Anthrax Vaccine Victims Still Seek Truth & Justice

by Barbara Loe Fisher

It remains one of the saddest stories in the long and sad history of forced vaccination: the killing and crippling of young, healthy soldiers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Israel and other countries with a crude, toxic experimental anthrax vaccine that top military physicians persuaded Generals to order soldiers heading for the Gulf War to take. In the U.S., despite a temporary court injunction issued by a courageous U.S. federal court judge in late 2004 halting the vaccination of U.S. soldiers without their informed, voluntary consent, since early 2006 the same crude, toxic anthrax vaccine has been forced on military recruits. Those who refuse to obey the order face court martial, imprisonment and fines.

On Sunday, May 18, 2008 at 9:30 a.m., an independent film "A Call to Arms" by award winning producer Scott Miller will be shown at the GI Film Festival, Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C.. This eye-opening film tells the inside story of how the anthrax vaccine has been forced on soldiers with tragic consequences. Tickets are $5 and a powerful trailer of the film can be viewed at http://www.gifilmfestival.com/2008/08filminfo/acalltoarms.html. Scott premiered an earlier version of the film ("Direct Order") at NVIC's Third International Public Conference on Vaccination in 2002.

The mandatory anthrax vaccine program in the U.S. received renewed support from top military officials after September 11, 2001 when mysterious anthrax powder letters were delivered to American citizens and federal legislators. No one has ever been arrested. A recent Truthout Report says that there are new suspects at a U.S. Army bioweapons lab involved in promoting the mandatory anthrax vaccine program who are now being investigated by the FBI.

As retired Air Force Lt. Col. John Richardson pointed out in the Truthout Report, when commenting on the continuing plight of former military pilots seeking restitution for lost promotions and pay because they refused to take the experimental anthrax vaccine after it had killed or injured colleagues:

"Two federal judges have now confirmed the Pentagon broke the law by forcing service members to take anthrax vaccine from 1998 to late 2005. Since 2005, mandating the vaccine is now lawful only because of the FDA's willingness to ignore clear evidence in military medical records of the deaths and disabilities associated with the anthrax vaccine. Just as the government misled the American people about the threat from Iraqi anthrax and the source of the anthrax letter attacks, it continues to mislead the troops about the safety and efficacy of the anthrax vaccine."

John Richardson is a co-founder of the Military and Biodefense Vaccine Project of the National Vaccine Information Center.

On February 29, 2008, six former soldiers pledged to appeal a federal judge's dismissal of their six year old lawsuit challenging the Pentagon's mandatory anthrax vaccination program because there is no scientific proof the vaccine is effective in humans against weaponized, inhaled anthrax. The soldiers search for truth and justice continues at the same time reports surface in Israel that Israeli military doctors experimented on soldiers using the highly reactive U.S. anthrax vaccine. Several Israeli news investigative reports from May 17, 2007 and February 24, 2008 reveal that elite combat unit troops were given the experimental anthrax vaccine in 2000 without being informed what they were getting and, when they suffered severe reactions and disability, were told their poor health had nothing to do with the vaccine they were given.

Forcing toxic vaccines on young soldiers using threats and punishment and denying them the right to informed consent is no different than forcing toxic vaccines on young children by threatening and punishing their parents and denying them informed consent. Forcing people to take pharmaceutical products which can injure and kill without their voluntary, informed consent is a violation of human rights. Ideology, one-size-fits-all medical policies and industry profit-making should not come before human rights.

No forced vaccination. Not in America.

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"Significantly, the infamous 2001 anthrax powder attacks, killing five people and sickening 17 others after 9/11, were domestic and not foreign in nature. They were allegedly inspired by laboratory insiders who mailed the powder to the offices of two US senators, a number of national news offices in New York City, and elsewhere. The incidents are still under active FBI investigation. That probe, says Fox News, recently identified three or four new suspects at an Army bioweapons lab intricately involved in helping to support the need for the mandated vaccine. They include a deputy commander, an anthrax scientist and a microbiologist. Curiously, at that point in time, the vaccine's continued use was being threatened by closer scrutiny from the US Department of Defense and other Bush administration officials. That review withered away after the attacks. However, the DOD then used the domestic incidents to claim the foreign threat was "real." In the years before and after those episodes, Dingle's and Rempfer's findings that the vaccine was improperly licensed and thus unnecessarily mandated were eventually vindicated by a combination of a federal judge's rulings and subsequent events. After the two officers' initial investigations, the US Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported that the vaccine's systemic adverse reaction rate was 100 times higher than the 0.2 percent rate reported on the product's label. Adverse vaccine reactions include immune disorders, muscle and joint pains, headaches, rashes, fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, chills and fever. At least half a dozen deaths and a warning against birth defects were listed on the vaccine's January 31, 2002, package insert, but they have never been proven to be vaccine-related. The vaccine is not recommended for use by pregnant women or for those who have experienced a history of Guillain-Barre Syndrome. And, last October, the GAO identified a potential $100 million in government waste annually. The anthrax vaccine stockpile for civilian emergencies had been improperly administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, the GAO report said." - Thomas D. Williams, Truthout Report (April 9, 2008) http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040908A.shtml

"An attorney for six Defense Department employees said yesterday [Feb. 29, 2008] that they will appeal a federal judge's dismissal of their lawsuit challenging the Pentagon's policy of compulsory anthrax vaccinations for certain troops. The employees had argued that, as military personnel, they should not be forced to take the vaccine because there is no scientific proof that it is effective for humans, said Mark Zaid, their attorney. The class- action lawsuit had asked the court to block the Pentagon from inoculating the plaintiffs and to rule that the vaccine was improperly licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. But U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer ruled yesterday that the FDA "did not act arbitrarily or capriciously" and granted the government's request to dismiss the case.....The lawsuit -- filed against the FDA, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Pentagon -- is the third of its kind and the latest chapter in a dispute that has been going on for at least six years.It follows another suit by the same group that led a federal judge to halt mandatory vaccinations in October 2004 on the grounds that an FDA review of the vaccine was insufficient. The anthrax vaccine was then administered on a voluntary basis. After the FDA reviewed the vaccine again and approved it in December 2005, the Pentagon said in October 2006 that it would resume mandatory vaccinations for more than 200,000 troops." - Christopher Lee, Washington Post (March 1, 2008) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/29/AR2008022903317pf.html

The IDF secretly used elite combat soldiers as "guinea pigs" for experimental anthrax vaccines, according to an expose broadcast Wednesday night by the "Uvda" (Fact) documentary program. Presenter Ilana Dayan revealed how in 2000, the army decided to carry out anthrax antibody experiments ahead of independent manufacture in Israel. According to the report, hundreds of young recruits into Israel's elite combat units were offered the opportunity to partake in a top secret experiment codenamed "Omer 2". They were led to believe they were performing a national service of the utmost importance to the state.....Since 2000, the soldiers selected for the experiment underwent a series of seven inoculations, all carried out in top secret, without even the knowledge of their commanding officers. When various symptoms such as serious skin lesions and pneumonia began to appear, the soldiers did not relate them to the experiment and sought standard medical treatment provided by the military. Once soldiers began to suspect that there may be a connection between the vaccines and their symptoms, they contacted the secret unit in charge of the program and presented their case. The symptoms, it was explained to them, had absolutely nothing to do with the inoculations....Professor Tzvi Bentowitz, head of the research institute researching infectious diseases at Ben Gurion University, said, "The fact that this matter was shrouded in secrecy here while it created such an outcry in the US is astonishing, to say the least." The secret medical unit had also contacted the air force in an attempt to recruit pilots for the experiment, but air force officials refused, saying that possible side effects could interfere with pilots' performance. " - Ines Ehrlich, Israel News (May 17, 2007) http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0, 7340,L-3401245,00.html Also see Feb. 24, 2008 update at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0, 7340,L-3510509,00.html

Public Tells Government Panel: Vaccine Safety Must Come First

by Barbara Loe Fisher

It has been 22 years since the U.S. Congress acknowledged vaccine injuries and deaths by passing the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and 17 years since the Institute of Medicine first confirmed that vaccines can cause brain and immune system dysfunction while admitting there were significant "gaps" in scientific knowledge about vaccine risks. After nearly three decades of resisting public calls from parents of vaccine injured children for a formal investigation into vaccine safety, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has established the National Vaccine Advisory Committee Working Group on Vaccine Safety to review a scientific research agenda proposed by DHHS.

On April 11, government health officials invited a few parents to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. to participate on a public engagement panel followed by a one hour public comment period. It was both business as usual and a departure of business as usual that left this participant wondering if it was really a new day and hoping is was not just an old day dressed up in new clothes.

There were physicians, scientists and policymakers on the Committee and in the audience who have been in charge of operating the mass vaccination system since the early 1980s: Dixie Snider, MD, Louis Cooper, MD and Neal Halsey, MD; and the 1990's: Bruce Gellin, Robert Ball, MD, Geoff Evans, MD; and since 2000: Marie McCormick, MD, Dan Salmon, PhD, Ben Schwartz, MD, John Iskander, MD, Karen Midthun, MD, Larry Pickering, MD and others. They admitted they had come together not only to create a scientific agenda to investigate vaccine risks but to also address the growing public "crisis of trust" in the mass vaccination system

The draft recommendations of the Scientific Agenda created by the Immunization Safety Office (ISO) was not released to the public until 9 a.m. on April 11 so parents attending the meeting did not have time to critique and tailor remarks made during the afternoon public engagement panel and public comment session. However, the informed public critical of vaccine safety did make a number of important suggestions.

As the first panel participant from the public to speak, I gave a presentation on vaccine safety research priorities summarizing past and current public calls to investigate vaccine risks and proposed a "20-year study that prospectively enrolls and compares the health outcomes of two groups of children, one group who will be vaccinated with the CDC recommended 48 doses of 14 vaccines by age six and 60 doses of 16 vaccines by age 12 versus another group, who will remain unvaccinated."

Another panel participant, Peter Bell, of Autism Speaks, described his son's regression into autism. While making it clear he is strongly pro-vaccine, Peter gave an eloquent plea for credible scientific research into vaccine safety issues and asked Committee members and government officials to "not demonize parents who are asking questions and searching for answers" to outstanding questions about vaccine risks.

Another presentation from panel members who were supposed to be representing the public was given by attorney Lisa Randall of Voices for Vaccines. She criticized the inclusion of "activists" critical of vaccine safety who "do not represent the mainstream" public opinion and said that she does not want her children to be in the same room with unvaccinated children whose parents have not "stepped up to the plate" and vaccinated them. At public comment time vaccine safety advocate Kelli Ann Davis, who had worked to press government officials to increase public participation in the meeting, questioned where the funding for Vaccines for Children came from and called for SafeMinds board member Mark Blaxill, who was co-author with me of the 2004 White Paper "From Safety Last to Children First" (http://www.ageofautism.com/ .com and http://www.nvic.org/) to be appointed to the NVAC Working Group.

Former pediatric ICU nurse and attorney Terry Poling, whose daughter Hannah was recently awarded uncontested federal compensation under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 after receiving nine vaccines on one day and regressing into autism, asked the Committee to conduct research to identify biological high risk markers for vaccine-related regression. Terry said that Hannah's development of mitochondrial dysfunction following vaccination could be a clue as to why some children are more vulnerable to vaccination than other children.

NVIC Director of Patient Safety, Vicky Debold, PhD, RN, who recently founded Children's Health & Safety Research, LLC, described her son's regression into autism after receiving seven vaccines on one day. Among the patient safety areas she defined were the "failure to rescue" which, in the case of vaccines policy "would be the pervasive failure on the part of nurses and physicians to recognize the importance of challenge-rechallenge phenomena and to modify the vaccination schedule accordingly. This is how my son was injured and is crucial to minimizing future risk."

SafeMinds board member Jim Moody, JD, commented that a lack of credible scientific studies demonstrating vaccine safety makes the application of one-size-fits-all vaccine policies on the entire child population an uncontrolled "scientific experiment." Journalist David Kirby, author of "Evidence of Harm" warned the Committee members that "history will judge each and every one of you. A year from now, five years from now, ten years from now people like me will look back on the history of vaccine safety in this country and look at you folks and say: "What did they do?"

Attorney Patty Healy, who was a former biotech scientist and is NVIC's Director of Counseling, told the Committee that when she became a new Mom eight years ago, she looked at the science for vaccine proof of safety and found it so lacking in substance that she made the difficult decision not to vaccinate her daughter. Patty challenged the Committee to be dedicated to investigating and embracing the truth about vaccine safety no matter what it may be. "Show me the science" she said and "let the chips fall where they may."

Committee Chair Andy Pavia, MD, and the Committee members listened attentively to the public panel members presentations and to the parents who spoke during the public comment time. Several Committee members, including consumer member Tawny Buck, who has a DPT vaccine injured daughter, asked questions of government health officials and made comments indicating that there is a heightened interest in conducting well designed scientific studies examining vaccine injuries and deaths.

Only time will tell if the meeting on Capitol Hill last Friday was for real or for show. Three decades is long enough to wait for government to listen to the people and take action to find out the truth about vaccine risks so every child in America has the opportunity to grow up healthy.

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"A government-appointed working group is charged with picking the most important safety questions for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research over the next five years. What's unique is that the group also is supposed to get significant public input in setting those priorities, an effort to ease skepticism that authorities hide or discount important information about vaccines. "A crisis of trust is going to be a crisis of public health," said Dr. Bruce Gellin, head of the National Vaccine Program Office. "There's been a lot of anger and a lot of distrust over issues of vaccine safety," Dr. Andrew Pavia, a University of Utah pediatric infectious disease specialist who is chairing the group, told the meeting Friday. "There's a need to engage as many voices as possible," he added. "It's a chance to make sure the right questions are going to be asked." - Lauren Neergard, Associated Press (April 12, 2008)
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gQkR4fS0l1M7ouxFGOr6WtrJpkPQD8VVVRTO0

"What doctors in positions of power in the Department of Health and Human Services need to know at this critical point in time is this: Young parents today, who trusted doctors to give them good advice about how to keep their children well, do not understand why their children are never well when they have been given twice as many vaccines as children in previous generations received. They want a full-scale, transparent scientific investigation into all potential environmental causes of autism and other chronic immune and brain disorders conducted by extra-mural researchers who are not connected to vaccine makers and policymakers with a bias toward existing policy......Just as we did a quarter century ago, they are asking you to listen to what happened to their children after vaccination and take immediate steps to modify current vaccine policies to demonstrate a respect for preventing vaccine reactions, biodiversity and the right to informed consent." - Barbara Loe Fisher, Co-founder & President, NVIC (April 11, 2008) http://www.nvic.org/Issues/vaccine_safety_priorities_2008.htm

" History will judge each and every one of you. A year from now, five years from now, ten years from now, people like me will look back on the history of vaccine safety in this country, and look at you folks, and say, "What did they do?" Now, I am going to guess from your body language that you know that there is an issue here. We have a problem with the vaccine schedule. We don't know what it is. You have the power to listen to these community people, and make some decisions. And you are maybe going to make the decision that you are going to look into this situation, and change things. Or, are you going to decide to protect the status quo?" - David Kirby, Journalist (April 11, 2008)

"As a nurse who used to work in the pediatric ICU unit, studied public health and became a lawyer, I am caring for a daughter who suffered regressive autism after receiving nine vaccines on one day. I now find myself in the middle of a contentious debate about vaccines and autism. What happened to Hannah, who has mitochondrial dysfunction associated with her autism and was awarded uncontested compensation in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, should stimulate immediate research into identifying biological markers for screening for vulnerable children." - Terry Poling, JD, RN (April 11, 2008)

"I have a 10-year old boy named Sam. At his 15-month well-baby visit, he experienced a number of serious adverse reactions after receiving seven vaccines. He hasn't fully recovered and it is unlikely that he will. Unfortunately, despite my having doctorates in nursing and public health, neither I, not our pediatrician, knew that the earlier and milder vaccine reactions were warning signs that he was potentially at risk for future and more serious vaccine reactions....The damage is done and, for Sam, it's too late to go back. But it's not too late for other children.... At its' core, the tendency to rigidly stress the need for compliance with a single clinical practice guideline - the national vaccination schedule - for all infants and a reluctance to instruct physicians to meaningfully engage parents in shared decision making or to personalize vaccination health care create conditions that precipitate medical errors and result in unnecessary harm." - Vicky Debold, PhD, RN, Director, Children's Health & Safety Research, LLC and NVIC Director of Patient Safety (April 11, 2008)

"I am a lawyer and I used to work in the biotech industry as a scientist. Eight years ago when I became a new Mom I looked to medicine and science for answers about vaccination. What I found was an absence of scientific studies on the long-term effects of vaccination and the health of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children. I asked my pediatrician to show me the science. Because of the lack of valid scientific studies in these areas, I chose not to vaccinate my child..... Public health officials are supposed to investigate vaccine risks and only care about finding the truth, regardless of the outcome. They should look for the truth and let the chips fall where they may." - Patty Healy, JD, Director of Counseling, NVIC (April 11, 2008)

Mom Jenny Slam Dunks AAP Docs on Larry King

by Barbara Loe Fisher

In what can only be described as a brilliant turn last night on Larry King Live, young celebrity Mom Jenny McCarthy stood her ground with a defiant "anecdotal evidence IS scientific evidence" in calling on the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to back away from one- size-fits-all vaccine policies that recommend all babies get dozens of doses of vaccines. Describing what happened to her son, who suffered convulsions and nearly died after a round of vaccinations and then regressed into autism, Jenny was accompanied by her pediatrician, Jay Gordon, M.D., and journalist David Kirby in a face-off with AAP pediatricians Harvey Karp, M.D. and David Tayloe, Jr. M.D.. It was a ground- breaking television debate about vaccine risks that highlighted the soft underbelly of a medical community unwilling to deal with the reality that regressive autism is part of the vaccine injury spectrum.

Watching Jenny talk about how she recovered her son from autism using diet and alternative healing therapies while resolutely rejecting the tired old platitudes offered up by the two pediatricians trying to defend the indefensible vaccine schedule promoted by the AAP, I smiled as I remembered how it was when I was a young Mom in the 1980's and 1990's and debated doctors on TV. Those were the days when the vast majority of Americans had no idea vaccines could brain injure children and the U.S. media was often bullied by AAP and CDC officials into downplaying reports by mothers that their children died or were brain damaged after vaccination.

The AAP and CDC leadership have essentially joined with the pharmaceutical industry and stuck their heads in the sand for three decades, refusing to take action even though parents and a few courageous doctors have repeatedly come to the table at the CDC, FDA, NIH and Institute of Medicine and pleaded with them to responsibly investigate the clear pattern of regression into poor health after vaccination that so many children are suffering. Pediatricians and vaccine manufacturers have hidden behind the protection offered by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which Congress gave to them as a gift in an exchange that was supposed to make the vaccine system safer and more trustworthy.

The sad truth is that the public trust has been betrayed by those operating a mass vaccination system now crumbling precisely because there was a refusal to listen to the calls by mothers of vaccine injured children to take constructive action in the 1980's and 1990's.

Today, those responsible for the betrayal of the public trust will be forced to deal with a new generation of Moms, exemplified by Jenny McCarthy, who are not starting from ground zero like we did. These Moms are holding their broken children in their arms and looking back in anger and disgust at the long, tragic history of denials by those operating the mass vaccination system. This generation of mothers and fathers, many of whom will spend a lifetime trying to heal their vaccine injured children, are standing on a platform of knowledge built brick by brick by those who have gone before and shouting: "It ends here and now with me."

During the Larry King show, Jenny announced that she and Jim Carrey will be leading a march for autism awareness in Washington, D.C. on June 4.

For more information, go to Jenny's page on the Generation Rescue website at
http://generationrescue.org/vaccines.html


"In light of the recent Hannah Poling decision, in which the federal court conceded that vaccines could have contributed to her autism, we think the tide is finally turning in the direction of parents like us who have been shouting concerns from our rooftops for years. Autism is a debilitating disorder, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is suffered by 1 in 150 kids, making it more common than childhood cancer, diabetes and AIDS combined. Recently, England and Ireland reported that autism is affecting one in 58 individuals. Is it any wonder that autism has become many new parents' No. 1 fear? We've met some of the most amazing moms and dads who are forging their own path to prevention and recovery. When our son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism we were lucky enough to benefit from their knowledge and experience. Evan has been healed to a great extent by many breakthroughs that, while perhaps not scientifically proven, have definitely helped Evan and many other children who are recovering from autism." - Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey, CNN - Larry King (April 2, 2008)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/02/mccarthy.autsimtreatment/index. html#cnnSTCVideo