Smallpox in America: Into the
Garden of Delights
By Jennifer Van Bergen
t r u t h o u t | Report
Tuesday 14 January 2003
[Coleridge] said ... there were
only three things which the government had brought into that garden of
delights, namely itch, pox, and famine.
-- Ralph
Waldo Emerson, English Traits(1856)
We are told that there is new grave
threat to our welfare. Smallpox.
If we are indeed in danger of a
smallpox outbreak (which is contradicted by medical testimony), the
threat appears to be inflated.
A far more grave threat, however, is
the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA, MEHPA, or EHPA),
portions of which were incorporated into the Homeland Security Act (HSA).
The EHPA provides for forced vaccinations and confiscation or
destruction of personal property under the mere threat of a threat of an
outbreak.
Representative Ron Paul (R.-TX.),
who also is a medical doctor, writes:
When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us,
we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies. The possibility
that the federal government could order vaccines is real. Provisions
buried in the 500-page homeland security bill give federal health
bureaucrats virtually unchecked power to declare health emergencies.
Specifically, it gives the
Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services _ in my view
one of the worst of all federal agencies _ power to declare actual or
potential bioterrorist emergencies; to administer forced
"countermeasures," including vaccines, to individuals or whole groups;
and to extend the emergency declaration indefinitely.
These provisions mirror those
found in the Model Emergency Health Powers Act [MEHPA], a troubling
proposal that was rejected by most state legislatures last year. That
Act would have given state governors broad powers to suspend civil
liberties and declare health emergencies. Yet now we're giving
virtually the same power to the Secretary of HHS. Equally troubling is
the immunity from civil suit granted to vaccine manufacturers in the
homeland security bill, which potentially could leave individuals who
get sick from a bad batch of vaccines without legal recourse.(2)
Rep. Paul omits that the smallpox
vaccine can be fatal. The MEHPA sounds almost like state-sponsored
population control. But this is not only population control via, say,
contraception. It is by state-mandated and enforced, vaccine-induced
illness and death.
That is frightening. In the name of
fighting terrorism, we are now going to kill off a small percentage of
our own people.
Health and welfare issues have
traditionally been state issues. Since 1824, the so-called "police
power," which includes "the authority to provide for the public health,
safety, and morals," has been the exclusive province of the states.(3)
Sandy Mintz, who writes on
Vaccination News, states: "The Homeland Security Bill as now written,
however, appears to be an effort to circumvent states' rights, by
federalizing declared emergencies related to "public health". It seems
to have been decided that declaring a federal emergency using federal
law would allow states' rights to be by-passed." (4)
She continues, "This effort seems to
be, at least in part, a reaction to the failure of all states to pass,
or in some cases to even consider passing thus far, an MEHPA bill."
Florida and The Model Emergency
Health Powers Act
The MEHPA has been passed in only
one state: Florida.(5) Adopted home of Jeb Bush. Land of electoral
madness. Home to alligators and other swamp creatures. The garden of
delights.
Joanna Rohrback, a health activist
in Broward County, Florida, who has been trying to raise awareness about
the Florida EHPA, says: "Some of the worst ramifications would include
forced vaccinations on the WHOLE population as well as the ability to
seize our property and quarantine us."(6)
Mintz writes that the dubiously
titled Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, which, as I understand
it, is identical to the Florida EHPA, "give[s] the power of life and
death over citizens to each state's governor."
Mintz delineates a few specific
things the MEHPA does:
1. Grant the governor of each
state power to declare a "public health emergency" as defined in the
act, with or without consulting anyone. (Article IV, Section 401)
2. Require medical examination
and/or testing and force isolation or quarantine if it is deemed that
refusal "poses a danger to public health". (Article VI, Section
602(c))
3. Require treatment and/or
vaccination and "isolate or quarantine" those "unwilling or unable" to
do so. (Article VI, (Article VI, Sections 603(a)(3) and 603(b)(3))
4. Constitute as a misdemeanor,
"failure to obey these provisions" (for examination, testing,
isolation or quarantine). (Article VI, Sections 604(a) and 604(c))
5. Provide that there be no
liability for any "State or local official" causing harm to
individuals in their efforts to comply with the provisions of the act,
unless there is "gross negligence or willful misconduct". (Article
VIII, Section 804(a))
6. Provide for similar absence of
liability for "any private person, firm or corporation" and their
"employees" or "agents". (Article VIII, Section 804(b)(2) and
804(b)(3))
7. Allow for the destruction of
property without compensation if "there is reasonable cause to believe
that [the property] may endanger the public health pursuant to Section
501". (Article V, Sections 506 and 507)
8. Limit legal recourse. (Article
VI, Section 605)
9. Allow for "the public safety
authority (to) request assistance from the organized militia in
enforcing the orders of the public health authority." (Article IV,
Section 404).
In other words, martial law. If you
have not seen "Minority Report" or read Orwell's "1984," you might want
to do so now.
The MEHPA, which was enacted as the
Florida EHPA, is the model for those provisions in the Homeland Security
Act that deal with emergency health issues.
Conflicts and Dangers
Toni Krehel of Vaccine Awareness of
Florida writes that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) "attempted to
rush anti-terrorism legislation through state legislatures" giving power
to the state to impose "medical procedures on people, using any means
necessary, including the kind of restraining methods that law
enforcement use to apprehend criminals (guns, militia)."7
Rohrback reports that the CDC, along
with the National Health Institute, will be receiving "extraordinary
funding" under the Homeland Security Act. Rohrback points out that,
according to the Congressional Committee for Government Reform back in
1999, there were numerous "conflicts of interest" in the CDC's
endorsement of these laws. One blatant example is that the "Chairman of
CDC's advisory committee until recently owned 600 shares of stock in
Merck, a pharmaceutical company with an active vaccine division."(8)
That was 1999 and the conflicts of interest have continued.
Dr. Marcia Angell, in an interview
on ABC Lateline in which she discussed the control that the drug
industry has taken of medical research, said that the drug companies use
medical researchers "as though they were hired guns." Researchers are
paid to do what these companies want them to do. "[D]rug companies
increasingly design the studies," and "don't even let the researchers
see the data."(9)
Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz, President
and Publisher of Tetrahedron Publishing Group, wrote in a June 6, 2002
letter to a CDC Working Group: "The little known fact is that the
primary smallpox vaccine producers, Aventis and Baxter corporations, or
their parent companies, are highly untrustworthy. They have been
implicated on more than one occasion in committing genocide. *** Both
firms settled out of court ..."(10)
Horowitz further remarks that
"Baxter is a subsidiary of American Home Products (AHP)," and AHP, "like
Bayer, Hoechst and BASF, is a progeny of I.G. Farben - Germany's leading
industrial organization that virtually directed the Third Reich and
Hitler's economic war engine." He adds that Aventis is a subsidiary of
Hoechst.
Horowitz pleads: "Please, for the
sake of millions of people, public healthy, medical respectability, and
the future of this great nation, DO NOT SUPPORT ANY POLICY REQUIRING
FORCED SMALLPOX VACCINATIONS."
Dr. Tom Mack of the University of
Southern California School of Medicine, whose "credentials include
probably spending more time working up population-based outbreaks of
smallpox than virtually anybody ever has," spoke at the Meeting of the
CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on June 19-20, 2002.
Remarking that "I made the arrogant assumption that you might actually
be interested in my opinion about the three questions that are open to
you, and so I'm going to give it," Dr. Mack said that "were there no
smallpox eradication program, my guess is that smallpox would have died
out anyway."(11)
One report states that: "By the
1920s, several British medical researchers documented that smallpox was
not only more common among the VACCINATED, but that the DEATH RATE from
smallpox was actually higher among those who had been vaccinated."(12)
Dr. Mack states that the smallpox
vaccine is "the single most dangerous live vaccine."
While these doctors state that
smallpox vaccinations are dangerous, they are also clear that the threat
of bio-attacks is slim and that even if there is bio-attack, it can be
readily contained and mass vaccinations thus are not justified.
Dr Mack -- asking, "What do we
expect if there were a terrorist introduction?" - concludes: "I would
expect a small number of cases. I don't think suicide dissemination is a
very likely possibility because of the severity of the disease. I think
that airborne spread would be relatively inefficient and I don't think
many cases would occur."
Informed Consent & Lack of Logic
The National Vaccination Information
Center (NVIC) maintains that Section 304 of the Homeland Security Act is
the "fulfillment of a federal plan in development for several years to
allow public health officials to force vaccination and medical treatment
on Americans without their informed consent while removing all
accountability from drug companies and those who participate in
enforcement of the policy."(13)
The legal doctrine of "informed
consent" requires that a person who is being subjected to any medical
procedure be informed of the nature and risks of that procedure so that
s/he can weigh the risks against the benefits and decide whether to
consent to allowing the physician to carry out the procedure.
Medical procedures, including
vaccinations, involve some type of intrusion on the body, as well as
various risks. Without informed consent, any medical procedure is
actually technically a battery. In civil law, battery involves
intentionally "harmful or offensive" touching of any part of the body.
In criminal law, battery involves "unlawful application of force to the
person of another."
NVIC states that "a voluntary
decision about whether to take the risk has been the centerpiece of
bioethics ever since the Nuremberg Code was adopted after World War II
and the doctrine of informed consent was introduced into U.S. case law
in 1957."
Two major hospitals have already
refused to vaccinate their employees because "the risk of dangerous side
effects of the vaccine and inadvertent transmission to patients
outweighs the remote threat of an attack with a virus."(14) The Boston
Globe reported that the decisions "underscore the reluctance of some
health workers to return to a decades-old vaccine known for its serious
side effects. In rare instances, the vaccine has caused life-threatening
cases of encephalitis and some deaths."
''There is a lack of logic to the
current proposal,'' said Dr. Richard Wenzel, chairman of the department
of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth. ''If our government in
all its intelligence thinks smallpox exists in enemy hands, why would we
creep up on that policy? We would rush to vaccinate everybody right
now.''(15)
Military Intervention
The MEHPA provides for military
intervention. According to one news report: "The Bush administration is
taking initial steps to plan for a potential military role in enforcing
a massive quarantine, if smallpox or another highly contagious virus
were to break out somewhere in the United States."(16) Remarkably,
according to this report: "The possibility of a biological attack on the
United States is receiving increased attention as the nation
contemplates war against Iraq, which experts fear may have 'weaponized'
smallpox, anthrax or other biowarfare agents."
This report also states that "some
federal officials, public health analysts and national security experts
anticipate a large-scale quarantine would almost surely incite public
panic and could require the use of federal troops to restore order."
How ironic.
The Bush Administration says it is
going to war with Iraq in order to ensure our safety, but experts fear
that Saddam may counterattack with bio-weapons, which means we must
forcibly inoculate several million people here with a dangerous vaccine,
causing mass panic that will require restoring order with the military.
This surely is the way to make
America safe.
Yesterday I, along with several
other members of the ad hoc Broward Bill of Rights Defense Coalition,
met with a County Commissioner here in Broward County to discuss passing
a resolution asking for the repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act. This
Commissioner told me that she was ready to give up the Bill of Rights in
exchange for safety. She felt we were in grave danger. As an example of
what she would accept, she told me that an airport search was "an
unreasonable search and seizure."
Search and seizure law is immensely
complex and the "rules" for what is a reasonable search vary according
to the context. Airport searches of persons entering the boarding area
have been deemed constitutional since 1973, as long as the intrusiveness
is limited by the administrative need (which is, in this case, flight
safety) and the passenger is able to avoid search by electing not to
fly. Searches that are minimally intrusive and intended to protect
passengers are not violations of the Fourth Amendment. More importantly,
we do not give up ANY individual rights by consenting to an airport
search. (I am not discussing reports of excessively intrusive and
embarrassing public searches that have occurred since 9/11, which, in my
opinion, are unreasonable as well as unnecessary.)
If, however, we allow such laws as
the PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Act, and the Emergency Health
Powers Act to stay on the books, we HAVE thrown away our Bill of Rights.
We have made the United States Constitution a nullity.
This Administration is taking us
down a perilous road. This Administration is putting its own citizenry
in grave danger. Forced vaccinations benefit only the producers of those
vaccines.
If we genuinely want peace and
safety, then unlawfully invading foreign lands, unlawfully assassinating
targeted people overseas, unlawfully divesting our own citizens of their
rights and invading their persons -- in other words, violating the most
sacred and certain of domestic and international laws -- will not do it.
These unlawful methods cannot
continue long without bringing world war. Bin Laden did not attack us
because we have a Bill of Rights. He attacked us, as he himself
declared, because we had invaded sacred Muslim lands. There is no
justification for Bin Laden's attacks on innocent Americans, but neither
is there any justification for the United States to invade lands that do
not belong to it, or the bodies of persons it does not and cannot ever
own.
Our bodies belong to us, not our
government. There is no genuine power without consent. Any power
obtained through force is illegitimate and eventually rebounds back on
those who apply it.
While in the short term, Bush might
maintain "order" (a term hauntingly reminiscent of the Nazi aphorism "Alles
in Ordnung") by forcing his will and his way on the world, it will not
last, and we Americans will be the ones to suffer for his mistakes.
There is no replacement for the Bill
of Rights or the Constitution of the United States. Whatever "garden of
delights" we have enjoyed will be forever lost.
-------
1 (Into the Garden of Delights, From
Title) Grateful thanks to Joanna Rohrback for her assistance in
researching and writing about this topic. A health advocate and activist
in Broward County, Florida, Ms. Rohrback is a former social worker with
the Florida Health & Rehabilitative Services and has a Bachelor of
Health Services, specializing in Health Administration, from Florida
Atlantic University. She heads the Citizen's For Democracy group in
Broward and has a patented fitness program called Prancercise(r). Her
report on the MSEHPA (hereafter Rohrback Report) is available at:
http://63.206.217.42/jvb/reff.ART/Model_to_Monstrosity.doc or via email
from me.
2 http://www.mercola.com/2002/dec/28/government_vaccines.htm;
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul66.html
3 Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc.
501 U.S. 560 (1991). The landmark case that determined that states
retain full authority to legislate in any field and to achieve any
objective, subject only to the limitations imposed in the Constitution
itself is Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1 (1824). Chief
Justice John Marshall wrote that such powers included "that immense mass
of legislation, which embraces every thing within the territory of a
state, not surrendered to the general government; all of which can be
most advantageously exercised by the states themselves. Inspection laws,
quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as
laws for regulating the internal commerce of a state ... are component
parts of this mass." In 1827, Marshall dubbed this power "the police
power." Brown v. Maryland, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 419. In 1878, the
Supreme Court decided that the states may not bargain away their police
power to corporations. Boston Beer Co. v. Massachusetts, 97 U.S.
25. But not every state law enacted in the purported interests of public
health, safety, welfare, and morals, is automatically presumed to be
Constitutional. Where a police power enactment infringes on rights
enumerated in the Bill of Rights, a federal court may strike down a
state law. U.S. v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938).
Additionally, the General Welfare Clause (Article I, section 8 of the
U.S. Constitution) empowers Congress to "collect taxes ... to pay the
debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the
United States." This has traditionally been interpreted as a federal
taxing power only, but also permitted the Supreme Court in 1937 to
sustain the Social Security Act. Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301
U.S. 548.
4 http://www.vaccinationnews.com/Scandals/Nov_22_02/Scandal43.htm
(All citations to Mintz are to this URL.)
5 Rohrback Report, p. 4.
6 Email from Joanna Rohrback to JVB,
26 December 2002.
7 www.know-vaccines.org/bioterror5.html
8 Rohrback Report, pp. 1 & 2. See
this Report for other examples.
9 www.vaccinationnews.com/DailyNews/August2001/ConflictInt&Vax.htm
(cited in Rohrback Report, p. 2-3).
10 Leonard G. Horowitz to ACIP-NVAC
Smallpox Working Group, CDC, June 6, 2002, www.wahale.to/a/horowitz.html.
See also: www.tetrahedron.org.
11 http://www.vaclib.org/news/drmack.htm
12 www.vaclib.org/basic/twenty.htm
(citing a 1993 book or article titled "Vaccination" by Dr. Viera
Scheibner)
13 www.909shot.com/Newsletters/spsmallpox.htm;
http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/nuremberg.php3 (cited in Rohrback Report, p. 8)
(further quotes from NVIC are from the same)
14 www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/352/nation/2_large_hospitals_refuse_smallpox_shots-.shtml
15 Id.
16 Inside the Pentagon, Elaine
Grossman, Dec. 12, 2002. (Posted on elist without URL.)
-------
Jennifer
Van Bergen is a contributing writer for truthout. She has a law
degree from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, and is a
faculty member of the New School University in New York where she
teaches in the writing program.
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