BARBARA LOE FISHER INTERVIEW

[Guest guest]

First Do No Harm

Barbara Loe Fisher and the National Vaccine Information Center work to

prevent vaccine-related injuries and deaths by educating the public

about rights and responsibilities.

by Neenyah Ostrom

NONYN@...

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

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 to 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.

source: http://www.chronicillnet.org/online/Fisher.html

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Karin Schumacher

Vaccine Information & Awareness (VIA)

792 Pineview Drive

San , CA 95117

408-448-6658 (phone/fax)

408-397-4192 (voice mail/pager)

via@... (email)

http://www.909shot.com (NVIC website)

http://www.ihot.com/~via (VIA website)

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We Must Have The Freedom To Choose &

Respect Everyone's Choice

*********************************************************

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

Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & UK

530-478-1242 Voicemail

http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm

" All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men ( &

women) do nothing " ...Edmund Burke

ANY INFO OBTAINED HERE NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE

DECISION TO VACCINATE IS YOURS AND YOURS ALONE.

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