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Vaccination: Your Health. Your Family. Your Choice.
On Wednesday, June 4, 2008, there was a rally in Washington, D.C. organized by Talk About Curing Autism (TACA) and celebrity spokespersons actress Jenny McCarthy and comedian Jim Carrey to raise awareness about the relationship between autism and vaccination. The "Green our Vaccines" rally, which drew thousands of parents of children with autism, called for removal of toxins from vaccines and adaptation of the vaccine schedule to individual children.
The rally was endorsed by more than 35 child health advocacy organizations and was held at a time when the debate about vaccine safety and whether too many vaccines are being recommended for use by public health officials is becoming more intense. While many more parents today want to make independent choices about vaccination, pediatricians and public health officials are warning that children must be vaccinated according to vaccine guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and American Academy of Pediatrics or infectious disease outbreaks will occur.
Vaccination is a medical intervention performed on a healthy person for the purpose of preventing infectious disease that could injure or kill that person or be communicated to someone else. Vaccination does not confer lifelong immunity and some individuals can experience adverse reactions to vaccination. Just as individuals can react differently to prescription drugs, the risks for adverse responses to vaccination are greater for some than for others.
Smallpox vaccine was the first vaccine used by humans on a mass basis. It has been credited with eradicating smallpox from the world. Serious side effects included brain inflammation, brain damage and death that occurred in about 1 in 4,000 persons.1
After smallpox vaccine was created in 1796, laws were passed requiring its use by all citizens in every country. In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could require Americans to be vaccinated against smallpox and soon many states passed laws mandating that children get vaccinated in order to attend public school.2
By the mid-20th century, vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio had been added to state vaccine laws. One of these vaccines, pertussis vaccine in the combined DPT shot is associated with convulsions and collapse/shock in 1 in 875 shots3 and brain inflammation leading to permanent brain damage.4,5
In 1982, when parents of DPT vaccine injured children organized co-founded the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education, pediatricians were giving children 23 doses of 7 vaccines, including vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella.6 By 2007, the numbers of doses of vaccines the federal government recommended for universal use by age 12 years had more than doubled to 54 doses of 16 vaccines (diphtheria (6 doses), pertussis (6 doses), tetanus (6 doses), polio (4 doses), measles (2 doses), mumps (1 dose), rubella (1 dose), HIB (4 doses), hepatitis B (3 doses), chicken pox (2 doses), hepatitis A (2 doses), pneumococcal (4 doses), rotavirus (3 doses), influenza (5 doses), meningococcal (1 dose), and HPV (3 – for girls). 7
In the 1985 book co-authored by NVIC co-founder Barbara Loe Fisher and medical historian Harris Coulter, DPT: A Shot in the Dark, both the safety of the DPT vaccine and the safety of the mass vaccination system in America was questioned.8 In 1986, Congress acknowledged the reality of vaccine injuries and death when it passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. By 2007, nearly $2 billion had been awarded to vaccine casualties by the U.S. Court of Claims.9
In 1991 and 1994, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published reports reviewing the medical literature for evidence that vaccines can cause brain and immune system dysfunction. IOM confirmed that vaccines can cause damage to the immune system and brain, as well as death, and admitted there are "many gaps and limitations in knowledge bearing directly or indirectly on the safety of vaccines." These include inadequate understanding of the biologic mechanisms underlying adverse events following natural infection or immunization…" 10,11
Vaccines may contain formaldehyde, phenoxyethanol, gluteraldehyde, sodium chloride, MSG, gelatin, hydrochloric acid, sodium acetate, hydrogen peroxide, yeast protein, lab altered viruses and bacteria and unidentified contaminants.12,13,14 Mercury preservatives in vaccines have been a controversial component of vaccines.15 The safety of the aluminum content in vaccines has also been questioned.16
As the numbers of vaccinations given to children has more than doubled since the 1970’s, the numbers of children suffering with chronic disease and disability has also increased. More than twice as many American children are suffering with chronic brain and immune system dysfunction today than there were in the 1970’s when half as many vaccines were given.
In 1970, 4 in 10,000 children developed autism17 a brain and immune system disorder that usually develops between birth and age six. In February 2007, the Centers for Disease Control published an analysis of 2002 data which revealed that 1 in 94 to 1 in 303 American child in 2002 developed autism by age eight for a national average of 1 child in every 150 or more suffering from Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD’s).18,19
In 1976, 796,000 children aged 3 to 21 years old in public school programs were classified learning disabled and by 2003 there were nearly 3 million.20 In 2005, a national survey reported that approximately 16 percent of boys and 8 percent of girls aged 5 to 17 years in America had been diagnosed with learning disability or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)21 which suggests that at least 1 child in 6 suffers with a learning disorder.
In 1980, less than two million American children 14 years of age or younger suffered with asthma, an autoimmune disorder involving chronic inflammation of the respiratory system. 22 Between 2002 and 2005, the numbers had risen to between 6.5 and 9 million children under 18 years old having been diagnosed with asthma for a prevalence rate of between 9 and 13 percent of all children or about 1 in 9 child coping with asthma.23,24,25
Diabetes is an autoimmune disorder that causes chronic inflammation of the pancreas. In 1970, the incidence of diabetes among children under age 15 in Rochester, Minnesota was about 1 in 1,75026 and by 2003 the CDC estimated that nationally about 1 in about 450 child was becoming diabetic.27
America spends more than 75 percent of the $2 trillion price tag for health care to treat the chronically ill and disabled. It is estimated that by 2025, 1 in 2 Americans will be chronically ill or disabled.29
Since September 11, 2001, the pharmaceutical industry has made new vaccine development a core multi-billion dollar business worldwide. Congress has passed legislation to protect drug companies from liability for injuries and deaths that could occur whenever new vaccines are used in mass vaccination programs.30 New vaccines recommended for mass use are financially subsidized by the federal government. State governments then mandate new vaccine purchase and use by children.30
Since the early 1980’s, every new vaccine developed by drug companies for children has been recommended by U.S. federal health officials for universal use by all children in America.32 Today, Americans are required to buy and use more vaccines than citizens in any other nation in the world.33 In the past decade, there has been an ongoing controversy about U.S. soldiers being required to get an experimental anthrax vaccine and other vaccines or face court martial and prison.34
Dozens of new vaccines are being developed by the pharmaceutical industry and being tested in more than 2,000 human clinical trials worldwide.35 Many of these new vaccines are scheduled for future universal use recommendations and mandates. Wall Street predicts that the market for child and adolescent vaccines will quadruple to more than $16 billion by 2016.36
Since 1982, societal sanctions for failure to use government recommended vaccines have increased. Vaccine requirements have been attached to the right to go to school, obtain financial aid to go to college,37 hold a job in the health care field,38,39,40 get health insurance,41 and receive medical treatment. 42,43
Since 2007. some physicians and public health officials have called for an end to philosophical and religious exemptions to vaccination in an effort to persuade the public and legislators to remove those exemptions from vaccine laws.44 On November 17, 2007, government officials in the State of Maryland ordered several thousand parents to line up at a county Courthouse with their children to get them injected with two newly mandated vaccines for hepatitis and chickenpox or else face jail time and stiff fines.45 Many children were vaccinated on the spot when parents could not produce records confirming they had been vaccinated.
During the century after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in 1905 the legal right of states to require citizens to be vaccinated for smallpox, vaccine laws in most states have allowed individuals to take exemptions to vaccine mandates for medical, religious, and philosophical or conscientious belief reasons. Requirements for obtaining these exemptions are worded differently in each state.46
All states provide an exemption for medical reasons, although this exemption must be written by a medical doctor (M.D.) or doctor of osteopathy (D.O.), which are the two types of doctors licensed by states to prescribe drugs and perform surgery. Some states will accept a private physician’s written medical exemption without question, while other states allow state health officials to review the exemption and revoke it if they decide the reasons stated by the doctor do not conform to official government criteria for vaccine contraindications.
All but two states (Mississippi and West Virginia) allow religious exemption, although language about which beliefs qualify for a religious exemption varies among states. The religious exemption is intended for those who hold a sincere religious belief opposing vaccination rather than objections based on scientific/medical reasoning or for reasons of conscience. To grant a religious exemption, some states require claimants to oppose all vaccinations as well as most medical treatment while others allow parents to selectively oppose certain vaccines. Some states require a signed affidavit or letter from the claimant explaining the religious belief objection as well as a letter from a pastor or spiritual advisor attesting to the sincerity of the claimant’s religious beliefs. Some state government officials will deny religious exemptions after judging the parents have failed to demonstrate that their opposition to vaccination is based on true religious (spiritual beliefs) rather than secular (scientific/intellectual) beliefs.
Some 17 states provide for a philosophical, personal belief or conscientious belief exemption and these states come the closest to protecting the right of Americans to exercise informed consent to vaccination. In 2004, Texas became the first state in many decades to add an exemption to state laws when the legislature approved an exemption based on deeply held conscientious beliefs. However, the conscientious/philosophical belief exemption is under attack by those who argue that it is a "loophole" in vaccine laws that allows too many people to easily take an exemption to vaccination. They contend that if many people opt-out of vaccination it could lead to future epidemics of infectious disease.
The National Vaccine Information Center has defended the ethical principle of informed consent since 1982, maintaining that the right to make informed, voluntary decisions about any medical intervention that can cause harm, such as vaccination, is a human right. Visit NVIC to learn more about diseases, vaccines and vaccine laws.
Article Resources
Below is an article about vaccines that is located at MyParenTime.com:
Below are some websites that discuss vaccines, safety, and informed consent:
Below are some books that discuss children and online games. Use Amazon.com's secure server to order:
Click here to read other articles by Barbara Loe Fisher.
Copyright © Barbara Loe Fisher is co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, co-author of DPT: A Shot in the Dark, author of The Consumer Guide to Vaccines, editor of the NVIC E-News, and a blogger. She served on the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Forum, the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, the Vaccine Policy Analysis Collaborative and is a member of Consumers United for Evidenced-Based Healthcare, Cochrane Collaboration – U.S. She is the mother of three children. Reprinted with permission.
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