...here is an email from NVIC ;0) correy

[Guest guest]

NVIC Vaccine E-Newsletter

November 3, 2008

Vaccines, Politics & Media: Both Sides?

by Barbara Loe Fisher

www.vaccineawakening.blogspot.com

www.NVIC.org

www.StandUpBeCounted.org

With a little help from his friends, a man who has made millions from

creating and promoting forced use of vaccines has begun the process of

canonizing himself. Frustrated that his new book attempting to debunk

the autism-vaccine connection is not selling well, Offit is

desperately trying to lose the Dr. Proffit label and morph into a

martyr even as he continues to lead a public attack begun in 2007 on

those questioning vaccine safety and defending informed consent to

vaccination.

The day before Halloween, Offit's good friend TV doc Snyderman

gave him a helping hand when she attempted to relentlessly browbeat

the intellectually honest and affable Matt Lauer into agreeing with

Offit that public debate about vaccines and autism is dangerous and

should immediately cease. Gritting her teeth through a steely grin and

hissing " It is NOT controversial " at her stunned NBC-TV colleague over

and over again, Snyderman's on-camera meltdown was an unexpected

Halloween treat for Moms making breakfast for the kids.

The interesting thing about Snyderman's glowing video tribute to her

friend and subsequent tantrum when Lauer innocently labeled the

vaccine- autism topic a " controversy, " was her insistence that public

debate should stop because her hero had gotten " death threats "

presumably from distraught parents of vaccine injured autistic

children. That same sentiment was forwarded by medical reporters at

Newsweek magazine and ABC- TV, who appeared to agree with Offit's

point of view that citizens questioning vaccine safety and forced use

of vaccines are dangerous.

Adopting a strategy similar to the one that Merck pro-actively

employed in 2006 to roll out the poorly tested and reactive Gardasil

vaccine, Offit and his colleagues are demonizing parents and doctors

questioning vaccine safety by characterizing them as ignorant, crazed,

anti-science religious fanatics with a penchant for violance. In a

desperate play for sympathy, pro-forced vaccination proponents

agreeing with Offit's big stick approach are trying to deflect

attention from the fact that they, themselves, created the current

climate of fear, distrust, and anger. The bitterness now being

expressed by parents, who have been belittled, harassed and threatened

by hostile doctors inside and outside of government for standing up

for their right to protect their children from vaccine injury and

death, was inevitable.

When mothers and fathers take their healthy sons and daughters to

pediatricians to get vaccinated and then witness them suffering

vaccine reactions and regressing into chronic poor health within

hours, days and weeks of getting sometimes 5 to 10 vaccines on one

day, they are not going to accept an illogical, unscientific

explanation like " it's all a coincidence. " When mothers and fathers

are thrown out of pediatricians offices and denied child medical care

for asking questions about vaccines; or reported to child protective

services for refusing to get children every vaccine; or denied

exemptions to vaccines by government officials taking a militant " no

exceptions " stance, they are going to feel angry.

At the same time, pediatricians, who become pediatricians to help

children stay well, are not going to willingly accept the possibility

that something they injected into a child injured or killed that

child. When they cannot answer questions parents ask about vaccines,

they are going to feel angry. The debate is so contentious because it

is about life and death issues that affect everyone but neither those

questioning vaccine safety nor those defending it serve their causes

well by engaging in physical intimidation and threats against each other.

What should be troubling for doctors practicing medicine and

journalists reporting on it is the Statist approach being taken by

influential doctors like Offit, Greg Poland and Hotez in

response to three decades of reports by parents that children are

being harmed by vaccination. Those who simultaneously develop new

vaccines, help make national vaccine policy and promote forced use of

vaccines certainly have the right to earn a profit from the products

they create. They also have the right to promote an ideology in which

they deeply believe. But Americans, who cherish freedom of thought,

speech and action, should think long and hard about all efforts to pit

citizen against citizen and marginalize those asking for credible

scientific investigation into vaccine risks and the right to make

informed, voluntary vaccination decisions.

A more reasoned, open minded approach to the vaccine safety debate was

taken by pediatrician Sears, M.D. and ER physician Stork,

M.D., who anchored an Oct. 28 episode of " The Doctors. " The new CBS

daytime show featured a segment airing different views about vaccine

risks and mandatory vaccination in which Berle, of TACA, and I

appeared. To the credit of the show's producers, a spirited but

civilized debate was allowed.

Both of the show's doctors joined an AAP pediatrician guest in

strongly encouraging vaccination. However Dr. Sears and Dr. Stork also

encouraged parents to become informed and supported the right of

parents to make voluntary decisions about vaccines.

The show has elicited heated discussion on " The Doctors " website and a

staff member monitoring the discussion boards yesterday told posters

" Time to remind everyone that there is a person behind every screen

name. Let's remember to address the topic without personally attacking

another member because their views are different from yours. We all

can learn from everyone's viewpoint, let's try to keep this discussion

progressing in the manner intended. " Immediately following this

advice, posters who had been attacking one another found common ground

even as they agreed to disagree.

At the vaccine freedom rally in Trenton sponsored by the New Jersey

Coalition for Vaccination Choice on October 16, pediatrician Larry

Palevsky, M.D. encouraged parents to continue speaking out and working

for the legal right to voluntary vaccine decision-making. He

challenged doctors to open their minds about vaccine risks, stating:

" As Einstein said, we can't solve problems by using the same kind of

thinking we used when we created them. I challenge my colleagues in

medicine to listen and learn that there is more to know than what

we've been told...... Engage in a more scientific dialogue and not in

the rhetoric that keeps coming from those who have a stake in keeping

the status quo of one-size-fits-all vaccinations and an ever-

increasing vaccine schedule. Take whatever fear you have about

speaking out, and turn it into being responsible to our children in a

new way. "

Another doctor, who has had the courage to step up to the plate and

ask her fellow physician colleagues to consider the possibility that

vaccine risks are not equal for all and must be examined more

thoroughly, is former NIH Director Bernadine Healy, M.D.. In a CBS-TV

interview last May, she expressed the view that scientific research

must go forward to identify individuals genetically or biologically

vulnerable for suffering vaccine injury.

Healy told CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Atkisson: " I don't

think you should ever turn your back on any scientific hypothesis

because you're afraid of what it might show..... there may be this

susceptible group. The fact that there is concern that you don't want

to know that susceptible group is a real disappointment to me. If you

know that susceptible group, you can save those children. If you turn

your back on the notion that there is a susceptible group - what can I

say? "

The fear and dread that new vaccine developers and promoters like

Offit, Poland and Hotez may have is that their vaccines will not be

welcomed with open arms by a public concerned about vaccine risks. But

the way to remove public concern about vaccine safety and

effectiveness is not to back questioning parents and doctors into a

corner and club them into submission and silence.

In the meantime, an editor at the Atlanta Journal Constitution in

Georgia is calling for a rejection of a bill to allow New Jersey

residents the same freedom that citizens living in 18 other states

have: the legal right to exercise conscientious belief exemption to

vaccination. And a large HMO in the Midwest is forcing all of its

26,000 employees to get a flu shot every year or be fired.

Tomorrow, all Americans have the opportunity to go to the polls and

vote for the candidates they believe will best represent them at the

local, state and federal government level. Understanding the positions

of candidates on vaccine safety and informed consent issues is important.

We cannot let those who are afraid of the truth about vaccination

silence the voices of those who have paid the ultimate price for that

fear. Stand by for announcements coming soon about how you can join

NVIC in becoming an activist citizen and educate members of your

community about the importance of standing up for the right of all

Americans to make informed, voluntary decisions about vaccination.

__________________________________________

" People think of me as this wild-eyed maniac, " Offit says. " If I sat

down with them for 10 minutes, they'd see that my motivation is the

same as theirs. You want what's best for kids. " Asked how he ranks the

intensity of the vitriol aimed at him, Offit says simply, " Abortion,

doctors who perform abortions. " Nobody's firebombing pediatricians'

offices, and there's no moral dilemma here about when life begins. But

the overarching question-what happened to my baby?-is still impossible

to answer, and the anger is real and it's deep. Some parents of

children with autism tell stories with an eerily similar start: an

infant who was happy and healthy until she got her shots. Then,

suddenly, she lost eye contact and language. Parents' dreams for their

babies are buried in sadness, their pockets are emptied to pay for

therapies, their worries about their children's future haunt them even

as they're trying to get through the screaming, splattered minutes of

the day. " - Kalb, Newsweek (November 3, 2008) http://ww

w.newsweek.com/id/165644

" Dr. Poland, director of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group at

the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a vocal proponent of

universal flu vaccination, says he is no stranger to such harassment.

Among the most egregious things -- I got a letter once railing against

my involvement in vaccines and hoping that something serious would

happen to me and hoping that something serious would happen to one of

my children, " he said.....But some people connected to groups that

believe a vaccine-autism link exists say that they, too, have been the

targets of hateful speech. " I've been called a baby killer, " says

Estepp, national manager of the autism support group Talk

About Curing Autism. " One woman got into my face this summer and told

me I was going to cause millions of children to die. Emotions are

running high because this involves the health of our

children....Poland said he believes legislation should be considered

to offer special protection to those in the field of vaccine research.

" Since this affects not only a person and his or her family, but

indeed the public health, special provisions should be considered in

terms of legal consequences, " he said. " This was done, for example, in

the case of abortion protesters. " .....Dr. Hotez, immunologist at

Washington University in Washington, D.C., and father of a

daughter with autism, said he believes that federal public health

agencies, including the surgeon general's office and the National

Institutes of Health, must take a more active role in dissuading the

link between vaccines and autism. " [These organizations] have to be

willing to speak out and make strong statements that vaccines do not

cause autism, " he said. " These organizations have been conspicuous by

their silence. " - Dan Childs, ABC-TV (October 31, 2008)

http://abcnews.go.com/print? id=6150482

" Parents fail to get their children inoculated for a variety of

reasons: ignorance of the requirement; concern over how much it will

cost; misunderstanding that for the vaccine to be effective against

some diseases, children must get follow-up shots....More problematic

are the parents who willfully ignore the requirement, substituting

their judgment for that of experts who must guard the public health.

In New Jersey, the state Legislature is being asked to approve a bill

that would allow parents to opt out of mandatory vaccine requirements.

The measure was prompted by a new requirement in New Jersey -- the

first in the nation -- that pre- schoolers get annual flu

shots.....The bill in the New Jersey Legislature would allow parents a

" conscientious exemption " as long as they swear they have " sincerely

held " objections to immunizations. No doubt many parents have

sincerely held beliefs, but allowing them to opt out of vaccination

puts the lives of their children at risk as well as the lives of

others....The vaccine-autism link has been thoroughly debunked. States

should not back off mandatory vaccination laws, and local school

districts and health departments should do a better job of enforcing

compliance. " - Mike King, Atlanta Journal Constitution (October 29,

2008) http://www.ajc.com/s

ervices/content/opinion/stories/2008/10/29/vaccinesed .html

" BJC HealthCare, the shining beacon for traditional medical care

throughout the Midwest, has made getting a flu shot mandatory for its

26,000 employees. That goes for all employees, even the ones who never

come in contact with patients. If anyone refuses, it is going to be

considered a breach of the fitness for duty requirement, meaning

anyone who refuses to be vaccinated is subject to dismissal. Many

employees are unhappy over this new edict. Some employees who see the

policy as a blatant violation of their privacy believe it should be at

the discretion of the individual to decide what medications to take.

Others think the way the policy was presented created an atmosphere of

intimidation. When the policy was initially presented to employees,

was made clear that without compliance, the employee could no longer

work at BJC. Still others suspect that BJC is getting a kickback from

the vaccine's manufacturer. Employees receiving the flu vaccination

are required to sign a waiver that totally absolves BJC of any

liability if the employee is harmed by the vaccine. " Barbara Minton,

NaturalNews.com (November 2, 2008) http://

www.naturalnews.com/024677.html