VACCINATION MYTH #9:
“Vaccinations are legally mandated and unavoidable…”
…or are they?
Vaccine laws vary from state to state. While every state legally requires vaccines, every state also has one or more legal exemptions from vaccines. School and health officials will seldom volunteer exemption information, and are often mistaken when they do, so it is important to check the laws in your state to find out exactly what the requirements are. Each state offers one or more of the following three kinds of exemptions:
1) Medical Exemption: All 50 states in the U.S. allow for a medical exemption. However, few pediatricians check for indications of increased risk before administering vaccines, so it is advisable for parents to research this matter for themselves if they have reason to believe that their child may be predisposed to vaccine reactions. Epilepsy, severe allergies, and a previous adverse reaction in a child or sibling are but a few of the many conditions in child or family history which may increase the chances of an adverse reaction, and thus may qualify for a medical exemption from one or more required vaccines. In general, though, medical exemptions are difficult to get, may be available only to those who have already had a serious vaccine reaction or who have a family history of serious vaccine reactions, may be granted only for the specific vaccine believed to have caused a previous reaction, and may be valid only as long as the condition giving rise to the exemption persists (i.e., may be temporary).
2) Religious Exemption: 48 states allow for a religious exemption (all but MS and WV). A state’s laws may state that membership in an established religious organization is required. However, this requirement has been held unconstitutional in New York federal courts; personal religious beliefs are sufficient for a religious exemption, regardless of which religious organization you belong to, or whether or not you belong to an organized religion at all.(66,67,68,69) In one case, the plaintiffs were awarded money damages when the court found that the state had violated their civil rights by denying them a religious exemption.
3) Philosophical or Personal Exemption: Approximately 17 states allow parents to refuse vaccination for personal or philosophical reasons.
It is worth noting that exempted children may be banned from attending schools during local outbreaks. But all schools, public or private, must comply with state vaccination laws and honor legal exemptions.
The best source for a copy of your state’s vaccination laws is state health officials. A phone call to the state Department of Epidemiology or Immunization (the specific name varies from state to state) may be all that it takes to get a copy mailed to you. Or, for a small fee, the NVIC and New Atlantean Press will sell you a copy of your state’s immunization laws (see contact information at the end of this article). Statutes can be searched on the internet (for example, see www.findlaw.com), but these sources many not always reflect very recent changes in the law, if there have been any. Law libraries and lawyers are, of course, a good source as well.
VACCINATION TRUTH #9:
“Legal exemptions from vaccinations are available for many—but not all—U.S. citizens.”
VACCINATION MYTH #10:
“Public health officials always place the public’s health above all other concerns…”
…or do they?
Vaccination history is riddled with documented instances of deceit portraying vaccines as mighty disease conquerors, when in fact vaccines have had little or no discernable impact on—or have even delayed or reversed—pre-existing disease declines. The United Kingdom’s Department of Health admitted that vaccination status determined the diagnosis of subsequent diseases: Those found in vaccinated patients received alternate diagnoses; hospital records and death certificates were falsified. Today, many doctors still refuse to diagnose diseases in vaccinated children, and so the “Myth” about vaccine success persists.
Conflicts of interest are the norm in the vaccine industry. Members and Chairs of the FDA and CDC vaccine advisory committees own stock in drug companies that make vaccines; individuals on both advisory committees own patents for vaccines under consideration or affected by the decisions these committees make. The CDC grants conflict-of-interest waivers to every member of their advisory committee a year at a time, allowing full participation in the discussions leading up to a vote by every member whether or not they have a financial stake in the decision.(70)
Concerns over vaccine adverse effects and conflicts of interest led the American Society of Physicians and Surgeons to issue a Resolution to Congress calling for a “moratorium on vaccine mandates and for physicians to insist upon truly informed consent for the use of vaccines.” Approved by unanimous vote at the AAPS October 2000 annual meeting, the resolution made references to the “increasing numbers of mandatory childhood vaccines, to which children are…subjected without …information about potential adverse side effects”; the fact that “safety testing of many vaccines is limited and the data are unavailable for independent scrutiny, so that mass vaccination is equivalent to human experimentation and subject to the Nuremberg Code, which requires voluntary informed consent”; and the fact that “the process of approving and ‘recommending’ vaccines is tainted with conflicts of interest.”(71)
In an October 1999 statement to Congress, Bart Classen, M.D., M.B.A., founder and CEO of Classen Immunotherapies and developer of vaccine technologies, stated, “It is clear…that the government’s immunization policies… are driven by politics and not by science. I can give numerous examples where employees of the US Public Health Service …appear to be furthering their careers by acting as propaganda officers to support political agendas. In one case…employees of a foreign government, who were funded and working closely with the US Public Health Service, submitted false data to a major medical journal. The true data indicated the vaccine was dangerous however the false data that was submitted indicated there was no risk. An employee of the NIH who manages large vaccine grants jointly published a misleading letter about the subject with one of these foreign civil servants. As you are aware it is illegal to falsify data from research funded by the US government.” Dr. Classen recommended that Congress hire a special prosecutor “to determine if public health officials are following the laws enacted to ensure vaccines are safe” and to determine “if public health officials along with manufacturers are misleading the public about the safety of these products.”(72)
In France, 15,000 French citizens have sued their government over adverse Hepatitis B vaccine reactions.(73) Former public health officials there are serving prison sentences following findings that they did not follow the law to ensure the safety of the vaccine, and school-age Hep B vaccination has been discontinued. U.S. military personnel may be even worse off: “…four letters from the FDA/Public Health Service…clearly reveal that the anthrax vaccine was approved for marketing without the manufacturer performing a single controlled clinical trial.”(74) Clinical trials are, of course, absolutely critical to determining the safety and effectiveness of any pharmaceutical product. Military personnel have been, and continue to be, unwitting subjects in an unethical experiment.
VACCINATION TRUTH #10:
“Many of the public health officials who determine vaccine policy profit substantially from their policy decisions.”
SOME CLOSING REMARKS
In the December 1994 Medical Post, Canadian author of the best-seller Medical Mafia, Guylaine Lanctot, M.D., stated, “The medical authorities keep lying. Vaccination has been a disaster on the immune system. It actually causes a lot of illnesses. We are actually changing our genetic code through vaccination…100 years from now we will know that the biggest crime against humanity was vaccines.” After critically analyzing literally ten’s of thousands of pages of the vaccine medical literature, Dr. Viera Scheibner concluded that “there is no evidence whatsoever of the ability of vaccines to prevent any diseases. To the contrary, there is a great wealth of evidence that they cause serious side effects.”(75) Dr. Classen has stated, “My data proves that the studies used to support immunization are so flawed that it is impossible to say if immunization provides a net benefit to anyone or to society in general. This question can only be determined by proper studies which have never been performed. The flaw of previous studies is that there was no long-term follow up and chronic toxicity was not looked at. The American Society of Microbiology has promoted my research…and thus acknowledges the need for proper studies.” To some these may seem like radical positions, but they are not unfounded. The continued denial and suppression of the evidence against vaccines only perpetuates the “Myths” of their “success” and, more importantly, their negative consequences on our children and society. Aggressive and comprehensive scientific investigation into adverse vaccine events is clearly warranted, yet immunization programs continue to expand in the absence of such research. Manufacturer profits are enormous, while accountability for the negative effects is conspicuously absent. This is especially sad given the readily available safe and effective alternatives.
The positions asserted above are not coming from a handful of fringe lunatics; entire professional organizations are speaking out. Criticisms of vaccines are being sounded by an increasing number of credible and reputable scientists, researchers, investigators, and self-educated parents from around the world. Instead, it is public health officials and die-hard vaccine advocates (many of whom have a financial stake in the outcome of the debate) who are beginning to lose credibility by refusing to acknowledge the growing body of evidence and to address the very real, serious, documented problems.
Meanwhile, the race is on. There are over 200 new vaccines being developed for everything from birth control to cocaine addition. Some 100 of these are already in clinical trials. Researchers are working on vaccine delivery through nasal sprays, mosquitoes (yes, mosquitoes), and the fruits of “transgenic” plants in which vaccine viruses are grown. With every adult and child on the planet a potential recipient of vaccines administered periodically throughout their lives, and every healthcare system and government a potential buyer, it is little wonder that countless millions of dollars are spent nurturing the growing multi-billion dollar vaccine industry. Without public outcry, we will see more and more new vaccines required of us all. And while profits are readily calculable, the real human costs are ignored or suppressed.
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