Immunizations required and the manner and frequency of their administration shall be as
  prescribed by the state board of health and welfare and shall conform to recognized standard medical practices in the state. The state board of health and welfare, in cooperation with the state board of education and the Idaho school boards association, shall promulgate appropriate rules and regulations for the enforcement of the required immunization program and specify reporting requirements of schools, pursuant to the provisions of chapter 52, title 67, Idaho Code
      39-4802. EXEMPTIONS. (1) Any minor child whose parent or guardian has submitted
to school officials a certificate signed by a physician licensed by the state board of medicine stating that the physical condition of the child is such that all or any of the require immunizations would endanger the life or health of the child shall be exempt from the provision of this chapter.
(2) Any minor child whose parent or guardian has submitted a signed statement to school officials stating their objections on religious or other grounds shall be exempt from the provisions of this chapter.

Congressional Hearing Exposes Conflicts of Interest

When a rotavirus (infant diarrhea) vaccine was suddenly withdrawn
from the market last year, the public was led to believe that it was
because of new information about harmful side effects.  At a hearing last
week conducted by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), we learned that other factors
influenced the 1998 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensing and
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommendation.

The FDA and CDC use outside advisory committees to consider new
vaccines, and federal laws are supposed to limit conflicts of interest.
It now turns out that half of those on the two key committees voting for
the rotavirus vaccine had financial ties to vaccine manufacturers, such
as being paid as consultants or lobbyists or owning vaccine patents or
stock in pharmaceuticals.

The FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee
(VRBPAC) decides whether vaccines are licensed.  The CDC Advisory
Committee on Immunizations Practices (ACIP) decides whether a vaccine
should be included on the Child Immunization Schedule, i.e., put on the
list of mandatory vaccines, a decision that overnight makes the vaccine
immensely profitable.

Most of the work of the CDC advisory committee is done in "working
groups" behind closed doors without public scrutiny.  Six of the ten
working groups had financial ties to pharmaceuticals that make rotavirus
vaccines.

In pre-licensure trials for the rotavirus vaccine, some babies
suffered obstructed bowels a week later, some requiring surgery to remove
a portion of the intestine, a painful condition called intussusception.
Nevertheless, the committees approved the vaccine for universal use,
calling these reports statistically insignificant.

Within months, 1.5 million vaccine doses were given to infants.  The
Department of Health and Human Services, in its announcement, stated that
"the most common adverse reactions included moderate fever, increased
irritability, and decreased appetite and activity," with no mention of
side effects requiring hospitalization or surgery.

The study data were concealed, and the public did not learn of the
problem until more than 100 cases of intussusception were reported,
including one death.

The Burton hearings provided some answers to help explain this
disaster.  When the rotavirus vaccine was approved by the FDA committee,
8 of the 15 members were absent, 2 were excluded, and 4 of the remaining
5 had conflicts of interest that necessitated waivers.

This was not a quorum so they were joined by 5 temporary members,
and then all voted to approve the vaccine.  The committee's own charter
states that temporary members are not normally to exceed 4.

The vaccine was not even considered to be all that effective in
preventing diarrhea in infants.  In a U.S. multicenter trial, for
example, the rotavirus vaccine only had a 49% efficacy rate in preventing
rotavirus disease.

The CDC routinely grants conflict-of-interest waivers to every
member of its advisory committee a year at a time, and allows full
participation in the discussions by all members even if they have a
financial stake in the decision.  One member who cast three votes to
recommend the rotavirus vaccine owned a patent for another rotavirus
vaccine and admitted that he was paid by the pharmaceutical industry to
travel around the country and teach doctors that vaccines are safe.

The data about side effects were never made available to the public.
The public still has no access to the actual data concerning side effects
of the rotavirus vaccine or for the controversial chicken pox or
hepatitis B vaccines.

If these new vaccines are safe, there should be no objection to
releasing the actual data that demonstrate this.  The obvious incentive
to conceal such data is to hide facts that dispute the public
recommendations.

At the June 15 hearing, officials from the FDA and CDC defended the
various conflicts of interest because waivers were granted.  One CDC
official went so far as to suggest that it good to use vaccine industry
insiders on official advisory committees because they are able to vote
based on secret drug-company information!

That is tantamount to letting vaccine industry lobbyists write their
own profitable government mandates, i.e., simply own the process.

It is a great mistake to make vaccine policy based on confidential
or trade secret data.  Science is most reliable when all data and
analyses are subject to public scrutiny, and our political system demands
that government policy decisions be subject to democratic checks and
balances.

The whole concept of the government forcing experimental health
treatment on healthy individuals is disturbing to those who value
freedom.  Mandatory vaccine policies depend on overwhelming public
acceptance, but public confidence is eroded by conflicts of interest and
secrecy of deliberations and data.

Government should put all the data, analyses and meeting minutes on
a public web site, and this should include a risk-benefit analysis,
cost-benefit analysis, and a comparison against alternate policies.  Only
public data and arguments should be considered.

The CDC should appoint advisory committee members with diverse
points of view.  Scientists from other fields, consumer advocates, and
even vaccine critics would greatly improve the quality of the
recommendations because more policy implications would be considered.

Phyllis Schlafly column 6-28-00
====================================================
Ingri Cassel, President
Vaccination Liberation - North Idaho Chapter
P.O. Box 1444
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816
(208)255-2307/ 765-8421
vaclib@dmi.net

"The Right to Know, The Freedom to Abstain"

This is a better reaction to have when a vaccine or a bee sting, an insect
bite or a snake bite occurs.  When using the homeopathic remedies of Apis
Melifica (made from honey bees) or Ledum Pal (made from an herb known as
Marsh Tea) you will note this reaction when using these remedies for the
above mentioned bites or stings.  Ledum Pal will also work for injections.

The body does not understand the difference between a sting or a puncture
wound from a nail, an insect, a bite of a human, a snake or a dog, cat,
raccoon, etc. or an injection of a needle to inoculate the body or inject a
medicine or a vitamin.  The body sees this as a trauma and an assault to the
system.

When a vaccine has the reaction of causing the swelling and the site becomes
swollen for a few hours most often the child will not have a full blown
reaction of seizure or collapse that is seen in the severe cases that end up
ending in brain damage, autism, or death.  These children have a better
response to the invasion of the materials of the injection.  They may had a
longer term problem that may or may not appear within the next few months or even years.  Often these children seen to have no short term problems at
all, but genetically the material is still there and will become part of the
miasm that they pass onto their progeny.  Their children may have a reaction
to the vaccines that they receive or they may pass on a congenital problem
that seems to come from nowhere and be a mystery to the medical people that
this child is taken to for answers.

The reason that most females have a less problem with learning disabilities
and hyperactivity disorders and even autism related to vaccines is because
the female has a better immune system for the XX" chromosome that is a
naturally reinforced gene.  She is set up to not only take care of her own
immune system, but also that of another human alive in her womb.
Females do not produce eggs by the millions as do Male with their sperm.  They have a set time clock for reproduction where males go from their puberty to their death producing reproductive materials (genes).  The female has a better immune response from the beginning.  The "XY" is less sufficient in immune faculties. Certainly this is not to say that females are not vaccine
damaged. We know that this is not the case.  But we do see more male
children that have immediate long term ailments from the vaccines and other
such drug and insect born injected trauma.

Many of you mentioned at our last VacLib meeting your interest in
receiving homeopathic remedies at reduced prices. Kathryn Jones, a
dear friend from Moses Lake, has been teaching and promoting
homeopathy for the past ten years. The following will give you an idea
of what she has to offer. The following is in response to a lady in NY
who was seeking a fairly unusual and "by prescription only" remedy
and needed a source. Hope to see you at our June meetings!

Ingri
*******************************************************

Thank you for inquiring into the use of Homeopathy as an alternative to
vaccinations.
Homeopathy for Health at http://elixirs.com
For your better health, we offer remedies, kits, books, combinations and
single
remedies in various forms and potencies from the finest of manufacturers.
Homeopathic Nosodes for immunization support include the following:

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) and the Autism Research Institute (ARI) are calling on the US Department of Health and Human Services to launch a public-private collaborative effort to investigate the possible relationship between vaccines and the autism epidemic in Brick Township, New Jersey, documented in a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as the nationwide autism epidemic highlighted in congressional hearings on April 6. Both NVIC and ARI represent families, many with children who developed normally until given routine vaccinations.

Barbara Loe Fisher, cofounder and president of NVIC, said "The CDC was asked publicly at a meeting with parents in Brick Township two years ago to look at the role vaccines may have played in the children's autism. The CDC did not do it. Parents want independent, non-government researchers to be involved in the Brick investigation and in any study of the national autism epidemic discussed in congressional hearings earlier this month so that parents can have confidence in the outcome."

Bernard Rimland, PhD, founder of ARI, agreed. "Parents want to know the truth. No stone should be left unturned. The vaccine question will haunt any government investigation into the autism epidemic until it is dealt with honestly. What is the CDC afraid of? Outside experts that parents trust should come in to take an unbiased look."

Suzanne Applegate, of Tom's River, who attended the initial CDC meeting held in Brick Township with parents two years ago said that she asked CDC officials not to exclude vaccines as a factor in the children's autism. "I asked them to look at the children's vaccine histories and to take blood samples and do other lab tests but the CDC officials said there was no scientific evidence vaccines cause autism. But now there are just too many parents with autistic children all over this country who know that their children were developing normally until after they got their shots."

The CDC reportedly discounted water pollution or other environmental causes for the high rate of autism in children living in Brick Township in 1998. The Brick Township study revealed that 1 in 149 children suffer from autism spectrum disorder, a much higher incidence than the 2 to 10 in 10,000 published figures often quoted by public health officials and autism researchers. The 1 in 149 figure did not include evaluation of children younger than 3 years.

The CDC report strongly supports the mounting evidence that the nation as a whole is experiencing an autism epidemic, first documented in a 1999 report by the California Department of Developmental Services (http://www.dds.ca.gov), which found that there was a 273% increase between 1987 and 1998 in the number of new children entering the California developmental services system with a professional diagnosis of autism. Since then, Maryland has reported a 513% increase in autism between 1993 and 1998 and several dozen other states have reported 300% or more increases in the numbers of autistic children served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Rick Rollens, father of a son who became autistic after a series of vaccinations and cofounder of the Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (MIND) Institute at the University of California-Davis, criticized the CDC's lack of investigation into the vaccine question. He said "If 1 in 149 children in America were sick with a brain-damaging infectious disease, the CDC would be all over the country sounding the alarm to find out what was going on and trying to find ways to stop it. Non-government physicians and scientists, especially those at the MIND Institute, should be involved in any government investigation into whether vaccines had anything to do with these children becoming autistic."

Hearings in the House Government Reform Committee last August and earlier this month included testimony from parents and physicians, who presented evidence that vaccines may be a cofactor in the development of autism in some children (http://www.house.gov/reform/hearings/index.htm). Meetings have taken place between agencies at the National Institutes of Health and parent groups in the past few months where both NVIC and ARI have asked for a public-private collaborative autism research effort that focuses on investigating the biological mechanisms of vaccine-associated brain and immune system dysfunction leading to autism. In a letter sent to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, both NVIC and ARI formally asked that nongovernmental researchers at private research institutes, including those at MIND, be involved in any large government study of the incidence or biological causes of autism, including vaccine-associated brain and immune system dysfunction leading to autism.
 
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

 May 12, 2000

"The next influenza pandemic: Not if, but when" is the central message of the annual "Preparing for the Next Influenza Pandemic" satellite broadcast sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Public health officials who attend this broadcast will learn about
strategies to address community needs during the next  influenza pandemic. Originally scheduled for June, this year's broadcast has been rescheduled for Thursday, July 13, 2000.

The literature for this broadcast states in part: "Epidemiologists agree that the probability is high that
another dangerous new strain of the influenza virus will emerge. In an effort to lessen the worldwide morbidity and mortality that such a strain will cause, public health
experts from federal, state, and local agencies have developed state and local guidelines to prepare for the next influenza pandemic and its anticipated vaccine shortage and disruption of social and community services. This live, interactive satellite broadcast will update local, state, and national plans, describe the federal role in the case of pandemic influenza as well as provide recommendations for antiviral drug use and triage and infection control measures."

For more information on this course, visit the website of CDC's Public Health Training Network at:
http://www.cdc.gov/phtn/pandemic/pandemicflu.htm Updates to the planning guide and general broadcast information will be made available on this website prior to July 13, 2000.

A guidebook titled "Pandemic Influenza: A Planning Guide for State and Local Officials (Draft 2.1)" will be the text for the course. To download this document online, go to:http://www.cdc.gov/od/nvpo/pandemicflu.htm

To register or to receive information about course materials and continuing education credit, contact your State Immunization Coordinator. For a list of State Immunization Coordinators and their phone numbers, go to: http://www.cdc.gov/nip/ed/coordinators.htm

 
 
http://www.massnews.com/hepw.htm
 

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Read More Culture Stories

Massachusetts News
By John Maguire

June 24--If you have a baby at home, you also have the booklet about shot records that  Massachusetts requires. It’s pale blue, in a vinyl slip cover, and it says, “Massachusetts Lifetime Health and Immunization Record.”  When you look at it, you probably feel safe. Most people do.

But not Judy Lafler Converse, 38, of West Falmouth. When she looks at that blue booklet, it brings back a vaccine-reaction nightmare that began three days after she delivered a  healthy baby in November 1996.

Her baby, Ben, got a hepatitis-B shot when he was one day old—on November 6, in Falmouth Hospital. Three days later, on his first night home, he began screaming uncontrollably, arching his back, turning blue. A nightmare for Jim and Judy Converse—not to mention poor Ben—began. It receded in agonizingly slow stages, as the Converses went from pillar to post—with no one able to say what was wrong with Ben.

The authorities claimed his steady all-night screaming, his inability to eat, his severely delayed development and his damaged reflexes were somehow normal. No way, they said, could his nerve damage have come from a vaccine reaction.

Today, Ben is a red-haired, blue-eyed two-and-a-half year old. He’s been in special physical therapy for 8 months, and he’s starting to do much better, though his development deficits are still profound. Judy and Jim Converse are worn out, putting their lives back on a normal track. But they no longer believe the idea that all American vaccines are equally well-tested and harmless. Judy has become a crusader against the unquestioned status quo in Massachusetts vaccination policy.

Hepatitis-B vaccine, for activists in this state and nationwide, is now the subject of a major effort. Many parents in this state, and thousands nationally, are drawing back from mandatory vaccination programs that increasingly seem more dangerous than they are worth.  (Another focus for protest is the chicken pox vaccine. See below.)

For the moment, the focus for parents is the hepatitis-B vaccine called Recombivax . Hundreds of parents, like Judy Converse, say their kids became nerve-damaged, developed arthritis or even died after receiving the shots. The suffering of children is a powerful stimulus for action, and a national effort to question this vaccine program is underway. The parents have gotten national press coverage and congressional hearings. The medical establishment is starting to look upset at the breadth and intensity of protest that Judy Converse and others are bringing out. How the hepatitis policy of Massachusetts came into being and how it affected the Converses  is a fascinating story. Parents of infants and small children may want to pay attention—because if the Converses and their allies are right, in a few cases,  hepatitis-B vaccine reactions can be tragic.

Mom and Ben

The Converses are educated, aware people. Judy has a Masters in Public Health degree from the University of Hawaii, and is a registered dietician. Chris, 39, is a mechanical engineer whose consulting practice includes the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Their son, Ben Converse, was born at Falmouth Hospital on Nov. 6, 1996. He was full term. “He was doing well on day-of-life number one,” his mother, quoting the medical records, told Massachusetts News.  Ben’s reflexes were quite good. He scored 9 and 10 on the 10-point Apgar scale. His sucking, grasping, swallowing and so-called Moro defensive reflexes were all recorded as good.

Baby Ben stayed with his mom, except on the second night when he was taken into the nursery and his Mom got to sleep.  On the third day he came home. And when his parents brought him in the door, he screamed. They fed him, they walked him. He could not be soothed. His parents were astonished and frightened.

“He did that for four hours straight,” Judy Converse said. “We were just shocked. We called the maternity ward but it was like they’d already forgotten us.

We called and called everybody. We tried to reach a doctor. Everyone said this is normal. No one mentioned ... the possibility of a vaccine reaction. We knew this was not normal.  Finally, my husband and I decided to take shifts  just holding him while he screamed.”

She slept, setting the alarm for 1:00 a.m.  When it rang, she woke up to take her shift, expecting to see father and child resting quietly—but it wasn’t to be.

“My husband was just trudging around the kitchen.” Ben was still in distress. “I called the maternity ward again. They told me to put him on the clothes dryer and turn it on.... That will make him stop crying—as though the crying was just annoying....”

She tried it. She put three-day old Ben on top of the dryer in the laundry room at 2 o’clock in the morning on his first night home and turned the dryer on. She slept on the floor. He woke up at dawn a little calmer, she said—but not better.

Converse says she assumed that first nightmare night was an exception—things were bound to get better.  But they didn’t . “Nothing was the same after that, ever.  He was a different kid. A whole litany of problems ensued from that day on ... and they never went away.”

His mom’s first glimmer of understanding came when Ben was 28 days old. Judy had brought him in for his check-up, still obsessed with what was wrong with her baby.  She remembers watching them give him the  hepatitis-B shot: “And then I went, ‘Oh yeah.’ I was standing there watching them do this, and realizing, ‘This is what’s wrong, this is what’s wrong.’ ”

She checked in his blue vaccination book and saw that the 28-day shot was the second shot. The first had happened somewhere in the hospital—without her permission—out of her sight. It was that first shot, she thought, that had set it all off: the screaming, the food allergies, the inability to sleep through the night, the damaged reflexes. The first shot, she thought,  must have happened in the hospital the night they took Ben away from her and kept him in the nursery.

Later, as she heard about hepatitis-vaccine reactions, she decided her child was probably  “demyelinating.”  He was having an auto-immune response.

The vaccine had caused his body to go into a cycle where it was eating the fat-and-protein covering off its own nerves. That must be why he had lost his infant reflexes. (For they were gone—the Moro reflex gone, the sucking reflex extremely weak.) He was in a state, she thought, of active nerve destruction—maybe a mild relative of the nerve destruction that happens with multiple sclerosis.  No one physician would confirm this, though.

Damaged Children

Bonnie Dunbar, Ph.D., is one of the pivots around which the current national storm on hepatitis turns. She is a researcher in vaccine development in the Department of Cell Biology at Baylor Medical College in Houston, Tex. Her credentials are strong. She became concerned about hepatitis-B vaccines when two of her lab workers developed reactions in a single year, 1994.

When told about Ben Converse’s problem at Day Three of his life, Dunbar told Massachusetts News: “There are more than 1,200 reports of that inconsolable-screaming syndrome after hepatitis B vaccination.”  She referred to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), one of the largest databases on vaccine problems in the US. More than 25,000 adverse reactions to hepatitis B vaccination are on record there. Though there may be duplicate reports, Dunbar and others believe there are many unreported adverse reactions.

Dr. Dunbar testified in Washington, D.C. on this subject in May.  “I am getting three or four of these reports of damaged children a day,” she said. “I have a call on my machine today from a doctor who has a child that was severely damaged.”

How could a vaccine that might, just might cause death or nerve damage, have come into use?

She says the adverse reaction studies that were done before the vaccine was approved only looked for negative effects in a five-day period after the shot—and some autoimmune problems take up to 60 days to develop. Secondly, there is a racial component that was not studied, said Dunbar. She says reports in the VAERS system suggest that these severe reactions happen to Caucasians more than to other races—Asians in particular seem safe from these reactions.

Dr. Dunbar, whose life now revolves around this project, says far more research is needed to find out why people are getting sick, who is at risk to get sick, and how to make the vaccine better.

Vaccinate Now, Worry Later

Most Boston doctors go with the massive mandatory vaccination program—they have little choice, it’s the law—but keep silent about it. One exception is Dr. Richard Moskowitz, a general practitioner in Watertown. He sees the current controversy as stemming from a couple of basic issues in the field of immunization.

“You might ask,” he told Massachusetts News, “what point is there in shooting up little newborn babies to protect against something they are not at risk for? The answer seems to be, ‘Let’s shoot em up now, while we have them under our thumbs. It’s can’t hurt, right?”

“The assumption is that vaccines are uniformly safe and beneficial across the board, but that assumption is mistaken.”

“We also seem to believe that it’s in our interest to vaccinate as many people against as many diseases as we can.” He wonders if that’s true. “It’s becoming a lot easier to make vaccines,” Moskowitz says.

“Now the bio-tech firms are cranking them out as fast as they can go.”

Moskowitz wonders who will decide when a health threat is serious enough to warrant a big vaccine campaign?

“It ain’t you and me,” he told Massachusetts News. “It’s the equivalent of a smoke-filled room in Washington.”  In that room are the doctors from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical corporations. They discuss, and they form the consensus about which disease to vaccine next for.

Dr. Moskowitz, like the lay vaccine activists, see pediatricians as cowed, reluctant to resist the combined influence of the CDC, the American Academy, industry and the new state laws.

This is why, he says,  physicians now “have knuckled under” and are giving every child a hepatitis vaccine which seven years ago was regarded as needed only by nurses.

But the pressure to administer new vaccines goes on.  Now doctors are scratching their heads over the need for a chicken-pox vaccine, since that is a childhood disease that everyone used to get and survive quite well.

According to Moskowitz, doctors are asking, “When is enough enough?”

How Parents Can Keep Informed

Debbie and Peter Bermudes of Arlington want parents to know more about vaccines and to make more informed choices about their kids’ shots. They have a large mailing list, which they call the membership of the assachusetts Citizens for Vaccination Choice. (PO Box 1033, East Arlington, MA 02474.) They and their network have given speeches, sent out mail, and produced proposed bills for the state legislature.

“We started this,” Debbie Bermudes told Massachusetts News, “because I once worked as an occupational therapist with some kids who had been injured by the DTP vaccine, and when I became pregnant, I questioned my baby’s need for the DTP vaccine.” (DTP is the standard combination vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, which doctors call pertussis.)

Her physicians were unwilling to take her worries seriously; nor did they give any credence to her own experience with damaged children.  So she founded this group. It lobbies for more vaccine information and more choice. It networks with other groups, especially the National Vaccine Information Center in Washington, D.C. (NVIC is at 800-909-SHOT or www.909shot.com).

At the state house, the group proposed bills to give parents seven days to think about a vaccine, and the right to refuse it. They got nowhere. Said Debbie Bermudes: “Their attitude was, ‘Are you a doctor?’ ”

“Our mission is just to insure that parents have access to information and the right to make informed decisions,” she said. Although physicians pooh-pooh her group, she is not bitter. “I don’t think the doctors are being malicious,” she said. “They truly want what is best for the child, but they are being taught only one side of the issue.”

She doesn’t know of many hepatitis-B reactions in the state right now, she told Massachusetts News.  Bermudes is more concerned about the mandatory chicken pox vaccine, which is coming soon. “We have 1,500 people on our mailing list for that subject alone,” she said.  She has filed a bill that would allow parents to opt out of the chicken pox vaccine.

Now that so many vaccines are mandated, doctors and health officials are getting careless about parental consent.  When she wrote to Dr. Susan Lett, medical director for immunization at the Massachusetts Health Department, to ask why hospitals were not bothering to get parental consent for hepatitis vaccine,  Bermudes says she was told, “We’re just following the CDC guidelines.”

It’s not easy getting the word out to concerned parents. One Worcester public school where Debbie Bermudes had been scheduled to give a parent-talk about vaccines and consent issues, she says, checked on her background and canceled the talk when they found she was not going to back the health department’s policy.

Exempting Your Children

How could it happen that, in a very small but real number of cases, people are having severe reactions to this vaccine, while the CDC and the FDA were saying “no reports of any serious reaction to the vaccination?"

The current situation with hepatitis-B arose out of several conflicts and events. First came the development of the vaccine in the late 1980s and the apparent success on the island of Taiwan in virtually wiping out hepatitis and liver cancers. Then came the U.S. approval of this vaccine in the early 1990s, and its recommendation to those known to be in high-risk categories, like nurses who might get stuck with needles. Next--expansion of the program, as U.S. health planners got their sights on the idea that they could wipe out liver cancer in the United States, as had been done on Taiwan.

The CDC began its war on hepatitis. Assuming that the proper tests had been done and that the vaccine completely safe, CDC issued guidelines and the states implemented them, requiring more and more children to have hepatitis-B vaccinations at various checkpoints of their lives: on entering day care, kindergarten, high school.

In 1999, about seven years after the beginning of the national hepatitis program, the health planners’ dreams of a perfectly immunized U.S. is almost within reach--but now a small group of parents, scientists and statisticians is standing up to shout,  “Stop!”

What comes next? Hard to know. But if you don’t want a child of yours to get a vaccine, the thing to do for now is talk with your doctor—and sign a religious exemption form. That’s what Judy Converse would do.

Ben is Rescued

Little Ben Converse, underweight, pale, with shiners under his eyes, whom no one could treat, finally began to get better when his mother took him at age 22 months to Occupational Therapy Associates in Watertown. They didn’t fight her diagnosis of vaccine damage nor did they care what the doctors had said. They recognized that Ben really did have nerve damage.

They diagnosed it as Sensory Integration Syndrome, and ordered a home-centered therapy plan using special toys and equipment. "It's made Ben a much happier kid," his mother says.

The special therapy stuff in his home includes three different special swings, rings, ropes, giant rubber bands, a weighted blanket--all kinds of things to get him to push and pull, moving the large muscles in his arms, legs and back.

Now Ben’s a blue-eyed, red-haired toddler, light at 33 pounds.   His movements are still odd, flaccid, and off-balance, because his balance system is still off. Mom says that's why he likes to sit still and play with small toys rather than run and jump about. He still has seizures--he had one last month

“He hates to eat,” says his mom. “He still wants to suck.” But she does get food into him: his favorite foods are puddings, chocolate kisses, and sunflower seeds. “He likes to really grind down on them,” she says.

Judy Converse is glad that she fought the medical establishment, including the hospitals and the pediatricians and the specialists. She had a long conversation recently with Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center recently, and found a vindication.

“She said, ‘your instincts were absolutely right,’” Judy Converse told Massachusetts News.  “He did have an autoimmune defect.’  I think we rescued him. He’d be either dead or profoundly autistic if we hadn’t.”
  RETURN TO FRONT PAGE
 
 
 
 

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) released figures today which show that the number of hepatitis B vaccine-associated serious adverse event and death reports in American children under age 14 outnumber the reported cases of hepatitis B disease in that age group. NVIC is calling the government-mandated hepatitis B vaccination of all children a "dangerous and scientifically unsubstantiated policy." At the same time, a national poll reveals that two-thirds of all Americans want the right to make informed, voluntary decisions about vaccination.

Independent analysis of raw computer data generated by the government- operated Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) confirms that in 1996, there were 872 serious adverse events reported to VAERS in children under age 14 who had been injected with hepatitis B vaccine. The children were either taken to a hospital emergency room, had life threatening health problems, were hospitalized or were left disabled following vaccination. 214 of the children had received hepatitis B vaccine alone and the rest had received hepatitis B vaccine in combination with other vaccines. 48 children were reported to have died after they were injected with hepatitis B vaccine in 1996 and 13 of them had received hepatitis B vaccine only before their deaths. By contrast, in 1996 only 279 cases of hepatitis B disease were reported in children under age 14.

There were 24,775 hepatitis B vaccine-related adverse events reported to VAERS in all age groups, including 9,673 serious adverse events and 439 deaths between July 1990 and October 1998. Out of this total, 17,497 reports were in individuals who received only hepatitis B vaccine without any other vaccines. 5,983 of the reports were for serious events and there were 146 deaths, which means that 35 percent of reports in all age groups after receipt of hepatitis B vaccine only are for serious events.

During the same time period, there was a total of 2,424 adverse event reports, with 1,209 serious events and 73 deaths in children under age 14 who got hepatitis B vaccine alone without any other vaccines. This means that 52 percent or 1 out of 2 reports for children under age 14, who only receive hepatitis B vaccine, are for serious events.

VAERS depends primarily upon physician reporting and causation cannot be conclusively determined without in-depth follow-up of each serious event and death report. NVIC maintains that reports made by doctors to VAERS represent only a small fraction of the vaccine-related injuries and deaths which occur in the U.S. every year. A former FDA Commissioner wrote in JAMA in 1993 that one study showed "only about 1 percent of serious events" attributable to drug reactions are reported to the FDA.

In October 1998, France became the first country to end hepatitis B vaccination requirements for schoolchildren after reports of chronic arthritis, symptoms resembling multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune and neurological dysfunction following hepatitis B vaccination became so numerous that the Health Minister of France suspended the school requirement. Currently in the U.S., public health officials in 35 states require children to get 3 doses of hepatitis B vaccine or be denied entry to school.

In a related development, NVIC also released the results of a national poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken by The Polling Company on December 8- 11, 1998, which showed that 2 out of 3 (68%) Americans support a parent's right to be informed of the risks of diseases and risks of vaccines and be able to choose whether or not their children receive certain vaccines which could potentially hurt them. A plurality (45%) of Americans oppose state laws requiring all five-year-olds to get the hepatitis B vaccine before being allowed to attend kindergarten and, when given information about risks of hepatitis B vaccination, 59 percent of respondents were less likely to support such mandatory vaccination laws.

Only 25 percent of Americans believe that people, after getting information about risks and benefits of medical procedures such as the administration of prescription drugs and vaccines, should then be required to follow the orders of their doctors or public health officials. The poll's margin of error is +/-3.1% at the 95% confidence level (i.e. the same survey could be administered to a similar population and yield comparable results in roughly 19 of 20 cases).

Founded in 1982, the National Vaccine Information Center is the oldest and largest vaccine safety and informed consent rights advocacy organization representing health care consumers and the vaccine injured. For more information or to report a serious health problem following vaccination, call 1-800-909-SHOT or access http://www.909shot.com

SOURCE National Vaccine Information Center

CO: National Vaccine Information Center
 

The Virus and the Vaccine
F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 0

A simian virus known as SV40 has been associated with a number of rare human
cancers. This same virus contaminated the polio vaccine administered to 98
million Americans from 1955 to 1963. Federal health officials see little
reason for concern. A growing cadre of medical researchers disagree

by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher

HARVEY Pass, the chief of thoracic surgery at the National Cancer Institute,
in Bethesda, Maryland, was sitting in his laboratory one spring afternoon in
1993 when Michele Carbone, a wiry young Italian pathologist who was working
as a researcher at the NCI, strode in with an unusual request. Pass had
never before met Carbone, and had talked to him for the first time, on the
telephone, only a few hours before. Now Carbone was asking Pass for his help
in proving a controversial theory he had developed about the origins of
mesothelioma, a deadly cancer that afflicts the mesothelial cells in the
lining of the chest and the lung. Mesothelioma was virtually unheard of
prior to 1950, but the incidence of the disease has risen steadily since
then. Though it is considered rare -- accounting for the deaths of about
3,000 Americans a year, or about one half of one percent of all domestic
cancer deaths -- the disease is particularly pernicious. Most patients die
within eighteen months of diagnosis.

--------------------------
Related links:

"The Lethal Dangers of the Billion-Dollar Vaccine Business," by Andrea Rock
(December, 1996)
"With government approval, drug companies sell vaccines that can leave your
child brain damaged, can spread polio from your baby to you -- and can even
kill. Safer stuff is available. Here's why you haven't been getting it." (A
health report in Money Magazine.)

"SV-40 Contamination of Poliovirus Vaccine," by Dr. John Martin (July, 1997)
An article by a doctor at the Center for Complex Infectious Diseases in
Rosemead, California.

National Vaccine Information Center
"The National Vaccine Information Center is a national, non-profit
educational organization founded in 1982. It is ... dedicated to the
prevention of vaccine injuries and deaths through public education."

The Vaccine Page
"The Vaccine Page provides access to up-to-the-minute news about vaccines
and an annotated database of vaccine resources on the Internet."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

April 22, 2000

An Open Letter to Those Who Support Informed Consent to Vaccination:

  I am writing this letter from my Capitol Hill home in Washington, D.C.,
stunned by the events of this morning when federal agents, with weapons
drawn, entered a home in Miami in the middle of the night and forcibly
removed a child whose mother gave her life to bring him to a country she
thought was free and governed by just laws.  Defying a court order, US
government officials took this child at gunpoint from the arms of the
fisherman, who rescued him from the ocean where his mother drowned trying to
escape from the police state she risked their lives to leave.

   Just as I will never forget waking up this morning to pictures of a
helmeted government agent with a gun taking away a terrrified child, I will
never forget the beautiful spring day last weekend when I walked in the
shadow of the Washington monument at a legal rally with my oldest son - who
I carried in my arms the day he suffered a vaccine reaction 20 years ago and
who is now nearly six feet tall - as we mingled with a peaceful crowd of
young, well educated, middle class Americans holding differing political and
philosophical views - and tried to hear speakers preaching non-violent civil
disobedience in the tradition of Ghandi, while police helicopters buzzed
overhead, and a sniper stood on the top of the White House facing us, and
phalanxes of armed police on motorcycles gunned their engines and moved in
formation along the bordering streets, and other officers on horseback and
on foot ringed the perimeters of the grassy space where people had gathered
to engage in some good old-fashioned free speech.  Or just watch others
exercise that freedom.

   Today is a sad day for America.  But it is also a wake-up call. Because
the mentality that sends in armed government agents in the middle of the
night to take a child from the only love and security he has known since his
mother died trying to lead him to freedom, is the same mentality that
motivates government officials to enter the homes of families in America,
where parents have chosen not to give their children every government
mandated vaccine, and issue charges of child neglect with threats to make
the children wards of the state if complete vaccination does not take place.
It
is the mentality that persuades doctors to insist on vaccinating a sick
child despite a parent's objections or re-vaccinate a child, who has already
experienced a serious vaccine reaction, in order to obediently adhere to the
government policy.

   It is a Statist mentality - the idea that the State and agents of the
State know what is best for the individual and that government policy will
be enforced no matter what the consequences. Although parental rights were
invoked today by the federal government to justify its action, Elian could
have been eventually reunited with his father in a humane, legally and
ethically supportable way. It is not parental rights that were upheld by the
Justice Department and INS action today, but the idea that the State owns a
child and that agents of the State can do what they will with a child even,
in this case, when there is a federal court ruling cautioning that due
process of law must be followed in examining the child's asylum and
custodial rights.

   In Cuba, the State owns children and the State, not parents, decide what
is best for a child.  This is true in communist China, was true in fascist
Germany during World War II, and is true in every totalitarian state where
individual freedoms are abrogated for what those in control of the State
have decided is in the best interest of the State.

   There is no difference between what happened in America today and what
happens in communist, fascist or totalitarian states in the rest of the
world.

   The mentality, which fosters the belief that the State has the right to
sacrifice civil liberties and human rights, individual inviolability and
even individual lives for what those in control of the State have determined
to be the greater good, is not the sole province of any one political party
or segment of the population. It is part of the human impulse to control the
freedom of others to think independently and determine their own destiny,
the very freedom our nation's founders fought and died for us to have and
serve as a beacon of truth and light for the world.

   Something changed this Easter and Passover weekend in America. In the
words of an old 60's song which I may or may not be quoting entirely
accurately: "There is something happening out here. What it is, is not
exactly clear."  I pray that what is happening is that Americans are waking
up to the realization that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, as
Thomas Jefferson said. And that we also remember the words of Martin
Niemoeller:

  '"In Germany, they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak
up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the
Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me and by that time there was no one left to speak up."

   I am not a Cuban refugee living in Miami and what happened to Elian
Gonzalez and his mother doesn't have anything to do with me personally, but
I know a police state in the making when I see one. And I know that the only
way my children and grandchildren and your childlren and grandchildren will
have any chance of living in true freedom tomorrow, is for us to speak up
today.

With faith and hope,

Barbara Loe Fisher
Co-founder & President
National Vaccine Information Center
E-mail: blfisher@mindspring.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Many of you have asked what the Delphi technique is.
The following is a brief summary of how it can be used and how to possibly diffuse this
manipulating technique. It will likely not be able to be diffused at the
meeting Friday but what we can ask them (if given the opportunity) is to
arrange for a town hall meeting in which Blaze Welch, Dr. Horowitz and I are
able to debate MDs or others of their choice at another date.
***************************************************************************
The Delphi Technique:

How to achieve a workable consensus within time limits

The Delphi Technique was originally conceived as a way to obtain the
opinion of experts without necessarily bringing them together face to face.
"In Educating for the New World Order" by Bev Eakman, the reader finds
reference upon reference for the need to preserve the illusion that
there is lay, or community, participation in the decision making
process, while in fact lay citizens are being squeezed out.
A specialized use of this technique was developed for teachers and is
called the "Alinsky Method."

The setting or group is, however, immaterial. The point is that
people in groups tend to share a certain knowledge base and display
certain identifiable characteristic (known as group dynamics).  This
allows for a special application of a basic technique.

The change agent, or facilitator, goes through the motions of acting
as an organizer, getting each person in the target group to elicit
expression of their concerns about a program, project, or policy in
question. The facilitator listens attentively, forms task forces,
urges everyone to make lists and so on. While she is doing this, the
facilitator learns something about each member of the target group.
He/she identifies the leaders, the loud mouths, as well as those who
frequently turn sides during the argument-the weak or non-committal.
Suddenly, the amiable facilitator becomes the devils advocate. He/she
dons his professional agitator hat.

Using the divide and conquer technique, he/she manipulates one group
opinion against the other. This is accomplished by manipulating those
who are out of step to appear ridiculous, unknowledgeable,
inarticulate, or dogmatic. He/she wants certain members of the group
to become angry, thereby forcing tensions to accelerate. The
facilitator is well trained in psychological manipulation. She/he is
able to predict the reactions of each group member. Individuals in
opposition to the policy or program will be shut out of the group.

The method works. It is very effective with parents, teachers, school
children, and any community group. The targets rarely, if ever, know
that they are being manipulated. If they do suspect this is happening,
they do not know how to end the process. The desired result is for
group polarization, and for the facilitator to become accepted as a
member of the group and group process. He/she will then throw the
desired idea on the table and ask for opinions during discussion.
Very soon his/her associates from the divided group begin to adopt
the idea as if it were their own, and pressure the entire group to accept
the proposition.

The technique is a very unethical method of achieving consensus on a
controversial topic in group settings. It requires well trained
professionals who deliberately escalate tension among group members,
pitting one faction against the other, so as to make one viewpoint
appear ridiculous so the other becomes sensible whether such is
warranted or not.

Disrupting the Delphi
by Lynn M Stuter

The Delphi Technique is being used at all levels of government to
move meetings to pre-set conclusions. For the purposes of this
dissertation, facilitator references anyone who has been trained in
the use of the Delphi Technique and who is running a meeting.
There are three steps to diffusing the Delphi Technique when
facilitators want to steer a group in a specific direction.

1. Always be charming. Smile. Be pleasant. Be Courteous. Moderate
your voice so as not to come across as belligerent or aggressive.
2. Stay focused. If at all possible, write your question down to help
you stay focused.
Facilitators, when asked questions they don't want to answer, often
digress from the issue raised and try to work the conversation around
to where they can make the individual asking the question look
foolish, feel foolish, appear belligerent of aggressive.
The goal is to put the one asking the question on the defensive. Do
not fall for this tactic.
Always be charming, thus deflecting any insinuation, innuendo, etc.
that may be thrown at you in their attempt to put you on the
defensive, but bring them back to the question asked. If they
rephrase your question into an accusatory statement (a favorite
tactic) simply state, "That is not what I stated. What I asked
was...(repeat your question)."
3. Be persistent. If putting you on the defensive doesn't work,
facilitators often resort to long, drawn out dissertations on some
off the wall and usually unrelated or vaguely related subject that
drags on for several minutes. During that time, the crowd or group
usually loses focus on the question asked (which is the intent). Let
them finish with their dissertation or expose. Then nicely with focus
and persistence, state, "But you didn't answer my question. My
question is-and repeat your question.
Always be charming, stay focused and be persistent.
Never, under any circumstance, become angry. Anger directed at the
facilitator will immediately make the facilitator the victim. This
defeats the purpose which is to make you the victim. The goal of the
facilitator is to make those they are facilitating like them, alienating
anyone who might pose a threat to the realization of their agenda
(people with fixed belief systems, who know what they believe
and stand on what they believe are obvious threats).
If the participant becomes the victim, the facilitator loses face and
favor with the crowd. This is why crowds are broken up into groups of
seven or eight, why objections are written on cards, not voiced aloud
where they are open to public discussion and public debate. It's
called crowd control.

It is always good to have someone else, or two or three others who
know the Delphi Technique dispersed throughout the crowd who, when
the facilitator digresses from the question, will stand up and say
nicely, "But you didn't answer that lady's/gentleman's question."
The facilitator, even if suspecting you are together, certainly will
not want to alienate the crowd by making that accusation. Sometimes
it only takes one occurrence of this type for the crowd to figure out
what is going on. Sometimes it takes more than one.
If you have an organized group, meet before the meeting to
strategize.  Everyone should know their part. Meet after the meeting
to analyze what went right, what went wrong and why, and what needs
to happen the next time around. Never meet during the meeting. One of
the favorite tactics of the facilitator if the meeting is not going the way
they want and they are meeting measurable resistance, is to call a recess.
During the recess, the facilitator and his/her spotters (people who wander
the room during the course of the meeting) watch the crowd to see who
congregates where, especially those who have offered measurable
resistance. If the resistors congregate in one place, a spotter will usually
gravitate to that group to join in the conversation and will report
back to the facilitator. When the meeting resumes, the facilitator
will steer clear of those who are resistors. Do not congregate. Hang
loose and work the crowd. Move to where the facilitators or spotters
are. Listen to what they have to say, but do not gravitate to where
another member of your team is.
This strategy also works in a face to face, one on one, meeting with
anyone who has been trained in how to use the Delphi Technique.

From a representative republic to a participatory democracy

With the advent of education reform, the ensuing turmoil among the
citizenry, and the grassroots research that has been sparked
therefrom, a consistent pattern with respect to public participation
and input has emerged, giving cause for alarm among people who
cherish the form of government established by our founding fathers.
Recent events, both inside and outside education, have brought the
emerging picture into focus.

In the not too distant past the hiring of a consultant by the City of
Spokane to the tune of $47,000 to facilitate the direction of city
government brought a hue and cry from the populace at large. Eerily,
this scenario held great similarity to what has been happening in
education reform.
The final link came in the form of an editorial comment made by Chris
Peck regarding the "Pizza papers." The editorial talked about how
groups of disenfranchised citizens were brought together to enter
into a discussion of what they felt (as opposed to know) needed to be
changed at the local level. The outcome of the compilation of those
discussions influenced the writing of the city/county charter.
Sounds innocuous enough. But lets examine this a little closer. Let's
walk through the scenario that occurs in these facilitated meetings.

First, about the facilitator.
The facilitator is hired to facilitate the meeting. While his/her job
is supposedly non-directive, neutral, non-judgmental, the opposite is
actually true. The facilitator is there to move the meeting to a preset
conclusion. This is done through a process known as the Delphi
Technique, developed by the RAND Corporation for the U.S.
Department of Defense as a psychological warfare weapon in the 50s
and 60s. Comforting, no doubt. With this established, lets move on
to the semantics of the meeting.
It is imperative to the success of the agenda that the participants
like the facilitator. Therefore, the facilitator first works the crowd to
cause dis-equilibrium-establishing a bad guy/good guy scenario.
Anyone who might not agree with the facilitator must be seen by the
participants as the bad guy, the facilitator the good guy. This is
done by seeking out those who might not agree with the facilitator
and making them look foolish, inept, or aggressive, sending a clear
message to the audience that if they don't want the same treatment to
keep quiet.
The facilitator is well trained in how to recognize and exploit many
different psychological truisms to do this. At the point the opposition
has been identified and alienated, the facilitator becomes
the good guy-a friend-and the agenda and direction of the meeting is
established without the audience ever being aware of it.
Next, the attendees are broken up into smaller groups-usually of
seven or eight people-each group with a facilitator. Discussion
ensues wherein the participants are encouraged to discuss preset
issues, the group facilitator employing the same tactics as the lead
facilitator. Usually participants are encouraged to put on paper
their ideas and disagreements, these to be later complied by others.
Herein lies a very large problem. Who compiles what is written on the
sheets of paper, note cards, etc.? When you ask the participants, you
usually get,
"Well, they compiled the results."
Who is "they?"
"Well, those running the meeting."
Oh-h! The next question: How do you know that what you wrote on
your sheet of paper was incorporated into the final outcome?  The
answer you usually get is, "Well, you know, I've wondered about that,
because what I wrote doesn't seem to be reflected here. I guess my
viewpoint was in the minority."

And there you have the crux of the situation. If you have fifty people
in a room, each writes his/her ideas and dislikes on a sheet of
paper, to be compiled later into a final outcome, each individual
has no idea of what any other individual wrote. How do you know
that the final outcome reflects anyone's input? The answer is that
you don't.
The same scenario holds when there is a facilitator recording your
comments on paper. But the participants usually don't question this,
figuring instead that their viewpoint was in the minority and thus
not reflected.
So why have the meetings at all if the outcome is already
established?
Because it is imperative to the continued well being of the agenda
that the people be facilitated into ownership of the preset outcome.
If people believe the idea is theirs, they support it; if the people
believe the idea is being foisted on them, they will resist.
Likewise, it is imperative to the continued well being of the agenda
that the people perceive that their input counts.
This scenario is being used very effectively to move meetings to
preset conclusions, effectively changing our form of government from
a representative form of government in which individuals are elected
to represent the people to a "participatory democracy" in which
citizens, selected at large, are facilitated into ownership of preset
outcomes, perceiving that their input resulted therein.
The reality is the outcome was already established by others, but
this is not apparent to the citizen participants.