June 19, 2019
I might as well apologize up front for all the profanity in this blog.
You see, I live in New York State, and this past Thursday my state legislators decided they knew best what medical interventions my children—and all other New York children—should receive.
As a staffer in New York State Senator Jessica Ramos’s office put it, “We think all children should be vaccinated.”
When I informed him that if that he were to achieve his goal, there would be many more injured children than we see already, he replied, “You’re entitled to your opinion.”
And therein lies the problem: That’s not my opinion; that’s fact.
It’s inexcusable that legislators are writing laws compelling children to consume these liability-free products made by the most corrupt corporations in the country without even knowing the basic facts.
Vaccine Injury Is Real
Vaccine injury happens. We know that. That’s why a 1986 law removed liability for vaccine manufacturers and established a “no-fault” compensation program for those who have been injured. Vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” because, like every other pharmaceutical product, they induce widely varying physical responses in individuals but, unlike other pharmaceutical products, governments are compelling their youngest and most vulnerable citizens to consume them.
Contrary to popular legislator belief, human beings are not biologically identical.
Vaccine manufacturers have to trade efficacy off against safety for each vaccine they make. This tension is inherent in vaccine design.
Because vaccines are intended to trick the immune system into creating antibodies for antigens it hasn’t yet encountered naturally, immune response will vary in largely unpredictable ways. This should be intuitively obvious to anyone who knows that natural measles infection, for instance, can cause anything from a low-grade fever and a few spots to life-endangering pneumonia or subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. What’s more, immune responses can be triggered to literally any ingredient in the vaccine, whether there by design or not.
This tradeoff can be illustrated quite easily with a so-called normal distribution, the classic “bell curve.” Ideally, immune response for the bulk of the population will fall in the middle range where an individual vaccine is both (mostly) safe and (mostly) effective.
But the situation changes, the further you move from the center of the curve, and there will always be outliers at both ends of the curve.
Every Vaccine Is Unsafe and/or Ineffective for Some
There are those for whom the vaccine is not effective at all. In the case of measles that includes the children who do not “seroconvert,” even after two doses of vaccine, and those who develop full-blown measles reactions to the vaccine itself. We are told by public health authorities that can happen in “up to 5%” of vaccine recipients.
And then there are those for whom the immune response is excessive.
Such people may be lucky enough to survive one or two doses relatively intact—and, then again, they may not. The more doses received, the more likely it is that a vaccine will cause permanent immune damage.
This is just a simplification, of course. There are those for whom any particular vaccine may be both unsafe and ineffective.
And according to Kuby’s well-known textbook Immunology,
Thus, the effects of vaccination cannot be limited to the immune system. Every major system of the body exists in an intricate symbiosis with every other system. What affects one will affect them all.
How Often Does Injury Occur?
So we know injury—even devastating, sometimes fatal injury—happens. What we don’t know is how often it happens, or how much it is costing the children themselves, their parents, or our society as a whole.
We’re told it’s “one in a million” with literally nothing to back that up but the successful navigation of a highly contentious legal proceeding that most parents—even parents of the injured—don’t even know about, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
But just because an injury hasn’t been compensated doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
No one knows how often serious acute injury happens because few doctors even report them, making the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) practically useless. But a Harvard Pilgrim study intended to result in an automated system for reporting vaccine injuries discovered that 2.6% of vaccinations resulted reportable adverse events. Their system was reporting adverse events thirty times more often than they were being reported in real life.
Meningococcal Conjugate Vaccines Cause Much More Illness than They Prevent
Just to provide an example of how far off the “one in a million” thing is, I’ll use the meningococcal conjugate vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control recommends that all 11-year-old and 16-year-old children receive one of the two vaccines. Assuming a conservative four million children in both age cohorts, that’s eight million doses of vaccine per year. According to the manufacturer’s insert the vaccines have a 1+% serious adverse event rate in this age group. That means that 80,000 kids will potentially get sick enough from the vaccine to hit the local emergency room if taken as the CDC recommends.
Incidence of meningococcal disease has been dropping since the 1990s, when there was no vaccine. The first dose was recommended in 2005 and the second added in 2010. There were a total of 353 cases in 2017, only 107 of which were identified as definitely from strains covered by the vaccine. It’s not clear how many of those were in children old enough to have had the vaccine, but it’s not likely to have been more than half.
That means that if all 8,000,000 children had the vaccine, and the vaccine were 100% effective (which, as noted, is not a realistic assumption), we could potentially send 80,000 children to the emergency room to avoid approximately 50—100 cases of a very serious, but just barely contagious, infection.
A national mandate for the meningococcal conjugate vaccine would force 79,900 children per year to accept serious risks with absolutely no benefit.
Some of the Most Serious Injuries Are the Hardest to Prove
But those statistics only account for injuries that are obvious shortly after the vaccines is administered. Autoimmune diseases are some of the most serious vaccine injuries, yet they can take several years to develop, making the link between a specific vaccination event and the eventual development of disease difficult to track.
The CDC can’t (or won’t) tell us anything about who is most susceptible to the more serious forms of vaccine injury. Of course, if they really studied the people who were injured—the obvious thing to do if they were really concerned with public health—there is no question that they could easily identify at least some of the factors that make injury more likely.
Since the CDC hasn’t looked for the patterns behind the recent rise in serious adverse outcomes from vaccination, the people who experience injury have to find the patterns for themselves if they wish to avoid further injury and help others to avoid it as well. Most people who have experienced injury firsthand will tell you that it’s not enough to try and fix the injury after it happens. These injuries tend to be chronic and devastating. Prevention is crucial.
Conscientious Parents Cannot Deliberately Harm Their Children
Which brings us to religious exemptions to vaccination. As New York State legislators have noted, there are few religions that explicitly prohibit the practice of vaccination—perhaps because there was no such thing when most religions began.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t compelling religious arguments against it, especially when it comes to specific individuals.
My ex-husband died last year from complications of two very serious, very debilitating autoimmune diseases, ulcerative colitis and primary sclerosing cholangitis. I’ve had immune dysregulation since I was a child with constant ear infections, eczema, asthma, and respiratory allergies, then later autoimmune conditions starting with Raynaud’s syndrome that began in college, but I’ve been lucky. I enjoy relatively good health.
My children, on the other hand, started out with compromised guts due to antibiotics at birth. (The overuse of antibiotics, with their wholesale destruction of the microbiome, is a huge contributing factor to the general ill health children “enjoy” today that is not talked about nearly enough. I hope to help remedy that in the nearish future.) There is no question whatsoever, that they are at very high risk of long-term neuroimmune damage from vaccination, yet they would not qualify for medical exemptions. The CDC only recognizes near-death experiences as legitimate medical reasons to avoid any vaccine.
To that I respectfully say: Bullshit.
When the likelihood of harm from a vaccine outweighs the likelihood of benefit, that is a legitimate reason to say “no.” Period.
“Legitimate” Religious Reasons Not to Vaccinate
Not only do I have “legitimate” medical reasons not to vaccinate my children, I have “legitimate” religious reasons as well. While I do not belong to any organized religion, I firmly believe that God entrusted the care of my children to me—charging me to use every ounce of love and intelligence God gave me to protect them from harm and fulfill their potential.
When it comes down to it, no God worth believing in would approve of sending an innocent child—any innocent child—to face a firing squad. Yet, metaphorically speaking, that is just what New York legislators have told us we must do.
Respectfully again, I say, Fuck. That. Shit.
The Poorest and Sickest Families Will Bear the Biggest Burden
A huge chunk of parents will simply not comply, pulling their children from the school systems who need their funding, and requiring those schools to provide services for the children on IEPs that will no longer be able to attend school. The families who will be hit hardest by these new laws are those who simply cannot afford to have a parent stay home and home school, especially the single moms. I have been hearing from families all over the state since Thursday, many of whom have to make excruciating choices in the coming days, and my heart breaks for every single one.
NO ONE SHOULD EVER HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF THEIR CHILDREN AND MAINTAINING THE ABILITY TO FEED THEM.
Democrats’ Own Goal
So, congratulations, Democratic lawmakers in Maine, New York, and California! You have sold your constituents’ children to the highest bidder—Merck and pals—guaranteeing a rising rate of injury and making it crystal clear that you don’t give a fuck about public health.
But while you may think you have “won” this battle, your achievement will amount to what in soccer is known as an “own goal.” In other words, you’ve cooked your collective gooses.
And much as it kills me to say it, if you mandate flu vaccines and HPV vaccines as well, you will lock up the 2020 election for Donald Trump.
You think you got a lot phone calls, emails, and faxes over this bill? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Most parents on our side of this issue weren’t even aware this was happening. Many of them are worn out trying to take care of their medically fragile children; others aren’t on social media or aren’t “political.” They’re just starting to get letters from schools telling them their children have to be vaccinated on a very aggressive schedule (starting in two weeks) or be kicked out of school. California is gearing up to prosecute doctors who actually care about their patients’ health.
The shocking facts are kicking parents right between the eyes, and they are reacting like any wounded animal does when someone they trust turns on them: They are fucking furious.
You legislators —in your ivory capitol towers—have no idea the rapidly growing depth of opposition to medical fascism in this country. You have no idea how many people have gotten sick by following their doctors’ recommendations and are determined to take back their families’ health once and for all. You have no idea how many people really believe that when it’s their body, it’s their choice.
As a lifelong registered Democrat, I am not and never have been a “single-issue voter,” but you damned well better believe I take my kids’ health very seriously. I’m also extremely concerned about corporate influence over government (I have been literally saying that our #1 issue should be campaign finance reform for over a decade), and like nearly everyone I know, I am utterly disgusted with my party’s recent wholesale sellout to Merck.
You know how reactionary American politics are. When you indicate that you are perfectly okay with destroying children’s health in supposed pursuit of the unachievable goal of zero cases of measles, then you indicate to anyone who actually cares about industry capture of government and regulatory agencies that you cannot wield power responsibly—and the American public will oblige by making sure you no longer do.
Congratulations.
~ Zoey O’Toole
P.S. If you would like to help in the legal challenges to the New York law rescinded religious exemptions to vaccination initiated by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. please click here.
For more by Professor, click here.
I was hoping I could communicate directly with someone here regarding religious/medical exemptions in Illinois. My daughter is starting kindergarten this fall and I have to provide the forms for her. She suffered adverse reactions from about 8 vaccinations (all over body rash with extreme itching that lasted from 6 to 8 months). Thus we have not done any further vaccinating since her first year. I’m not sure our doctor will provide an official medical exemption for school but will probably sign a religious exemption form for me. Anyways, please if someone can help me out, i have a few questions and with all of your expertise I’d like to know your thoughts on some things. thank you!
I don’t know much about Illinois’ exemptions, but I believe that so far all you have to do is get it signed by a doctor. They don’t have any right to say no, because the exemption is on religious grounds not medical ones.
With their history – they have some cheek – Nuremberg ?
Now that is the whole of the EU threatened with mandatory vaccination for sure.
https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/germany-passes-compulsory-measles-vaccination-law
Germany passes compulsory measles vaccination law
18 July 2019 , by Abi Carter
It’s been under discussion for a while, but now it’s official: From March 2020 onwards, parents in Germany must have their children vaccinated against measles before they can enrol in daycare or school. Anyone who fails to comply faces a hefty fine.
Federal Cabinet makes measles vaccinations compulsory
On Wednesday, July 17, Germany’s Federal Cabinet approved legislation for compulsory measles vaccination. As of March 2020, parents and guardians will have to prove that their children have been vaccinated before they can attend daycare or school. Compulsory vaccinations also apply to childminders and staff at daycare centres or community facilities such as refugee shelters.
Unvaccinated children will not be accepted and, as it is illegal to homeschool your children in Germany, the new legislation essentially amounts to a countrywide vaccination obligation. Anyone who fails to have their children vaccinated could face fines of up to 2.500 euros.
Unvaccinated children must get jabs
Children and staff who will already be attending daycare or school by the time the law comes into effect next March have until July 31, 2021, to prove that they have been vaccinated.
This proof can be provided by a vaccination certificate, a yellow child examination booklet (Kinderuntersuchungsheft) or a medical certificate signed by your doctor, showing that your child has previously contracted measles.
Growing number of measles cases in Germany
Justifying the decision to introduce mandatory vaccinations, Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn said that the German government wants “to save as many children as possible from measles infections.” He hopes that the measure will bring Germany’s measles vaccination rate up to the 95 percent recommended by the World Health Organisation.
The issue of compulsory vaccinations has long been under discussion in Germany, hastened on by the increasing number of measles outbreaks worldwide. Last year, 543 cases were reported in Germany and there have already been more than 400 confirmed cases in the first half of this year alone. Last year, 350.000 measles cases were reported worldwide, twice as many as in 2017.
The law – which has so far received almost unanimous approval – now needs to be approved by the Bundestag before it can be put into action.
Thank you for your outrage. I was feeling queesy over the lack of outrage around me. I am a trained metalsmith. Aluminum and borax are known toxins in my field and I can not comprehend how they have become miraculously safe to inject into the bloodstream when I have read msds sheets telling me how to handle them as hazardous chemicals. I have one teen left with one year of high school in new york. He is fully ready to home school on his own decision after researching facts. He is my science computer geek and I am so proud of him. Beyond all that, why would anyone in their right mind allow their government power over their own body or their children’s? Have we learned nothing of politics?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/measles-as-metaphor/592756/?utm_medium=offsite&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=newstand-politics
Sorry, but what “the measles epidemic” “says about America” is that virologists didn’t understand what they were doing when they set out to eradicate a generally benign childhood illness because “it was there” and they thought it would be easy.
Fifty-five years later, we know that they were wrong about so much, but most especially about the long-term risks and benefits of artificially induced immunity.
So what would happen if there was no measles vaccine today?
We would go back to most kids getting measles, but how bad would it be? Here is the data.https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html
This says in the 1910 1920’s era there was about 6000 deaths a year from measles. And then says in the last decade before the vaccine invention in 1963 there was an average of 400 to 500 deaths a year.
Lets put that in context, there are 35,000 car crash deaths a year, about 200,000 deaths a year from prescription drugs, over 10,000 death from opioids and fentanyl deaths, and over 30,000 gun related deaths a year.
So why are they more afraid of measles than driving their car? Worst case scenario today would be 400 to 500 deaths.
The above CDC link also says, there were 48,000 hospitalized and 1000 people got encephalitis a year in the last decade pre-vaccine. That was back in the late 1950’s, would this still be true today with healthier people and better medical care? The government is also worried about the economy, as a working parent would have to stay home with the kid for a week if he got measles.
And what is the damage from the vaccine? We dont really know. We know there is 99% under reporting of side effects to VAERS, and that just track short term harm, like this.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22622699 Read last sentence of Results, says 2% get a serious adverse event, Serious means hospitalization or worse. 2% is a lot.
Or long term harm like cancers,https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/biologics-research-projects/investigating-viruses-cells-used-make-vaccines-and-evaluating-potential-threat-posed-transmission
And more here: https://www.arationallookatvaccines.com/appendix
Until we do a proper vaccinated versus un-vaccinated study we wont really know.
The above shows that if a few people decide not to get the vaccine it should not be that big a deal, we are not all going to die. Let’s relax a bit.
Well said.
I have 3 unvaccinated and very healthy children ages 28, 25 and 15. My 15 year old just finished her 1st yr of high school. She has a medical exemption meant to be for life. Now we need to possibly vaccinate??? Her so she can stay in school or pull her snd homeschool her. She’s thriving in and loves school. She would be absolutely devastated if she was kicked out. But having gotten to this stage of her life with an intact snd strong immune system, free of vaccine poisons, I can’t get my head around vaccinating her so she can stay in high school. But I may have to. Furthermore her titer test showed an immunity to Pertussis so she wouldn’t need the P in the DTap. Tetanus isn’t contagious-why mandate that? And only the elderly get Diptheria. Again, not something she needs for high school. She had chicken pox-natural immunity.
If I get to the point and have to vaccinate her no one will listen and pick and choose the vaccines based on her personal history. She’ll be just another number and after keeping my kids safe and healthy for 28 years, I will have failed my daughter and caved to Big Pharma. It makes me sick.
This is exactly the sort of message I’ve been fielding all week.
Did you say she had a medical exemption? Did you mean religious exemption? That’s what was repealed, not medical exemptions. But medical exemptions in New York have to be renewed. So I’m a little confused. But, yes, the high schoolers are those with the most to lose, I think. They are the ones who have spent time with their friends and are looking forward to graduating with their peers. I had a little boy who died as a newborn almost 17 years ago. I’m actually GLAD that I don’t have to tell him he can’t do his senior year of high school. How insane is that?
If you’re comfortable putting your children’s lives in the hands of known criminals, go for it.
Massive Fraud In Merck MMR (Measles) Vaccine Testing
“According to the whistleblowers’ court documents, Merck’s misconduct was far-ranging: It:
• “failed to disclose that its mumps vaccine was not as effective as Merck represented,
• (ii) used improper testing techniques,
• (iii) manipulated testing methodology,
• (iv) abandoned undesirable test results,
• (v) falsified test data,
• (vi) failed to adequately investigate and report the diminished efficacy of its mumps vaccine,
• (vii) falsely verified that each manufacturing lot of mumps vaccine would be as effective as identified in the labeling,
• (viii) falsely certified the accuracy of applications filed with the FDA,
• (ix) falsely certified compliance with the terms of the CDC purchase contract,
• (x) engaged in the fraud and concealment describe herein for the purpose of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for mumps vaccine,
• (xi) mislabeled, misbranded, and falsely certified its mumps vaccine, and
• (xii) engaged in the other acts described herein to conceal the diminished efficacy of the vaccine the government was purchasing.”
—LegalExaminer
https://www.legalexaminer.com/health/massive-fraud-in-merck-mmr-vaccine-testing/
I don’t think ANY of us are “comfortable” with it.
Merck = Murder Inc.
Merck’s “FDA-approved” Vioxx killed 60,000 Americans— the same number that died in Vietnam. Fraudulent studies got VIOXX approved—and people want to entrust their children’s lives to this criminal organization?
And even though Merck had to pay a $4 billion fine, they made many times that amount from this product. (Paying huge fines are just the cost of doing business.)
But don’t worry—no Merck executives’ careers were harmed in the prosecution of this company. These SERIAL KILLERS* still received their bonuses while people died.
Why doesn’t Merck just change their name to Murder Inc. already?
* Other serial killers have gotten the death penalty for killing far fewer people.
http://web.archive.org/web/20170125113949/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vaccines-are-totally-safe-say-the-people-who-brought_us_58877dbce4b08f5134b624b3
https://www.foxnews.com/story/merck-agrees-to-4-85-billion-settlement-over-pain-medication-vioxx
Totally agree.As a petson with a hyper immunecsystem and assessed with 187 alkergies it would kill me.Move pit.Take yourctaxes wihb you and yourcspending money and your orifessional expertise. Sorey my eyesightbdamaged by wkfi
Please stop laying the blame on one political party because I don’t see any Republicans fighting for vaccine awareness. Remember who the man was that held that widely reported hearing on vaccines: Senator Lamar Alexander (R), Chairman of the HELP committee, presided over the recent Vaccine Save Lives hearing. Sen. Alexander has accepted $714,112 from the “pharmaceutical/health products” sector, which includes many vaccine manufacturers, according to OpenSecrets.org. Also, go to Open Secrets and see who is on the pharma teat-not just Democratic’s. Besides, where are the Republicans standing up to support Vaccine Awareness? Yea, Dems are putting these bills forward because they are sucking on the teat of pharma but where are the Republicans publicly in any bully pulpit saying- NO, we won’t stand for this, we support Vaccine Awareness. We support Informed Consent. We demand and support a unvaccinated to vaccinated health comparison study. We support the right to choose! Mandatory vaccination is a violation of the Nuremberg Code. Where are the Republicans-NO where to be seen or heard. Until they stand up and chose a side, publicly speak out for open debate and publicly denounce vaccine mandates. Until they publicly denounce censoring of vaccine awareness facts on social media-they are just as culpable.
Dude, I’ve been the one reminding people that they cannot trust Republicans to protect their children anymore than Democrats. Ed Day of Rockland County is a Republican, and he was the one who declared an emergency in Rockland County to justify BANNING non-vaccinated children from public spaces. Michael Bloomberg is a Republican, and he convinced the New York City Department of Health to require flu vaccines for preschool entrance on his way out of the office of mayor. Rick Perry who single-handedly ordered an HPV vaccine mandate in Texas is also a Republican. Donald Trump is a Republican and he put Alex Azar, CEO of Eli Lilly, the MAKER OF THIMEROSAL and source of the infamous Eli Lilly rider preventing lawsuits over vaccine injuries, in charge of HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES!
That’s one of the reasons I’m so furious with the Democrats who did this. Just about the last thing in the world *I* want is four more years of Donald Trump.
Just about the last thing in the world *I* want is four more years of Donald Trump.
I hear you but there has been this vein of thought on vaccine awareness boards that this is a agenda of the Democratic’s. Del Bigtree went off on a recent show of his The Highwire, on how we need to take another look at trump because his administration is not funding aborted fetal cells. To me, this is the sort of stuff that is dangerous. One of the things I read often in 2016 was anti-vaxvers/vaccine awareness/vaccine safety people were going to vote for trump because he made some comments about vaccine causing autism. Many declared themselves 1 issue voters and that issue was vaccines. There are a whole lot of those folks on Age of Autism. Throwing down against Dems can lead people back to thinking they way they did in 2016. It concerns me because like you, the last thing in the world *I* want is four more years of Donald Trump.
I have personally felt the same despair watching how it all went down in 2016. I think this community had more influence than anyone predicted because we are tightly networked in a way that most people are not. Things went viral in our community VERY quickly in those last weeks before the election. It felt oddly orchestrated and illogical to me at the time, so I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear that Russian bots had been targeting the American election. I suspect that our fabulous networking was exploited in a way that we could not anticipate. I suspect the recent events in Maine, New York, and California, are going to have far-reaching effects that these legislators could not even begin to suspect, and that depresses the hell out of me.
Ditto. Nearly everyone I know, republican and democrat alike, is completely ignorant of the dangers of vaccines. This issue goes way beyond political lines.
That’s right..it DOES.
Trump is just as bad as the Democrats. Something got to him.
What we need to do is run for office locally, for state legistlatures, for congress, for senate, and beat all the schmucks.
Agreed.
Thanks for all the information in this article; the ferocity of your anger is certainly justified. After years of party politics damaging our children and us via Republican air pollution and toxic chemicals, it’s shocking to see Democrats promoting potentially lethal injections in the name of health. Killing us with kindness….
To support the behemoth vaccine machine, predictably yesterday The New York Times cherry-picked its way through “Vaccine Injury Claims Are Few and Far Between.” The female co-authors’ optimism is worthy of a Monty Python parody – like three men singing “The Sunny Side of Life” while hanging nailed to Christian crosses.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/health/vaccine-injury-claims.html
Our sound-bite-programmed society discourages people from taking deep dives into honest medical research, or investigative reporting critical of government, or lab test results of children’s ravaged immune systems. Censorship is the moldy cherry on top, ensuring that records of society’s willful blindness will be muddled if any fact-first historians are still around generations from now to ascertain how we got health care so wrong.
Thanks as always for the work you do to help our kids.
I wonder if you could change images so that facebook shares have a better graphic? (For whatever that’s worth, what with their shadow-banning all of this kind of stuff.)
I’d be happy to. Any suggestions?
I reposted it and the image now shows “Sellout” so looks fine. Thanks.