Would you agree to immunize your child if you knew the vaccine had aluminum phosphate, bovine serum or formaldehyde?

What about human diploid fibroblast cell cultures − cultures of human fetal tissue?

Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Phoenix, wants to mandate in state law that you be given the option of getting that information — and get it before any injections.

Boyer said he’s not necessarily opposed to vaccinations for children, though he said that he will have to develop a personal philosophy now that his wife is due to give birth in two months. And he sidestepped questions of whether he personally believes that vaccines are harmful.

But he said there has been an explosion in the number of vaccines that are scheduled to be given to children, going from five in the 1960s to more than 70 now.

More to the point, Boyer said parents are entitled to the same kind of “informed consent” about vaccines as they would get before any medical procedure. And his SB 1115 would require that any health professional provide not just the positive effects of vaccinations but also the full list of ingredients and side effects − and before a vaccine could be administered.

The legislation comes as the Arizona Department of Health is trying to convince more parents to get their children immunized. That follows a study which found an increasing percentage of parents of children entering kindergarten opting out for personal reasons.

Health officials say that it takes about a 95 percent vaccination rate to create “herd immunity.” That’s where enough people are immunized against the disease to prevent it from spreading widely into those who cannot be vaccinated for things like medical and religious reasons.

But Boyer said he’s not concerned that providing a list of chemicals in vaccines might work against what the health department is trying to accomplish.

“I think we should trust parents,” he said. “I don’t think anybody should be afraid of more information and what’s in these vaccines we’re giving to our children.”

And Boyer said he doesn’t really believe that vaccines help create herd immunity. He said 2016 figures from Maricopa County showed that 30 percent of the children admitted to the hospital for pertussis were fully vaccinated.

State health officials would not comment about the legislation.

But former Health Director Will Humble said he worries this legislation and another sponsored by Boyer could lead to fewer parents agreeing to vaccinate their children.

He said parents already are provided with what the Centers for Disease Control has determined is what they need to know about the vaccines and the side effects, all in a form that is understandable. And Humble, now executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, said inundating parents with technical information that is not meaningful and potentially confusing will result in doctors having to spend valuable time with explaining the technical information instead of talking to parents about things like keeping their children safe at home and in cars.

But Boyer said that, as far as he’s concerned, parents are being denied information they need − and in  a timely fashion.

“Everybody who goes for an operation procedure or anything, they’re informed, they’re told of all the risks that could happen with whatever procedure it is,” he said. “They’re not given the surgery and then, after the fact, told, ‘Oh, by the way, here are the known adverse effects.”

He said that’s what’s happening now, as the state law reads that parents are given the sheet of reactions to watch for after the vaccination.

Humble said he has no problem with altering the law to have that information given to parents ahead of time. But it’s the rest of what Boyer is proposing, he said, that he believes could harm overall public health.

One is giving parents the full list of side effects prepared by manufacturers with approval of the Food and Drug Administration that is mainly meant for doctors.

Humble said what’s being provided now is what’s appropriate.

“They’re tested messages with health literacy so that they’re built so that people understand the benefits, the risks of vaccines, why vaccines are important, all the health effects,” he said.

“The goal is to have effective, meaningful informed consent so that people understand what they’re consenting to,” Humble said, meaning literature and material that people actually can comprehend. “Where you have ineffective informed consent is when somebody gets something that they don’t understand.”

And Humble said a 12-page FDA-approved package insert meant for doctors does nothing to help parents make decisions about the merits of a specific vaccine.

Then there’s the list of ingredients that Boyer said should be provided.

“So, for example, human diploid fibroblast cell cultures, fluoride, yeast extracts,” Boyer said.

“I don’t know that most parents know that bovine extract or animal parts or fetus parts are in certain vaccines,” he continued. “And I just think, as a parent, we should know the answer to that.”

Humble said all that also undermines providing parents with “meaningful informed consent so that people understand the information they’re getting about the risks, benefits of the vaccine.”

Flooding them with data like this, he said, would create unnecessary fears and questions for the doctor who instead should be examining the child.

“When parents get a whole bunch of information that they don’t understand, then that pediatric appointment could become about the 12-page sheet of paper that they don’t understand rather than doing all the developmental screenings that need to be done during that 15- to 20-minute appointment,” Humble said.

Boyer’s other legislation, SB 1116, requires parents to be told that there is what’s called an “antibody titer” test to determine whether a child may already have “naturally acquired immunity” or whether a booster shot is unnecessary. Here, too, Boyer said his concern is the chemicals in the vaccines.

“Think about it: If your body is already immunized to a certain disease or certain something you could pick up, wouldn’t you want to know that and not have to undergo putting aluminum thimerosal in many of the flu vaccines, human diploid cells, or fetus parts” into your body, he asked.

Humble said that’s based on misinformation

“The way you get the antibody titer is by becoming either vaccinated or having the illness,” he said. Humble said that was appropriate in a measles outbreak in Pinal County years ago where it was unclear whether people around 50 — born around the time the measles vaccine came out — had been vaccinated as children. He said that helped determine who already was protected and who was not during a public health outbreak.

“It’s not an appropriate role for using it to determine whether or not somebody needs to be vaccinated as a child,” Humble said.

On a more practical level, he said if this becomes the law that will not only delay vaccinations but also could increase costs for parents and insurers.