Meghan Moses: If it ain't broke, don't fix it (Opinion)

Charleston Gazette-Mail

Jimmy Carter’s close adviser and director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance, popularized the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” He went on to quip, “That’s the trouble with government: fixing things that aren’t broken and not fixing things that are.”

Our current West Virginia Legislature is going one step further, needlessly altering a tried-and-true exemplary model that other states have emulated with a proposal (Senate Bill 535) regarding exemptions for childhood immunizations by “creating religious and philosophical exemptions for school attendance vaccines.”

Basically, the bill allows parents to simply fill out a form with an ostensible “religious or philosophical reason,” which would exempt their child from taking required vaccinations that would immunize the child and prevent the potential spread of previously eradicated communicable diseases, such as polio, measles and pertussis.