceptive alert.
The issuer of the coercive email and likely author of the phone call text was Dr. Kendra McDow, the district’s medical officer, who has held the position since June 2022. CHD PA reached out to McDow to request a correction be sent to parents. McDow responded with an apology over the distress this has caused families and said a follow-up email was scheduled to be sent out this week with added information about exemptions.
The Pennsylvania State Code provides language that indicates that a “susceptible” child could be kept from attending their school if an outbreak is reported there. How an outbreak is defined is not clearly stated. The period of exclussion from school is indicated for 14 days after the last reported case of measles.
Although public health agencies and the media rarely discuss it, high dose Vitamin A has been shown to be an effective treatment for measles, according to this study on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.
Deaths from measles in the US are extremely rare and often result from encephalitis, a swelling of the brain. Encephalitis is also an acknowledged adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine and has been linked to hundreds of deaths reported to the Centers for Disease Control over the past couple decades. Neurological injury is commonly indicated by parents as a reason they chose to decline the MMR vaccination.