Vermont Legislature: Keep the Vaccine Philosophical Exemption

Thursday, March 08, 2012 by: Alan Phillips, J.D.
Tags: vaccine exemptions, Vermont, legislature

(NaturalNews) March 7, 2012, To: The Vermont Legislature

Re: SB 199, An Act Relating to Immunization Exemptions and the Immunization Pilot Program

Honorable Vermont Legislators and Concerned Others:

SB 199 seeks to eliminate the Great State of Vermont's vaccine philosophical exemption. This goal is problematic for many reasons. By way of brief introduction:

I. Philosophical exemptions address a human rights issue. Vaccines cause permanent disability and death.[1] Doctors cannot tell in advance if any given child will become disabled or killed by a vaccine. Therefore, philosophical exemptions are a moral and ethical imperative.

The philosophical exemption is further justified by the fact that we don't know whether or not vaccines provide a net benefit:

• The FDA, CDC and other medical authorities report that only 1% to 10% of vaccine adverse events are reported.[2] That is, 90% - 99% of vaccine harm is unreported.

• Congressional testimony revealed that medical students are taught not to report vaccine adverse events,[3] despite the federal reporting requirement.[4]

• A survey found that only 2.5% of New York pediatricians report vaccine adverse events to the government.[5]

The truth is, there is insufficient data to conduct a vaccine risk-benefit assessment. No one knows whether vaccines provide a net benefit or not.

II. There is substantial evidence connecting vaccines with autism:

• The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has been compensating vaccine-injured children with autism for the past two decades.[6]

• Published studies in 2011 found: 1) A 1% increase in vaccination coverage results in 680 more autism cases,[7] 2) "Documented causes of autism include . . . encephalitis following vaccination,"[8] and 3) There is a connection between the aluminum in vaccines and autism.9]

• In April of 2011, Poul Thorsen, the principal coordinator of multiple studies funded by the CDC used to deny a vaccine-autism link, was indicted on 13 counts of fraud and 9 counts of money-laundering.[10]

• A 2011 Freedom of Information Act request uncovered emails showing that the CDC and study authors withheld data showing that the mercury in vaccines causes autism. The resulting published "Denmark" study was used to (fraudulently) "prove" that vaccines do not cause autism.[11]

III. Vaccine supporters, while well-intended, rely on faulty reasoning:

Will failure to vaccinate cause diseases to return?

• About 90% of 20th Century infectious disease decline preceded vaccines. Diseases that had no vaccine declined along with diseases that did. [12]

• Vaccine protection lasts from 2 to 10 years. The majority of our population consists of adults who were last vaccinated as children. Their vaccine protection wore off years, sometimes decades ago. Yet, diseases levels have not increased during recent decades.[13] Lack of vaccine protection has not caused diseases to return.

Was the first polio vaccine a success?

• In 1962, Dr. Bernard Greenberg, Biostatistics Department Head at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, testified before Congress that cases of polio increased substantially after the first polio vaccine was introduced -- 50% from 1957-58, and 80% from 1958-59 -- and that the Public Health Service deliberately manipulated statistics to give the opposite impression.[14] We were all deliberately misled.

• Polio declined in countries that didn't vaccinate along with those that did.[15]

Do exempt children pose a risk to anyone else?

• The CDC says that 5% - 15% of vaccinated children are not immune.[16] They far outnumber the 1% - 2.5% of exempt children.[17] In fact, exempt children may be immune without even getting sick.[18]

Over half of the U.S. population has the right to refuse vaccines for philosophical reasons. To remove Vermont's philosophical exemption would be an egregious error.

Respectfully Submitted,

Alan Phillips
N.C. Bar No. 30436
www.vaccinerights.com
[email protected]
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[1] HRSA, Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, Data and Statistics. Compensation payments to date exceed $2 billion. http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/data.html

[2] (a) Less than 1%, according to Barbara Fisher, citing former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, 1993, JAMA, in the Statement of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), Hearing of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, "Compensating Vaccine Injuries: Are Reforms Needed?", September 28, 1999; (b) Less than 10% according to KM Severyn, R. Ph., Ph.D. in the Dayton Daily News, May 23, 1993; (c) Only 10% according to the CDC as reported by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Fact Sheet on Mandatory Vaccines, http://www.aapsonline.org/testimony/mandvac.htm

[3] Jane Orient, M.D., Director of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, "Mandating Vaccines: Government Practicing Medicine Without a License?" 1999.

[4] 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-25. Recoding and Reporting Information, National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

[5] Hepatitis B Vaccine Reaction Reports Outnumber Reported Disease Cases in Children According to Vaccine Safety Group, National Vaccine Information Center, January 27, 1999.

[6] Unanswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury, Pace Environmental Law Review, Vol. 28, Issue 2 Winter 2011, http://digitalcommons.pace.edu

[7] Delong G. A Positive Association found between Autism Prevalence and Childhood Vaccination uptake across the U.S. Population. J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2011 Jan;74(14):903-16. PMID: 21623535, http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/241126

[8] A former senior pharmaceutical scientist Helen Ratajczak reviewed the autism literature from the early 1940's and reported, Autism and vaccines, a surprising connection, Salem News (CBS, London) May 2, 2011, http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may022011/vaccine-reality-pd.php

[9] Michael Wagnitz: Scientists find correlation between autism and aluminum in vaccines, The Cap Times, Feb 5, 2012, http://host.madison.com

[10] Autism and Vaccines Researcher for CDC, Indicted for Fraud and Money-Laundering, CNBC, April 14, 2011, http://www.cnbc.com/id/42592600

[11] "Scandal Exposed in Major Study of Autism and Mercury", http://www.prnewswire.com

[12] For one of many sources, see Immunization Graphs at http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk

[13] Is herd immunity real? Russell Blaylock, M.D., Neurosurgeon, The Epoch Times, January 28, 2010, http://www.theepochtimes.com

[14] Hearings Before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, 87th Congress, Second Session on H.R. 10541, May 1962, at 94.

[15] The polio vaccine: a critical assessment of its arcane history, efficacy, and long-term health-related consequences, section 7, Neil Z. Miller, Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute, http://www.thinktwice.com/Polio.pdf

[16] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vaccines and Immunizations, Misconception #2. The majority of people who get disease have been vaccinated, http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm

[17] Non-medical Exemptions to School Immunization Requirements, The Journal of the American Medical Association, http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/296/14/1757.full

[18] See, e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vaccines and Immunizations, Glossary, "Asymptomatic infection: The presence of an infection without symptoms. Also known as inapparent or subclinical infection." http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/about/terms/glossary.htm



*A pdf file of the above letteris available here.



About the author:
Alan Phillips, Vaccine Rights Attorney
[email protected], 1-828-575-2622
Vaccine Rights (www.vaccinerights.com)