Thousands of Americans living in all 50 states took action and registered for the new NVIC Advocacy Portal at www.NVICadvocacy.org during Vaccine Awareness Week (Nov. 1-6, 2010) co-sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) and Mercola.com. The NVIC Advocacy Portal, a free, online interactive database and communications network to help Americans protect and expand vaccine exemptions in state vaccine laws, was launched during the joint weeklong effort to raise public awareness about vaccine safety and informed consent issues.
More Than Two Million People Reached
More than two million people were reached during Vaccine Awareness Week through a series of articles and videos about vaccination published on Mercola.com. In a
joint press release issued Nov. 8, Dr. Joseph Mercola urged Americans to join with NVIC and Mercola.com and organize to protect vaccine choices.
"Americans should be free to say "yes" or "no" to using vaccines without being harassed or punished for the informed decision they make," said Dr. Mercola. "Like any drug or medical procedure a doctor recommends, getting a vaccine is a personal health choice and the voluntary consent of the patient is absolutely necessary."
Topics of articles about vaccination published on Mercola.com during Vaccine Awareness Week, included:
· NVIC Advocacy Portal
· Influenza
· Chickenpox & Shingles
· Hepatitis B
· HPV & Gardasil
· Vaccine Mandates & Big Business
Leveling the Playing Field in State Legislatures
Dawn Richardson, NVIC Director of Advocacy, who designed the web-based vaccine choice advocacy communications network, developed the Advocacy Portal to make it easier for average citizens to make their voices heard in state legislatures where vaccine exemptions are under attack.
Dawn said 'This is a dream for smart phone users who can be viewing a vaccine legislative action alert in their state, while also being able to get in immediate contact with their elected legislators to voice their opinion. We, the people, don't yet have the money to fight drug company lobbyists and doctors, who are camped out in state legislatures pushing for more vaccine mandates and the elimination of vaccine exemptions. This gives us an effective tool to help level the playing field."
Those who register on the NVIC Advocacy Portal become NVIC Advocacy Team Members and have access to:
· complete, up-to-date contact information for legislators
· vaccine tutorials
· webinars and conference calls
· tips for communicating with legislators and health officials
· web stickers for posting on websites, blogs, Facebook, MySpace
· urgent Action Alerts notifying NVIC Team Members about breaking vaccine legislation news
· online state and national vaccine newsletters
· "Tell a Friend" feature to send an online invitation to family and friends to join the NVIC Advocacy team
Getting Serious About Defending Informed Consent Rights
NVIC developed the NVIC Advocacy Portal because we know it is time to get serious about legally defending the human right to informed consent to medical risk-taking in America. Big medical organizations and doctors with financial ties to vaccine manufacturers are advocating for the elimination of vaccine exemptions in state vaccine laws. We cannot allow ourselves to become captive consumers of every new vaccine that drug companies produce.
NVIC is committed to making our Number One priority in the second decade of the 21st century the protection of the legal right for all Americans to make fully informed, voluntary decisions about vaccination for themselves and their children. NVIC is working to make sure that every state vaccine law includes:
· a medical exemption that does not require approval of state or federal government health officials;
· a religious exemption that is not questioned by doctors or government officials; and
· a conscientious belief exemption that allows citizens to obey their conscience and their personal or philosophical beliefs regarding vaccination.
NVIC & Mercola.com: Partners Since 2008
NVIC's partnership with Mercola.com, which ranks in the top five most visited health information websites in the world, is strengthening and expanding NVIC's three decade call for the institution of informed consent protections in US vaccine laws. Mercola.com hosts NVIC.org and NVICadvocacy.org and has worked with NVIC since 2008 to research and disseminate referenced information about vaccination and health.
Click here to make a comment and watch a video interview Dr. Mercola conducted on taking action NOW to protect vaccine choices.
Become an NVIC Facebook Fan and get a free vaccine report from NVIC.
Click here to register for the free NVIC Advocacy Portal.
Click here to make a donation to NVIC.
Thousands Of Americans Register for NVIC's New Advocacy Portal During Vaccine Awareness Week
Forcing Flu Shots on Health Care Workers: Who Is Next?
60 percent of all U.S. health care professionals don’t want to get an annual flu shot,2 which matches the number of Americans, who choose not to get a flu shot, even in pandemic years.3, 4 Surveys reveal that health care providers know that influenza vaccine can cause nasty, unexpected side effects for some people, like paralysis5 and convulsions.6
Not Just Doctors & Nurses: Everyone
But that has not stopped medical organizations from launching a national crusade to force everyone employed in a “healthcare setting” to get a flu shot every year, whether they have direct contact with patients or not.7, 8 That’s right. Not just doctors and nurses, but every single person who has anything to do with the health care facility, including students, volunteers, and contract workers. An exception could be made if the doctors in charge approve a “medical exemption” to vaccination, which, today, is about as hard to get as a job.
It is not a pretty sight to watch doctors acting more like thugs than healers. When doctors threaten people with financial ruin for refusing to shut up and salute smartly, there is something wrong.
Trust is replaced with fear and anger. People start asking questions. Questions like: Who will be threatened and punished next for refusing a flu shot?
The answer is YOU, me, and every American. We are next in line because when doctors trade in their white coats for military uniforms, going after their own is just the first step on the road to going after the rest of us. If this latest power grab is allowed to set precedent in America, the only question in the future will be: how many vaccines will we be forced to take or lose our jobs, our health insurance, our right to enter a hospital, or receive medical care, or get on a plane, or check into a hotel if we can’t prove we have gotten vaccinated?
1905 U.S. Supreme Court Sets Up Vaccine Pushing & Profit-Making
Vaccine mandates are nothing new in America. After smallpox outbreaks disfigured or killed up to one third of those infected during the 17th and 18th centuries, in 1905 the U.S. Supreme Court gave permission to states to pass laws requiring smallpox vaccination.9 Since then, that precedent setting Supreme Court case, Jacobsen v Massachusetts, has become a kind of holy scripture for public health officials, who have used it to persuade state legislators to pass a whole slew of new vaccine laws barring children from going to school unless they prove they have been injected with dozens of doses of vaccines for infectious diseases that do not come close to being as deadly or contagious as smallpox.10
So, even though the 1905 Supreme Court legal opinion was about Americans getting one or two smallpox vaccinations, since then it has been used by doctors to wage an evangelistic crusade to smack down all microorganisms associated with infectious disease by calling on 300 million Americans to be injected with multiple vaccines from day of birth to year of death.11, 12 This, of course, has created a lucrative boondoggle for pharmaceutical corporations seeking a guaranteed, liability-free market for every new vaccine licensed and sold in America, the third largest nation in the world, which helps these companies finance and develop huge global markets as well.13 , 14 In 2009 alone, multi-national corporations took home profits of $2.8 billion dollars in influenza vaccine sales.15
What most people don’t realize is that those long dead US Supreme Court judges used a pseudo ethic, utilitarianism, to justify their legal opinion that vaccination should be forced in America. Utilitarianism, which argues that an action is moral if it results in the “greatest good for the greatest number of people,” was quite popular at the turn of the 20th century.16
The cruel reality of what can happen to individuals when utilitarianism is used to prop up public health policy was brought home in 1927, when US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes used the Jacobsen vs. Massachusetts decision to facilitate the forced sterilization of a young woman.17 At the age of seven months, Carrie Buck was judged to be mentally retarded like her mother. So Holmes gave the green light to the state of Virginia to employ a eugenics solution advocated by medical doctors and scientists and sterilize Carrie for the greater good of society.18
Justice Holmes said flatly and prophetically, “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.”
It is no surprise that Hitler and the Nazis were big fans of Oliver Wendall Holmes.19 By the way, it turned out that Carrie was not mentally retarded after all.
Crimes Against Humanity & The Informed Consent Ethic
Utilitarianism, like eugenics, was discredited during the Doctor’s Trial at Nuremberg after World War II when medical doctors and scientists, who were charged with crimes against humanity, used the utilitarian rationale to justify medical experiments on captive human subjects.20The Doctor’s Trial in 1946 gave birth to the Nuremberg Code and the ethical principle of informed consent, which has been the guiding principle in the ethical practice of modern medicine since then.21 Respect for the informed consent principle protects ordinary people from exploitation by wealthy and powerful individuals, corporations and institutions in society, who are in charge of defining “the greater good” and can easily invoke that utilitarian argument to commit civil and human rights abuses.
Take Doctors & Scientists Off the Pedestal
Now, we come full circle to 2010, as we witness doctors in positions of authority threatening people with loss of employment and financial ruin if they refuse to get injected every year with influenza vaccine, a vaccine that carries two risks: the risk of injury or death and the risk of not working at all.
Why are we letting fellow citizens with M.D. or Ph.D. written after their names to tell us what kinds of risks to take with our lives or the lives of our children? Why do we continue to put doctors and scientists on a pedestal in America and fail to put boundaries on the power they too often wield with callous disregard for the informed consent ethic, civil liberties and individual human life?
Influenza Vaccine: You Have the Right to Weigh the Benefits & Risks
Whether or not you are a health care provider, the decision about whether or not to get a flu shot every year is a personal health choice that should be yours to make after you become informed and weigh the benefits and risks. Educated health care professionals and consumers alike are perfectly capable of analyzing the facts about influenza and influenza vaccine, including the fact that:
- 80 percent of all flu-like illness reported during the “flu season” is NOT caused by influenza but by other viruses and bacteria;22
- Only 5 to 20 percent of Americans get type A or type B influenza in an average year and the majority recover without any complications and are left with immunity to the strains they were infected with, which contributes to natural herd immunity in our population;23, 24
- Like most infectious diseases, influenza can be prevented or reduced in home and health care settings with hand washing, masking and separating sick and healthy persons;25, 26
- Influenza viruses are constantly evolving so, depending upon the year, the flu shot may or may not contain the influenza strains associated with most reported influenza cases;27
- The majority of published influenza studies are so poorly designed, they have not demonstrated that influenza vaccine is effective or safe;28, 29
- Influenza vaccines containing the pandemic H1N1 “swine flu” strain have generated increased reports of paralysis, blood disorders and convulsions;30, 31
- There are no clinical studies to evaluate the long term positive or negative health effects on human populations of being injected with influenza vaccine every year throughout life; and
- Nobody knows whether mass use of influenza vaccine from the cradle to the grave by all Americans will put pressure on influenza strains to become more virulent like has happened with other microorganisms and universally used vaccines.32, 33
Intimidation & Retaliation to Force Vaccination Is Unethical
It is unscientific, irresponsible and a gross waste of health care dollars, especially in these hard economic times, for doctors and scientists in positions of authority to conduct an uncontrolled national medical experiment on the American people by threatening societal sanctions for those who refuse to get a flu shot every year. Firing health care workers, already hit by unemployment, for simply exercising their human right to informed consent to medical risk taking, is unnecessary and unethical.
The National Vaccine Information Center, which has defended the informed consent ethic in medicine since 1982, joins with other responsible organizations and enlightened individuals, who oppose use of intimidation and retaliation to force all health care professionals to use influenza vaccine.34, 35 NVIC continues to call for informed consent protections in all vaccine policies and laws in America, including liberal medical, religious and conscientious belief exemptions to vaccination.
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
A British historian, who died three years before the 1905 US Supreme Court justices issued their flawed legal opinion about mandatory vaccination, got it right when he said, “Power corrupts [and] absolute power corrupts absolutely.” 36 History has shown that medical doctors and scientists do not know how to wield power without leaving a trail human suffering behind them.
It is time for Americans to stand up and draw a line in the sand for doctors, who fail to appreciate the difference between offering a medical opinion and giving an order that punishes people for disagreeing with that opinion.
Learn More & Stand Up For Your Informed Consent Rights
Go to www.NVIC.org for more information on diseases and vaccines. Sign up for our Vaccine E-newsletter and watch for the announcement of NVIC’s Vaccine Advocacy Portal that will give you the tools you need to stand up in your state and protect your human right to informed consent to vaccination.
Remember, it’s your health, your family and your choice.
REFERENCES
1 Offit, P. 2010. Mandating Influenza Vaccine: One Hospital’s Experience. Medscape.
2 King WD. Woolhandler SJ et al. 2006. Influenza Vaccination and Health Care Workers in the U.S. Journal of General Internal Medicine.
3 Centers for Disease Control. 2008. State-Specific Influenza Vaccine Coverage Among Adults – US, 2006-07 Influenza Season. MMWR.
4 Centers for Disease Control. 2010. Interim Results: State Specific Influenza A(H1N1) 2009 Monovalent Vaccine Coverage – U.S. Oct. 2009 – Jan. 2010. MMWR.
5 Haber P, DeStefano F et al. 2004. Guillain-Barre syndrome following influenza vaccination. Journal of the American Medical Association.
6 Corderoy A. Sept. 19, 2010. Side effects worse than the disease. The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia).
7 Infectious Diseases Society of America and Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. Aug. 31, 2010. Press Release: Nation’s Leading Infectious Disease Experts Call for Mandatory Flu Vaccine for All Healthcare Personnel: Vaccines Should be Required for Continued Employment for Healthcare Personnel, Epidemiologists and Infectious Disease Physicians Say.
8 Neale T. Sept. 8, 2010. Flu Vaccine a Must for All Healthcare Workers, AAP says. Medpage Today.
9 Jacobsen v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11(1905. LSU Law Center.
10 CNN. Nov. 15, 2007. Vaccinations or Jail: County’s Threat to Parents.
11 Centers for Disease Control. 2010 Child & Adolescent Immunization Schedules.
12 Centers for Disease Control. Adult Immunization Schedule - 2010.
13 HealthCare Finance News. 2010. Global vaccine market now exceeds $20B.
14 Glorikan H. 2009. Influenza Scare Not the Only Vaccine Driver. Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.
15 Kresse H, Rovini H. 2009. Influenza Vaccine Market Dynamics. Nature Reviews.
16 Mautner, T. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. and Utilitarianism. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy.
17 Supreme Court Upholds Sterilization of the Mentally Retarded – Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 475 Ct. 584, 71L, Ed. 1000 (1927). LSU Law Center.
18 Encyclopedia of Virginia. Buck v. Bell (1927).
19 Black E. Nov. 24, 2003. The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics. History News Network (George Mason University).
20 Seidelman WE. 1996. Nuremberg lamentation: for the forgotten victims of medical science.British Medical Journal.
21 Katz J. The Consent Principle of the Nuremberg Code: It’s Significance Then and Now. The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 227-239.
22 FDA. Feb. 20, 2003. Vaccines & Related Biological Products Advisory CommitteeMeeting Transcript.
23 Centers for Disease Control. Seasonal Influenza
24 Simonsen L., Clarke MJ et al. 1998. Pandemic versus Epidemic Influenza Mortality: A Pattern of Changing Age Distribution. Journal of Infectious Diseases.
25 Enstone J. 2010. Influenza transmission and related infection control issues. Introduction to Pandemic Influenza (pp. 57-72). CABI
26 Aledort TE, Lurie N et al. 2007. Non-pharmaceutical public health interventions for pandemic influenza: an evaluation of the evidence base. BMC Public Health
27 Fisher BL. 2004. Flu Vaccine: Missing the Mark. The Vaccine Reaction (National Vaccine Information Center).
28 Jefferson T. 2006. Influenza vaccination: policy versus evidence. British Medical Journal.
29 Jefferson T., Debalini MG et al. 2009. Relation of study quality, concordance, take home message, funding, and impact in studies of influenza vaccines; systematic review. British Medical Journal.
30 National Vaccine Information Center. 2010. Press Release: NVIC Calls for Expanded Monitoring of Pandemic H1N1 Vaccine Reactions.
31 Collignon P, Doshi P, Jefferson T. 2010. Adverse Events Following Influenza Vaccination in Australia – Should We Be Surprised? British Medical Journal.
32 Associated Press. Sept. 17, 2007. Shot may be inadvertently boosting superbugs. MSNBC.
33 Fisher BL. July 8, 2010. Whooping Cough Outbreaks and Vaccine Failures. NVIC.
34 ACLU. 2009. NYCLU Urges Public Education and Voluntary Vaccine for H1N1 Flu, Warns Vaccine Mandate Violates Privacy Rights. Testimony by Donna Lieberman.
35 Sullivan PL. 2010. Influenza Vaccination in HealthCare Workers: Should It Be Mandatory? Journal of Issues in Nursing.
36 John Dahlberg-Acton (1834-1902). Wikipedia.
Click here to watch the video.
Amy Wallace & Yellow Journalism
To watch the video, click here
Using Fear & Prejudice to Attack Vaccine Exemptions
by Barbara Loe Fisher
This summer, inaccurate and misleading information about B. pertussis whooping cough and the pertussis vaccine is being put out there by medical doctors, who should know better. Media campaigns designed to create fear about infectious disease are nothing new. This one appears to have three goals: first, to emphasize pertussis risks while ignoring vaccine risks; second, to place blame for whooping cough cases and deaths on the unvaccinated; and, third, to attack religious and conscientious belief exemptions, which serve as informed consent protections in U.S. vaccine laws.
In 2009, public health officials declared a pandemic H1N1 influenza emergency and played up the potential complications of the swine flu while playing down the potential risks of the untested new swine flu vaccine. 1 When two-thirds of Americans “just said no” to swine flu shots, NBC’s chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman ridiculed them and quipped “Just get the damn vaccine.” 2
Now Snyderman has issued a similar standing order to “get vaccinated” but, this time, she is accusing parents of unvaccinated children for causing the deaths of six California infants, who have reportedly died from complications of B. pertussis whooping cough. On July 28, 2010, Dr. Snyderman further alleged that “most people” with religious objections to vaccination are not telling the truth and that the “needs” of the “community as a whole” are “better than the individual” and “more important.” 3
Ordinarily I would not take the time to address specific comments by a prominent doctor, who is careless with the facts when voicing an opinion. But as more doctors use the bully pulpit of the national media – unchallenged - to disseminate incorrect information, promote personal ideological views and advance political agendas, it becomes more important for informed Americans to speak up.
Responding to recent press releases and media reports, in which California health officials say the state is experiencing the worst whooping cough outbreak in 50 years with about 1500 reported cases and six infants dying from B. pertussis, 4 on July 28 Dr. Snyderman offered the following explanation:
“I think that what we are seeing here is a tipping point in unvaccinated children because the hot pockets are in families where, frankly, parents have under-vaccinated or decided not to vaccinate their children.” 5
A quick fact check reveals that both California health officials and Snyderman have not been entirely honest with the people. The Centers for Disease Control’s published morbidity and mortality report shows that in the past 12 months, between July 24, 2009 and July 24, 2010, there were a total of 809 “provisional” cases of whooping cough reported in California.6 In fact, in the entire United States of America for the week ending July 24, there were only 187 reported cases of whooping cough, with no cases occurring in California.
When disease incidence statistics publicized by state health departments do not match those published by federal health agencies, there is something wrong. It is time for California health officials to fully disclose complete details of the 1500 whooping cough cases they allege have occurred in the state during the past year, including how many cases were lab confirmed as B. pertussis; how many cases were classified as “epidemiologically linked” - which means they were NOT lab confirmed; and the ages and vaccination status of all cases, including whether people with suspected or confirmed cases had been given 1,2,3,4,5,6 or more pertussis shots.
Most doctors know perfectly well that getting 3 to 6 doses of pertussis vaccine or more does not give lifelong immunity to whooping cough, and that other viruses and bacteria, such as parapertussis and RSV - which are not covered by the vaccine - can be misdiagnosed as pertussis if proper lab tests are not done. 7, 8 In addition, public health officials know that B. pertussis bacteria have been evolving and become vaccine resistant, making the pertussis vaccine much less effective. 8
So Snyderman is engaging in pure speculation when she blames whooping cough-related deaths on the unvaccinated. The truth is that infants can be as easily exposed to B. pertussis by coming into contact with a fully vaccinated infected person as with an unvaccinated person. 9
Dr. Snyderman goes on state that, “These are 6 infants who have lost their lives who, frankly, should not have died.”
I agree. It is tragic when babies die from whooping cough and it is tragic when babies get pertussis containing vaccines and suffer convulsions, collapse/shock, high pitched screaming and other signs of brain inflammation and then, die.10 It is a tragedy when any baby dies, regardless of the cause.
No fear campaign about infectious disease would be complete without bringing up polio. Snyderman says, “We were given our polio vaccine and the idea was that, if you get a vaccination, you will not get ill and you will not die.”
Yes, that was the “idea” but it is not a fact. Every vaccine carries a risk of injury and death that can be greater for some than others. There is no guarantee the vaccine will prevent an infectious disease and, depending upon the vaccine, it could actually give you the vaccine strain of the disease it is supposed to prevent.
In 1999, the U.S. abandoned use of the live virus oral polio vaccine to prevent individuals in America from being paralyzed by vaccine strain polio. 11 A lot of people don’t know that, if you swallow the live virus polio vaccine, you can get paralyzed and die. On top of that, recently vaccinated persons shed live poliovirus in their body fluids for weeks. People who come in close contact with them can get vaccine strain polio and be paralyzed or die.
Today, a killed polio vaccine is used in America because parents of vaccine injured children lobbied in the 1990’s to get the polio vaccine policy changed.
But Dr. Snyderman only tells one side of the polio story, charging that: “Now people, frankly, have amnesia from the event. They forget what it was like to see people with these communicable diseases.”
There are plenty of Americans, like me, who remember lining up for polio shots in the 1950’s and 60’s and were informed 40 years later, in the 1990’s, that a lot of those experimental polio shots were contaminated with a monkey virus, simian virus 40, that causes cancer in lab animals and has been associated with brain, bone and lung cancers in children and adults. 12, 13
We do remember polio and the iron lung. But we also remember not being told the whole truth about polio vaccine risks.
Then Snyderman takes out the big club and warns: “I worry that, if we are under-vaccinating our children are you start to see things like whooping cough coming back, this is the canary in the coal mine. Last year we saw children die of measles and I worry that, if we see whooping cough and measles, that polio can’t be far away.”
Let’s take another look at official federal disease incidence statistics to see whether that “worry” is justified or is just a lot of hype. In 2009, out of 300 million people living in the United States, there were 71 cases of measles reported. This year, there have been 32 cases of measles. That’s right: 32. There have been no cases of polio reported in America this year and only 1 case since 2006.14
Get a grip, Dr. Snyderman.
“In a country like this, where vaccinations are available, these communicable and infectious and deadly diseases shouldn’t even be talked about,”says Snyderman.
Most doctors know that vaccines only give temporary immunity at best and that microbes, like B. pertussis, are constantly evolving to survive. 15, 16 That’s why five or more doses of pertussis vaccine still can’t prevent all whooping cough disease. So we will be talking about whooping cough, measles, mumps, chicken pox and lots of other infectious diseases for a long, long time in this country and in every country, whether we get vaccinated or not.
“You know I have been an unabashed, unapologetic advocate for vaccinations. They are safe. They work,” says Snyderman.
Many American doctors are “unapologetic” mandatory vaccination advocates because that is what they are told to be by public health officials and leaders in major medical organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics17 and the American Medical Association.18 In fact, about 40 percent of pediatricians in America today proudly say they flatly deny medical care to families, who refuse to follow their orders to “get vaccinated.”19
As important, though, is the question: How many of these doctors refuse to speak to, associate with, and condemn other doctors, who do treat patients making selective vaccine choices?
The truth is, vaccines are not safe for everyone and they do not work for everyone. When doctors only tell half the truth about vaccine benefits and risks, people can sense it. And when they demean and threaten patients, who ask questions or disagree with them, the fragile bond of trust between doctors and patients is broken.
Like when Dr. Snyderman demeans Americans, who exercise religious exemption to vaccination, an exemption which exists in all but two states. “A lot of people are opting out on them [vaccines] and saying, “Well, it’s against my religion” and I would say, for most people, that is just not true,”she says.
It is annoying when anyone pretends to know another person’s mind, heart and soul. But it is frightening when doctors believe they are entitled to judge the sincerity of another person’s religious or conscientiously held beliefs. With this comment, Dr. Snyderman has assumed the position of an Inquisitor. There is some comfort in knowing that the rack is no longer in fashion and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution 20 has not yet been repealed.
“Make sure your children are vaccinated,”says Snyderman.
This simplistic, one-size-fits-all approach to vaccination is dangerous. Because there are children, who are at higher risk for becoming brain injured or dying after getting pertussis containing vaccines (DTaP, Tdap), including those who have suffered previous vaccine reactions like:21,22
- Very high fever
- High pitched screaming or persistent crying
- Convulsions (with or without fever)
- Collapse/shock (also known as hypo-tonic/hypo-responsive episodes)
- Brain Inflammation and encephalopathy
For a full list of precautions for children, teenagers and adults, read the manufacturer product inserts and get more information about how to recognize a vaccine reaction at www.NVIC.org. Find out whether the pertussis vaccine your doctor is recommending for your child has been studied for safety and effectiveness when given at the same time as other vaccines. For example, many pertussis vaccines have not been studied in clinical trials when a flu shot is given at the same time.
“If you are an adult and you are around a child under the age of one, get vaccinated,”says Snyderman.
Again, it is important to know whether you, as an adult, are at high risk for suffering a pertussis vaccine reaction, such as being sick at the time of vaccination.
“If you are a woman of childbearing years, get vaccinated,”says Snyderman.
How many pregnant women, whose doctors urge them to get a booster shot (Tdap), know that the vaccine has not been thoroughly studied in pregnant women? Or that manufacturer product inserts include this disclaimer: 23
Animal reproduction studies have not been conducted…..It is not known whether [the vaccine] can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman, or can affect reproductive capacity. [The vaccine] has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or for impairment of fertility.
But wait - Dr. Snyderman even tries to make us believe that unvaccinated people can infect immune compromised people simply by walking past them in the grocery store! No, really. She says:
“And if you think, well, you can opt out [of vaccination], remember that, when you go to the grocery store and you walk by someone who has cancer or MS or any other compromised immune system, you put that person in harms way, too.”
Is that the kind of immunology being taught in medical schools today? 24, 25 That an unvaccinated person can transmit infectious disease without hand shaking or kissing or coughing or sneezing - just a simple walk-by will do? 26
And, finally, Dr. Snyderman gets to the heart the matter and promotes her personal ideological belief, which requires devaluing the individual:
“There is a time, when the community as a whole, their needs are better than the individual and, I think, more important,” says Snyderman.
This kind of thinking is called utilitarianism, 27. 28 a political philosophy that was judged to be a pseudo-ethic by the Nuremberg Tribunal at the Doctor’s Trial in 1946. The judges at Nuremberg exposed what happened when doctors used the utilitarian rationale to conduct scientific research during World War II that forced individuals to risk their lives in drug, vaccine and other medical experiments. 29
The Nuremberg Code, which defined the ethical principle of informed consent, has served as the foundation for the ethical practice of medicine for more than half a century. The informed consent principle makes it clear that the rights of the individual cannot, ethically, be sacrificed to the needs or interests of society. 30
But Dr. Snyderman goes further and marginalizes and condemns individuals, who do not agree with her utilitarian view.
“Right now, individuals are trumping the general populace at large and I find that, frankly, offensive and amoral,”says Snyderman.
It is disturbing when prominent doctors tell half-truths and promote fear, hate and prejudice. We want to believe the doctors we trust with our health and our children’s lives care about us as individuals.
Most people consider it is offensive and amoral to write off a minority of individuals as expendable in service to the rest. Because then, the question becomes: How many individuals can be sacrificed for what some in positions of authority have defined as “the greater good?” Is it 300? 3,000? 30,000? Or can we go as high as three million? That is only 1 percent of 300 million Americans, after all.
The truth is, nobody knows how many vaccine victims there are in America, how many of the 1 in 6 learning disabled children; or the 1 in 9 with asthma; or the 1 in 100 who develop autism; or the 1 in 450 who become diabetic, can trace their chronic inflammation, disease and disability back to vaccine reactions that have been dismissed by public health officials and doctors for the past century as just “a coincidence.” 31, 32
When parents of vaccine injured children held the first public demonstration in front of the CDC in Atlanta on May 12, 1986, the larger question we asked public health officials was “Do you know how many?” After we marched, we made presentations to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, (ACIP) and asked the Committee questions and, then, I gave a report on my investigation into whooping cough outbreaks in 1985, which had been heavily publicized by physician officials at the American Academy of Pediatrics. I found that many of the whooping cough cases reported in eight states in 1985 had not been lab confirmed and the majority had occurred in vaccinated children and adults. (You can read a transcript of what happened at that May 1986 CDC meeting on NVIC’s website) 33
Nothing much has changed in the last 25 years. Whooping cough is still infecting both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. There are pertussis increases every four to five years, no matter how high the vaccination rate.32 Many children and adults survive whooping cough disease without complications but some do not. And some doctors in positions of power are still in the business of creating fear and demonizing those, who make informed health choices that do not include use of 16 government recommended vaccines. 33, 34,35
Dr. Snyderman concludes her diatribe by focusing on her own fears, while wistfully clinging to the myth that vaccines will eradicate all infectious diseases in America - if only every man, woman and child would dutifully comply with doctors’ orders to “get vaccinated.”
“I think this winter, as whooping cough upticks, measles continues to be under-vaccinated, we’re going to increasingly see pockets of communicable infections that a few decades ago we thought, frankly, we had eradicated from the United States. These illnesses should not be seen in the United States with the vaccinations that we have at hand,”says Snyderman.
Abe Lincoln once said “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.”
How long is it going to take for medical doctors, who have abandoned their critical thinking skills and lost themselves in orthodoxy, to stop fooling themselves so they can accurately inform their patients about the benefits and risks of vaccination 36 37 and respect the choices their patients make? 38 39
Whatever doctors decide to do and whether they ever conduct the good scientific studies that will answer outstanding questions about vaccination, individuals should always have the freedom to exercise informed consent to medical risk-taking. That freedom protects individuals and minorities from exploitation by those in positions of authority in society, who do not know what they do, as well as from those who do know what they are doing.
The freedom to make an informed, voluntary decision about what we are willing to risk our lives or our children’s lives for is not just an individual need, it is a human right. It is a human right and a freedom worth defending in this and every century.
References
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38 NBC “The Today Show.” March 1997. Matt Lauer, Barbara Loe Fisher, Neal Halsey, M.D.
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