Problems with the Current Vaccination Policy
The United States’ policies mandating vaccination against infectious diseases began in response to the serious threat of illness and death posed by the smallpox virus. Smallpox was eradicated during the 20th century and mandatory vaccination against this
particular threat has since been eliminated (20) as a requirement for entrance by children in the public school environment.
Public policy that mandated vaccination against infectious diseases was initiated at a time when the threat of death from smallpox was a genuine concern, especially for persons living in conditions of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and poverty (6). Review of the results of early court cases challenging the right of local jurisdictions and state governments compelling citizens to vaccinate against smallpox reveals that judges deciding those cases took into account the seriousness of the illness not only in terms of immediate harm to the individual, but with regard to the threat to the community and the capability of the public health authorities to respond to the threat (6, 10, 11). Notably, the earliest court case regarding compulsory vaccination was decided in favor of the school system and the local government, but in his remarks, the judge in that case specifically mentioned that his decision was based on the fact that at that time (1894) attendance in public school was a “privilege” and not a right. This distinction would seem to be of import to current advocates facing increasingly zealous attacks from mainstream media and attempts to alter legislation to eliminate currently available exemptions for parents who object to the one-size-fits-all vaccination schedule.
Several of the vaccines that are currently required before a child is allowed to attend school or even daycare are known to cause serious side effects and in some cases, death, for a segment of the population receiving them (21, 22, 23, 24). Proponents for vaccine safety argue that mandatory vaccination of all infants and children with vaccines that have not been proven to be effective at eradicating serious illness or death, and which have resulted in serious illness or death for a percentage of children makes no sense. In short, the cost (in human life and suffering) is too high.
Proponents of vaccine safety often advocate for individuality in the vaccine schedule, asserting that decisions about what vaccines a child should receive (or not) should be based on careful consideration of the risks of that child contracting a particular illness, the possible harm to that child as a result of having contracted the illness, and the possible threat to the community if others should become infected. The argument has been made that since a large percentage of the population of the United States does not object to vaccination and willingly complies with the recommendations of the CDC, even if the number of parents filing exemptions and “opting out” of vaccinations were to increase considerably, there would be little chance of outbreaks of disease in school settings, as the vast majority of children would continue to be fully vaccinated. If the vaccines do indeed work, children who are fully vaccinated should not be at risk of contracting illnesses for which they have received vaccinations. As one popular mantra among advocates for more thoughtful vaccination states, “Saying my unvaccinated child is a risk to your vaccinated child is like saying my child must take birth control pills so your child doesn’t get pregnant.” If you’re protected, you’re protected.
Attitudes about parents who are concerned about the safety and necessity of so many vaccinations are often disparaging and downright nasty. This has been the case since the beginning of the vaccine controversy, dating back to the 1890s when those who refused vaccination were accused of being morally corrupt and lacking in a sense of responsibility for the health and welfare of the public at large (6). At present, mainstream media outlets contribute to the divisiveness among parents, with figures as prominent as Dr. Nancy Snyderman declaring on The Today Show that the majority of parents who claim religious exemptions are lying about their beliefs and putting the general public at risk (25). Dr. Snyderman stated on national television that parents who refused vaccination were responsible for the recent deaths of eight babies in California from pertussis. During her rant, Dr. Snyderman stated that parents who choose not to vaccinate their children according to the CDC’s recommended schedule are guilty of neglect and should have their children removed from their custody. Dr. Snyderman went so far as to suggest that such parents should be held liable and criminal charges should be filed against them, holding them responsible for the children that died. With a daily viewership numbering in the millions, Dr. Snyderman’s opinion carries a lot of weight and rhetoric such as hers is contributing to the chasm between concerned parents and their neighbors, school systems, and personal physicians. What the majority of the public does not know is that more than two-thirds of the pertussis infections in California this year have occurred in individuals who were fully vaccinated and in the majority of cases the illness occurred as a result of vaccine failure (25).
Dr. Snyderman’s rhetoric is insignificant when compared to the activities of Dr. Paul Offit. Dr. Offit is without debate the single-most vocal pro-vaccine voice in the United States. He is the chair of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and was a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee that reviewed the evidence regarding the association between vaccines and autism. The IOM’s 2004 report of findings announced there was insufficient evidence at this time to determine a causal association between vaccines and autism. This review was based on the results of 14 studies that evaluated one vaccine (MMR) and one vaccine ingredient (thimerosal). The committee further concluded that future research funding for autism should go to the areas that show the most promise, in effect declaring that further research regarding vaccines and autism should not be pursued.
Advocates for vaccine safety argue that there are significant conflicts of interest that prevented the IOM from delivering a balanced report, chief among them being Paul Offit’s membership on the committee. Dr. Offit is not only the Chief of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, he is the recipient of an annual $1.5 million dollar research award from Merck pharmaceuticals, which is a major manufacturer and distributor of vaccines. Dr. Offit is also heavily involved in vaccine research on a personal level, having developed a vaccine against rotavirus (Rotateq). During the time Dr. Offit was serving on the IOM committee to review vaccine safety, he was the patent-holder for Rotateq vaccine, a patent that was since sold, for a reported sum of $182 million.
When evaluating the risks of vaccination versus the benefits to society, there are a number of issues that must be considered. As this review of the history of infectious disease in the United States shows, the early development of vaccine policy was in response to outbreaks of smallpox, a highly contagious disease that carried a high rate of mortality. Even so, when the first court cases objecting to mandatory vaccination for school attendance were decided in favor of the state and local governments, the ruling judge tempered his decision, stating that mandatory vaccination was not a violation of Constitutional rights because at the time, school attendance was not considered a right, but was a privilege.
Given that school attendance is now not only a right, but is compulsory, the factors mitigating The Court’s ruling in those cases that set precedence have changed. It is the opinion of this writer that just as times have changed, so must the law.
Law Professor: Mothers of Unvaccinated Children Are Criminals
“When it comes to vaccines, rich parents get away with child neglect,” the headline in The Washington Post proclaimed on May 10, 2017. The OpEd was written by Linda C. Fentiman, a Pace University law professor promoting criminal prosecution of mothers whose children are not vaccinated. She alleged that state legislatures are accommodating “wealthy” mothers by allowing exemptions in vaccine laws, while poor pregnant women have “faced charges of criminal child abuse” and imprisonment for “failing to deliver adequate nutrition or delivering drugs via their breast milk.” She suggested that ALL mothers who don’t vaccinate their children are criminals and should be punished — “regardless of socioeconomic status” — because vaccination is a “collective obligation” and “the science on the efficacy and safety of vaccines is clear.”
Echoing Dr. Fentiman was Dr. Nancy Snyderman declaring on The Today Show that the majority of parents who claim religious exemptions are lying about their beliefs and putting the general public at risk (25). Dr. Snyderman stated on national television that parents who refused vaccination were responsible for the recent deaths of eight babies in California from pertussis. During her rant, Dr. Snyderman stated that parents who choose not to vaccinate their children according to the CDC’s recommended schedule are guilty of neglect and should have their children removed from their custody. Dr. Snyderman went so far as to suggest that such parents should be held liable and criminal charges should be filed against them, holding them responsible for the children that died. With a daily viewership numbering in the millions, Dr. Snyderman’s opinion carries a lot of weight and rhetoric such as hers is contributing to the chasm between concerned parents and their neighbors, school systems, and personal physicians. What the majority of the public does not know is that more than two-thirds of the pertussis infections in California this year have occurred in individuals who were fully vaccinated and in the majority of cases the illness occurred as a result of vaccine failure (25).
Dr. Snyderman’s rhetoric is insignificant when compared to the activities of Dr. Paul Offit. Dr. Offit is without debate the single-most vocal pro-vaccine voice in the United States. He is the chair of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and was a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee that reviewed the evidence regarding the association between vaccines and autism. The IOM’s 2004 report of findings announced there was insufficient evidence at this time to determine a causal association between vaccines and autism. This review was based on the results of 14 studies that evaluated one vaccine (MMR) and one vaccine ingredient (thimerosal). The committee further concluded that future research funding for autism should go to the areas that show the most promise, in effect declaring that further research regarding vaccines and autism should not be pursued.
Advocates for vaccine safety argue that there are significant conflicts of interest that prevented the IOM from delivering a balanced report, chief among them being Paul Offit’s membership on the committee. Dr. Offit is not only the Chief of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, he is the recipient of an annual $1.5 million dollar research award from Merck pharmaceuticals, which is a major manufacturer and distributor of vaccines. Dr. Offit is also heavily involved in vaccine research on a personal level, having developed a vaccine against rotavirus (Rotateq). During the time Dr. Offit was serving on the IOM committee to review vaccine safety, he was the patent-holder for Rotateq vaccine, a patent that was since sold, for a reported sum of $182 million.
When evaluating the risks of vaccination versus the benefits to society, there are a number of issues that must be considered. As this review of the history of infectious disease in the United States shows, the early development of vaccine policy was in response to outbreaks of smallpox, a highly contagious disease that carried a high rate of mortality. Even so, when the first court cases objecting to mandatory vaccination for school attendance were decided in favor of the state and local governments, the ruling judge tempered his decision, stating that mandatory vaccination was not a violation of Constitutional rights because at the time, school attendance was not considered a right, but was a privilege.
Given that school attendance is now not only a right, but is compulsory, the factors mitigating The Court’s ruling in those cases that set precedence have changed. It is the opinion of this writer that just as times have changed, so must the law.
Boston Herald: Hang People Talking Bad About Vaccines
That “punish the mothers” OpEd was preceded by a May 8 Boston Herald editorial revealing just how far the persecution of people advocating for vaccine safety and informed consent has gone. The Boston Herald editorial staff called for the execution of individuals who exercise free speech about vaccine risks and failures.
As in, it should be “a hanging offense” to inform parents (especially, to inform parents in “immigrant communities”) that vaccines carry an unpredictable risk of injury or death and often fail to work as advertised.
Nobody should be surprised. Prejudice and discrimination against groups of people, whether because of the color of their skin, their gender, how they dress, what they eat, where they live, their religious beliefs, their cultural values and political opinions — or simply because they choose to stay healthy in a different way — is always a slippery slope once it is allowed to gain a foothold in society.
MD, Professor, Vaccine Developer Calls for ‘Funeral’ of Vaccine Safety and Choice Advocacy
In 2011, Dr. Gregory Poland, a University of Minnesota professor of medicine and vaccine developer at Mayo Clinic, profiled parents concerned about vaccine risks in the New England Journal of Medicine.
He said, “Antivaccinationists tend toward complete distrust of government and manufacturers, conspiratorial thinking, denialism, low cognitive complexity in thinking patterns, reasoning flaws and a habit of substituting anecdotes for data.” Then he used a death image to invoke a thinly veiled threat. He asked, “What can we do to hasten the funeral of antivaccination campaigns?”
CDC on Mothers: Who Are They and Where Do They Live?
Trash talk has become the weapon of choice for a select group of professors and doctors using academic journals and mainstream media to humiliate and bully people who disagree with them about the science, policy, law and ethics of vaccination.
In the 21st century, it has been going on in earnest since about 2004 when Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials kicked off the Vaccine Culture War by asking this question in the Journal of Pediatrics: “Children Who Have Received No Vaccines: Who Are They and Where Do They Live?” The CDC study authors played with the words “undervaccinated” and “unvaccinated” so mothers could be profiled by class and race. They said:
“Undervaccinated children tend to be black, to have a younger mother who was not married and did not have a college degree, to live in a household near the poverty level, and to live in a central city.
Unvaccinated children tended to be white, to have a mother who was married and had a college degree, to live in a household with an annual income exceeding $75,000 and to have parents who expressed concerns regarding the safety of vaccines and indicated that medical doctors have little influence over vaccination decisions for their children.”
There it was, the uncomfortable truth that it is college educated, financially stable middle class mothers independently evaluating the benefits and risks of vaccination rather than blindly trusting and relying on someone else to do their thinking for them.
Although the CDC’s 2004 profiling study drew lines between mothers based on race and socio-economic class, there was no discussion of the distinct possibility that those lines would disappear if ALL mothers were financially stable, able to access full information about vaccination and were truly free to make voluntary vaccine decisions without being punished for the decision they make.
Your skin doesn’t have to be a certain color and you don’t have to belong to a certain socioeconomic class — or have a college degree — to figure out that you are not being told the whole truth about risks that doctors insist your child must take. All you have to do is vaccinate your healthy child and witness that child have symptoms of severe vaccine reactions and either die or become a totally different child physically, mentally and emotionally.
Delegitimizing Vaccine Exemptions and Those Who Take or Give Them
For more than a decade, professors at Johns Hopkins and Emory universities have published articles profiling parents making independent vaccine choices for their children for the purpose of creating a public narrative that delegitimizes vaccine exemptions and the human right to exercise freedom of thought, conscience, religious belief and informed consent to vaccine risk taking.
In 2012 these esteemed professors also put the squeeze on pediatricians to discourage them from exercising professional judgment and conscience when giving children medical vaccine exemptions, directing them to strictly conform to narrow vaccine contraindications approved by the CDC, which exclude 99.99 percent of children from qualifying for a medical exemption.
Since doctors cannot predict who will be harmed by vaccination, this kind of cruel utilitarian public health policy selects an unknown number of children, who are biologically vulnerable to being harmed by vaccines, for sacrifice. When doctors with big titles in government and academia put a target on the backs of parents and doctors opposing inhumane one-size-fits-all public health policies and laws, it gives a green light for legislators to do the same thing.
In 2012, California pediatrician politician Richard Pan lobbied to eliminate the personal belief vaccine exemption for children to attend school. He told The Associated Press that, “In private schools, these are people who have money, who are upper middle-class, and they are going on the internet and seeing information and misinformation.”,
Educated Critical Thinkers Eating Organic, Leaning Holistic
In 2013, the flames of prejudice were fanned by an online publication profiling parents in a San Francisco community and labeling them “vaccine deniers.”
The parents were described as “wealthy, educated, liberal leaning” and often working in “technology, law and other white collar professions that demand critical thinking skills,” who put their children at risk by feeding them non-GMO organic food, taking them to holistic doctors, and paying $20,000 a year to send them to private schools where self-reliance, independence and critical thinking are taught.
So, by 2015, the narrative about parents being stupid and crazy for questioning the safety of vaccines had morphed into one profiling parents by class and race. The New York Times had no problem running the headline, “Rich, White and Refusing Vaccinations.”
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