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Profits, Not Science, Motivate Vaccine Mandates |
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By Kristine M. Severyn, Ph.D.
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The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a group of
individuals hand-picked by members of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), recommends which vaccines are administered to
American children. Working mainly in secret, ACIP members frequently
have financial links
to vaccine manufacturers. Dependent on federal CDC funding,
administrators of state vaccination programs follow CDC directives by
influencing state legislators to mandate new vaccines. Federal vaccine
funds can be denied to states that do not "vigorously enforce"
mandatory vaccination laws.
Conversely,
the CDC offers financial bounties to state departments of health for
each "fully vaccinated" child. In a recent year, the Ohio
Department of Health received $1 million in such CDC bonus payments.
At CDC national immunization conferences, Merck and other vaccine
manufacturers wine and dine thousands of attendees who make their
living promoting and administering vaccines.
Are physicians beholden?
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a major supporter of
mandatory chicken pox and other vaccine mandates across the country,
shares incestuous financial ties with Merck. When constructing its new
headquarters in suburban Chicago, the AAP solicited funds from Merck,
and received $100,000 for its building campaign.
Vaccines represent an economic boon for pediatricians. Profitable
well-baby visits are timed to coincide with vaccination schedules
established by the AAP and the CDC.
Traveling circus?
As a front for Merck's campaign to enact a chicken pox vaccine mandate,
the company established and bankrolled the Illinois Children's Health
Coalition. Upon investigation, this group was found to be no more than
a public relations gimmick. Merck's similar campaign moved to Ohio with
the introduction of a senate bill (SB 254). The senator (Grace Drake,
R-Solon) who presides over the committee (Health and Human Services)
hearings for SB 254 accepted significant campaign contributions from
Merck. (Sen. Drake, at the request of a Merck lobbyist, had sponsored a
bill in the previous year to mandate hepatitis B vaccine for Ohio
kindergartners. To hide the legislation from the public, the mandate
language was buried in a hazardous waste bill. The other hepatitis B
vaccine manufacturer, SmithKline Beecham, lobbied the House Health
Committee. In
previous years, Sen. Drake opposed legislation to restore vaccine
informed consent to Ohio parents. Despite a 94-3 vote in the Ohio House
favoring informed consent, Sen. Drake refused to hold hearings on the
bill [effectively killing the bill] after its assignment to her
committee).
Further, Merck consultant, vaccine patent holder and ACIP member Dr.
Paul Offit of Philadelphia spoke at a recent American Legislative
Exchange Councils meeting in Nashville. State lawmakers from around the
country were treated to a well-rehearsed performance extolling the
virtues of mandatory vaccination. Similar productions were staged
during hepatitis B vaccine hearings in Ohio and Washington, D.C.
Who should make decisions about the vaccines & children, parents, doctors, legislators or vaccine manufacturers?
That is the issue. Special interests continue to push for mandatory
vaccines for schoolchildren. Recently, in Ohio, it was the chicken pox
vaccine (varicella). If the bill passes, chicken pox vaccine,
manufactured in human fetal tissue, will be the ninth in the cocktail
mix of vaccines required for school attendance.
In Ohio, at the urging of vaccine manufacturer Merck, Sen. Bruce
Johnson introduced SB 254, which mandates the vaccine for
schoolchildren in grades K-12. Ohio marks only one of Merck's latest
efforts to require chicken pox vaccine in every state a plan that
would guarantee Merck annual sales of nearly $7 million for each new
class of kindergartners in Ohio alone.
The fine print and informed consent.
Chicken pox vaccine is produced in lung tissue obtained from two
surgically aborted human fetuses (Exp. Cell Res. 37:614-636, 1965;
Nature 227:168-170, 1970). Merck's own literature states the vaccine
contains "residual components" of fetal lung cells. Informed
consent, a basic tenet of ethical medical practice, dictates that
citizens should have a choice whether or not they are injected with
another person's body cells. [Or anything else.]
Benefit lacking.
From the medical and health-care cost perspectives, chicken pox vaccine
is a loser. Two studies, one funded by Merck, found that only if lost
wages are included for a parent to stay home with a sick child is there
cost advantage to using chicken pox vaccine (JAMA 271: 375-381, 1994;
J. Ped. 124(6): 869-874, 1994).
While providing lifelong immunity, chicken pox disease [not vaccine]
carries a very low risk of complications and death. Writing in the
British medical journal, the Lancet (343: 1363, 1994), a voice of
reason, Dr. Arthur Lavin, Department of Pediatrics, St. Luke's Medical
Center in Cleveland, Ohio, presented concerns that "argue strongly
against the licensure of varicella vaccine for healthy children."
Lavin asserted: "[Chicken pox] is not major in the sense of disease
mortality or morbidity. Therefore, if healthy children were fully
vaccinated it is unclear in what significant way the health of the
children or the economic health of their families would be improved."
The vaccine industry has corrupted government policy. It's about time
lawmakers say "no" to drug company lobbyists and "yes" to
informed consent. ∆
Kristine M. Severyn, Ph.D., is director of the Vaccine Policy Institute, 251 Ridgeway Dr., Dayton, OH 45459, 937-435-4750.
This article is from Well Being Journal, Spring 2001, Volume 10, #2 (out of print). Click here for Current Issue.
Related Articles
"Vaccines have eradicated nothing, ever."
http://www.medicalvoices.org/: Medical doctors
convey the results of thousands of hours of study.
The Flu Case,
website of journalist Jane Burgermeister, who filed criminal charges
against Baxter for producing and distributing contaminated bird flu
vaccine material, alleging that this was a deliberate act to cause a
pandemic, and also to profit from that pandemic.
A pediatrician provides evidence why you might well reconsider rejecting vaccines
Bell Tolls for Swine Flu
a six-part
YouTube video by Teresa Forcades, M.D.,
uncovering details about why you and yours may very well choose to reject a swine
flu vaccine.
Healthcare Professionals on Swine Flu Misinformation
Nurses Reject Swine Flu
Influenza Vaccines: What's in that Needle?" by Sherri J. Tenpenny, D.O., who lists flu vaccine ingredients that most of the vaccinated have never heard of and very well may not want in their bodies; in
Well Being Journal, Volume 17, No. 4.
Special issue on Vaccines: Questioning Their Necessity and Governmental Mandates, various articles by researchers Kristine Severyn, Ph.D., Jane Orient, M.D., Barbara Brewitt, Ph.D., Joseph Mercola, D.O., Sherri Tenpenny, D.O., and others who all caution about vaccine use; in
Well Being Journal, Volume 17, No. 2.
For more vaccine information see: Evidence Flu Vaccines Don't Work and http://www.nvic.org/ as well as Swine Flu Not the Problem and HPV/Gardasil Vaccine Cautions;
School vaccine exemptions.
ON RELEASE OF FLU VIRUS INTO POPULATIONS VIA VACCINES
"[S]ome manufacturers have
conducted advance studies using a
so-called 'mock-up' vaccine. Mock-up vaccines contain an active
ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in
human populations and thus mimics the novelty of a pandemic virus"�."
"�From the World Health Organization (WHO) website, in an article titled
"Safety of Pandemic Vaccines," Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 briefing note 6, 6
August 2009, Geneva.
Here for full article.
Swine flu: pandemic or panic? See related video here.
September 12th, 2009, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
Public health officials are gearing up for a mass swine flu (H1N1) immunization campaign, first targeting children, pregnant women, and medical workers.
The U.S. government has purchased 195 million doses of swine flu vaccine, and contracted for 120 million doses of adjuvants to stretch the vaccine supply. The production process in eggs is yielding two to four times less viral antigen from H1N1 flu than from seasonal strains.
Is this necessary to prevent a replay of the 1918 influenza epidemic, with up to 350 million deaths worldwide instead of 50"�100 million? Or is it 1976 all over again, when swine flu immunizations had to be terminated because the dreaded epidemic failed to occur, but thousands suffered adverse reactions, including Guillain-Barré syndrome, from the shots?
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has taken the precaution of immunizing both government officials and vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits like those filed in 1976, by invoking the 2006 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREPA). The state of Maine, by declaring a statewide civil emergency, also protects schools and medical personnel from liability claims.
Read more (or comment): http://www.aapsonline.org/newsoftheday/00459
Vitamin D and Flu Prevention
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