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Biography, Barbara Loe Fisher

Co-Founder & President National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)


Barbara Loe Fisher

Barbara Loe Fisher is co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a non-profit charity she founded with parents of vaccine injured children in 1982 to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education. For the past four decades, she has led a national, grassroots movement and public information campaign to institute vaccine safety and informed consent protections in public health policies and laws. She has researched, analyzed and publicly articulated the science, policy, law, ethics and politics of vaccination to become one of the world’s leading non-medical, consumer advocacy experts on vaccination and human rights.

She is co-author of the seminal book DPT: A Shot in the Dark (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1985; Warner 1986; Avery/Putnam 1991) and author of The Guide to Reforming Vaccine Policy & Law (2014, 2017, 2022); The Emerging Risks of Live Virus and Virus Vectored Vaccines: Vaccine Strain Virus Infection, Shedding and Transmission (2014); Vaccines, Autism & Chronic Inflammation: The New Epidemic (2008) and The Consumer’s Guide to Childhood Vaccines (1997). She is founder and executive editor of the weekly online journal, The Vaccine Reaction, and a video blog commentator for the NVIC Newsletter and Mercola Newsletter. Her long public record of vaccine safety and choice advocacy was featured in the 2011 award winning film documentary THE GREATER GOOD and the 2020 movie 1986: The Act.

Her 1985 book, DPT: A Shot in the Dark, which she co-authored with Harris Coulter, Ph.D., was the first major, well documented critique of America's mass vaccination system calling for safety reforms and the human right to informed consent to vaccination. She worked with Congress to secure vaccine safety provisions in the historic National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and has served as a consumer representative on federal vaccine advisory and public engagement committees, including the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (1988-1991); the Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Forum (1995-1998) where she helped coordinate five public workshops on vaccine safety issues; the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (1999-2002); the Vaccine Policy Analysis Collaborative (2002-2005); and the Vaccine Safety Writing Group (2009).

She has testified in Congress and state legislatures on vaccine policy and law and has provided a series of written and oral public comments on vaccine science and policy issues for federal and state health agencies. She coordinated five scientific conferences, including the 1989 International Scientific Workshop on Pertussis and Pertussis Vaccines and four International Public Conferences on Vaccination in 1997, 2000, 2002, 2009 and 2020. 

Barbara has written articles published in USA Today, Congressional Research Quarterly (CRQ), Leaps Magazine, and other publications and has been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, Time, and Newsweek and many other national and global news outlets. Since 1993, she has debated more doctors on the subject of vaccination than any other American, including on NBC’s “The Today Show,” as well as on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and National Public Radio. She has appeared in vaccine news reports on CBS “Sunday Morning News,” ABC “World News Tonight” ABC “Nightline,” PBS “Frontline” and CBS “The Doctors.”

She graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A. in English and was a writer and community relations professional at a teaching hospital before becoming a mother in 1978. She has three grown children and a grandson. Her oldest son suffered a convulsion, collapse and brain inflammation within hours of his fourth DPT shot in 1980 when he was two and a half years old. He was left with multiple learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder and was confined to a special education classroom throughout his public school education.

Complete Barbara Loe Fisher Curriculum Vitae

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