By Barbara Loe Fisher
Vaccine risks for you or your child can range from zero to
100 percent depending upon the genes you were born with, your
microbiome DNA, the environment you live in, your age and health
at the time of vaccination, and the type and how many vaccines
you get.1,2
Vaccines are not safe or effective for everyone because we
are not all the same and we do not all respond the same way to
pharmaceutical products like vaccines.3,4
Our response to infectious diseases and the risk for
complications can also vary, depending upon our genes,
environment, and age and health at the time of infection.5
That is why malnourished, vitamin deficient children living
in impoverished environments, for example, are at higher risk
for complications from gastrointestinal, respiratory and other
childhood infections.6,7,8
Vaccinators Do Not Know If the Odds Will Be in Your Favor
The doctor or nurse giving vaccines to you or your child does
not know whether the odds will be in your favor. You may get
vaccinated and have no reaction or your immune system and brain
function could be severely compromised.9,10
The scientific literature is clear about that fact and so are
Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, which have declared
vaccines to be "unavoidably unsafe" and shielded the
pharmaceutical industry from vaccine injury lawsuits.11,12,13
Since 1988, there have been thousands of children and adults
in America who have suffered brain inflammation and other long
recognized vaccine reactions and have been awarded $3 billion in
vaccine injury compensation. There are thousands more, who have
been unable to secure federal compensation for their vaccine
injuries.14,15
Vaccines Recommended and Given in Vacuum of Scientific Knowledge
But doctors and nurses are not taught about the genetic,
biological, and environmental high risk factors that could make
you or your child more vulnerable to experiencing disabling
vaccine complications.
Vaccines are being recommended and given in a vacuum of
knowledge and vaccine policymakers know it. As many Institute of
Medicine committees have repeatedly pointed out in published
reports spanning a quarter century, there are huge gaps in
vaccine safety science.16,17,18,19,20
Vaccine safety research is not a priority because long ago
public health officials made a calculated decision that the
lives of those harmed by vaccines are expendable in order to
pursue what they consider to be a more important goal: the
eradication of a long list of infectious microorganisms through
compulsory vaccine use.21,22,23
When vaccine risks turn out to be 100 percent for you or your
child, you are expected to quietly accept that you are
unavoidable collateral damage in the war on microorganisms.24,25,26
Almost No Medical Condition Qualifies for Medical Vaccine
Exemption
This cruel utilitarian rationale, also known as "the ends
justifies the means," has been used by public health officials
and medical trade groups to narrow the medical vaccine exemption
so that, today, almost no medical condition qualifies as an
"official" reason (contraindication) for a doctor to grant
someone a medical exemption to vaccination.27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35
At the same time, there are no good biological mechanism
studies or large clinical trials validating the safety of
severely restricting the medical vaccine exemption. But, then,
there is no independent oversight on the quality and quantity of
the science used to make vaccine policies and laws in the US
either.
36,37,38
Basically, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) now tells doctors that a medical vaccine exemption should
only be granted if you are one of the estimated 320,000 children
and adults annually receiving chemotherapy;39,40
or one of the estimated 47,000 Americans who have had a recent
organ or blood cell transplant;41,42
or your child is one of the 40 to 100 children born every year
with Severe Combined Immune Deficiency, known as SCID.43
Once you are done with chemo, no medical vaccine exemption
for you. Once you have recovered from your organ or blood cell
transplant, no medical vaccine exemption for you.44
And if you are immunosuppressed but don't have SCID, the rarest
and most severe of all immunodeficiency disorders, in most cases
no medical exemption for you.45
No Medical Exemption for Immune and Brain Disorders, Genetic
Susceptibility
If you or your child is already suffering with autoimmune or
brain disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus,
inflammatory bowel syndrome, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, or an
immunosuppressive disease like HIV, no medical vaccine exemption
for you.46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55
If you or your child have a family history of severe
allergies, vaccine reactions, seizures, sudden infant death
syndrome, or serious autoimmune and neurological disorders, no
medical vaccine exemption for you.56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64
No Medical Exemption for Sickness, Many Previous Vaccine
Reactions
If you or your child are sick at the time of vaccination with
a fever or on antibiotics, no medical vaccine exemption for you.65
If, after vaccination, you or your child ran a 105-degree
fever, collapsed, or had seizures and symptoms of brain
inflammation followed by serious health deterioration, and you
are still chronically ill but a doctor disagrees that your
continuing health problems were caused by vaccination, no
medical vaccine exemption for you.66,67
No Medical Exemption for Pregnancy, Siblings of Vaccine Injured,
and Premature Infants
If you are a pregnant health care worker and do not want to
get a flu shot while you are pregnant because you do not want to
risk a miscarriage, no medical vaccine exemption for you.68,69
If your child was injured or died after vaccination and you want
to protect your other children from vaccine injury, no medical
vaccine exemption for your children.70,71
If your baby was born prematurely and is low weight and
struggling to survive, no medical vaccine exemption for your
infant.72,73,74
Obey Liability Free Doctors' Vaccine Orders or Be Punished
For all practical purposes, the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention and medical trade organizations now direct
pediatricians and other vaccinators to deny the medical vaccine
exemption to 99.99 percent of Americans. Although nobody can
predict whether the odds will be in your favor, you are expected
to obey doctors' orders and get and give your children every
government recommended vaccine – no exceptions and no questions
asked - or be subjected to threats, coercion, discrimination and
denial of medical care, education, and employment.75
Like drug companies selling vaccines, doctors giving vaccines
are protected from vaccine injury lawsuits. If a doctor
vaccinates you or your child against your will and you suffer a
catastrophic vaccine reaction, you cannot seek justice in a
civil court of law in front of a jury of your peers.76
Without accountability or liability, there is strong incentive
for vaccinators to implement government vaccine policy and deny
vaccine harm - but little incentive to prevent vaccine harm.
Eliminating Non-Medical Exemptions to Blackmail Americans
Now public health and medical trade groups are pressuring
legislators to pass laws that would not only eliminate
non-medical religious and conscientious belief vaccine
exemptions for children to attend school,77
but also would require children to get every one of the 69 doses
of 16 federally recommended vaccines - unless a parent can get a
medical vaccine exemption from a doctor.78
This vaccine dragnet, which is already being applied to health
care workers, is also pulling in childcare workers and teachers
as proposed new vaccine laws threaten them with loss of
employment if they cannot find a doctor to write a medical
vaccine exemption.79,80,81,82
Zealously pursuing a 99.99 percent vaccination rate and using
very small groups of immune compromised individuals as an excuse
to eliminate all non-medical vaccine exemptions, liability free
doctors want permission from lawmakers to blackmail virtually
every American into playing vaccine roulette. And they want to
do this in the absence of sound vaccine safety science, even for
those potentially at higher risk for suffering vaccine harm.
Philosopher and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel has said "When
you take an idea or a concept and turn it into an abstraction,
that opens the way to take human beings and turn them,
also, into abstractions. When human beings become abstractions,
what is left?"83
Cruel and Inhuman to Last Degree
In 1905, when the U.S. Supreme Court in Jacobsen v.
Massachusetts affirmed the right of states to mandate
smallpox vaccination, the Court warned legislatures that it was
not condoning vaccination of persons for whom the medical
procedure would be "cruel and inhuman to the last degree,"
adding that "all laws should receive a sensible construction."84
The inalienable right to autonomy and free exercise of
conscience to protect bodily integrity trumps the right of
government to use our bodies for any purpose, which is why
informed consent to vaccine risk taking and flexible medical,
religious and conscientious belief vaccine exemptions must
remain a legal right in America.85
Act Now to Protect Bodily Integrity and Free Exercise of
Conscience
If you want the legal right to freely exercise conscience and
protect your bodily integrity or that of your child when it
comes to vaccine risk-taking, if you do not want to wake up one
day and be forced to play vaccine roulette when you have good
reason to conclude that you or your child are at high risk for
suffering vaccine harm, you need to act now. You can be sure
that the odds definitely will not be in your favor when it comes
to finding a doctor to grant you a medical vaccine exemption.
On Tuesday, June 9, a hearing about CA SB277 will be held in
the California Assembly. If it passes there, it will go
immediately for a vote by the Assembly. It is critical to stop
this bill from passing, as SB277 eliminates all but the medical
exemption. One of the main arguments is that the medical
exemption is so narrow that 99.99 percent of children will not
qualify anyway.
Five Reasons Why SB 277 Should NOT Become Law in California
SB 277 will eliminate all non-medical vaccine exemptions
and:
- Is not based on scientific evidence or compelling state
interest
- Is a violation of parental and human rights
- requires children to risk vaccine injury, while vaccine
manufacturers and doctors administering vaccines are
shielded from vaccine injury liability,
- Discriminates against children to deny them a
school-based education guaranteed by the California
Constitution
- Will be excessively expensive to administer and enforce
FACT #1: Unvaccinated school-aged
children with religious and conscientious belief exemptions are
not causing measles and whooping cough outbreaks in California.
In 2015, California reported 136 cases of measles. Of the cases
with vaccination records, 30 percent had been vaccinated. Only
18 percent of the measles cases were in school-aged children,
while 55 percent were in adults.86,87
In 2014, out of 8,200 pediatric cases of pertussis with
vaccination records reported in California, 90 percent of the
children had been vaccinated.88
BOTTOM LINE: Despite originating in one of
the most densely populated places in the country, the 2015
Disneyland measles outbreak was successfully contained and only
affected 0.00035% of the state's population. There is no public
health emergency and no need to eliminate informed consent
protections in California public health laws.
FACT #2: Vaccines are pharmaceutical products that
carry a risk of injury or death, which can be greater for some
than others. According to the Institute of Medicine,
(1) doctors cannot accurately predict who will be harmed by
vaccines because of unknown biological, genetic and
environmental high risk factors;89
and (2) the safety of the federally recommended childhood
vaccine schedule has not been adequately studied.90
Even so, 99.99 percent of children do not qualify for medical
vaccine exemptions under federal guidelines.91
BOTTOM LINE: Parents are legally and morally
responsible for the health and well being of their children.
When a medical intervention like vaccination carries an
unpredictable risk of injury or death, parents of minor children
must have the legal right to make informed, voluntary medical
decisions for them without being coerced or punished by doctors
or the state.
FACT #3: The federal government maintains that
vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe" products and shields vaccine
manufacturers and those administering vaccines from product
liability and personal injury lawsuits even if the vaccine(s)
could have been safer or were given negligently. Under
the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, since 1988 over $3
billion has been paid for vaccine injuries and deaths suffered
by children and adults but vaccine manufacturers have paid none
of it.92
BOTTOM LINE: SB277 compels children to take
vaccine risks or be denied an education while
drug companies and vaccine administrators remain risk-free. It
gives preferential treatment to drug corporations and the
medical trade while denying equal protection to children and
their parents.
FACT #4: Children living in California have a
constitutional right to an education and children with special
needs have rights under the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA) and Free Appropriate Public Education Act
(FAPE). SB 277 deprives children of their civil right
to an education and sanctions parents making informed medical
decisions for their children.
BOTTOM LINE: The California Constitution
guarantees to all children a public education whether or not
they have received every dose of every vaccine recommended by
the government.
FACT #5: SB 277 will incur excessive administrative
and litigation costs to the state. Children requiring
special education will be denied an equal education unless the
state provides costly home-based tutorial support services. The
state will incur costs to charge non-complying parents with
truancy and criminally prosecute and imprison them. When
California families penalized by SB 277 bring civil actions, the
state will incur the costs to defend those lawsuits.
BOTTOM LINE: SB 277 is an expensive and
unnecessary bill that will add to the state's debt while
violating children's constitutionally guaranteed right to
receive an equal education regardless of vaccination status.
ALERT: California Fast Tracking Forced Vaccination Bill
The California government is fast tracking SB 277, a bill to
eliminate all non-medical vaccine exemptions for religious and
conscientious beliefs from the mandatory vaccination law
governing school attendance. Although there were public hearings
in the Health, Education and Judiciary committees in the state
Senate, the bill has only been referred to the Health Committee
and a hearing could be scheduled as early as June 8-12, 2015.
California Parents - This May Be Your Last Chance to Act
If you live in California and are the parent of a child who
attends daycare, public or private school, you may only have one
more week left to contact your Assembly member and tell the
person you elected to represent you what you think about SB 277.
Download a handout
here that lists five good
reasons why SB 277 should not become law. Give it to your
Assembly member so he or she understands why:
- SB 277 is not based on scientific evidence or compelling
state interest;
- SB 277 is a violation of parental and human rights;
- SB 277 requires children to risk vaccine injury, while
vaccine manufacturers and doctors administering vaccines are
shielded from vaccine injury liability;
- SB 277 discriminates against children to deny them a
school-based education guaranteed by the California
Constitution; and
- SB 277 will be excessively expensive to administer and
enforce.
The Time to Act is Now!
Find the name and contact info for your Assembly
member
here. Track SB 277 and immediately
contact your Assembly member on your cell phone, tablet or
computer by using the free online
NVIC Advocacy Portal.
If the bill is voted out of the Assembly Health Committee and
then quickly approved by the full Assembly and signed by the
Governor, your only options will be to (1) find a doctor to
write an almost impossible to get medical vaccine exemption for
your child or (2) homeschool or enroll your child in an
independent study program. Under federal guidelines, 99.99
percent of all children do not qualify for a medical exemption.
Californians - participate in our democracy and ACT
NOW to protect your parental and vaccine informed consent
rights. There is no substitute for one-on-one personal contact
with your own Assembly member.