by Barbara Loe Fisher
Co-founder & President
National Vaccine Information Center
Following is a referenced excerpt from a keynote presentation given
by Barbara Loe Fisher at the 2014 U.S. Health Freedom Congress in
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The public conversation about whether we should have the freedom to
choose how we want to maintain our physical, mental, emotional and
spiritual health has become one of the most important public
conversations of our time. It is a conversation that challenges us to
examine complex public policy, scientific, ethical, legal,
philosophical, economic, political and cultural issues.
This may appear to be a new conversation but it has been around for centuries. 1 At the center of this new and old public conversation about health and freedom, is the topic of vaccination. 2 3
What unites those defending an open discussion about vaccination and health is a commitment to protecting bodily integrity 4 5and defending the inalienable right to self-determination, 6 which has been globally acknowledged as a human right. 7 8 9
Whether you are a health care professional practicing complementary
and alternative medicine or specializing in homeopathic, naturopathic,
chiropractic, acupuncture, or other holistic health options, 10
or you are a consumer advocate working for the right to know and
freedom to choose how you and your family will stay well, many of you
have a deep concern about health and freedom.
Vaccination: Most Hotly Debated of All Health Freedom Issues
The most divisive and hotly debated of all health freedom issues is
the question of whether individuals should be at liberty to dissent
from established medical and government health policy and exercise
freedom of thought, speech and conscience when it comes to vaccination. 11 12 13
In the health freedom movement, there are some who will defend the
legal right to purchase and use nutritional supplements, drink raw milk,
eat GMO free food, remove fluoride from public water systems and
mercury from dental amalgams or choose non-medical model options for
healing and staying well, but are reluctant to publicly support the
legal right to make vaccine choices.
A Sacrosanct Status for Vaccination
Vaccination is a medical procedure that has been elevated to a
sacrosanct status by those in control of the medical-model based health
care system for the past two centuries. Vaccination is now being
proclaimed as the most important scientific discovery and public health
intervention in the history of medicine. 14 15 16
Using religious symbols and crusading language, medical scientists describe vaccination as the Holy Grail. 17 18 19 20
Vaccines, they say, are going to eradicate all causes of sickness and
death from the earth and anyone who doubts that is an ignorant fool. 21 22 23 24 25
In the 1970’s, pediatrician and health freedom pioneer Robert
Mendelsohn, who described himself as a medical heretic, warned that
medical science has become a religion and doctors have turned the act of
vaccination into “the new sacrament.” 26
In the 21st century, if you refuse to believe that
vaccination is a moral and civic duty and dare to question vaccine
safety or advocate for the legal right to decline one or more government
recommended vaccines, you are in danger of being branded an
anti-science heretic, a traitor and a threat to the public health. 27 28 You are viewed as a person of interest who deserves to be humiliated, silenced and punished for your dissent. 29 30 31 32
Exercising Freedom of Thought, Speech and Autonomy
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” said Voltaire, 33 34 the great 18th
century writer during the Age of Enlightenment, who was imprisoned
several times in the Bastille for defending freedom of thought and
speech before the French Revolution.
As contentious as the public conversation about vaccination, health
and autonomy has become, we cannot be afraid to have it. There has
never been a better time to challenge those ruling our health care with
an iron fist. We have the power and all we need to do is exercise it.
Information is Power
We have the tools in the 21st century to bring about a modern Age of Enlightenment 35 that will liberate the people so we can take back our freedom and our health.
The electronic communications revolution has provided a global platform for us to access the Library of Medicine 36
and evaluate the quality and quantity of vaccine science used to make
public health policy and create vaccine laws. The World Wide Web allows
us to circumvent the paid mainstream media dominated by industry and
governments and publicly communicate in detail on our computers, tablets
and smart phones exactly what happened to our health or our child’s
health after vaccination. 37 38 39 40
We are connected with each other in a way that we have never been
before and it is time to talk about vaccines and microbes and the true
causes of poor health. It is time to face the fear that we and our
children will get sick and die if we don’t believe and do what those we
have allowed to rule our health care system with an iron fist tell us to
believe and do.
Who Will Control the Multi-Trillion Dollar U.S. Health Care System?
What is at stake in this debate between citizens challenging the
status quo and those resisting constructive change is: Who will control
the multi-trillion dollar U.S. health care system? 41
If people have the right to know and freedom to choose how to heal and
stay healthy, a free people may think independently and choose to spend
their money on something different from what they have been carefully
taught to spend their money on right now. 42
A free people may reject sole reliance on the expensive and, some
say, ineffective pharmaceutical-based medical model that has dominated
US health care for two centuries. 43 44 45
A free people may refuse to buy and eat GMO foods. 46
A free people may walk away from doctors, who threaten and punish
patients for refusing to obey orders to get an annual flu shot or
decline to give their children every single government recommended
vaccine on schedule – no exceptions and no questions asked. 47
The most rational and compelling arguments for defending health
freedom, including vaccine freedom of choice, are grounded in ethics,
law, science and economics. The human right to voluntary, informed
consent to vaccination is the best example of why Americans must not
wait any longer to stand up and defend without compromise the
inalienable right to autonomy and protection of bodily integrity.
NVIC: Defending Ethical Principle of Informed Consent
I and the more than 100,000 followers and supporters 48 of the non-profit charity, the National Vaccine Information Center,
take an informed consent position with regard to vaccination. Since our
founding in 1982, we have defended the ethical principle of informed
consent to vaccine risk-taking because vaccines are pharmaceutical
products that carry a risk of injury, death and failure, 49 and because informed consent to medical risk taking is the central ethical principle guiding the ethical practice of medicine. 50
We support the “first do no harm” precautionary approach to public policymaking, which focuses on how much harm can be prevented from a policy or law and not how much harm is acceptable. 51
NVIC Supports Your Health Choices & Vaccine Exemptions
We do not advocate for or against use of vaccines. We support your
human and legal right to make informed, voluntary health care decisions
for yourself and your children and choose to use every government
recommended vaccine, a few vaccines or no vaccines at all. 52
NVIC has worked for more than 30 years to secure vaccine safety and
informed consent provisions in public health policies and laws,
including flexible medical, religious and conscientious belief vaccine
exemptions.
We are doing this in an increasingly hostile environment created by
an industry-government-medical trade alliance that is lobbying for laws
to compel all Americans to use every government recommended without
deviation from the official schedule or face a growing number of
societal sanctions. 53
Although historically, children have been the target for vaccine
mandates, authoritarian implementation of federal vaccine policy is not
just for children anymore, it is rapidly expanding to include all
adults. 54 55
Californians Stood Up for Personal Belief Vaccine Exemption
In 2012, many California residents traveled to Sacramento to
protest a law introduced by a pediatrician legislator to make it harder
for parents to file a personal belief vaccine exemption for their
children to attend school. They responded to Action Alerts we issued
through the online NVIC Advocacy Portal
and lined the halls of the state Capitol building, many with their
children, and waited for hours and hours to testify at several public
hearings.
Mother after mother and father after father, grandparents, nurses,
doctors and students of chiropractic, came to the public microphone.
Some talked about how vaccine reactions left their children sick and
disabled but they can’t find a doctor to write a medical exemption so
their children can attend school; others talked about how their babies
died after vaccination; and others simply opposed restriction of the
legal right for parents to make medical decisions for their minor
children.
It was a remarkable public witnessing by articulate, courageous
citizens pleading with their elected representatives to do the right
thing.
The right thing would have been for lawmakers to vote to
leave the personal belief vaccine exemption alone so parents could
continue to make vaccine decisions for their minor children without
being forced to beg a hostile doctor or government official for
permission to do that.
That didn’t happen. 56
Today, parents in California are forced to pay a pediatrician or other
state-approved health worker to sign a personal belief vaccine exemption
and the doctor can refuse to sign and parents are reporting many
pediatricians ARE refusing to sign.
Californians Inspired Colorado Citizens to Stand Up in 2014
Yet, because in 2012 California citizens made a powerful public
statement by participating in the democratic process and taking action
with calls, letters, emails and personal testimony, in 2014 Colorado
citizens were inspired to do the same when the personal belief vaccine
exemption was attacked in that state.
Because in 2012 enough people in California did not sit back and
assume the job of defending health freedom would get done by someone
else, in 2014 enough people in Colorado did not assume it would get done
by someone else. 57 And this time, we were able to hold the line and protect the personal belief vaccine exemption in that state from being eliminated or restricted. 58
This time, there were enough lawmakers in Colorado, who listened and carefully considered the evidence. 59 They did not cave in to pressure from drug industry, government and medical trade lobbyists 60 61 62 63
labeling a minority of citizens as “ignorant,” “selfish,” “crazy” and
in need of having their parental and civil rights taken away for
defending the human right to self determination and informed consent to
vaccine risk-taking.
The Right to Make a Risk Decision Belongs to You
I do not tell anyone what risks to take and never will. The right
and responsibility for making a risk decision belongs to the person
taking the risk. When you become informed and think rationally about a
risk you or your child will take - and then follow your conscience - you
own that decision.
And when you own a decision, you can defend it. And once you can
defend it, you will be ready to do whatever it takes to fight for your
freedom to make it, no matter who tries to prevent you from doing that.
Einstein: “Never do anything against conscience”
Albert Einstein, who risked arrest in Germany in the 1930’s when he
spoke out against censorship and persecution of minorities, said, “Never do anything against conscience even if the State demands it.” 64
It takes strength to act independently. When the herd is all
running toward the cliff, the one running in the opposite direction
seems crazy.
People who think rationally and act independently even when the majority does not, may be the only ones to survive!
Ghandi: “Speak Your Mind”
Ghandi was often persecuted by the ruling majority for challenging
their authority and using non-violent civil disobedience to publicly
dissent. He said, “Never apologize for being correct, for being
ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind.
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.” 65
Sharing what you know to be true empowers others to make conscious choices.
Jefferson: “The Minority Possess Their Equal Rights”
The authors of the U.S. Constitution made sure to include strong
language securing individual liberties, including freedom of thought,
speech and conscience. They did that because many of the families
immigrating to America had personally faced discrimination and
persecution in other countries for holding beliefs different from the
ruling majority.
In his first Presidential inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson warned:
“All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though
the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be
rightful must be reasonable; that the minority posses their equal
rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be
oppression.” 66
Getting Vaccinated Is Not A Patriotic Act
There is no liberty more fundamentally a natural, inalienable right
than the freedom to think independently and follow your conscience when
choosing what you will risk your life or your child’s life for. And
that is why voluntary, informed consent to medical risk taking is a
human right.
Despite what you are being told by paid propaganda experts 67 68 spinning the conversation about vaccination and health in the media today, getting vaccinated is not a patriotic act 69 and declining to use a government recommended vaccine is not a criminal act. 70 It is a choice.
All Born Equal but Not the Same
And vaccination must remain a choice because, while we are all born
equal, with equal rights under the law, we are not born all the same.
Each one of us is born with different genes and a unique microbiome 71 influenced by epigenetics 72 that affects how we respond to the environments we live in.
We do not all respond the same way to infectious diseases 73 and we do not all respond the same way to pharmaceutical products like vaccines. 74 75 76 77 Public health laws that fail to respect biodiversity and force everyone to be treated the same are unethical and dangerous.
My Son’s Severe DPT Vaccine Reaction
The first time I really understood what it means to belong to a
minority was after I witnessed my son, Chris, suffer a convulsion,
collapse shock and brain inflammation within hours of his fourth DPT
shot when he was two and a half years old.
I remember that day in 1980 when I took my exceptionally bright,
healthy two and a half year old son to the pediatrician with all the
trust and faith of a young first time mother. Saying words at seven
months, speaking in full sentences and identifying words by age two, my
precocious, cheerful little boy had a friend, Timmy, who lived across
the street and also got four DPT shots by age two.
Timmy was born to a different mother and father with a different
genetic, biological and environmental history. Timmy did not have a milk
allergy or a family history of autoimmunity and allergy like Chris. He
had not experienced a severe local reaction after his third DPT shot
like Chris had and, unlike Chris, Timmy had not just finished a course
of antibiotics before he was vaccinated a fourth time.
Timmy did not have a reaction to his booster DPT shot.
Chris did.
Within hours of vaccination, I watched my son’s eyes roll back in
his head and his head fall to his shoulder as if he had fallen asleep
sitting up. It was a classic post-DPT vaccine convulsion and collapse
shock reaction 78
and I didn’t know. Then, when he slept for hours without moving and I
thought he was just taking a really long nap, I didn’t understand that
he was unconscious 79
and could have died in his bed and I would never have known why because
my pediatrician did not tell me about DPT vaccine risks or how to
identify vaccine reaction symptoms. 80 81 82 83
Vaccine Induced Brain Inflammation and Regression
The immune mediated brain inflammation, also known as encephalopathy, 84 85 86
that Chris experienced after DPT vaccination was followed by
progressive deterioration in physical, mental and emotional health,
including chronic infections, constant diarrhea, new allergies, failure
to thrive, loss of previous cognitive skills, inability to concentrate,
and personality and behavior changes.
Chris could no longer do what he could do before his fourth DPT
shot. He became a totally different child. After repeated testing, he
was diagnosed with minimal brain damage, including multiple learning
disabilities and attention deficit disorder and placed in a special
education classroom for the learning disabled where he stayed through
his public education until the end of high school.
Chris and I know how very fortunate he was that the severe vaccine
reaction he experienced did not take his life or leave him with far more
serious brain and immune dysfunction like so many of the children we
have both come to know since then.
Today, Chris is a videographer and competitive power lifter. He has
worked hard to compensate for the learning disabilities that made his
childhood a frustrating, unhappy and sometimes dangerous time in his
life. Recent testing has revealed that Chris has an exceptional ability
to engage in abstract thinking and that, when his learning disabilities
are discounted, he has a high IQ, which is one reason why he was so
frustrated and lost in a special education system that does not have a
place for children like him.
Vaccine Reaction Survivors: The Walking Wounded
Chris is a vaccine reaction survivor. He is among the walking
wounded, who are not left with severe vaccine injuries, but whose
futures are compromised in childhood when the risks of vaccination turn
out to be 100 percent.
How many mothers do not witness a child’s vaccine reaction and
never understand why their children’s physical, mental and emotional
health suddenly regressed after vaccination? How many of those children
are filling the special education classrooms, doctor’s offices, mental
health facilities and prisons in America?
The Risks of Trusting Without Verifying
What happened to my healthy son after vaccination in 1980 sent me
on a journey to learn more and find out why doctors are not talking
about vaccine risks and why a commercial product that can brain damage
and kill people is being mandated. In part I was driven by
disappointment in myself as a college educated woman, who had come from a
family of doctors and nurses and had worked as a writer at a teaching
hospital before I became a Mom.
Why did I irrationally assume that vaccines were 100 percent safe
and effective? Why had I blindly trusted a doctor instead of examining
vaccination with the same due diligence that I had researched nutrition
and toxic exposures during pregnancy and had taken prepared childbirth
classes to weigh the merits of an epidural versus natural childbirth and
breast feeding versus bottle feeding?
A Journey to Find Out Why
Some of my questions were answered during the two years of research
that medical historian Harris Coulter and I conducted, when I learned
that pertussis vaccine contains lethal pertussis toxin 87 88 89 and endotoxin, 90 91 as well as aluminum and mercury, 92 93 which can make the blood brain more permeable. 94 95 96
That research culminated in the publishing of our 1985 book DPT: A Shot in the Dark. 97
Harris and I were the first to report an association between vaccine
induced brain inflammation and a spectrum of brain dysfunction that
doctors give labels like seizures, learning disabilities, ADHD and
autism. But it would take another 25 years of research and interfacing
with politicians and serving on committees with doctors in industry,
government and medical trade to answer the rest of my questions. 98
Everybody Knows Somebody
In 1982, when I joined with parents of DPT vaccine injured children
and co-founded the non-profit charity that is known today as the
National Vaccine Information Center, the number of Americans questioning
the safety of vaccines was so tiny, it could not even by measured in
public opinion polls.
Three decades later, national polls reveal that the majority of
parents in America say the Number One child health concern they have is
about the safety of vaccines. 99
That is because in the 21st century, everybody knows somebody who was healthy, got vaccinated and was never healthy again.
Militarization of Vaccine Policy: Fear Replacing Trust
And people are talking about it, especially mothers taking their
children to pediatricians because we are the ones who carry our babies
inside us for nine months and give birth and feed and nurture them
through infancy and are responsible for their health and we are the ones
who usually quit work and stay home and care for them when they are
never well anymore.
Mothers are asking their doctors logical questions about
vaccination and when their doctors react to those questions with
irrational rage or cold refusal to provide medical care if one or more
vaccines are declined, it becomes obvious that there is something very
wrong with doctors using threats to push and enforce use of a
pharmaceutical product. 100 101 102 103
The militarization of vaccine policy in the United States is
eroding the trust that used to exist between the people and their
doctors and that broken trust is being replaced by fear. 104 105
From 23 Doses of 7 Vaccines to 69 Doses of 16 Vaccines
One of the reasons parents are asking more questions about
vaccination is that there have been big changes in U.S. vaccine policy
and law since 1982.
In 1982, Centers for Disease Control officials told pediatricians
to give children 23 doses of seven vaccines before age six, with the
first vaccinations starting at two months old. 106
Today, the CDC has upped that number to 69 doses of 16 vaccines by age
18, with 49 doses of 14 vaccines given between the day of birth and age
six. 107
That is twice the number of vaccines children in the 1980’s got by
age six and three times as many vaccinations as Americans used to get
during their whole life!
But these new vaccines are not for diseases like smallpox and
polio. They are for infant diarrhea and chickenpox, which are rarely
fatal in this country, and hepatitis B, which requires direct exposure
to infected blood and cannot be easily transmitted in public. 108
Jacobsen v. Massachusetts: State Police Powers Affirmed
Not the kind of infectious diseases the justices of the 1905 U.S.
Supreme Court probably had in mind when they issued their ruling in Jacobsen v. Massachusetts. 109 In
that precedent setting split decision, the high court majority ruled
that state legislatures could use police powers to force a minority of
dissenting citizens to use smallpox vaccine for what medical doctors and
government officials judge to be the greater good of the majority.
Those early 20th century justices based their decision
in part on a false premise argued by lawyers representing public health
officials, who argued that medical doctors could predict ahead of time
who will be injured or die from smallpox vaccination. Doctors have never
been able to predict with any certainty who will be injured and die
from vaccination.
In affirming the constitutional right of states to use police
powers to enact public health laws, the Supreme Court was also
reaffirming the roles of state government versus the federal government
in public health law. Anything not defined in the US Constitution as a
federal responsibility has traditionally defaulted to the states. Public
health was not defined in the Constitution as a federal responsibility
so public health laws have always been state laws and this is why
vaccination laws vary from state to state. 110 111
A Utilitarian Rationale Turned Into Law
It is important to note that the Supreme Court ruling in Jacobsen v Massachusetts at the turn of the 20th
century was clearly based on a utilitarian rationale that a minority of
citizens opposing vaccination should be forced to get vaccinated in
service to the majority.
Utilitarianism was a popular ethical theory in the late 19th and early 20th
century in Britain and the U.S. and was used by government officials as
a mathematical guide to making public policy that ensured “the greatest
happiness for the greatest number of people.” 112 113 Today, utilitarianism has a much more benign and lofty name attached to it: “the greater good.”
Minorities At Risk When State Employs Militant Utilitarianism
Perhaps that is because utilitarianism went out of fashion in the mid-20th
century after, beginning in 1933, the Third Reich employed the
utilitarian rationale as an excuse to demonize minorities judged to be a
threat to the health and well being of the State.114 Enlisting the assistance of government health officials, 115 116 117 118
the first minority to be considered expendable for the good of the
State were severely handicapped children, the chronically sick and
mentally ill, the “useless eaters” they were called. 119 120
And when the reasons for why a person was identified as a threat to
the health, economic stability, or security of the State grew longer to
include minorities who were too old or too Jewish or too Catholic or
too opinionated or simply unwilling to believe what those in control of
the State said was true….as the list of those the State branded as
persons of interest to be demonized, feared, tracked, isolated and
eliminated grew, so did the collective denial of those who had yet to be
put on that list. 121 122
Jacobsen v Massachusetts Used to Embrace Eugenics in U.S.
Prophetically, in 1927, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes invoked the Jacobsen v. Massachusetts
“greater good” utilitarian decision to justify using the heel of the
boot of the State to force the sterilization of a young Virginia woman,
Carrie Buck, who doctors and social workers incorrectly judged to be
mentally retarded like they said her mother was. 123 In a chilling statement endorsing eugenics, 124 Holmes revealed the morally corrupt core of utilitarianism that still props up mandatory vaccination laws in the U.S.
Pointing to the Jacobsen vs. Massachusetts decision,
Holmes declared that the state of Virginia could force Carrie Buck to be
sterilized to protect society from mentally retarded people.
Coldly, Holmes proclaimed, “three generations of imbeciles are enough” and “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.” 125
The 1905 U.S. Supreme Court majority made fundamental scientific and ethical errors in their ruling in Jacobsen v. Massachusetts. It is clear that medical doctors cannot predict ahead of time who will be injured or die from vaccination and that is a scientific fact. 126 127
Utilitarianism Is A Discredited Pseudo-Ethic
Utilitarianism is a discredited pseudo-ethic that has been used to
justify horrific human rights abuses not only in the Third Reich 128 129 but in human scientific experimentation 130 and the inhumane treatment of prisoners and political dissidents here and in many countries, 131 132 133 134 which is why it should never be used as a guide to public policy and law by any government.
Although we may disagree about the quality and quantity of the
scientific evidence used by doctors and governments to declare vaccines
are safe at the population level, at our peril do we fail to agree that,
while the State may have the power, it does not have the moral
authority to dictate that a minority of individuals born with certain
genes and biological susceptibilities give up their lives without their
consent for what the ruling majority has judged to be the greater good.
Our Lives Are Defined by the Choices We Make
The journey we take in this life is defined by the choices we
make. And if we are not free to make those choices, the journey is not
our own.
And the choices we make that involve risk of harm to our
physical body, which houses our mind and spirit, those choices are among
the most profound choices we make in this life, which is why we must be
free to make them.
