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Photographs of three beautiful children are the first images encountered by a
visitor to the website of the National
Vaccine Information Center. Each child is a victim of immunization gone
almost unimaginably awry: Two of the children are now paralyzed -- one
following a polio shot, the other following the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella)
vaccine -- and the third, a chubby baby in a blue knitted hat, died in infancy,
only 33 hours after receiving the whooping cough (DPT) vaccine.
It is just such vaccine-related hospitalizations, injuries, and deaths that
Barbara Loe Fisher, a cofounder and President of the National Vaccine
Information Center (NVIC), wants to prevent.
A tour of the NVIC's website provides a host of cautionary materials on a
procedure most Americans, including the current President, consider crucial to
maintaining good health: vaccination against childhood diseases.
But Fisher is concerned that, in medicine's war against microbes, citizens are
paying too dear a price for the promised protection. As evidence, she cites not
only vaccine failures and adverse reactions -- which include, among others,
paralysis, brain damage, shock, encephalopathy, development of autism and
learning disabilities, and death -- but also a public health bureaucracy
increasingly intent upon mandating inoculation with vaccines that have not been
studied rigorously enough to ensure they are safe.
Additionally, Fisher points out that there are no studies being conducted -- as
there have been for cancer and heart disease -- to determine the long-term
effects of vaccination. Some research has suggested that various defects in the
vaccines routinely administered to newborns and small children may be
contributing to the current explosion of chronic, neurological and immune
system dysfunction in the American population, including asthma, lupus,
rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and AIDS.
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is operated by Dissatisfied
Parents Together (DPT) in Vienna, Virginia. A non-profit organization begun in
1982, NVIC receives no government or corporate funding, and operates solely on
donations from concerned parents, health care professionals, and other
individuals. The mission of NVIC is to encourage health care consumers to make
informed decisions about vaccination; to that end, NVIC provides educational
materials about the risks and benefits of vaccination.
Fisher is the author (with Harris Coulter) of DPT:A Shot in the Dark (Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1985; Warner, 1986; Avery, 1991), one of the first books to
publicize the dangers of vaccinating in what she calls "a vacuum of
scientific knowledge."
Fisher recently discussed her continuing concerns about vaccine research,
development, policy making, and safety and the ongoing work of the National
Vaccine Information Center in a wide-ranging interview with Chronic Illness
Research Foundation.
CIRF: One of the things that I was very shocked to learn of from your website
was the lack of standardization in vaccine manufacture. How can this be? Is the
National Vaccine Information Center trying to get more standardization
implemented by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)?
Barbara Loe Fisher: We have been most involved in trying to inform the public
about the hospitalizations, injuries, and deaths that have been associated with
vaccines, particularly the DPT and DPTH vaccines. The DPT vaccine -- the whole
cell pertussis, or whooping cough, vaccine -- is the most reactive vaccine used
in the U.S. It's still on the market, even though the FDA finally licensed a
less toxic, acellular pertussis vaccine, after 15 years of pressure from NVIC
and parents. Although the DTaP vaccine causes fewer reactions, it still
contains pertussis toxin that is somewhat bioactive, and so has the potential
of causing injury.
Even though studies have shown that the DTaP vaccine is associated with far
fewer severe reactions than the whole cell pertussis, or DPT, vaccine, the FDA
won't take the whole cell vaccine off the market. In the compensation program
that was set up under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, most
of the nearly 1,000 awards that have been made are for DPT vaccine injuries.
There's no question that it is the most reactive vaccine that we use.
What we have been trying to do is get the FDA to release more information about
the lots of vaccine that are associated with higher numbers of hospitalizations,
injuries, and deaths than other lots of vaccines. But the vaccine manufacturers
continue to claim that this is proprietary information: that they don't have to
release the number of doses in a lot of vaccine, so vaccine consumers can compare
one lot to another. They claim that they don't want a competitor to know how
big their lot sizes are. It's obviously an attempt to keep the public in the
dark about the reactivity of one lot compared to another.
We have been urging that there be a standardization of lot numbers and sizes,
and that full information be given to the public. I think that the only way
we're going to be able to get more information out to the public about vaccine
lot variability and toxicity is if Congress steps in and forces the
manufacturers to be more forthcoming.
CIRF: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System reported 54,000 vaccine
injuries, hospitalizations, or deaths over a 20 month period, most of which are
due to DPT. Is this vaccine more bioreactive, or as bioreactive, as those using
live viruses like the oral polio vaccine?
Fisher: Unfortunately, there has been virtually no scientific research into the
biological mechanism of vaccine injury and death -- in other words, there have
been very few studies that have looked at what occurs in the body at a
cellular/molecular level when you introduce a viral or bacterial antigen.
We are vaccinating in a vacuum of scientific knowledge. There have been no
long-term studies set up, as has been done with heart disease and cancer, to
evaluate all morbidity and mortality outcomes following vaccination in large
populations of vaccinated and unvaccinated groups to see if we are paying a
price for the control of infectious disease in childhood. Are we paying a
larger price down the road, in terms of chronic illness?
We have certainly seen an explosion of chronic neurological and immunological
dysfunction in the last 30 years in the American population. It has taken the
form of minimal brain damage such as learning disabilities, attention deficit
disorder, mutiple sclerosis, diabetes, asthma, lupus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,
rheumatoid arthritis, otitis media, autism. There's no explanation for why
these conditions are on the rise. So I think it's a very fair question to ask
if increased vaccination at such an early age is playing a role. The National
Vaccine Information Center has been asking for more research to be done into
the biological mechanism of vaccine associated injury, death, and chronic
illness.
CIRF: Some researchers have suggested that vaccines are given to infants before
they are able to mount an immune response to microbial agents, and so they
become tolerized to the presence of the microbe, which may result in chronic
illness later in life. Do you see evidence we are vaccinating children too
young?
Fisher: Well, when I was doing the research for A Shot In the Dark back in the
early 1980s, it certainly became clear that the main reason the vaccination
schedule was instituted at as early as two months of age was because the
mothers were bringing in their babies for the postpartum visit. This decision
wasn't made on sound scientific grounds; public health officials just felt it
was a great opportunity to get the babies vaccinated. They felt that, at all
costs, they should get the vaccines in the baby.
So vaccination became associated with not only the postpartum visit, but with
"well child" visits at two, four, and six months of age. And indeed,
that tradition has continued as the drug companies have produced new vaccines,
such as HIB, hepatitis B, and now, chicken pox. When a new vaccine comes on the
market, the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] plugs it into the
existing vaccination schedule. Today, in this country, a one-year-old child can
be vaccinated with ten different viral and bacterial antigens on one day. That
is an incredible assault on the immune system.
And there are no studies to evaluate the damage this might be doing to the
immature immune system and how it will affect health later in life. When I sat
on the National Vaccine Advisory Committee in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I
repeatedly asked the public health officials for the scientific studies proving
that it was safe and effective to give so many vaccines on one day. They never,
ever gave me any of the studies, or even a list of them.
I think the public is unaware that, when a new vaccine comes out, decisions are
made to plug it into the schedule for reasons other than, perhaps, those that
are good for the individual child.
One of the things that I've learned in the last 15 years of sitting on
government advisory committees, going to scientific conferences and to
government meetings, is that public health officials see themselves -- and they
have stated this -- as being in a war with microorganisms. They have decided
that the only way they can eradicate these organisms is to employ vaccines to
eliminate all reservoirs where the microorganisms can thrive which, in most
cases, is humans. So they insist that everyone use these vaccines, because
their goal is eradication.
Public health officials seem to believe that, having achieved the eradication
of smallpox, every other organism they believe should not exist on earth should
be eradicated using the same means. What they haven't factored in, in this
rather fanatical mission to eradicate these microorganisms, is whether or not
they are compromising the biological integrity of the human race. They've
developed tunnel vision about it.
In the meantime, there have been a large number of casualties in their war on
disease that have never been acknowledged, are not being counted, and therefore
the benefit/risk equation is not truly known on a public health or an
individual basis. There is probably a genetic predisposition to vaccine injury
for some children, but there's no effort to do research and find out which
children are at risk and screen out high-risk children. They're telling us that
we must vaccinate -- our children must take the risk -- but they are unwilling
to spend the money and do the work to evaluate or minimize that risk.
I've been at meetings where public health officials basically have said,
"Why are you complaining? Yes, your child was a casualty, but we must all
risk for the welfare of the whole." And I remind them that the whole is
made up of individuals, and when you devalue the life of the individual, you
devalue the whole. And I remind them that the right to informed consent to any
medical procedure which carries the risk of injury or death is a human right.
But they don't want to hear that. They don't want anybody questioning the
decisions they have made.
CIRF: Something that scientists have known about for a while, but is just now
coming to public attention, is the contamination of early polio vaccines with
monkey viruses. One in particular, simian virus 40 or SV40, has been
shown to cause cancer in humans. It has also been suggested that the monkey
kidney cells in which polio virus was grown for the early polio vaccines were
infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and that, when the monkey
virus was introduced into the human population, it recombined with human
genetic material to create the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV. I understand
that NVIC wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala
in 1994, asking her to investigate this matter. What was her response?
Fisher: We did get a response in 1994, from an official in the FDA, who replied
for Secretary Shalala. This official basically tried to say that there was no
problem, it had been looked at, and they were going to continue to evaluate it,
but that no serious scientist believed that there was a connection between
contamination of polio vaccines with simian viruses and the development of HIV
in humans.
Of course, over the last few years, there have been several scientists who have
come forward with evidence that the early polio vaccines were contaminated with
monkey viruses, both SIV and SV40, and that chronic illness has resulted from
that contamination. There was recently a National Institutes of Health
conference held here in the Washington, D.C., area that brought together a
number of researchers who are culturing SV40 from tumors of adults and children
who are suffering from rare forms of bone, brain, and lung cancer.
So we are writing another letter to HHS which is going to request further
information under the Freedom of Information Act, about new research in the
last few years -- since the FDA's 1994 reply to us -- which again raises the
question about the connection between monkey viruses contaminating polio
vaccines and HIV.
CIRF: As I have been watching the work on the development of AIDS vaccines for
the last few years, from the viewpoint of someone following AIDS science, I've
been appalled at how ineffective and potentially dangerous these vaccines are.
Nevertheless, some researchers are calling for thousands of people to be
injected with experimental AIDS vaccines on the chance that they might be 20 or
30 percent effective.
Fisher: The worst nightmare of those of us who've been involved for several
decades in vaccine safety work is waiting for the day when public health
officials will present an AIDS vaccine to the American public. The work we are
doing right now is critically important, because it will lay the foundation for
that day when Americans are going to have to decide if they are going to line
up with their children, and with their babies, and accept the injection of the
AIDS virus, essentially, into everyone.
I have absolutely no confidence whatsoever that public health officials and
drug companies are going to know what they are doing on that day. I am
extremely concerned that, unless the issues of vaccine safety and the inherent
flaws in the mass vaccination system are addressed right now, we are in danger
of literally jeopardizing the genetic integrity of the human race, not only
with the HIV vaccine but with the more than 200 new vaccines that are currently
in the research pipeline.
The public doesn't know that the scientists and physicians in the
pharmaceutical industry and government who are in charge of the mass
vaccination system are policing themselves. Nobody is looking over their
shoulders. The mass vaccination infrastructure is totally unsupervised, with no
oversight mechanism in place to safeguard the public health. Our organization
is the only organized effort to monitor vaccine research, licensing,
development, promotion, and policy making. And ours is a consumer-led movement
that was started by parents of vaccine-damaged children.
We receive no federal grants -- obviously -- no corporate grants, and are
supported entirely by the people.
It's amazing that, on one side, there is a huge, powerful, wealthy lobbying
group that is rushing vaccines to market, after which they are put into the
vaccination schedule for adults and children, and promoted heavily by the
government and the pharmaceutical industry. And on the other side, there is one
little group, our little non-profit group, that is saying, "Wait a minute.
Is this good science or junk science? Is it good medicine or good politics? Is
it good for the people or good for drug company stockholders and career
bureaucrats? Who is providing any oversight on a multi-billion dollar mass vaccination
system?"
One of the ways that the public can have more control is to win the right in
this country to make informed vaccination decisions for ourselves and our
children. Mandatory vaccination has made the vaccines, which are a product like
any other product, legally required to be used by every citizen born in this
country. Therefore, there has been no ability by the public to put pressure on
the system to improve the product or to remove dangerous vaccines from the
market. In other words, vaccines are treated uniquely in the free enterprise
system. As consumers, we can bring very little economic pressure on the system
to have that product improved or removed, because all of us are required by law
to use it.
It's a dream for the pharmaceutical industry involved in making vaccines,
because there's no way anybody can say no. It's a stable, ready-made market,
and the enactment of the compensation law in 1986 has removed almost all
liability for drug companies.
You would think that, because vaccines are required to be used by everyone,
they would be held to the very highest safety and efficacy standards, but that
is not the case. What the National Vaccine Information Center has been pushing
for is more consumer involvement in the public health decisions that are made
in this country with regard to vaccination. We believe that health care
consumers should have the right to choose the type of preventive health care
that they want to use -- including choosing whether to use one, ten, or no
vaccines.
Our vaccine safety and informed consent movement is really part of a larger
health care revolution that is moving away from exclusive reliance on the
allopathic medical model. There has been, in the last ten years especially, an
interest in going back to basics -- better nutrition, better lifestyles, more
exercise, more natural ways of maintaining health and well-being. With that
return to a healthier lifestyle, there has also been a growing interest in what
we call alternative health care options: chiropractic, homeopathic,
naturopathic, acupuncture, and so on. Our movement is really part of that new
paradigm shift, in which there is less of a reliance on drugs, vaccines, and
surgery, and a return to less invasive ways of maintaining health.
What concerns us most is that there is an electronic monitoring system being
put in place by state public health departments with federal funding -- they're
trying to get it in every state -- called Vaccination Registries, which are
going to track every child born and monitor his or her vaccination status. It
will be linked to the birth record and social security number. A person will
not be able to move from state to state without being tracked, because the
tracking systems will be linked together. This monitoring system also includes
entitlement programs being linked to your vaccination status. It started out
with "no shots, no school." They've now graduated to no shots, no
welfare; no shots, no food stamps; no shots, no women, infant, and child
benefits. In other words, a pregnant woman who is poor will get no federal
assistance unless she can show that all of her children have been vaccinated
with all the recommended vaccines. There is a state legislator in Oregon who
has introduced a bill that will take away parents' rights to file a state tax
exemption for their children unless they can show that the kids have had all
the government-recommended vaccines.
So what I'm saying is that an Orwellian infrastructure is being set up that is
not only tied to education -- no shots, no school -- but to economic penalties.
When speak in public, I often make the prediction that soon you will have to
carry a health care card with your vaccination status on it, among other
information, and you will not be able to get into a hotel, you will not be able
to get into a nursing home, you will not be able to get a job, unless you can
show you've been vaccinated with all the government-recommended vaccines.
I think Americans have got to wake up and realize that, in the name of disease
control, their rights are being taken away every day. People must go to their
state legislatures and change mandatory vaccination laws to allow them to make
informed, independent decisions about vaccination. Then we will have the
ability to put economic pressure on the drug companies and on the health
agencies to do a better job with vaccine safety and efficacy.
CIRF: Something else that shocked me greatly when I read it about it recently
was all the unapproved and experimental vaccines that were given to the soldiers
who went to the Gulf War. We've been talking about taking control of our lives.
Of course, when you go into the military, you give up control over your life,
including your health care, but this seems like a moral dilemma to me: I do not
understand how these doctors can use these young people as guinea pigs in the
way that they have.
Fisher: That's an issue that is very close to my heart, because my father was a
military officer, and I was in effect in the military with him, in terms of the
health care I got, for 18 years. And I know well that, as a military dependent
-- especially when we lived overseas -- when new drugs came out, we were among
the first to get them, whether they knew at the time what the adverse effects
were or not. We were part of that post-marketing experiment. Every time we
turned around, we were vaccinated. I was chronically sick, my whole childhood,
with respiratory infections, throat infections -- I was just a very sickly
child, despite all the vaccines and drugs I got. And I don't have any doubt, at
this point, that my immune system was never allowed to recover and get back in
balance, because it was constantly being manipulated.
You do give up your rights when you enter the military. You are at the mercy of
whatever the military wants you to do. Both the reservists and the active duty
soldiers who went over to the Gulf were threatened that if they didn't
cooperate and take these experimental drugs and vaccines -- I think it was 17
bacterial and viral vaccines, simultaneously -- that they would be
court-martialed.
I am horrified, with everything that is not known about the cofactors involved
in the illnesses that the Gulf War veterans are now experiencing, that the
Pentagon would announce that all active military personnel -- more than a
million -- are going to be given anthrax vaccine.
I have called the Pentagon three times and asked for information on that
announcement. What I'm looking for is the studies to show the efficacy and
safety of this anthrax vaccine. And I've yet to receive any information. The
Pentagon public relations officials say they don't have any information on that
yet.
It is shocking that military personnel are being experimented on and that, as
we have found out with Gulf War Syndrome, nobody wants to take responsibility
when questions are asked.
CIRF: I fear that the HIV
vaccine is going to be foisted first on the military, and then on women --
especially poor women, who depend on the state for health care -- just as women
are now tested for HIV antibodies, without informed consent, when they give
birth in New York State.
Fisher: I think our society has become obsessed with fear of infectious
disease. We have become deathly afraid of viruses and bacteria which, in some
cases, have been on this earth longer than humans. Instead of trying to find
natural ways to enhance the functioning of our immune systems and come to an
accomodation with microorganisms, we have blindly trusted public health
officials who, like generals in a war, are determined to exterminate without
evaluating the number of human casualties it will take. This climate of fear is
the breeding ground for the draconian measures being employed by, and powers
given to, public health officials. It's very dangerous.
If we don't act now, the public health infrastructure is going to get more
power to intrude in our lives, intrude in our health care choices. It all comes
down to whether or not we, as individuals, are going to fight for the right to
make informed health care choices, including vaccination choices, for ourselves
and our children, and whether we are going to hold the drug companies and
government health officials accountable for the injuries, deaths, and chronic
illnesses caused by vaccines they produce, sell, and promote for mass use.
The National Vaccine Information Center can be reached in Vienna, Virginia, at
1-800-909-SHOT to order information, or 703-938-DPT3 to report a vaccine
reaction. NVIC's website is located at www.909shot.com;
it provides information on how to obtain the organization's publications and
information about making vaccination choices, as well as a host of resources
and information on related topics.
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INFORMATION, DATA, AND MATERIAL CONTAINED, PRESENTED, OR PROVIDED HERE IS FOR
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KNOWLEDGE OR OPINIONS OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED
AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO
VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU
ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.