MANDATORY FLU VACCINATION FOR N.Y. HEALTH WORKERS IS CRITICIZED
By Anemona Hartocollis
New York Times
October 13, 2009

Original Link

The New York Civil Liberties Union demanded on Tuesday that the state health commissioner withdraw a new regulation requiring hundreds of thousands of health care workers to get both seasonal and swine flu vaccinations.

In testimony before several State Assembly committees in Lower Manhattan, Donna Lieberman, executive director of the civil liberties union, said that the requirement violated the constitutional right of health care workers to control their bodies and their medical treatment.

Ms. Lieberman said that, while the civil liberties union supported voluntary flu vaccination, the “societal interest” being advanced by compulsory vaccination was dubious, since the state regulation conflicted with both international and national policy on the vaccination of health care workers.

Neither the World Health Organization nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called for mandatory vaccination, she pointed out.

Ms. Lieberman stopped short of saying that the civil liberties union would sue over the requirement, which was adopted by the state’s Health Department as an emergency regulation in August. State health officials said Tuesday that the regulation affected 500,000 health care workers and volunteers statewide.

Her testimony came a day before a judge in State Supreme Court in Manhattan was to hear a lawsuit filed by a nurse in Poughkeepsie, Suzanne Field, seeking to overturn the regulation.

In her lawsuit, filed a week ago, Ms. Field argues that the regulation is arbitrary and capricious because no other state is ordering mandatory vaccination despite concern about the H1N1 pandemic.

“It’s up to the Legislature to invoke such broad and sweeping police power,” Ms. Field’s lawyer, Patricia Finn, said Tuesday.

Some legislators, including Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman, chairman of the subcommittee on workplace safety, questioned the order to vaccinate workers, especially in light of what Mr. Lancman called the “relatively mild nature” of the H1N1 virus for most people infected.

“Before I can support the government ordering people to inject medicine into their bodies, I want to see clear and convincing evidence that the vaccine will be safe and effective for each individual taking it, and necessary to protect human life,” Mr. Lancman, a Queens Democrat, said after the hearing.

Both federal and state health authorities have said the H1N1 vaccine is made using the same protocols as seasonal vaccine and is safe.

Susan Waltman, general counsel for the Greater New York Hospital Association, said Tuesday that a shortage of seasonal flu vaccine, coupled with slow delivery of the newly developed H1N1 vaccine, had undermined the ability of hospitals to vaccinate their workers by the state’s Nov. 30 deadline.

Several labor unions have opposed compulsory flu vaccination, arguing that it could result in the punishment and even dismissal of workers who refuse, whether for religious, cultural or other reasons, to be vaccinated.

The regulation covers workers and volunteers who come into direct contact with patients, including nurses, doctors and aides and even nonmedical staff members like food service workers if they enter a patient’s room, according to the state Health Department.

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RELATED LINKS & RESOURCES:

NHNE Swine Flu Resource Page

NHNE Vaccinations Resource Page

NHNE Epidemics & Pandemics Resource Page

Wikipedia On Pandemics In General:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic

Wikipedia On Influenza Pandemics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic