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Neuroscience & Behavior student, Tyler Stetson ’21, follows HB220 establishing medical freedom in immunizations.
University of New Hampshire students explore the science behind the underlying aspects of current issues under consideration at New Hampshire's State House.
From UNH Cooperative Extension, this is Relative to New Hampshire.
Step into the classroom and listen in while group of UNH students explore the underlying aspects of current issues under consideration at New Hampshire's State House. We pick apart those issues and connect with experts. All to share with you, insights from our scientific community that enhance our understanding of the biological world right here in New Hampshire, home of the greatest democracy in the world.
Anna: I’m your moderator, Dr. Anna Kate Wallingford.
Tyler: I’m Tyler. I'm a senior neuroscience and behavior major.
Anna: Tyler has been following HB 220 establishing medical freedom in immunizations, which was passed and adopted in this year’s session with an amendment, which essentially added the establishment of a committee to examine the policy of medical intervention going forward. The law states that “no person may be compelled to receive an immunization for COVID-19 in order to secure, receive, or access any public facility, any public benefit, or any public service from the state of New Hampshire, or any political subdivision thereof, including but not limited to counties, cities, towns, precincts, water districts, school districts, school administrative units, or quasi-public entities.”
Tyler attended public hearings held by the House committee on Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs and reported to our group on a regular basis. The group is a team of science liaisons made up of UNH students from a diverse array of departments in the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, as well as my co-moderators Extension’s Public Engagement Program Manager, Nate Bernitz and Extension’s Public Affairs Manager, Lauren Banker.
Obviously, this a controversial topic and things seem to change from day to day in terms of what we know about this disease, so keep in mind that much of this recording was made in the past. I’ll be careful to point out when these conversation occurred. Let’s jump right in with Tyler’s summary of the bill and the hearing he attended in Feb 2021.
Tyler: Establishing medical freedom for immunizations basically establishes the right for people to have bodily integrity. And, you know, it doesn't compel them to accept any medical intervention that they don't want to have. And it also protects them from being discriminated against, or if they refuse any sort of medical intervention or immunization. I thought it was really interesting because, of course, the pandemic and the vaccines that we have going around and what that might mean for the future this year. Like the big argument that kept coming up, of course, was the argument of people having integrity over their own bodies and what they put in their bodies and what they don't.
There is a kind of an interesting origin for this bill was that apparently, in New Hampshire, foster parents have to have all of their immunizations before they can foster children, which I did not know. And if they decide that they don't want to get immunized, then they are ineligible to become foster parents. So it's kind of, you either get your shots or you can't be parents. The person who wrote this bill kind of wanted to bypass that so that people could be foster parents if they didn't want to immunize.
The conversation really went towards how this bill would affect kids in school once we start having more kids in physical classes. And whether it got into, you know, the whole realm of like, whether we were going to segregate the non vaccinated kids to one side of the class and all the other kids to like another side of the class and like this whole kind of debate started happening. Somewhere acquainting getting vaccinated to treating people like they treat them now with like peanut allergies, that they would still just be a member of the class and that there wouldn't be any segregation. But it's not really the same thing as a peanut allergy, especially if like the kids are like breathing on the other kids. It got into like, should schools be mandating vaccines or not? The general consensus was that it should be left up to medical professionals, whether we should be mandating vaccines or not.
They had a doctor of public health, Beth Daly from HHS come in, as a consultant. She did a lot of like basic information on vaccines because, at that point, the conversation definitely turned towards the coronavirus and getting vaccinated. She did a lot of basic information on vaccines. And then after that she fielded a bunch of questions.
One thing that I didn't know, was specifically about the Moderna vaccine, which claims to be 95% effective, but what it's effective towards is preventing you from getting sick, and it has no effect on stopping whether you actually get the virus or not. It's just whether you're symptomatic, which was new information to me, I thought I had like, prevented you from actually getting the virus. So I feel like that's probably a misconception that a lot of the public will have as well.
Anna: You know, I think when it comes to that Moderna vaccine, and like the difference between symptoms versus being a carrier of the virus, I think that there just not enough information about that. So like, that would basically be like the genre of questions you would ask an expert like, Is there enough information to make any of the assumptions that people are making?
You know, like, that's my big thing is like, how, how much data do we have to collect? How many different types of experiments do we have to collect? before we're like, super certain, you know, like this is, this is a question for a risk. So like, even though like it'd be really nice to seek out some, like medical or epidemiological research, you also kind of want to think about who can describe a risk to us?
Anna: A very reductive synopsis on how the COVID vaccines work. First of all, it’s important to know that viruses are not living things – at least not according to most definitions of living organisms - they’re essentially just pieces of genetic material that float around and trick your body into replicating more virus. This particular piece of genetic material – SARS COV2 - can make us incredibly sick in the process of taking over our bodies and our immune systems have never encountered it before. The processes that normally destroy dangerous microbes entering our bodies are caught unawares, unprepared. Each of the handful of available vaccines are essentially training our bodies to fight this virus so that it cannot cause the disease, the fever, the coughing, the loss of taste, and the deadly symptoms.
While lots of folks might be familiar with some of the first vaccines in history, which were weaker versions of a deadly pathogen, these COVID vaccines different. They don’t give you COVID. The Moderna & Pfizer vaccines are mRNA vaccines. The mRNA vaccines get your body –temporarily - to produce fakes of the protein that’s dotting the lipid coat around the virus – the famous spike proteins that give the virus the corona or crown appearance. Johnson & Johnson is a vector vaccine. Vector vaccines use a different harmless virus to introduce some of those unique coronavirus proteins. This is all to let all the macrophages and lymphocytes living in your body to recognize the real thing if it shows up in your body and that they should to get to work in destroying them.
All this to say that it is technically possible for the virus to be living in the nose of a perfectly healthy, vaccinated individual. It’s unclear on how possible it is for that vaccinated person with the nose full of virus to get someone else sick. The science just isn’t there to answer that question yet.
…but all of our questions about research kept leading us back to the same questions about risk. How do we know to trust this research… and this all happening so fast? Is it safe? How do we measure how risky taking this vaccine is? And what about the participants in these research studies? How safe is it to be a participant in these research studies?
Well anyone from the research world will tell you, this isn’t our first rodeo. There’s a robust system of weighing risk in research. There’s a particularly robust system that weighs the risk to the participants in these research projects. We had a discussion with UNH IRB experts – that’s Institutional Review Boards – who’s jobs are to assure the protection of human subjects in research. UNH doesn’t do any biomedical research, so they can’t speak to vaccine trials, but I think you’ll see why we found this conversation so interesting. I’ll let them introduce themselves.
Julie: I'm Julie and I'm the Director of Research Integrity Services at the university, and that unit is within the Office for Research, Economic Engagement and Outreach.
Melissa: I'm Melissa McGee and I work with Julie and Sue in Research Integrity Services. I’m a compliance officer, also a member of the IRB, and I'm the HIPAA Privacy Officer for the university.
Sue: I'm Sue Jalbert. I also am a compliance officer in research integrity services. I work with IRB, IACUC and conflicts of interest.
Julie: IACUC is the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. So that is the similar program but refers to the humane care and use of vertebrate animals.
Tyler: So I think we'll start trying to basic and just ask, you know, what function does the IRB serve for researchers when they propose studies?
Melissa: The IRB is the committee that will review the protocol for the use of human subjects in research to ensure that the human subjects are appropriately protected, not exploited, or coerced into participating in research. To make sure that the research is fully voluntary, and that the protocols make sense for the for what the questions are. And so it's a primarily faculty, but also staff members from the university or on the committee. Julie, Sue, and I are administrators as well for the committee. And so we do initial reviews of protocols that are submitted to make sure that they're complete.
If you look on the website, there's three levels of review. So exempt level of review is one IRB member reviews it. And so that's a very minimal risk, expedited level of review would have two reviewers. So essentially, still minimal risk. But sometimes the risks are a little bit different. And a full board means that a convened meeting of a quorum of the IRB membership and discussion amongst the members for review of those either greater than minimal risk studies or studies involving vulnerable populations.
The IRB provides feedback and guidance. As far as you know, if there's suggested ways to improve a research study to better protect the rights of the human subjects. So it doesn't just sort of rubber stamp things. And it doesn't just say it does or doesn't approve, it provides pretty detailed feedback. If you've gone through the process, you know.
Tyler: This is true. For those that are reviewing research proposals, do they generally have expertise in the area like if it was a biology or psychology type of study that was being proposed?
Julie: The IRB has to comply with federal regulations, as well as kind of ethical principles. And then any state laws, we have to make sure that research, the there's no state law around IRB, but there are state laws that researchers have to comply with when they're conducting their research. So the IRB is somewhat responsible for making sure that people don't violate state law, although that's not a that's not the IRB's primary mission.