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
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
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.