By Barbara Loe Fisher
No matter who you are or where you live, it is difficult to be part of a minority. It takes courage to follow your conscience. It takes courage to stand up and speak out for what you know is right when you are being targeted and sanctioned by those who claim it is their right to bully and shun you for who you are or what you believe.
This is especially true for those speaking out and standing up for the right to make informed, voluntary choices about using vaccines, a pharmaceutical product that carries a risk of harm and failure that can be greater for some than others. 1 2 3
Informed Consent to Medical Risk-Taking: A Human Right
The freedom to make voluntary decisions about what you are willing to risk your life or the life of your child for is a human and civil right.
It is a human right to exercise voluntary, informed consent to medical risk taking,4 5 6 including taking risks with pharmaceutical products like vaccines. In America, parents of minor children have the legal right and responsibility to make medical risk decisions for their children.7 8 9
Freedom of Thought, Speech & Belief: A Civil Right
Under the U.S. Constitution, Americans are guaranteed the civil right to exercise freedom of thought, speech and belief.10 11 12 The right to dissent and petition the government for redress of grievances and hold beliefs that may differ from ones held by the majority is protected because our nation’s founders understood that minorities must be protected from oppression by the majority.13
Targeted, Bullied, Shunned and Sanctioned
In America today, some citizens are being discriminated against and persecuted for following their conscience and making vaccine choices that do not conform with federal health policy. They are being targeted, bullied, shunned and sanctioned. 14 15 Doctors 16 and politically powerful special interest groups 17 18 19 20 associated with private drug companies 21 and medical trade associations22 have joined with government health officials23 24 and lobbying state legislators to eliminate or severely restrict the legal right to exercise informed consent to vaccine risk taking.25 26 27
Laws Passed Restricting Non-Medical Exemptions
In the past three years, laws have been passed in the states of Washington,28 California29 and Oregon30requiring parents filing non-medical exemptions to either undergo state mandated vaccine “education” or beg for signatures from pediatricians already refusing to provide medical care to children who do not get all 69 doses of 16 federally recommended vaccines right on schedule.31
Colorado Preserves Personal Belief Exemption
But this year in Colorado, concerned citizens turned out in force to publicly object to similar attempts by professional lobbyists to restrict vaccine informed consent rights.32 On May 2, 2014 the Colorado legislature became the first to vote to preserve the personal belief exemption to vaccination without modification.33
NVIC’s Pro-Vaccine Choice Message in Times Square
The same day that legislators in Colorado voted to affirm freedom of conscience in America, a pro-education, pro-vaccine choice message sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center was up on the CBS Jumbotron in Times Square celebrating freedom of speech.34 The message is simple: “Vaccinations? Know the risks and failures: Your Health. Your Family. Your Choice.” That 24-hour message in the heart of Broadway on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City is going to stay there through mid-July.
NVIC Publishes Vaccine Law Reform Guide
Today, the National Vaccine Information Center is launching a national campaign to secure vaccine safety and informed consent protections in state vaccine policies and laws. We have published a fully referenced guide for legislators and the public called Reforming Vaccine Policy and Law and you can view or download it for free online on NVIC.org.35 I wrote this Guide and it is anchored with more than 240 references and explains in detail why laws should be passed in every state to maximize vaccine safety for those choosing to use vaccines while protecting the legal right to get an education, hold a job, receive health insurance and medical care, enter a hospital or nursing home and function in society without being forced to get every government recommended vaccine.
These legal rights are important to preserve because, first, we are not all the same.36 37 We do not all respond the same way to drugs or vaccines just like we do not all respond the same way to infectious diseases.38
High Vaccination Rates and Vaccine Failures
Public health officials admit that for more than 30 years, the U.S. has had a 95% plus vaccination rate among children entering kindergarten for at least seven vaccines, including pertussis.39 40 Now, public health officials admit that children and adults can be fully vaccinated and still get infected with and transmit B. pertussis whooping cough to others without even knowing it.4142 There have been recent reported outbreaks of mumps and measles among fully vaccinated children and adults and the influenza vaccine has a less than 60 percent rate of effectiveness in most years.43 44 45 46 47
Pharma Shielded from Civil Liability
At the same time, the federal government has paid out nearly $3 billion dollars to victims of vaccine injury since Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.48 That law banned most vaccine injury lawsuits against drug companies selling vaccines and doctors giving them49 and, in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court went one step further and gave vaccine manufacturers a complete product liability shield – even when vaccines could have been made safer!50 This sealed a cruel fate for the two out of three vaccine victims denied compensation under the federal vaccine injury compensation program.51 Now drug companies can fast track and market new vaccines52 that may be more reactive and less effective than they should be because there is no legal accountability for anyone who develops, regulates, markets, gives and promotes vaccine use.
Individual Susceptibility = Unequal Vaccine Risk Burden
During the past three decades, the Institute of Medicine has published a series of reports pointing out the large gaps in vaccine safety science,53 54 confirming that some people are genetically, biologically and environmentally more susceptible to suffering brain inflammation and other types of serious vaccine reactions but doctors often do not know who will be injured or die from vaccination.55 56 It has become very clear that one-size-fits-all vaccine policies place a disproportionate and unequal risk burden on those more vulnerable to vaccine harm.57
Have you or your child already discovered you are a member of that vulnerable minority who is at increased risk for vaccine injury- or do you have a relative or friend who is?
If so, then you understand why a law that compels everyone to use a pharmaceutical product which carries an unpredictable and greater risk of injury or death for a minority of vulnerable individuals – most of whom do not even know who they are – is not humane. There is nothing moral or just about a government policy that facilitates a de facto selection of certain individuals for sacrifice in the name of the public health.
Every Life Is Important
Every life is important and it is time for all Americans to stand up, speak out and take action to defend our human and civil rights when it comes to vaccine risk taking. Join with NVIC and help us secure vaccine safety informing, reporting and informed consent provisions in all vaccine policies and laws to protect both those who choose to use every government recommended vaccine and those who don’t.
Please read the guide to Reforming Vaccine Policy and Law. Check out the referenced version and share it with your family, friends, community leaders and state legislators. Sign up to become a user of the free online NVIC Advocacy Portal that will inform you about vaccine legislation moving in your state.
What you choose to do, what we all choose to do right now will determine what kind of America we leave to our children and grandchildren. Because if the state can tag, track down and force individuals against their will to be injected with biological products of known and unknown toxicity today, there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the state can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow.
It’s your health. Your family. Your choice.
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