Phyllis Schlafly Article... a GOOD one!

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Fw: Whatever Happened to Informed Medical Choice?

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>>Whatever Happened to Informed Medical Choice?

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>>January 27, 1999 by: Phyllis Schlafly

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>>The New York Times has just given us a front-page report on how the

>>pharmaceutical corporations spent $5.3 billion last year sending their

>>representatives into doctors' offices and hospitals, with gifts and

>>meals, to sweet-talk physicians into using their brand-name

>>products. The Times headlined the news " Fever Pitch: Getting

>>Doctors to Prescribe is Big Business. "

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>>The Times explains that " business is a big part of medicine now, "

>>Indeed it is. But, of course, doctors have complete freedom to accept

>>or reject the drug corporations' sales pitches.

>>

>>Let's hear the rest of the story about how politics is an even bigger

>>part of medicine now. With a $5.3 billion marketing budget, the drug

>>corporations can easily afford to lobby state legislators and federal

>>and state bureaucrats to pass laws that force us to buy their

>>products, particularly vaccines.

>>

>>Vaccines are designed to give us immunity from certain diseases,

>>but the most interesting immunity is the drug corporations' immunity

>>from any liability related to vaccine side effects, which Congress

gave

>>them by law in 1986. That, combined with coercive state laws, has

>>made vaccines extremely profitable for the drug corporations.

>>

>>All states have passed laws requiring children to be given about 33

>>doses of 9 or 10 different vaccines before entering school. The New

>>Jersey courts recently upheld the right of a private school to deny

>>admission to a student merely because she objected to taking a

>>vaccine.

>>

>>Medicine has a grand tradition of according patients the right of

>>informed choice before being given drugs or other medical

>>procedures. But vaccines are mandatory, and instead of " choice, "

>>some states tolerate limited and hard-to-get " exemptions. "

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>>Most states permit a medical exemption if a child has already

>>suffered a vaccine injury. All but two states permit a religious

>>exemption, and 16 states permit a philosophical exemption, both of

>>which may be narrowly and arbitrarily interpreted by state

>>bureaucrats.

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>>So much for the " choice " part of " informed choice. " Now, what about

>>the " informed " part?

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>>U.S. vaccine policy is set by a quasi-governmental group of

>>mandatory-vaccination promoters called the Advisory Committee on

>>Immunization Practices (ACIP), whose members are appointed by

>>the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). ACIP members can have

>>financial ties to the drug corporations, which is a gross conflict of

>>interest since the vaccine manufacturers' profits depend on laws that

>>force vaccines on all children instead of just those at risk.

>>

>>One would think that ACIP's objective would be to promote the health

>>of Americans or to provide information to aid informed choices by

>>patients, but it's not. ACIP's stated purpose is " to increase the safe

>>usage of vaccines. "

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>>It is not clear that the increased use of vaccines always promotes the

>>health of individuals. No vaccine is 100% safe or effective. Between

>>12,000 and 14,000 reports of hospitalizations, injuries and even

>>deaths following vaccination are reported to the government every

>>year, and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has

>>already paid out $925 million in claims for vaccine-caused injuries

>>and deaths.

>>

>>Many vaccines are required without regard to the risks and benefits.

>>The vaccine establishment's attitude is that such information unduly

>>alarms parents and, anyway, the government knows what's best for

>>children.

>>

>>Polio vaccines are required even though the World Health

>>Organization has declared polio to have been eradicated in the

>>Western Hemisphere. The last case of polio in the United States was

>>in 1979, except for Americans who get polio from vaccines (like

>>Virginia's Lieutenant Governor Hager, who is in a wheelchair

>>because he got polio from the vaccine given to his infant son).

>>

>>In November 1997, two influential news magazines featured articles

>>asking a vital question: Has the decrease of infectious diseases in

>>childhood through the mass use of vaccines been replaced with an

>>increase in chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes?

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>>The Economist discussed the " hygiene hypothesis, " which holds that

>>exposure to infections during childhood may prevent chronic disease

>>later in life, and that intervention against childhood diseases by

>>vaccines may have undesirable effects.

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>>Science News, in an article called " The Dark Side of Immunizations, "

>>reviewed reports from several countries showing that vaccinated

>>children have a higher incidence of asthma and diabetes than

>>unvaccinated children. The dramatic increase in asthma in the United

>>States in recent years is an unexplained phenomenon.

>>

>>Although American children entering kindergarten have a 98%

>>immunization rate for most prescribed vaccines, government officials

>>are determined to let no child escape. The CDC is setting up

>>federally monitored state immunization registries that will tag all

>>children at birth with an I.D. number and track them so that they will

>>not be able to get into daycare, kindergarten, school or college, or

>>get health care, without showing proof of all required vaccinations.

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>>It's time to have a free and open debate on the pros and cons of the

>>policy considerations that go into laws that make the use of drugs

>>compulsory. Better yet, it's time to give all parents the right of

>>informed choice about medical treatment for their healthy children.

>>

>> Phyllis Schlafly column 1-27-99

>>

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