By Dr. Mercola
USA Today1
recently ran an editorial under the headline, “Vaccine opt-outs
put public health at risk” and called for elimination of
personal belief exemptions in state public health laws,
including those that require children to get dozens of doses of
up to 15 vaccines in order to attend daycare and school.
“When vaccination rates
are very high, as they still are in the nation as a whole,
everyone is protected. Diseases such as polio, smallpox and
measles are wiped out,” the editorial claims.
“This ‘herd immunity’
protects the most vulnerable, including those who can’t be
vaccinated for medical reasons, infants too young to get
vaccinated and people on whom the vaccine doesn’t work.
But herd immunity works
only when nearly the whole herd joins in. When some refuse
vaccinations and seek a free ride, immunity breaks down and
everyone is more vulnerable.”
Not Sharing the Risks of
Vaccination = Selfish?
The editorial goes on to claim
that outbreaks of infectious diseases such as measles are due to
the “selfish decisions” of a few, who take vaccine exemptions
and place everyone else in the “herd” at risk.
The answer, the editorial board
says, is to eliminate personal belief vaccine exemptions from
state public health laws and presumably force all children and
adults to get every government recommended vaccine. The article
finishes off with the curious statement:
“Everyone enjoys the
life-saving benefits vaccines provide, but they’ll exist
only as long as everyone shares in the risks.”
[Emphasis mine]
I call it curious, because
nowhere in the editorial did they actually address the issue of
health risks associated with vaccines, which is one of the
primary reasons for having personal choice in the first
place. If safety and effectiveness of the product could be
guaranteed, fewer people would have major objections.
Also noteworthy is the
editorial board’s statement that herd immunity protects “people
on whom the vaccine doesn’t work.” Right there, they admit that
vaccination isn’t a foolproof disease prevention strategy.
Vaccines can and often do fail to prevent disease.
What USA Today Didn’t Tell You
What they don’t spell
out clearly is that the risk of vaccine failure must be weighed
in along with the potential risk of harm from the vaccine. That
inconvenient truth is cleverly hidden amid inflammatory rhetoric
designed to get people to rally against those pesky
free-thinkers who have the audacity to do their own risk-benefit
analysis.
While the USA Today
editorial board admits that there are health risks
associated with vaccines and vaccines don’t always
work, they still insist that people should not
be free to make their own choices when it comes to
vaccination. Why?
Apparently, their reasoning
goes like this: the only way to have any hope of success in
eradicating disease is by forcing everyone to blindly accept the
known and potential unknown risks of vaccination.
And since there are
risks – even though the newspaper’s editors only acknowledge
risk briefly in their OpEd – the only way they say mass
vaccination policies are “fair” is by mandatorily distributing
the risk across the entire population.
The simpler argument is that it
is done for “The Greater Good” and opting out is therefore
proclaimed to be “selfish,” which is an old utilitarian
rationale that can be challenged on ethical grounds.
Sadly their reasoning is
irrational. For starters, the premises of vaccine-induced
immunity and herd immunity are both fundamentally flawed, and
the medical literature is full of scientific evidence of
this—none of which is ever mentioned in newspaper OpEds designed
to make you fear and intensely dislike anyone who wants to make
well informed, independent vaccine choices for themsleves and
their children.
The theory of vaccine-acquired
herd immunity, which is regularly used as a justification for
forced vaccination, is based on the premise that it will work
the same way naturally-acquired herd immunity works. The only
problem is that itdoesn’t. For a refresher on herd
immunity, and the differences between vaccine-induced and
naturally-acquired immunity, please refer to my previous article
“Expert Pediatrician Exposes Vaccine Myths.”
Leave Parents Free to Choose
Vaccines
Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder
and president of the non-profit National Vaccine Information
Center (NVIC) wrote an editorial opposingUSA Today’s
call for an end to personal belief vaccine exemptions in state
laws. She noted that US health officials now recommend twice as
many vaccines compared to three decades ago.
If you follow the recommended
vaccine schedule, your child will receive no less than 69 doses
of 16 vaccines. Up to 15 of those vaccines are mandated by
different states. Yet despite this cornucopia of “preventive
medicine,” American children are among the sickest in the
developed world.
“With 95 percent of US
kindergarteners fully vaccinated and one child in six
learning disabled, one in 10 asthmatic and one in 50 living
with autism, educated parents and health care professionals
are asking legitimate questions about why so many highly
vaccinated children are so sick,”Fisher writes.
“They’re examining
vaccine science shortfalls and wondering why Americans are
coerced and punished for declining to use every
government-recommended vaccine while citizens in Canada,
Japan and the European Union are free to make choices.
Vaccines carry two
risks: a risk of harm and a risk of failure to prevent
disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
admit that US pertussis outbreaks are not due to a failure
to vaccinate but failure of the vaccine to confer
long-lasting immunity…
When doctors cannot
predict who will be harmed by a vaccine and cannot guarantee
that those who have been vaccinated won’t get infected or
transmit infection, the ethical principle of informed
consent becomes a civil, human and parental right that must
be safeguarded in US law. Non-medical vaccine exemptions
immunize individuals and the community against unsafe,
ineffective vaccines and tyranny.”
Fortunately, judging by the
newspaper’s reader polls, few Americans agree with the USA
Today editorial board. In fact, 82 percent of readers (as
of this writing) “strongly disagree” with the editorial. In
contrast, 85 percent of readers “strongly agree” with Fisher’s
“pro-vaccine choice” rebuttal. Clearly, most Americans who took
the time to cast their vote expressed strong opposition to the
newspaper’s “anti-choice” stance and were not fooled by the same
old emotion-based propaganda. And that’s good news.
Is Mass Vaccination Causing
Unforeseen Consequences?
When it comes to vaccination,
there are a lot of unanswered questions. Some of these questions
include:
- Could injecting up to 69
doses of various vaccines into a child beginning on the day
of birth and throughout childhood create immune system
problems over the long term?
- What are the
multi-generational effects of forcing our immune systems to
react to vaccines rather than naturally-occurring pathogens?
One recent study2 found that women who received
the Tdap vaccine during pregnancy had children whose immune
responses to vaccination was far weaker compared to children
whose mothers were not vaccinated.
Animals that are not yet weaned
are typically not vaccinated as the mother’s milk is known to
interfere with antibody responses to vaccines. Many animals are
titered to ensure they don’t receive excessive vaccines, as the
side effects are well known. As explained by veterinarian Dr.
Jean Dodd:3
“A titer test is a
simple blood test that measures a dog or cat’s antibodies to
vaccine viruses (or other infectious agents). For instance,
your dog may be more resistant to a virus whereas your
neighbor’s dog may be more prone to it. Titers accurately
assess protection to the so-called ‘core’ diseases
(distemper, parvovirus, hepatitis in dogs, and panleukopenia
in cats), enabling veterinarians to judge whether a booster
vaccination is necessary. “
So, we’re titering animals but
not children? There are plenty of reasons not to accept a
mandated one-size-fits-all vaccination policy: the right to self
determination being first and foremost. The decision to
participate in a medical intervention or experiment that carries
serious risks, whether the risk is high or low, should belong to
each individual person, including parents of minor children who
are legally and morally responsible for protecting their
children.
The Case for Reasonable Doubt
What is some of the evidence
raising reasonable doubt about the “reasonableness” of forced
vaccinations? How about the following:
- Environmental
toxins can reduce vaccine efficacy. Research
published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA) suggests that exposure to
perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) prior to, and after
birth, can significantly weaken the effectiveness of
vaccines. PFCs are found in countless products,
including non-stick cookware and food wrappings,
personal care, and cleaning products, just to name a
few. If poorly regulated environmental pollutants can
dramatically decrease vaccine effectiveness, then that
means your risk-to-benefit ratio of vaccination is
automatically skewed toward higher risk and lower
benefit. As reported by ABC News:4
“The study found that
higher levels of PFCs in both mothers and children meant
lower numbers of disease-fighting antibodies in the
children. Mothers who had twice the level of PFC in their
blood had children with a 40 percent decrease in the number
of antibodies formed after getting the diphtheria vaccine.
The 7-year-old children who had doubled PFC levels had
nearly a 50 percent reduction in their antibody levels.”
- Vaccinated
people are asymptomatic carriers of disease, and can
still both spread and contract the disease.
Mounting evidence shows that vaccinated people can
actually unknowingly be infected with and spread
diseases like pertussis (whooping cough) for which they
were vaccinated. This was shown in an FDA baboon study5
last year, which concluded that while the pertussis
vaccine can cut down on serious clinical disease
symptoms, it does not eliminatetransmission of
the disease. As noted by the lead author of the
research, when the baby baboons were newly vaccinated
with either DPT or DTaP vaccines, they were asymptomatic
carriers of pertussis and could infect others in their
community.
Needless to say, if vaccinated
people can be asymptomatic carriers of disease, this can place
everyone at risk and really raises questions about the wisdom of
vaccinating health care workers before permitting them to work
with high-risk populations. Vaccinated people can still contract
the disease because (a) most vaccine-acquired artificial
immunity istemporary,6 and (b) because
microbes can evolve to evade the vaccines.
For example, 97 percent of
those who contracted mumps during the outbreak in Ohio earlier
this year were fully vaccinated7against the disease.
Some are quick to say that “sure, vaccinated people can contract
the disease—if exposed; which is why no one should be
allowed to opt out of vaccination.” However, when a vaccinated
person can contract the disease from another vaccinated
person… this entire argument clearly falls apart.
- Flu
vaccination raises your risk of contracting more serious
flu illness. Research published in 2012 showed
that theflu vaccine increases your risk of contracting
more serious pandemic flu illness,8 such as
H1N1. This supported previous findings, such as that
from a 2011 study,9 which found that the
seasonal flu vaccine actually weakened children’s immune
systems, thereby increasing their chances of getting
sick from influenza viruses not included in the vaccine.
Unvaccinated children actually built up more
antibodies against a wider variety of influenza virus
strains than the vaccinated children.
- Vaccines
promote disease mutations. Vaccines have also
been found to place pressure on microbes to
developmutated versions of the disease, and/or enhance
the ability of other similar strains to become more
dominant and cause disease. For example, a veterinary
vaccine study10 at the University of
Melbourne (Australia) found that using two different
vaccine viruses to combat the same disease in an animal
population quite rapidly caused the viruses to combine
(referred to as recombination), creating brand new and
more virulent viruses.
In Australia, dangerous new
strains of whooping cough bacteria were reported in March 2012.11
The vaccine, researchers said, was responsible. The reason for
this is because while whooping cough is primarily attributed to
Bordetella pertussisinfection, it is also caused by
another closely related pathogen called B. parapertussis,
which the vaccine does NOT protect against.
Two years earlier, scientists
at Penn State had already reported that the pertussis vaccine
significantly enhanced the colonization of B. parapertussis,
thereby promoting vaccine-resistant whooping cough outbreaks.12
According to the authors, vaccination led to a 40-fold
enhancement of B. parapertussis colonization in
the lungs of mice, and the data suggested that the vaccine may
be contributing to the observed rise in whooping cough incidence
over the last decade by promoting B. parapertussis
infection instead.
Fraudulent Research Does Not
Inspire Confidence
Please understand that efficacy
of a vaccine relates to its ability to produce an antibody and
this is NOT at all a good marker for whether or not immunity has
been achieved, while effectiveness measures the ability of the
vaccine to actually protect against infection. So let’s look at
the basic effectiveness of vaccines, and the reliability of the
research backing up effectiveness claims. On a number of
occasions, outright fraud has been revealed, raising serious
doubts about whether or not the stated benefit—the
ability of the vaccine to prevent disease—is even part of the
risk-benefit equation. If not, you’re taking on risk with very
minimal, if any, benefit.
Case in point: in 2012, two
former Merck virologists sued their former employer, claiming
Merck overstated the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine in the
company’s combination MMR shot. A federal antitrust class action
lawsuit was also filed that year, in which Merck was accused of
falsifying test results and selling millions of doses of the
vaccine that were of “questionable efficacy.”
Clearly, vaccine effectiveness
has a major bearing on disease outbreaks, and it would appear as
though many vaccine failures are simply covered up by blaming
outbreaks on the unvaccinated population. This way, ineffective
vaccines can still be sold, while everyone’s busy tarring and
feathering those who have opted out of using every government
recommended vaccine. You know, those who “selfishly” choose not
to “share in the risks.”
Another example: in 2012, a
systematic review13 of pre- and post-licensure trials
of the HPV vaccine showed that the vaccine’s effectiveness is
not only overstated (through the use of selective reporting or
“cherry picking” data) but also unproven. According to
the authors: “[T]he widespread optimism regarding HPV
vaccines long-term benefits appears to rest on a number of
unproven assumptions (or such which are at odds with factual
evidence) and significant misinterpretation of available data.”
A 2013 HPV vaccine
effectiveness study also turned out to have significant
discrepancies, raising doubts about the veracity of its
conclusions. Upon closer scrutiny, the data actually revealed
that unvaccinated girls had the best outcome.
Furthermore, records obtained last year through a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Health
and Human Services (DHHS) revealed that the National Vaccine
Injury Compensation Program has so far awarded nearly $5.9
million to 49 victims for harm and/or death resulting from the
HPV vaccine.
According to an April 7 report
by WCPO News,14 the VAERS database has received more
than 31,000 reports of adverse reactions to the HPV vaccine
Gardasil. This is up from May 13, 2013, at which point VAERS had
received 29,686 adverse event reports (including 136 deaths, 922
reports of disability, and 550 life-threatening adverse events).
Is it reasonable to doubt the safety and efficacy of Gardasil?
Ask Tracie Moorman, whose 15-year-old daughter Maddie became too
chronically ill to attend school after receiving the HPV
vaccine. “If I ever could have a do-over, it absolutely
would be this situation,” Tracie told WCPO in a recent
interview.
Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated: Who’s
Healthier?
Large studies comparing the
health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children have
not been a priority for vaccine researchers. This is a travesty,
as this is the kind of research most desperately needed. Most
vaccine studies are about developing more vaccines for children
and adults to use.
Some claim that studies
comparing the health of highly vaccinated and unvaccinated
children cannot be done because it would be “unethical” to leave
children participating in the study unvaccinated in order to do
the comparison. But since some American parents are already
delaying or avoiding vaccinating their children, this hardly
seems like a reasonable excuse. It is more likely that comparing
the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children in
appropriately designed studies are avoided because the results
might upset the proverbial apple cart.
However, that doesn’t mean
there is a total absence of evidence about the health of
vaccinated versus unvaccinated children to give us an indication
of whether or not the use of many more vaccines by children in
the U.S. is contributing to so many being chronically ill and
disabled. In December 2010, a survey was initiated by
VaccineInjury.info to compare the health of vaccinated children
with unvaccinated children. The survey is ongoing, so if you
would like to participate, you can. Though this is obviously not
a double-blind controlled study, and depends on the individuals
submitting the data to give accurate information, it is still
revealing. At the time of this writing, the results show:
Health Condition |
Prevalence in Vaccinated Children |
Prevalence in Unvaccinated Children |
Allergies |
36.71% |
11.25% |
Asthma |
14.23% |
2.26% |
Hay fever |
17.86% of
German children |
3% |
Neurodermatitis (an autoimmune disorder) |
23.9% |
7.5% |
Attention
deficit disorder (ADD) |
14.94% |
1.28% |
Middle
ear infections |
20.84% |
7.5% |
Sinusitis |
12.14% |
2.5% |
Autism |
7.43% |
0.49% |
Do You Want the Right to Choose
Vaccination for Yourself and Your Child?
So, what do we know, and what
can we be sure of? One thing that appears to be beyond dispute,
based on overwhelming evidence that spans across decades, is
that pharmaceutical companies have repeatedly demonstrated their
willingness to bribe, lie, threaten and commit fraud in order to
bring, and keep, their products on the market. This kind of
behavior is so commonplace, it appears to be part and parcel of
the accepted modus operandi of the drug industry, albeit
unofficially.
So, based on what you know, do
you think parents should have the legal right to choose whether
or not to give their children every one of the dozens of doses
of 15 vaccines that health officials mandate for infants and
children attending school and daycare? Do you want that right to
know and freedom to choose for yourself which vaccines you are
going to get?
I cannot impress upon you
strongly enough the importance of your active involvement when
it comes to defending our legal right to make informed vaccine
choices in America. In order to protect the health of as many
children as possible, we cannot continue to ignore the signs
that using vaccines as the nation’s primary disease prevention
strategy may have been taken too far in the past three
decades – to the point that we’re now seeing the health of
too many children and adults being compromised..
When you follow the money, you
realize that multi-national drug companies marketing vaccines
and the organizations they fund are the ones pulling the
political strings to eliminate non-medical vaccine exemptions in
U.S. state laws. Eliminating the freedom to know and right to
choose nationwide would be a major coup by a pharmaceutical
industry already making huge profits from vaccine laws that
require every person born in America to purchase and use their
products. At the same time, the safety of vaccine
policies are primarily based on the word of these very companies
that not only have their products mandated but also enjoy a
liability shield from vaccine injury lawsuits in civil court
that was given to them by Congress and the Supreme Court!
Is any of this really wise?
No Time to Waste – Take Action Now
The non-profit National Vaccine
Information Center (NVIC) has been working for 32 years to
prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and
defend the informed consent ethic in vaccine policies and laws.
NVIC is leading a grassroots movement to secure and protect
broad medical, religious, and conscientious belief vaccine
exemptions in state public health laws to prevent parents of
minor children and adult workers from being discriminated
against and harmed by “no exceptions” mandatory vaccination
policies.
On NVIC’s “Cry for
Vaccine Freedom Wall,“ you can read (and post)
first-hand accounts of threats and coercion by pediatricians,
government officials, and employers harrassing and punishing
Americans for refusing to get every government recommended and
mandated vaccine. It is heartbreaking to read how many people
are being bullied into using vaccines against their will – even
individuals who have already suffered vaccine reactions and
injuries!
In the past few years, states
like Washington, Oregon and California have restricted the use
of non-medical exemptions and theColorado legislature
is currently debating similar legislation. NVIC has testified
and has educated families and helped them testify in
public hearings in those states.
To become active in your state
and make sure your community and elected officials are fully
informed about the importance of protecting vaccine exemptions
in state laws, sign up for the free online NVIC Advocacy
Portal. You will be notified by email when vaccine
legislation is moving in your state to restrict or expand
vaccine exemptions. You will also be put into direct electronic
contact with your own elected officials and can let them know
your views with a touch on your smart phone screen or a
keystroke on your tablet or computer. If we all stand up for our
right to know and freedom to choose the way we want to stay
healthy – including whether or not we choose to use vaccines –
we will be protecting a fundamental right we cannot afford to
lose.