TOPEKA — Two Kansas Republican lawmakers joined a Democratic colleague Thursday to stress the safety and necessity of vaccines, in an attempt to stave off misinformation in the Statehouse.
Rep. Melissa Oropeza, D-Kansas City, Rep. John Eplee, R-Atchison, and Sen. Kristen O’Shea, R-Topeka, teamed up with the Immunize Kansas Coalition at a Statehouse rally, standing at a podium surrounded by signs on rubella, measles and and other vaccine-preventable diseases.
“Leave the status quo alone, it has worked well and it has served us well for 50 years,” Eplee, a physician, said. “We just need to send a message to all our colleagues both in the House and Senate to keep their mitts of the statutes, because they’re working.”
Kansas vaccine requirements are controlled at the state level. Despite false claims made by an anti-vaccination movement in recent years, COVID-19 vaccines and other vaccines have been repeatedly proven safe and effective. Vaccine requirements in Kansas for children attending school include shots for polio, hepatitis A and B, measles, mumps and rubella, among others.
“There are folks out there that have coalesced around anti-vax media and ideas and they think they know more than all these leaders here at this meeting and their narratives are going to hurt Kansans, they’re going to kill Kansans,” Eplee said. “We have to push back hard against that.”
On Wednesday, Sen. Mark Steffen, R-Hutchinson, introduced two anti-vaccine bills into the Senate Committee on...
A recent review of developments in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors highlights a $290 million penalty imposed on CVS Caremark under the False Claims Act, widespread non-compliance with HI...