·
State public health authorities are
being given control over firearms, alcohol and private property; the plan is an
excuse for the federal government and the states to seize control of the entire
health care system.
·
Lawrence Gostin, the author of the plan,
is an advocate of using force in the name of “protecting” the community; he
served on the federal task force to implement Hillary Clinton’s health care
scheme.
·
A mandatory smallpox vaccination
program using a live virus could produce 70,000 severe reactions and injuries,
several hundred deaths, and spread the disease to countless others.
·
A top-down federal command-and-control
scheme ignores the necessary involvement on a practical level of ordinary
citizens.
·
States already have the power to
control outbreaks of contagious diseases.
There
is a real danger that, in the war on terrorism, law-abiding American citizens
could be forced to sacrifice their rights. That is clearly the case with the
federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) scheme for the Model State Emergency
Health Powers Act. In the name of protecting us from bioterrorism, the CDC has
endorsed a plan written by Lawrence Gostin, a former member of Hillary
Clinton’s health care task force with very close ties to the World Health
Organization (WHO) of the United Nations. Clinton holdover and CDC director Dr.
Jeffrey Koplan unveiled the plan for public health authorities to take over
hospitals, seize drug supplies, quarantine people, draft doctors, force patients
to be vaccinated, prevent people from leaving contaminated areas, and destroy
contaminated property without the owners’ consent.
The CDC is the same group of
folks who lied to the American people about condoms supposedly having the
ability to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. They said
condoms prevented most STDs when the evidence showed the exact opposite.
Because of them, we have an epidemic of STDs in America. This is the same group
that failed to promote legitimate public health initiatives that could have
helped contain the spread of other diseases such as AIDS.
Now they want to protect us
from bioterrorism?
So
what will they do if we try to leave a contaminated area? Shoot us?
They say the big danger today
is smallpox. We don’t have enough vaccine and when we do, they may try to force
us all to get a smallpox shot. That’s potentially dangerous because the current
vaccine is a live virus. For many, the vaccine may be as dangerous as the
disease.
Why don’t we have enough vaccine?
And why don’t we have a safe vaccine? Federal incompetence. The public health establishment was told by
the CIA back in 1995 that Osama bin Laden possibly had the virus. The feds
failed to act.
Actually, the feds
have known with certainty since the early 1990s that the smallpox virus was in
the hands of terrorists and terrorist states. And here is where the story gets
interesting. Only the Soviets/Russians and the United States are supposed to
have the virus, because it was officially eradicated in 1980. That’s why
smallpox vaccinations were discontinued. American scientist Donald A.
Henderson, who led the U.N. World Health Organization effort to eradicate
smallpox, says he feels “betrayed totally” by the Soviets, who, after it was
officially eradicated, proceeded to make it into a weapon. The United Nations
gets part of the blame because the WHO was supposed to safeguard the virus.
Not only did federal
officials fail to act, Henderson agitated for the U.S. to destroy our stockpile
of the virus. That would have put us at an even more fatal disadvantage.
President Bush, to his great credit, has said no to that.
Regarding the vaccine, what if the terrorists have
vaccine-resistant smallpox? Ken Alibek, who helped run the Soviet bioweapons
program, says too much hope is being placed in vaccines which don’t exist for
every possible biological agent or strain of a virus. He points out that the
Soviets also developed other diseases as weapons. What about those? Alibek says
more effort should be placed on treating diseases when they occur.
It’s also worthwhile to take
a look at what was being said before the current hysteria. The book, Living
Terrors, co-authored by Dr. Michael Osterholm, an acknowledged expert in the
field, was published last year. He says the likelihood of being infected by a
bioterrorist attack is comparable to being struck by lightening. He warned
about the anthrax vaccine and the smallpox vaccine, which “has side effects
that would be unacceptable to many people today…” Osterholm worried about
“disease hustlers” who would try to force these vaccines on everybody, when
only a limited number of volunteer public health workers preparing for an
outbreak of a disease would need to get vaccinated.
The program Endangered Liberties has
aired a discussion of the proposed legislation. Hosted by Cliff Kincaid,
president of America’s Survival, Inc., it featured Sandy Liddy Bourne of the
American Legislative Exchange Council (www.alec.org)
and Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center (www.909shot.com). What follows is an
edited transcript of the show:
Cliff Kincaid, President, America’s Survival:
Since
September11th there’s almost no terrorist act considered
unthinkable. The most talked about
threat is bio-terrorism. And officials
are scrambling to come up with some kind of plan in the event of such an
attack. Unfortunately some of what’s being planned is not good. In fact it is
frightening. The Department of Health
and Human services is encouraging state governments to pass new laws that
would, according to the Washington Post, permit large scale quarantine,
forcible seizure of hospitals and other business, mandatory vaccination or
treatment and destruction of property without the owner’s consent.
Joining
me to discuss this topic is Sandy Liddy Bourne from ALEC, the American
Legislative Exchange Council. Here is the controversial piece of proposed
legislation -- model legislation for the states -- endorsed by some big names
-- the CDC, the Centers for Disease
Control, National Governors Association, National Conference of State
Legislatures, and so on. This may sound harsh but they have set up a plan for a
medical dictatorship for this country.
Sandy Liddy Bourne, American Legislative Exchange Council:
Unfortunately
that is true. We need to step back and provide historical perspective. First of all, they’re looking at this as a
public health model and what to do in a time of war. That’s where I have a strong difference of opinion with what they
are trying to do. These organizations,
the National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures,
historically are to the left. And so
they’ve had a lot of this language in the pipeline ready to go. Just waiting for an emergency to quickly try
to push this through.
Let’s go back in history. Germ warfare
is not a stranger to this country. We
have been looking at it through the centuries of man when people were flinging
dead bodies over walls to spread the plague. They used smallpox to contaminate
our Native American population. So this is not new to us.
In
fact, today, we’ve debunked the anthrax scare.
The envelopes that were sent were clearly, from what I can read in the
paper, weaponized spores that were designed to infect hundreds of thousands of
people. It failed. It failed in a big way.
Furthermore, we found out that there was one medication that could cure
this or that could stop it, and that was Cipro. So immediately we began giving those people who were potentially
contaminated the Cipro. Within 36 hours
after testing the spores we found out that three other antibiotics could be
used.
When
you go back through our history of warfare, this country has relied upon the
free market to provide us with solutions, and in fact that has been our saving
grace in every single occurrence. Let’s go back to World War lI. Remember the pictures of Rosie the Riveter?
Many people will tell you those were the women, the tough women. In reality,
that was a picture of our manufacturers putting out as quickly as they could
our best technology to our soldiers who were fighting. We need to do the same thing right now. Relax the regulations on our biotechnological
companies on all of our free market and let them, in modern day terms, rock and
roll. And develop the medicines we need
to fight bio-terrorism, even smallpox.
Kincaid: Here we’re dealing with something that’s
deadly and very contagious. They say
one case is too many and can lead to dozens, hundreds, hundreds of thousands of
cases. It’s fine to talk about biotech
and the drug companies coming through some time. But what are we going to do in
the meantime if a smallpox attack occurs?
Bourne: When
we last were studying smallpox we had no cure against viruses. We now have 21 medicines on the
shelves. With HIV we also began
studying viruses. There are probably
now 4 or 5 of those 21 drugs used against viruses that have the potential to go
after smallpox. Let’s look into those
medications; see what we can find now that we have a need. There wasn’t a need to study smallpox
because we eradicated it, we thought, from the face of the earth.
Kincaid: But if a case does break out, if we’re under
attack from smallpox as a weapon, what’s wrong with giving public health
officials at the federal or state level the power to quarantine people, to
isolate them and perhaps even force them to be vaccinated?
Bourne: The
problem that we have from the state perspective is that all of the vaccinations
are being held at CDC, Centers for Disease Control. So, by the time you find
that person that has been contaminated there are not medications at the state
level, there are no regional stockpiles. Yet that’s the first thing we need to
do.
Kincaid: So at least isolate and quarantine them.
Bourne: You can and that’s already there. We already
have those powers; we don’t need new laws.
Kincaid: So the states already have that power.
Bourne: Yes.
We don’t need new laws to do this. If
they see a contagious disease, they can quickly isolate them in the hospital
and find out what they had. Then they
go to the next group of people and they can vaccinate that circle of
people. That’s an appropriate response. Mass vaccination is not necessarily the best
response.
Kincaid: If the states already have this power,
what’s behind this new proposal?
Bourne: Rationing health care. Where did you hear that before?
Kincaid:
Rationing health care. You mean it’s designed
to go into other health areas?
Bourne: This
is under the auspices of bio-terrorism.
You look at this language and you see that the public health director of
the states has the authority to control property, and control material and
control people. That is a
perspective that is unprecedented in
the history of this country -- to give the public health director, a
non-elected official, that kind of authority.
Kincaid:
Barbara, let’s get into the area of smallpox and mandatory vaccines, because
this is seems to be where the focus is now
-- that we’re in danger of a smallpox attack and a smallpox vaccine is
the only hope. Do you agree?
Barbara Loe Fisher, president, National Vaccine Information
Center:
The
National Vaccine Information Center has been monitoring vaccine research and
policy making for the past 20 years and what we’ve been really concerned about
is the increasing militarization of the public health infrastructure. I think this model state legislation is
further proof that that has been the goal all along. And with regard to smallpox vaccine I think we have to remember it is the
most reactive vaccine that has ever been used in the human population. It
caused more injuries and deaths than any other vaccine. It was a well-kept secret, but that
basically is the truth. When you look
at this vaccine you see it is a live vaccinia virus vaccine, which is really a
genetic hybrid of the variola virus that causes smallpox and the cowpox virus
that causes infection in cows. We don’t
have it in our population anymore. Because we don’t vaccinate for smallpox we
would have to reintroduce that live vaccine. It has the ability to infect you
with the vaccinia virus and you can infect other people with the virus and it
cause severe complications. One in four
thousand people will have a severe enough complication that they will require
vaccinia immune globulin. The existing
supplies that we have of this smallpox vaccine have deteriorated and are very
compromised, as is the vaccinia immune globulin.
Kincaid: We’re
told that mass vaccination programs for smallpox eradicated the disease.
Fisher: The
vaccinia virus put pressure on the variola virus and that is how they were able
to eradicate the disease. But the
problem is we don’t have vaccinia virus in our population anymore. We don’t use
the vaccine. To reintroduce that,
particularly for people under thirty who have never had experience with it,
what we’re going to have, we’re going to have that virus circulating again, and
again you can give the virus to other people once you’ve been vaccinated and
cause their death or injury particularly the immune compromised. You’re going to have some people who are
biologically or genetically more vulnerable to reacting to this vaccine, or to
die or be injured by the disease. So what you have is this -- a dangerous
disease and a dangerous vaccine.
Now
the question becomes in a state of emergency, do we want to put the power --
your right to decide what you’re willing to die for basically -- in the hands
of an elite few who are going to make that decision for you? Your choice between a dangerous disease or a
dangerous vaccine. I think we have to
look at what is really occurring here.
Do we have the right as citizens in a free society to make life and
death decisions for ourselves and our children. I think the answer has got to
be yes.
It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make. What are you willing
to die for?
Kincaid: The
state officials are looking at the well being of society as a whole and they
might figure we’ll lose less people by using the vaccine then letting the
disease itself grow.
Fisher: Those
who want to vaccinate have every right to vaccinate. Then they are protected. Right? My family is biologically genetically
vulnerable to reacting to vaccines.
The choice that we would have in the case of a true exposure to smallpox
virus is a horrible one because we could die very easily from the vaccine, as
we could die from the disease. That
decision belongs to me. Not to the
state.
Bourne: To
highlight her point, one of the first criticisms out of the box on this whole
thing is that the CDC are talking about inoculating themselves, but nobody
else. And already the states are
complaining that they’re not getting access to the vaccinations to help the
population. So the elitism is already
present and working, now in the CDC. That’s a fundamental problem with
this. They’re talking about federal
control, and command and control. But
our enemy right now is a network of individuals and a network of
countries. It’s not Russia; it’s not
Nazi Germany. These folks are going to use multiple targets at multiple
times. So therefore we don’t want a
command and control response coming down from the federal government. We want
to have the states and the individuals and the localities prepared to respond
if they need to. It will be the citizens that will respond first in an
emergency. Just as we saw on
September 11th, it was the firemen, the policemen and individual
citizens that responded to the attacks on the Pentagon and New York. In New York, one of the lessons learned was
that the Department of Health and Human Services was able to get 50 tons of
medical supplies to New York, but they were not able to distribute the supplies
at the time they needed them on the ground.
Kincaid: We are in favor of drugs and other
medications as treatment if somebody comes down with smallpox. But in the
meantime, if there is an outbreak, would you object to forcibly isolating, even
quarantining those people who are infected?
Fisher: I
think quarantine, under proper circumstances, is much preferable to forcing
medication or vaccination, because that truly puts the individual at risk for
injury or death. With a quarantine you’re not mixing those unvaccinated with
those who were infected, which would put a person’s life in jeopardy. I think we have to remember that in times of
emergency we need to have the trust of the citizens, the confidence of the
citizens, in any emergency response plan.
When you start forcing people -- not allowing them recourse even to
court, to lawyers in a court -- before you isolate them and forcibly vaccinate
or medicate, this is not a situation that I would think we would want in our
country. The people are going to be afraid. They are going to be more
afraid if the government response is working against rather than with them.
There
was a bioethicist who had a quote in a newspaper in California. He said this
law, this proposed legislation, treats the people as the enemy. I think it’s the wrong kind of message to
send, particularly in time of fear and confusion that we’re now in following
these terrorist attacks.
Bourne: I
think you’re forgetting about the individual patient-physician relationship
there. ALEC does not have a policy on
mandatory vaccinations, but a particular patient may have contra-indications to
a vaccine and the physician should make the call. It’s a personal decision, I think, between the patient and the
physician.
Kincaid: Sandy, you refer earlier to some of these
groups involved in this Model State Emergency Health Powers Act as being left
of center. Your group ALEC, the
American Legislative Exchange Council, is definitely conservative. It’s made up
of state legislators.
Sandy:
Bipartisan
Kincaid:
Bipartisan. But we have a conservative, former Wisconsin governor Tommy
Thompson, now secretary of Health and Human Services. And yet he’s endorsed
this.
Bourne: I
cannot speak for the secretary, I think that since September 11th
our leadership has been faced with some difficulties that were basically
left-over unfinished business from the previous administration. At a time of anxiety and trying to take
control of these attacks and with agencies still filled with holdovers from the
Clinton administration -- because we’ve got a Senate that’s been blocking
confirmations -- I think bad advice came up. Unfortunately, sometimes when
you’re in charge you do things hoping that you’re doing the right thing, but
it’s based on hope. I think everyone
needs to take a deep breath, look at the facts, look at the research. As I said
earlier we’ve already debunked anthrax. We found out the attack didn’t
work. We’ve got three antibiotics that
can address it. So let’s just slow down and wait and see what happens.
Kincaid:
Barbara, you wanted to make a point about where this whole thing is heading. We
have the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, but there is other
legislation up on Capitol Hill that is going through, designed to protect the makers
of these new controversial vaccines from any liability.
Fisher: Yes.
The drug makers are asking for totally immunity for any liability associated
with injuries and deaths caused by, for example, the smallpox vaccine. I think it is important to remember the
smallpox vaccine was never subjected to clinical trials before it was used on a
widespread basis. So even the old
vaccine or a new vaccine that would be created needs to be subjected to modern
standards that are in place to evaluate new vaccines or an old vaccine as in
this case. They are also asking for
immunity from liability for the injuries and deaths. They want to model the
legislation on the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which was passed in
1986. I’m very familiar with that law, because
I worked on it. It has really been
tremendously gutted by the Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice
to the extent that 2 out of 3 children who are vaccine-injured and apply for
federal compensation are turned away.
So you have a situation where you have drug companies with no liability
but when it comes to the vaccine injuries and deaths, the government doesn’t
pay.
Kincaid: Can
you give me an estimate if we were to vaccinate America, how many deaths or
injuries would you suspect would come out of that?
Fisher:
According to one of the expert groups on bio-terrorism there would be 1 in 4000
people would have severe reactions. That’s about 70,000 severe reactions that
would occur in about 280 million people.
They say that 1 in a million dies. Whether that’s a low estimate or not,
that would be at least 280 deaths. But
you have to remember that for this vaccine, 1 in 1890 persons will have spread
the lesion from the original site around the body to all sorts of areas of your
body. They might be able to communicate that to other people that would get
sick. It’s a highly reactive vaccine. I
don’t think we have any idea how many reactions it will cause particularly in
the people under 30 who have never had experience with this virus at all.
Kincaid: We
can talk about legislation and where it is going but this is a situation of
war. The phrase here -- Emergency Health Powers. Couldn’t the President himself simply short circuit the
legislative process and through executive order say, ‘Look we need this
vaccine, we’re going to mandate it . We’re going to force it on everybody. We
just have to do it for the sake of the country in a time of emergency and
war.’ So where does that leave us?
Fisher: I’m not
sure that this president would do that.
I suppose that’s a possibility but I think that vaccine laws, for
example, are state laws and the public health laws are state laws.
Kincaid: They
are saying this is the most powerful president since FDR, in terms of war
powers. Couldn’t he mandate it?
Bourne: He’s
not even close yet to being near president Roosevelt. Let’s go back to our
founding fathers here for a moment. When we have had times of war it is
appropriate for the president to take executive action to protect the
country. But let us not forget that if
there has ever been, in our history, an overreach of those powers, the
legislative body has stepped in and taken back some of that power. It has been cyclical and it has worked every
time so let’s not start bashing the president because he is doing what he
thinks is best to protect the country.
And he hasn’t taken that action in an executive order to mandate
vaccines at this point in time. But what I’m failing to see across the board is
addressing the local response to terrorism and we’re all still thinking high
level command and control. We need to get down to the ground and figure out
what we can do. Pittsburgh has a good
model of what we can do. We’re talking about communication. In the reality of war time we can have our
communications knocked out, and we saw that on September 11. The Emergency
Broadcast System did not work in Washington D.C. All the cell phones were cut
off and jammed. So how are these people
going to communicate with each other? We’ve seen the natural disasters across
the country - phone lines have been taken out. So you have to rely on radio
control. Do you have the effective
means to communicate on the ground? We
saw that the response by the municipalities here in Washington was they weren’t
able to communicate with each other.
Kincaid:
You’re suggesting that the states, the localities, ought to concentrate on more
practical things.
Bourne:
Absolutely. Because it’s the practical responses, the free thinking responsive
individuals on the ground, that are going to survive and stay alive and prevail
over time with this.
Fisher: This model state legislation puts the
entire command of a public health emergency in the hands of public health
officials, including the right to seal the borders, to appropriate private
property, communications devices, fuel, food, clothing, alcohol, firearms.
Bourne: It’s
backwards. It’s the last thing you want to do to allow people to survive. Other
things you want to look at: surveillance and detection. You want to determine
if there was some kind of bioterrorism attack and address it. You want to
decontaminate on the site. You don’t necessarily want to walk into everything
and bring everyone into the hospital. You ought to have interdisciplinary teams
that can go back into an area that you think has been hit and contain it over
there. You want to look at your medical supplies, your training of first
responders. Also, you want to look at the mental health response….
Kincaid: This
plan is really a excuse to take over the entire health care system.
Fisher:
Absolutely.
Bourne: We
should focus on what we can do on the ground to enable people to help
themselves.
Kincaid: But
we are in a panic.
Fisher: Cool
heads have to prevail, especially in times of emergency. People have to feel
their government and their local officials are working with them, not against
them – not treating people as the enemy,
Kincaid: But
people out there are panicked. The federal government is acting quickly to
foist this Model State Emergency Health Powers Act on the states. And many of
the states are eager to carry these draconian measures forward. What can
ordinary people do?
Fisher: People have to become involved in the
legislative process in the states. They
have to monitor their public health committees for this legislation to
be introduced and then they have to be prepared to leave their jobs, leave
their homes, take their babies in their arms, and go to these hearings and make
their voices heard. The National Vaccine Information Center is going to
release a major report on smallpox and forced vaccination. It will be up on our
Webs site (www.909shot.com) very
soon. Education – informing the people – and then getting involved in the legislative process at the local level
and making sure their legislators know these are not the kinds of laws they
want governing them if an emergency takes place.
Bourne: I have
had a meeting with 60 legislators in Texas and we talked about this bill coming
through. I think what our legislators can do is focus on a local response.
Benjamin Netanyahu, who wrote a book on fighting terrorism, says over and over
again that you need to educate the public on what they can do for self-defense
and to protect themselves and live with terrorism….This legislation says the
director of public health has the ability to limit firearms and your ownership
of firearms. What is that doing in this bill? That is why, when I looked at
this, it immediately lost credibility to me as a nurse because we’re talking
about restricting civil liberties rather than fighting disease.
Kincaid: Who is really behind this? The actual author,
Lawrence O Gostin, is professor and director of the Center for Law and the
Public Health at Georgetown University Law Center. Who is he?
Bourne:
This picture is from his book on public health law. You see a public health
policeman. That is what he’s all about. Withholding your civil liberties.
Fisher: He’s a
longstanding forced vaccination proponent. I had a public argument with him at
the Institute on Medicine in 1995 on Jacobsen vs. Massachusetts, the Supreme
court decision that is supposed to be underpinning this law. That 1904 Supreme
Court decision was the one that set the precedent for mandating smallpox
vaccination in this country. That decision said clearly you cannot harm people
by the implementation of this law. But that’s being totally disregarded when
they’re talking about forced vaccination under this law.
Bourne: When
he defines public health law, one of his tenets is coercion. I quote from his
book: “Health authorities possess the power to coerce individuals and
businesses for the protection of the community rather than relying on a near
universal ethic of volunteerism.” I
don’t know what country he was born in, but I was born in the United States of
America. The founding fathers wanted us to have volunteerism. The whole
principle under which we live is volunteerism and individual rights. Over
and over again Gostin talks about communal power to
protect the
community. He attempts to discuss balancing the Constitution and the power of
the federal government with individual rights but throughout his book and
writings he discusses coercion of
individuals and the need for public health authority…
Fisher: This
model law has already been introduced in Massachusetts. I think other states
are going to fall in line. I think that it is a tremendous threat. I don’t know
what’s going to happen. It will depend on the people. If they understand what
it is really about, and they then take the initiative to go in and stop this,
it will be stopped. If the people don’t understand what it’s about and don’t
take the initiative, I think it will become law. And we’re going to live to
regret it. (30)
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