by Darrel Crain, Chiropractor
Big Vaccine (son of Big Pharma) has been busy in Sacramento helping lawmakers come up with a scheme to do away with the annoying problem of public opposition to new vaccine mandates. After all, if it weren’t for pesky parental opposition during legislative review, the controversial HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine for young girls would already be on the long list of “mandatory” vaccines for California school children.
And controversial it is. As reported in the Miami Herald, in each state that has considered mandating the HPV vaccine, the debate has involved “some of the nation’s most politically charged issues.” These include teenage sex, parental control, state mandates and a “backlash against vaccines and a suspicion of drug companies.”
The ingenious solution devised by vaccine enthusiasts to guarantee victory in Sacramento every time from here on out is to simply change the rules. The time-honored tradition in California of giving parents a chance to ask tough questions during the legislative review process for new vaccines may soon be overthrown.
In the future, look for rubber-stamp approval of all federally recommended vaccines without debate. In place of elected representatives getting a chance to vote thumbs up or thumbs down, a single un-elected bureaucrat at the top of the state”s medical hierarchy will simply nod yes.
Should we be surprised to learn that the new system would add the HPV vaccine to the mandated list automatically, contrary to public sentiment?
Assembly Bill 16 is working its way through the California legislature and has already been approved by the Assembly. If signed into law, beginning in July 2008 every vaccine ever decreed by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) will automatically become mandatory for California school kids.
The author of the bill, Assemblyman Ed Hernandez of West Covina, says his bill will “leave the decision as to how and when to implement a vaccine to the public health professionals best qualified to make that determination.”
Hernandez’s bill would force us to place blind faith in the experts, shove parental rights off the cliff, and allow our medical freedom to be dashed against the jagged rocks of medical authority below.
Ah, but doesn’t the new law call for an opt-out clause that will protect parents’ medical freedom to exempt their child from vaccines for medical, religious and philosophical reasons? The new bill may allow parents to opt out, but as Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute has pointed out, “An opt-out provision is simply the government telling me that they have taken away my parental rights and in order to regain them I must file an affidavit with the school.”
Why not make it an opt-in program for vaccines instead, such as the system in New Hampshire? Rather than making parents jump through hoops to exempt their child from government mandates, the state government ought to present solid evidence to convince parents why each vaccine is a good idea.
My vote for the Grand Poobah of Vaccine Enthusiasm must go to Paul Offit, M.D., vaccine patent holder, consultant to the Merck drug company (maker of the HPV vaccine Gardasil), and one of fifteen policy makers on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
“Paul Offit is calling for an end to exemptions to vaccination unless approved by a medical doctor or government health official. He argues that the unvaccinated place themselves and others at risk for catching and transmitting infectious diseases and, therefore, government should force citizens to purchase and use vaccines without exception,” writes National Vaccine Information Center director Barbara Loe Fisher.
Dr. Offit apparently finds it incomprehensible that catching and transmitting infectious disease is a scientifically valid strategy for developing a naturally robust immune system. As to whether the unvaccinated pose a risk to vaccinated people, if vaccines work as well as he claims, what risk is he referring to?
Offit shares his worries, “Given the increasing number of states allowing philosophical exemptions to vaccines, at some point we will be forced to decide whether it is our inalienable right to catch and transmit potentially fatal infections.”
In response to his quandary I must answer an emphatic yes, Americans do have an inalienable right to catch and transmit potentially fatal infections (even though most will be benign) just as we have an inalienable right to refuse potentially fatal injections, vaccine or otherwise, for whatever reason suits us. I am sorry if medical freedom makes you nervous and interferes with your plans to vaccinate everyone with whatever you want Dr. Offit, but you are just going to have to cope.
It is true that vaccines can provoke temporary immune responses that result in circulating antibodies. But here is what is puzzling, this is considered proof of a vaccine’s effectiveness even though there is universal agreement that antibodies are not predictive of an appropriate immune response. Indeed, each year we see outbreaks of infection in fully vaccinated populations with high levels of circulating antibodies.
Our medical leaders seem to confuse vaccination with immunity. In order to clear this up, the first thing we need to do is clean up our language. Let us change the term “vaccine-preventable disease” to the more precise term, “vaccine-alterable disease,” since no disease has yet been prevented by a vaccine.
Dr. Offit has stated, “And the notion of requiring vaccines for school entry, while it seems to tear at the very heart of a country founded on the basis of individual rights and freedoms, saves lives.”
Can he point to a single study that has ever compared the death rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated children to support his claim that vaccines save lives? The good doctor cannot because no scientific evaluation comparing the health of the two groups has ever been made.
Isn’t it amazing that mass vaccination, the front-line strategy of modern medicine, is based entirely on an assumption that has never been tested or proven? The fact that the majority of the medical community shares Offit’s “belief” that vaccines save lives gives evidence of a widespread faith in vaccines, but does not confer scientific validation.
There are at least 300 vaccines in development, and our federal agencies have seemingly never met a vaccine they didn’t like. If the rubber stamp system is enacted in California, this will no doubt influence adoption of similar laws in other states and the list of mandated shots will grow exponentially.
The only thing standing between the Big Vaccine druggernaut and its plans to inject every man, woman and child on a regular basis are two issues apparently viewed by our health leaders as trivial: scientific integrity and individual medical freedom.
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Darrel Crain is a chiropractor practicing in San Diego, California
Articles appearing on Planet Chiropractic authored by: Darrel Crain
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