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By Barbara Loe Fisher

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This past year, we have seen many lawmakers in the U.S. and other countries vote to eliminate or severely restrict civil liberties in the name of the public health.^{1 2 3}  One of the most outrageous legislative actions violating parental and human rights took place in Washington, DC in November 2020 when City Council officials gave doctors the power to vaccinate children as young as 11 years old and hide what they did from parents.^{4 5 6 7 8} The DC Mayor refused to veto the bill ^{9 10} and, in January 2021, the U.S. Congress sat on its hands^{11 12} and gave tacit approval to enactment of the most dangerous child vaccination law in America.

In a breathtaking violation of medical ethics and several federal laws, the new vaccine concealment law in Washington, DC allows doctors to extract “informed consent” from young children too immature to know what informed consent¹³ means or what a vaccine reaction looks and feels like.^{14 15 16} The DC City Council majority, with only three members dissenting, cruelly disempowered parents by voting to make it illegal for a doctor, insurance company or school administrator to divulge a child’s vaccination history in records that can be seen by the child’s mother or father.¹⁷

Parents Won’t Have Information to Protect Child From Vaccine Injury

An 11-year old child does not know or understand his or her personal health history but most parent do. If a child has experienced previous vaccine reactions, has severe allergies or other health conditions that could increase vaccine risks,^{18 19} parents kept in the dark will not have a way to protect their child from further harm.

Parents who don’t know which vaccines their children have been given will not be able to monitor them for signs of a potentially life-threatening vaccine reaction that requires immediate medical treatment.²⁰ If the child is injured or dies after vaccination, parents will not know they must apply to the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) before the filing deadline expires.²¹

Parents will not know their insurance company has been billed for vaccines. Parents will not know that a school the child attends is in possession of their child’s secret vaccination records even when there is a vaccine exemption for religious belief reasons on file with the school.

This blatant violation of a parent’s moral right and legal responsibility to make medical risk decisions on behalf of a minor child was endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics²² and pushed through by the DC City Council, while the Mayor and the US Congress looked the other way.

Washington, DC Vaccine Concealment Law Violates Federal Laws

First, DC’s vaccine concealment law violates vaccine safety provisions of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a federal law that confirmed vaccine injuries and deaths are real and made preventing vaccine reactions a national priority. Parents of DPT vaccine injured children secured vaccine safety provisions in the 1986 Act, which directs doctors and other medical workers to give parents written vaccine benefit and risk information before a child is vaccinated ²³ and also mandates that vaccine providers record which vaccines the child is given in a record the parents can access.

Specifically, the 1986 Act mandates that “health care providers who administer a vaccine” must give a child’s legal representative ”a copy of the information materials” developed by the Centers for Disease Control QUOTE “prior to the administration” of a vaccine.^{24 25} The 1986 law also requires each person administering a vaccine to QUOTE “ensure that there is recorded in such person’s permanent medical record or in a permanent office log or file to which a legal representative shall have access upon request” certain information: Number 1: the date of administration of the vaccine; Number 2: the vaccine manufacturer and lot number of the vaccine; and Number 3: the name and address and, if appropriate, the title of the health care provider administering the vaccine.”²⁶

These informing and recording vaccine safety provisions were included in the 1986 Act specifically to provide parents with information they need to make well informed vaccine decisions for their minor children; and to help parents recognize and prevent vaccine reactions; and to ensure a vaccine reaction is reported to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).^{27 28}

If a doctor can secretly inject a young child with one or more vaccines and hide the vaccination records, how will parents know what is happening when a vaccine reaction occurs? They won’t have the information they need to take their child to an emergency room or be able to make the connection between the vaccinations and a child’s regression into poor health.

This lack of critical information about their child’s medical history also means parents will likely miss the deadline for filing a claim in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which has awarded more than 4.5 billion dollars to the vaccine injured over the past three decades.²⁹

DC’s vaccine concealment law violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, which guarantees parents the legal right to have access to their children’s education records, including health and vaccine records, at the primary and secondary school level.³⁰

Vaccine Concealment Law Violates Informed Consent Rights

DC’s vaccine concealment law also violates the long standing ethical principle of informed consent to medical risk taking,³¹ which has governed the ethical practice of human research and medical practice since the Nuremberg Code was published in 1947 after the Doctor’s Trial.^{32 33} Informed consent is exercised on behalf of minor children by parents, who are morally and legally responsible for the well-being and financial support for their children until they are old enough to live independently.^{34 35 36}

Child development specialists have documented how young children and teenagers lack the critical thinking skills and emotional maturity to exercise good judgment when assessing risks.^{37 38 39 40} Pre-adolescents are more susceptible to pressure from peers and authority figures.^{41 42 43 44}

Doctors and Other Vaccine Administrators Have No Liability for Vaccine Injuries and Deaths

Doctors are the ultimate authority figures in our society today, and many are serving as authoritarian implementers of one-size-fits-all federal vaccine policies and state vaccine mandates.^{45 46} Like vaccine manufacturers, doctors and other persons who administer vaccines cannot be held liable in civil court when a child dies or is injured.⁴⁷ Congress passed special legislation in 2020 to make sure that doctors or anyone else who administers a Covid-19 vaccine cannot be sued.⁴⁸

When the risks of vaccination turn out to be 100 percent for a child, it is the mother and father raising that child on a day-to-day basis who will be left with the life-long consequences - not the doctor who has been given the power to secretly persuade the child to take vaccines, and not the politician who voted to give doctors that power.

The DC Council sponsor of the bill entitled the “Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act” originally wanted doctors to be able to vaccinate children of any age – no matter how young - without the knowledge or consent of their parents. She argued that minors of any age can get an abortion in Washington, DC and get treated for a sexually transmitted disease or substance abuse without the knowledge or consent of their parents.⁴⁹

She told Medscape Medical News that parents with “anti-science” beliefs were not vaccinating their children based on a “disproven belief” that vaccines may cause harm, which puts other people at “extreme risk” for disease.⁵⁰

A dissenting DC City Council member countered with “Medical professionals and schools should not be permitted to coerce impressionable minors into procedures capable of causing injury or death behind their parents’ back.”⁵¹

DC Vaccine Concealment Law A Profound Betrayal of Public Trust

The Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights states that:

“The interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society;” and “For persons who are not capable of exercising autonomy, special measures are to be taken to protect their rights and interests;” and “Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information.”⁵²

It is a profound betrayal of public trust for any city, state or federal government to strip parents of their God given right to protect their children from harm by allowing a doctor to give a child a pharmaceutical product without getting a parent’s permission. Science is not perfect, doctors are not infallible, and pharmaceutical products like vaccines come with risks that can be greater for some individuals than others,^{53 54 55} which is why parents must retain the human right to exercise informed consent to medical risk taking on behalf of their minor children.

Will the vaccine concealment bill that is now law in Washington, DC be exported to your state next?

Take Action Today To Protect Parental Rights

If you want to protect parental and informed consent rights, register for the free online NVIC Advocacy Portal today and stay up to date on vaccine laws being proposed in your state so you can contact your legislators and take positive action.    

Never be the one who has to say you did not do today what you could have done to change tomorrow.

It’s your health. Your family. Your choice.

And our mission continues: No forced vaccination. Not in America. 

Podcast Available on SoundCloud

By Barbara Loe Fisher

To activate and view hyperlinked references, please click here once and then click any superscripted number below to access a hyperlinked reference, or scroll down to the bottom of the article to view all hyperlinked references.

As COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out and given to millions of Americans in every state, it is critical that doctors and other medical workers, who are administering the vaccines, actively report every serious health problem, injury and death that happens after vaccination to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Known as VAERS, the centralized vaccine reaction reporting system was created under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. ^{1 2}

If you get a vaccine, including a COVID-19 vaccine, and your health deteriorates within hours, days or weeks of being vaccinated, the person who gave you the shot is required by federal law to file a report with VAERS. ³ If he or she refuses to file a vaccine reaction report, you can do it yourself.

Click to learn how to report a vaccine reaction to VAERS.

Parents of DPT Vaccine Injured Children Got VAERS Into 1986 Act

In 1982, when Kathi Williams and I joined with other parents of DPT vaccine injured children and founded the educational charity known today as the National Vaccine Information Center, ⁴ we discovered there was no centralized vaccine reaction reporting system in the U.S. and no requirement for doctors to report vaccine reactions. Back then, the government’s Monitoring System for Adverse Events Following Vaccination ⁵ was split into two parts: doctors vaccinating children in public health clinics were supposed to report serious vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and doctors in private practice and vaccine manufacturers could choose to report to the Food and Drug Administration, ^{6 7} but there was no requirement to report vaccine reactions.

As parents who had watched our children have serious reactions and regress into chronic poor health after DPT shots, ^{8 9} we argued that every vaccine provider and every vaccine manufacturer should be required to report vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths to the government. To ensure transparency, we wanted those vaccine reaction reports to be accessible to the public and to independent researchers investigating vaccine safety issues. We also wanted a way for individuals who had experienced a vaccine reaction to be able to file a vaccine reaction report themselves if a vaccine provider refused to do it.

That is why we worked with Congress in the early 1980s to secure vaccine safety informing, recording, reporting and research provisions in the 1986 Act. ^{10 11 12} We insisted that the government publish written information describing vaccine reactions and disease risks to be given to parents before children are vaccinated; ¹³ and that doctors and other vaccine providers be required to keep a permanent record of all vaccines given and the manufacturer’s name and lot number; ¹⁴ and that serious health problems following vaccination be recorded in the child’s permanent medical record, along with the requirement that vaccine providers and manufacturers be required to report adverse events to a centralized vaccine reaction reporting database monitored by health agencies and open to the public. ¹⁵

Ultimately, Congress agreed with parents that federal health agencies should create a new centralized Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. VAERS was finally launched in 1990 – four years after the 1986 Act was passed. ¹⁶

VAERS A Post-Marketing Vaccine Safety Surveillance Tool

VAERS records the timing of the vaccination and onset of the adverse event; the age and current illnesses or medications taken by the person who reacted; past history of vaccine reactions; the name of the state where the person lives and other important information to help record and evaluate reported vaccine reactions. ^{17 18}

CDC officials say that, “about 85 to 90 percent of the reports [to VAERS] describe mild side effects such as fever, arm soreness, and crying or mild irritability. The remaining reports are classified as serious, which means that the adverse event resulted in permanent disability, hospitalization, life-threatening illness, or death.” ¹⁹

Government officials repeatedly emphasize that vaccine-related injuries and deaths reported to VAERS are rarely caused by the vaccine. ^{20 21 22}

The reality is that federal health agencies are unable to follow up every vaccine reaction, so the system remains a broad post-marketing surveillance tool for picking up red flags that signal unusual or frequent vaccine complications, which may not have been identified in pre-licensing clinical trials ²³ or - in the case of COVID-19 vaccines - were not identified prior to the FDA granting vaccine manufacturers an Emergency Use Authorization to distribute experimental COVID-19 vaccines.  ²⁴ 

And because VAERS is open for public view and analysis, it is an invaluable database for research and public education. ^{25 26 27 28}

You can search the VAERS database of vaccine reaction reports filed since 1990 by going to NVIC.org and accessing the user-friendly MedAlerts search engine.

No Legal Sanctions for Doctors Failing to Report Vaccine Adverse Events to VAERS

Sadly, even though it has been a federal law for vaccine providers and vaccine manufacturers to report to VAERS for more than three decades, there are no legal consequences for failing to report. A 2011 federally funded study found that less than one percent of vaccine reactions that happen in the US are ever reported to VAERS. ²⁹ That’s because Congress made it a federal requirement in the 1986 Act to report, but did not include legal penalties when vaccine companies or vaccine providers fail to report.

The result is that 99 percent of vaccine reactions, including injuries and deaths, which are taking place every day among the highly vaccinated US population, go unreported.

Reaction Reporting to VAERS Should Be A Priority for New COVID-19 Vaccines

Today, the US is operating under a public health emergency declaration ³⁰ and there is an even greater need to step up efforts to report vaccine reactions to VAERS, especially injuries and deaths, that occur after vaccination. COVID-19 vaccines were fast tracked to market in record breaking time. ^{31 32 33 34} Most of the participants in clinical trials where healthy people between 17 and 55 years old. ^{35 36}

This means that while COVID-19 vaccines are being given to millions of Americans, VAERS becomes an extremely important mechanism for detecting a pattern of vaccine-related serious health problems that may not have been detected in clinical trials that only included thousands of subjects and did not include certain high risk categories of people – like those over age 85 ^{37 38} or pregnant women  ^{39 40} or people with certain underlying health problems. ^{41 42}

During this time when there is a national COVID-19 vaccination campaign underway, you can help by reminding medical workers giving COVID-19 vaccines to file reaction reports with VAERS. Vaccine administrators are not supposed to be making their own judgments about whether an adverse event following vaccination was or was not caused by the vaccine. They are simply supposed to file a VAERS report as required under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act whenever a person suffers a serious deterioration in health after vaccination, especially if it results in a permanent injury or death.

If A Vaccine Provider Fails to Report a COVID-19 Reaction to VAERS – DIY

Remember, if you or your minor child have gotten a COVID-19 shot and have suffered a reaction ^{43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53} but the person who gave the vaccine refuses to make a report to VAERS, you can file a report yourself.

It’s your health. Your family. Your choice.

NVIC VAERS Update: On May 21, 2021, the CDC released COVID-19 vaccine-related data through May 14, 2021 reported to VAERS. As of May 14, 2021, there had been 227,805 adverse events reported to VAERS following COVID-19 vaccinations. Of those, 153,710 adverse events were reported after the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 64,193 were reported after the second dose. There have been 4,406 reports of COVID-19 vaccine related deaths, which includes 142 death reports from other countries. See MedAlerts.org.