No matter who you are or where you live, it is difficult to be part of a minority. It takes courage to follow your conscience. It takes courage to stand up and speak out for what you know is right when you are being targeted and sanctioned by those who claim it is their right to bully and shun you for who you are or what you believe.
This is especially true for those speaking out and standing up for the right to make informed, voluntary choices about using vaccines, a pharmaceutical product that carries a risk of harm and failure that can be greater for some than others.
Informed Consent to Medical Risk-Taking: A Human Right
The freedom to make voluntary decisions about what you are willing to risk your life or the life of your child for is a human and civil right.
It is a human right to exercise voluntary, informed consent to medical risk taking, including taking risks with pharmaceutical products like vaccines. In America, parents of minor children have the legal right and responsibility to make medical risk decisions for their children.
Freedom of Thought, Speech, and Belief: A Civil Right
Under the US Constitution, Americans are guaranteed the civil right to exercise freedom of thought, speech, and belief. The right to dissent and petition the government for redress of grievances and hold beliefs that may differ from ones held by the majority is protected because our nation’s founders understood that minorities must be protected from oppression by the majority.
Targeted, Bullied, Shunned, and Sanctioned
In America today, some citizens are being discriminated against and persecuted for following their conscience and making vaccine choices that do not conform with federal health policy.
They are being targeted, bullied, shunned, and sanctioned. Doctors and politically powerful special interest groups associated with private drug companies and medical trade associations have joined with government health officials and lobbying state legislators to eliminate or severely restrict the legal right to exercise informed consent to vaccine risk taking.
Laws Passed Restricting Non-Medical Exemptions
In the past three years, laws have been passed in the states of Washington, California, and Oregon requiring parents filing non-medical exemptions to either undergo state mandated vaccine “education” or beg for signatures from pediatricians already refusing to provide medical care to children who do not get all 69 doses of 16 federally recommended vaccines right on schedule.
Colorado Preserves Personal Belief Exemption
But this year in Colorado, concerned citizens turned out in force to publicly object to similar attempts by professional lobbyists to restrict vaccine informed consent rights. On May 2, 2014, the Colorado legislature became the first to vote to preserve the personal belief exemption to vaccination without modification.
NVIC’s Pro-Vaccine Choice Message in Times Square
The same day that legislators in Colorado voted to affirm freedom of conscience in America, a pro-education, pro-vaccine choice message sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center was up on the CBS Jumbotron in Times Square celebrating freedom of speech.
The message is simple: “Vaccinations? Know the risks and failures: Your Health. Your Family. Your Choice.” That 24-hour message in the heart of Broadway on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City is going to stay there through mid-July.
NVIC Publishes Vaccine Law Reform Guide
Today, the National Vaccine Information Center is launching a national campaign to secure vaccine safety and informed consent protections in state vaccine policies and laws.
We have published a fully referenced guide for legislators and the public called Reforming Vaccine Policy and Law and you can view or download it for free online on NVIC.org. I wrote this guide and it is anchored with more than 240 references and explains in detail why laws should be passed in every state to maximize vaccine safety.
Additionally, it is for those choosing to use vaccines while protecting the legal right to get an education, hold a job, receive health insurance and medical care, enter a hospital or nursing home, and function in society without being forced to get every government recommended vaccine. These legal rights are important to preserve because, first, we are not all the same. We do not all respond the same way to drugs or vaccines just like we do not all respond the same way to infectious diseases.
High Vaccination Rates and Vaccine Failures
Public health officials admit that for more than 30 years, the US has had a 95 percent plus vaccination rate among children entering kindergarten for at least seven vaccines, including pertussis. Now, public health officials admit that children and adults can be fully vaccinated and still get infected with and transmit B. pertussis whooping cough to others without even knowing it. There have been recent reported outbreaks of mumps and measles among fully vaccinated children and adults and the influenza vaccine has a less than 60 percent rate of effectiveness in most years.
Pharma Shielded from Civil Liability
At the same time, the federal government has paid out nearly $3 billion to victims of vaccine injury since Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. That law banned most vaccine injury lawsuits against drug companies selling vaccines and doctors giving them and, in 2011, the US Supreme Court went one step further and gave vaccine manufacturers a complete product liability shield – even when vaccines could have been made safer!
This sealed a cruel fate for the two out of three vaccine victims denied compensation under the federal vaccine injury compensation program. Now drug companies can fast track and market new vaccines that may be more reactive and less effective than they should be because there is no legal accountability for anyone who develops, regulates, markets, gives, and promotes vaccine use.
Individual Susceptibility = Unequal Vaccine Risk Burden
During the past three decades, the Institute of Medicine has published a series of reports pointing out the large gaps in vaccine safety science confirming that some people are genetically, biologically, and environmentally more susceptible to suffering brain inflammation and other types of serious vaccine reactions but doctors often do not know who will be injured or die from vaccination. It has become very clear that one-size-fits-all vaccine policies place a disproportionate and unequal risk burden on those more vulnerable to vaccine harm.
Have you or your child already discovered you are a member of that vulnerable minority who is at increased risk for vaccine injury or do you have a relative or friend who is? If so, then you understand why a law that compels everyone to use a pharmaceutical product which carries an unpredictable and greater risk of injury or death for a minority of vulnerable individuals – most of whom do not even know who they are – is not humane. There is nothing moral or just about a government policy that facilitates a de facto selection of certain individuals for sacrifice in the name of the public health.
Every Life Is Important
Every life is important and it is time for all Americans to stand up, speak out and take action to defend our human and civil rights when it comes to vaccine risk taking. Join with NVIC and help us secure vaccine safety informing, reporting and informed consent provisions in all vaccine policies and laws to protect both those who choose to use every government recommended vaccine and those who don’t.
Please read the guide to Reforming Vaccine Policy and Law. Check out the referenced version and share it with your family, friends, community leaders and state legislators. Sign up to become a user of the free online NVIC Advocacy Portal that will inform you about vaccine legislation moving in your state.
What you choose to do, what we all choose to do right now will determine what kind of America we leave to our children and grandchildren. Because if the state can tag, track down, and force individuals against their will to be injected with biological products of known and unknown toxicity today, there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the state can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow. It’s your health. Your family. Your choice.
Protect Your Right to Informed Consent and Defend Vaccine Exemptions
With all the uncertainty surrounding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, it’s critical to protect your right to make independent health choices and exercise voluntary informed consent to vaccination. It is urgent that everyone in America stand up and fight to protect and expand vaccine informed consent protections in state public health and employment laws. The best way to do this is to get personally involved with your state legislators and educating the leaders in your community.
THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.
National vaccine policy recommendations are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level. It is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights can have the greatest impact. It is critical for EVERYONE to get involved now in standing up for the legal right to make voluntary vaccine choices in America because those choices are being threatened by lobbyists representing drug companies, medical trade associations and public health officials, who are trying to persuade legislators to strip all vaccine exemptions from public health laws.
Signing up for NVIC’s free Advocacy Portal at www.NVICAdvocacy.org gives you immediate, easy access to your own state legislators on your Smart Phone or computer so you can make your voice heard. You will be kept up-to-date on the latest state bills threatening your vaccine choice rights and get practical, useful information to help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your own community. Also, when national vaccine issues come up, you will have the up-to-date information and call to action items you need at your fingertips.
Share Your Story with the Media and People You Know
If you or a family member has suffered a serious vaccine reaction, injury or death, please talk about it. If we don’t share information and experiences with each other, everybody feels alone and afraid to speak up. Write a letter to the editor if you have a different perspective on a vaccine story that appears in your local newspaper. Make a call in to a radio talk show that is only presenting one side of the vaccine story.
I must be frank with you; you have to be brave because you might be strongly criticized for daring to talk about the “other side” of the vaccine story. Be prepared for it and have the courage to not back down. Only by sharing our perspective and what we know to be true about vaccination will the public conversation about vaccination open up so people are not afraid to talk about it.
We cannot allow the drug companies and medical trade associations funded by drug companies or public health officials promoting forced use of a growing list of vaccines to dominate the conversation about vaccination. The vaccine injured cannot be swept under the carpet and treated like nothing more than “statistically acceptable collateral damage” of national one-size-fits-all mandatory vaccination policies that put way too many people at risk for injury and death. We shouldn’t be treating people like guinea pigs instead of human beings.
Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More
I encourage you to visit the website of the non-profit charity, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), at www.NVIC.org:
NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims: View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
If You Vaccinate, Ask 8 Questions: Learn how to recognize vaccine reaction symptoms and prevent vaccine injuries.
Vaccine Freedom Wall: View or post descriptions of harassment and sanctions by doctors, employers, school and health officials for making independent vaccine choices.
Connect with Your Doctor or Find a New One That Will Listen and Care
If your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don’t want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to stop the change in attitude of many parents about vaccinations after they become truly educated about health and vaccination.
However, there is hope.
At least 15 percent of young doctors recently polled admit that they’re starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents. It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.
So take the time to locate a doctor, who treats you with compassion and respect and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child.
Barbara Loe Fisher is president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a non-profit charity she co-founded with parents of DPT vaccine injured children in 1982. For the past three decades, she has led a national, grassroots movement and public information campaign to institute vaccine safety reforms and informed consent protections in the public health system. She has researched, analyzed and publicly articulated the major issues involving the science, policy, law, ethics and politics of vaccination to become one of the world’s leading non-medical, consumer advocacy experts on the subject.
Republished with permission from Mercola.com, read the original.
*Image of a baby being vaccinated via Shutterstock
