by Barbara Loe Fisher
On October 21, 2008 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in association with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) issued a report on Gardasil vaccine safety that amounts to a cover-up of serious reactions, including paralysis and deaths, that have been reported to the government's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS).On October 24, 2008, the National Vaccine Information Center issued a press release that calls on the CDC and FDA to release to the public the study design, data and names of principal investigators involved in the report maintaining that Gardasil vaccine is safe with no serious side effects. NVIC will also be calling on the newly elected President and members of Congress to remove the nation's vaccine safety monitoring system from DHHS and place it in a separate entity reporting directly to Congress.
Sadly, U.S. government officials have learned nothing in the past 26 years from parents asking for investigation of vaccination side effects and identification of individuals at higher risk for having vaccine reactions so their lives can be spared.
Now, a callous disregard for human life, which has been tragically demonstrated for decades, is once again illustrated in this latest refusal to properly evaluate the risks of the newly licensed Gardasil vaccine. Why should anyone have confidence in government and drug company officials who do not bother to scientifically investigate the biological mechanisms contributing to serious reactions, injuries and deaths and why some individuals may be more vulnerable than others for suffering Gardasil reactions?
Conflicts of interest are rampant in a mass vaccination infrastructure that has the same people, who are regulating and promoting vaccines, also evaluating vaccine safety. This kind of conflict of interest cannot be tolerated. The people -- and only the people being told and often forced to buy and use vaccines -- can reform the system by getting involved in the democratic process and appealing to their elected officials and demanding change. Because 26 years is long enough to wait for those in government responsible for ensuring vaccine safety to do the right thing.
At the end of the day, the only way we can have the ability to place economic and political pressure on the public health system to change is to have the right to make informed, voluntary decisions about which vaccines we and our children use.
The right to informed consent to vaccination or any medical intervention which carries a risk of injury or death is a human right. Anything less, as we can see from the latest whitewash of Gardasil vaccine risks by government health officials we are supposed to trust, is a threat to both individual and public health.
It is up to each parent to decide for their child whether this manipulation of the immune system with increasing numbers of vaccines is a good thing or not. This is not a matter of being for vaccines or against them, it is a matter of defending your right to make educated, voluntary health care choices.Yet, currently NVIC is being flooded with vaccine reaction reports and parents are reporting that they’re unable to get vaccine exemptions, or those they had are being pulled. We are reaching a critical mass. NVIC’s Web site will help a lot with awareness, but as more people become aware there will be the need for a bigger response, and that takes money.NVIC is dedicated to the prevention of vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and to defending the informed consent ethic. If you would like to help them further their mission, you can donate now. As far as what NVIC will immediately use the funds for: