by Barbara Loe Fisher
The results of a 2009 survey evaluating the vaccine safety concerns of American parents was recently published in the journal
Pediatrics.
1 Out of the approximately 1500 parents, who took the survey, only 23 percent believe that vaccines cause autism in healthy children. But more than half were worried about serious adverse health effects of vaccination. The vast majority said they believe that getting vaccines is a good way to protect children from disease and follow their doctor’s recommendations. Still, more than 30 percent of those surveyed believe that parents should have the right to refuse vaccines that are required for school for any reason.
I am not surprised by these survey results because, since 1982, most parents contacting the National Vaccine Information Center tell us they want to trust what their doctors tell them about vaccination. Mothers and fathers depend upon their doctors to give them good advice; but when the health of their child or a child they know deteriorates after vaccination,
2 parents logically start to ask questions. And when they are belittled or even threatened for asking those questions,
3 4 the relationship between doctor and parent is never the same again.
Parents asking questions about vaccine safety is nothing new. Although in the past decade there has been a focus on whether a mercury preservative in vaccines, perhaps in combination with the MMR vaccine, can cause autism in some children, the public conversation about vaccine risks and flaws in vaccine science and policy began in the early 1980’s.
5 Back then, it was parents of DPT vaccine injured children calling for a less toxic whooping cough vaccine to replace an old one causing brain inflammation, brain damage and death.
We worked with Congress on the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986,
6 believing that this historic law would provide a safety net for children harmed by vaccines. We believed that the informing, recording and reporting requirements for doctors in that law would reduce the numbers of children, who died or became chronically ill and disabled after vaccination.
Little did we know that - even though $2 billion dollars has been paid to families with vaccine injured children under that law - only one out of three vaccine victims are ever financially compensated.
7 8 This, while drug companies making and selling vaccines have been almost completely protected from product liability.
9 10 Other pharmaceutical products, like Vioxx,
11 are not protected from liability and they are not mandated for school attendance like vaccines. Perhaps that is why there are far more black box warnings on drugs
12 13 than on vaccines.
14
A quarter century after the Vaccine Injury Act was passed, nothing has been done yet to conduct the kind of vaccine science that will give us answers about which children are at higher risk than others for dying or being brain injured by vaccination so their lives can be spared.
15 16 17 Whether industry or government will ever do that good vaccine science
18 is an outstanding question. But that does not mean that we, the people, cannot raise the money to do it. That is why the National Vaccine Information Center is creating an independent vaccine safety research program to study long term health outcomes of those who do and do not get vaccinated.
19
Public trust is fragile. When what the people are being told about vaccine safety does not match what they are experiencing in their own lives, doubt grows and trust fades.
The American public still has fresh memories of the aggressive lobbying campaign for mandatory HPV vaccination of all sixth grade girls.
20 And the 2009 H1N1 swine flu emergency declaration
21 that turned out to be the mildest influenza season in decades,
22 followed by the new federal recommendation that every American from birth has to get a flu shot every year,
23 is also fresh in our memory.
More and more Americans are becoming painfully aware that their medical bills, taxes and health insurance premiums are going up because, today, 1 in 6 highly vaccinated child in America is learning disabled; 1 in 9 has asthma; 1 in 100 develops autism; 1 in 450 becomes diabetic and 7 in 1,000 babies born alive are dying before their first birthday.
24 25 With 69 doses of 16 vaccines being given to children from birth through age 18
26 and hundreds of new vaccines being developed
27 to prevent infectious disease while trillions of dollars are being spent to treat chronic disease,
28 is it any wonder more parents are asking more questions about vaccine safety?
And is it any wonder that more Americans want the legal right to make vaccine choices as drug companies and public health officials encourage legislators to pass laws that electronically track medical records and attach penalties for those who fail to get every government recommended vaccine?
29
There is no more important task before those responsible for ensuring the public health than addressing parental concerns about vaccination with better science and not with better press releases and more mandates.
Please support the work of the National Vaccine Information Center
30 and other parent-led organizations,
30 31 32 33 who have been educating the public for many years about vaccination and health and defending your right to make informed, voluntary vaccine choices for yourself and your children.
29 Fisher, BL. Electronic Medical Records Tracking Systems & Privacy. Letter to Assistant Secretary for Planning & Evaluation, Department of Health & Human Services. February 15, 2000.
New Annual Event To Fund Vaccine Safety Research and Protection of
Informed Consent Standards
“Valentines for Victoria” co-founders Danny and Dr. Stephanie Christner hosted the 1st annual Valentines for Victoria dinner and auction benefiting the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). The event was created in remembrance of Victoria Christner, who died after reactions to childhood vaccines, to initiate dialogue and awareness about the need for vaccine safety and informed consent protections in public health policies.
Dinner Dance at Historic Southern Hills Country Club
The evening’s festivities included an auction, dinner dance and educational presentations. The event was held at the historic Southern Hills Country Club on Saturday, February 13, 2010 and raised more than $100,000 that will be used to create vaccine safety awareness, promote informed consent and conduct scientific research into health outcomes associated with vaccination.
More Than 300 Entertained by Sam Debold & The Biggest Loser”
Musician Danny Cahill of “The Biggest Loser” fame entertained attendees with his latest song Second Chance. Twelve year old Sam Debold also entertained guests with piano stylings of his favorite performing artists: U2, Eagles and Eric Clapton.
More than 300 people attended the sit down dinner and dance event and were also treated to a live auction featuring vacation getaways to Vail and Sun Valley and football box tickets to a Dallas Cowboys game.
Vaccine Public Education Forum Features Expert Panel
Earlier in the day, “Valentines for Victoria” sponsored a public education forum held at the Southern Hills Marriott attended by parents and health care professionals. The focus of the public forum was to encourage dialogue about the ethical principle of informed consent and making educated health choices, including vaccine choices.
From left to right: Dr. Vicky Debold; Dawn Richardson, Stephanie and Danny Christner; Kathi Williams; Barbara Loe Fisher and Theresa Wrangham.
NVIC’s expert panel featured NVIC co-founder & president, Barbara Loe Fisher; NVIC Director of Research & Patient Safety, Vicky Debold, PhD, RN; NVIC Medical Advisory Board Member, Lawrence Palevsky, MD; and NVIC Director of State Advocacy, Dawn Richardson. The panel discussion was moderated by Theresa Wrangham, NVIC’s Executive Director.
Also attending and providing staff support for the event were NVIC Co-founder & Vice President Kathi Williams; NVIC Director of Operations Paul Arthur; NVIC Board Member Paul Mulhauser with his wife, Linda Mulhauser, and Stephen Mulhauser, whose original art work was included in the silent auction.
Theresa Wrangham, immediate past president of SafeMinds, has been appointed Executive Director of the National Vaccine Information Center. She joins the NVIC management team with more than 25 years experience in project management, accounting, business administration and child health advocacy.
As a Usui Reiki master, former AMTA massage therapist and mother of two teenage daughters, Theresa has a holistic health perspective on raising a healthy child. She became a parent advocate as a result of her daughter Deanna’s life-threatening asthma, as well as her daughter Rachel’s diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
As Executive Director of NVIC, Theresa will assist the Board and management with identification and implementation of organizational goals and objectives and in strategic planning for business, communications and research programs. She will officially assume her position on April 1, 2010.
Theresa’s professional career includes positions in budgeting and full scale accounting systems, office management, and small business administration. Her experience in the holistic healthcare field includes spending five years in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi teaching Usui-based Reiki and speaking about alternative healthcare within a multi-cultural environment.
In 2001, Theresa co-founded the Autism Society of Boulder County (ASBC) in Colorado and served five terms as its president. She has served on the Board of Directors for SafeMinds since 2007 and serves on the advisory boards for the US Autism & Asperger Association and the American Medical Autism Board. She is a representative on the Boulder Valley School District Special Education Advisory Committee.
She has helped to raise public awareness of biomedical causes and treatments for autism by publishing Colorado’s first autism specific resource guide and coordinating conferences and lectures, as well as Colorado’s consensus statement supporting the Combating Autism Act. In 2005, she worked with local agencies to establish a parent-directed treatment program for individuals with autism, who are ineligible for state services.
She collaborated with Google to create Project Spectrum, a program designed to identify possible career paths, give educators classroom tools and assist parents in obtaining special education services for children with autism. In 2006, the Boulder County Business Report recognized Theresa as a Health Care Hero.
Theresa has published articles in Mothering Magazine, The Autism File, Age of Autism, Pathways magazine and ASBC and SafeMinds newsletters She has been featured in local and national television and print news reports on autism issues and is a speaker at autism conferences She represented SafeMinds in a 2009 H1N1 vaccine stakeholder meeting sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control.
“Theresa Wrangham will play an important role in shaping the future of the vaccine safety and informed consent movement in America,” said NVIC co-founder and president, Barbara Loe Fisher. “She comes to us with a wealth of business and consumer advocacy experience and we are delighted to welcome her to NVIC’s management team.”
by Barbara Loe Fisher
I remember the day I met Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It was September 12, 1997 and he had just flown into Dulles Airport from London the night before to speak at the First International Public Conference on Vaccination sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center. The title of his talk was “Measles Virus & Measles Vaccine: Lessons to be Learned.”
It was five months before he and 12 other physician colleagues would publish a study in The Lancet 1 calling for more research into a possible association between inflammatory bowel disease, MMR vaccine and developmental delays in some children.
I met Dr. Wakefield that day in 1997 in the auditorium where our conference was to take place as he was trying to decide what to do with a slide that identified him as being employed by the Royal Free Hospital. You see, he had received a telephone threat from London in the middle of the night warning him that if he spoke at our conference, he might not have a job when he returned to Britain. He then described to me the intense pressure he had been under from senior health officials in Britain to withdraw from our conference.
This was five months before he and his colleagues published the first article in the medical literature suggesting there might be an association between vaccine induced chronic inflammation in the body and developmental delays in some children.
In September 1997, Andrew Wakefield was a young British gastroenterologist, a rising star in the world of experimental medicine. He had received awards and scholarships for original research into the pathogenesis and etiology of inflammatory bowel disease, including Crohn’s disease. He had a bright future ahead of him until he examined children suffering with both inflammatory bowel disease and developmental delays and decided to investigate the reports by parents that their once normal children regressed and began exhibiting symptoms of autism after getting an MMR shot.
So, as Andrew Wakefield and I were standing in the conference auditorium five months before The Lancet article was published, I told him that he did not have to speak at our conference. I told him it was not worth losing his job. I told him that I could look back and count the doctors lying on the road, who had lost their careers because they dared to conduct research into or speak about vaccine risks. I told him his own colleagues would hang him for challenging the status quo.
Despite the fact he had been threatened by senior doctors in positions of authority demanding that he withdraw from our conference, Andrew Wakefield refused my offer to stand down. He said that if he did not speak at our conference, he would always be afraid and he was not going to live in fear for the rest of his life.
And then we sat down and had a long talk about freedom of thought, conscience and scientific inquiry. We talked about fear and courage, about risking it all to do what is right. We talked about events leading up to World War II in Europe and how good people did nothing when they had the chance to act; how instead they turned away from the suffering of minorities targeted for destruction. We talked about government health policies that devalue individual life and write off some as acceptable losses in service to the rest. We talked about the suffering of vaccine injured children and their families.
And I knew then, that despite my warnings to Andrew Wakefield that he could lose everything if he tried to investigate or speak out about vaccine risks, this man was not going to stand down. He was going to risk it all.
It was a moment I will never forget because I knew the price he would pay for standing up to colleagues ordering him to salute smartly and remain silent.
Today, doctors in positions of authority in Britain, who have sought to intimidate Andrew Wakefield even before the February 1998 Lancet article was published, have declared through the General Medical Council that he and two other brave doctors, who refused to recant the conclusions of The Lancet article, are guilty of professional misconduct. 2 The General Medical Council does not operate a legal court of law; it is rather a medical court of opinion, where doctors can sanction other doctors and, in effect, hang their own.
I learned early on in my 28 years of work to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and defend the informed consent ethic in medicine, that it does not matter whether you are a doctor investigating vaccine risks or a parent of a once healthy child, who regressed into chronic poor health after vaccination. If you question the quality of vaccine science or policy, you will be demonized, harassed, and sanctioned for being an unbeliever and questioning the wisdom of doctors and scientists in positions of authority.
The General Medical Council inquisition was never about the three doctors they put on the rack and found guilty on most counts. It was always about declaring vaccine science and policy innocent on all counts. And creating a horrible warning to any young doctor, who even thinks about investigating or talking about better defining vaccine risks, to think again, shut up and salute smartly.
Today, I join millions of parents of vaccine injured children around the world, and thank Drs. Andrew Wakefield, Simon Murch and John Walker-Smith for having the intellectual honesty, conscience and courage to stand up for truth and freedom in science. You are honored and loved by many for what you have done to try to help ease the suffering of the growing numbers of vaccine injured children and prevent more children from joining their ranks.
Like you, we will not stand down and we will not be silent. We will stand up and defend truth and freedom for as long as it takes to bring both back.
January 29, 2010 Statement by the National Vaccine Information Center on Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his research
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) supports the past, present and future scientific research into the reported association between inflammatory bowel disease, developmental delays and vaccination in young children conducted by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and other physician scientists. Dr. Wakefield’s work to define the pathogenesis and etiology of chronic inflammation in the body that can affect brain and immune function is commendable. His work has led to biomedical interventions for children, who have become chronically ill and disabled after vaccination, to ease their suffering.
Research to better define the association between vaccination and chronic inflammatory disorders that affect brain and immune function should be given a much higher priority by government, industry and academia. Understanding the biological mechanisms for vaccine induced chronic inflammation in children and adults can help identify those at high risk for suffering vaccine reactions, injury and death and lead to adoption of safer vaccine policies.
The National Vaccine Information Center presented Andrew Wakeifield with an Humanitarian Award at the Oct. 2-4, 2009 Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination for “his compassion, brave spirit and uncompromising commitment to improving the health of children and the biological integrity of future generations.”
Click here for a Statement from Thoughtful House Center for Children
Click here for Official Finding of Facts from UK General Medical Council
Click here for AOA Short Form FAQ About the Wakefield GMC Case
Click here for commentary by Mark Blaxill “From the Roman to the Wakefield Inquisition”
by Dawn Richardson
NVIC Director of State Advocacy
The New Hampshire Coalition for Vaccine Choice (www.vacchoicenh.org) led by NVIC members Eileen Landies and Melanie Streeter will be participating in a public hearing on Jan. 28, 2010 in Concord, New Hampshire on proposed legislation for conscientious belief exemption to vaccination (HB 1555). They need the support of everyone who wants to help secure the right to make informed, voluntary vaccine decisions in New Hampshire.
A fundamental parent right
One of the most fundamental and important parental rights is for parents to have the final say over what drugs and vaccines are put into their child’s body. Whether you chose to consent to your child receiving a particular vaccine or not, the important thing is that it is ultimately your decision and not the decision of a government health or school official or anyone else.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Unfortunately, there are still states that make receiving an education contingent upon a child being injected with dozens of CDC recommended and government mandated vaccines. The problem with this is that every child is different and every vaccine is different: one size does not fit all. Ensuring that all states have informed consent protections in their laws in the form of strong medical, religious and conscientious belief exemptions is the only way to protect our freedom to make voluntary health care decisions, including voluntary decisions about vaccination.
Here is What You Can Do
Here is how you can help even if you do not live in New Hampshire: please forward this message to everyone you know in New Hampshire so they know about this bill and can contact their friends and colleagues.
If you are a resident of New Hampshire, there are five steps you can take to make your voice heard and show your support:
- Attend the Jan. 28, 2010 public hearing for HB 1555 in Concord New Hampshire next Thursday at 11 a.m. in the Legislative Office Building (LOB), Room 205.
http://vacchoicenh.org/Attending_a_Hearing.html
- If you can’t attend the hearing, send a letter to members of the Health Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee.
http://vacchoicenh.org/Action_Alert.html
- Send a letter to your own elected representative.
You can link to http://vacchoicenh.org/Action_Alert.html and scroll down to “Finding and Contacting You Representatives.”
- If you or a family member have suffered from a vaccine injury and are willing to help by sharing a vaccine reaction experience, please contact Eileen and Melanie directly at vacchoicenh@gmail.com.
- Forward this information to everyone you know in New Hampshire. Please remember to reach out to supportive health care practitioners asking for their testimony and letters too.
Together, we can help the “Live Free or Die” state restore parental rights back in favor of informed consent to vaccination with a conscientious belief exemption.
About Dawn Richardson
Dawn Richardson is president of PROVE (Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education), a statewide parent rights advocacy network in Austin, Texas she co-founded in 1997. She was appointed Director of State Advocacy for the National Vaccine Information Center in October 2009.
Securing Informed Consent Rights in Texas
An activist Mom, Dawn has led a highly successful 12 year public information campaign in Texas and in the Texas Legislature to promote awareness about vaccine safety, medical privacy and informed consent issues. Her work has contributed to positive legislative changes, including the passage of a statewide conscientious belief exemption to vaccination in 2003; the vacating of a gubernatorial executive order for mandatory HPV vaccines for 6th grade girls in 2007; and institution of medical privacy protections in a statewide vaccine tracking system and a newborn DNA storage system.
Defeating HPV Vaccine Mandates
Dawn graduated with a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Connecticut and her vocational and educational experience in science and computer engineering has helped to shape her leading role in the criticism of mandatory one-size-fits-all vaccine policies and vaccine tracking systems. She has appeared in many media reports in Texas and nationally defending parents’ right to refuse vaccines. Her February 2007 appearance on the NBC “Today Show” calling for the repeal of the Texas Governor's Executive Order mandating Gardasil vaccine for all sixth grade girls was instrumental in raising public awareness in Texas that the Executive Order should be overridden by the legislature.
Debating Doctors & Speaking Out
She has publicly debated doctors and spoken at health conferences about how vaccine safety is taking a backseat to genetic technologies and how drug companies are spending millions of dollars lobbying legislatures for stronger vaccine mandates, while government-operated computerized vaccine tracking systems are being used to enforce compliance.
Developing a National State-Based Vaccine Choice Network
Dawn led the vaccine choice advocacy training sessions at
NVIC’s Oct. 2-4, 2009 Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccination. As NVIC's Director of State Advocacy, she is developing a national state-based communications and organizing network to help Americans secure vaccine safety, privacy and informed consent protections in state public health laws to protect voluntary vaccine choices in America.