State Vaccine Legislation Scorecard: Majority of Americans Oppose Mandatory Vaccination

State vaccine laws and the legal right to vaccine exemptions are hot topics in America. Between 2015 and 2017, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a non-profit charity, closely monitored state legislation and analyzed and issued positions on 454 vaccine-related bills through the NVIC Advocacy Portal (NVICAP). In 2015, the NVICAP team responded to more vaccine related bills than were filed in any previous year: 160 bills across 41 states. This record was shattered two years later in 2017 when NVIC tracked and published information on an all-time record of 184 proposed vaccine bills filed in 42 state legislatures. Mainstream media continues to cite the passage of two 2015 bills, California SB277, which eliminated the personal belief and religious vaccine exemption, and Vermont H98, which removed only the philosophical exemption, as evidence that public support for vaccine exemptions is waning. This is a myth easily refuted by looking at the real evidence.

From Nuremberg to California: How Eugenics Destroys the Lives of Children by Removing Consent to Medical Procedures Like Vaccines

Comments by Brian Shilhavy, Health Impact News Editor: I have been investigating and covering the topic of vaccines for over a decade now, and know the topic so well that seldom, if ever, can I find anyone to carry on an intelligent conversation about the topic. The controversial topic of vaccines in the U.S. today is primarily a topic about beliefs, and people's trust in vaccines resembles a religious belief, not an informed opinion based on the facts. I am not sure in all of my years in covering this very important and very controversial topic, that I have ever found a literary treatise on the subject as eloquent and comprehensive as this piece just put together by Barbara Loe Fisher, the founder of the National Vaccine Information Center. Revolutions that have changed the course of history have begun on lesser documents and exposés than what Barbara has written here, and I am not exaggerating. When discussing the topic of vaccines, the religious-like faith of those who put their trust in them usually starts out with a statement like: "When it comes to vaccines, the science is settled." This statement in and of itself is intrinsically unscientific, and is simply used to avoid debate and censor any information contrary to the religious-like beliefs so many hold about vaccines. Fisher correctly points out how our modern day culture has come to worship "science," but it is a very perverted form of true science. Fisher does an excellent job also of documenting the history of "eugenics," which was born in American intellectualism and made notorious by Hitler in Nazi Germany to justify horrible atrocities. As we have reported here at Health Impact News, while the term "eugenics" has become unpopular, the ideas it represents have never left American culture - they have just been "repackaged" and are the same arguments used today for forced vaccination as they were used in the past for forced sterilization.

The Day the Doctor Kicked Me Out for Not Vaccinating My Daughter

The day I was kicked out of my doctor’s office for not vaccinating my daughter, I had no idea what my rights were. I know now. And I want to make sure you know yours as well. When her six month appointment came around, I began to get really nervous. I had just joined a natural parenting group and had begun to hear a couple of stories about vaccine injury. One of the group members shared an article online about a mother, who regretted not doing her research on vaccines prior to vaccinating her daughter, and she went on to develop autism as a result. I read it from start to finish just before I left for my baby’s appointment, and I knew that I just couldn’t go through with the vaccines. I remember calling my husband nervously, though, not knowing what to do. I was so scared of making the wrong choice. The doctor checked our daughter and although she had been completely healthy in every way and was exceeding all of her milestones, he commented that he was concerned about the size of her head. He showed me a chart with the normal measurements and noted that she was significantly off the bell curve. He feared that she could have hydrocephalus and wanted to do an MRI to rule out any complications. I told him that I would need to discuss it further with my husband since general anesthesia was needed for the procedure. He agreed and then reminded me that today was her six month visit, and he needed to catch her up on her vaccines. I expressed my concerns to him, especially now with her head size being an issue, and told him that I just wasn’t ready to move forward with them just yet. I needed more time to make an educated decision and to make sure all was okay with her head. It was then that he snapped. According to him, my time was up, and I needed to do them NOW. He told me that he had warned me at my previous visit and that I no longer could postpone them if I wanted to continue bringing my daughter to him. I remember shaking uncontrollably, and almost said yes ... But I just couldn’t do it. He kicked me out at that point and told me to go to the waiting room for the final paperwork. When I asked him about the concerns with the size of her head, he said that he would no longer take care of her as a patient until I decided to catch her up on ALL of her vaccines. He then slammed the door and left me to dress my baby, alone in the cold room.

Patient’s Right of Informed Dissent to Medical Products and Services – Do Your Own Research!

While the American Hospital Association claims that all patients have the right to “informed consent,” they don’t disclose that the patient must inform himself of the benefits and risks prior to consenting or dissenting. This lack of reliable information regarding treatment risks also occurs across the country when it comes to vaccines and their many potential (even life threatening) adverse reactions. Big Pharma profiteers now control a) clinical drug trials, b) the FDA approval process, c) the physician’s ‘belief’ as to what drugs are appropriate to prescribe for their patients, and d) the standards of care that physicians are required to adhere to. We must never forget that Big Pharma has no fiduciary duty to “do no harm." Its only mandate is to generate profit. Many drugs have severe – even lethal – adverse reactions. Physicians today are either naive or indifferent to this reality. Either way, they cannot be trusted to always act in the best interest of their patients. From Dr. Daniela Drake’s article, Big Pharma is America’s new mafia: “Our prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. Our drugs kill around 200,000 people in America every year, and half of these people die while they do what their doctors told them—so they die because of the side-effects,” said Dr. Gotzsche in his recent interview. “The other half die because of errors—and it’s often the doctors that make the errors because any drug may come with 20, 30 or 40 warnings, contraindications, precautions…and then the patients die.”

Health Freedom: Is the Right to Refuse Vaccines a Human Right?

Informed consent means you have the legal right to be fully and accurately informed about the benefits and risks of a medical intervention, including a pharmaceutical product, and are free to make a voluntary decision about whether to accept the risk for yourself or your minor child without being coerced or punished for the decision you make. Informed consent has guided the ethical practice of medicine since the Doctor’s Trial at Nuremberg after World War II, where the informed consent principle was internationally acknowledged as a human right for individuals participating in scientific research. Today, informed consent to medical risk taking also means you have the legal right to be fully and accurately informed by a doctor or medical facility about the benefits and risks of a lab test, surgical procedure, prescription drug or other medical intervention performed on you or your minor child and give your voluntary permission.

Tactics Doctors Use to Pressure Hesitant Parents to Vaccinate

The number of parents questioning the wisdom of the currently recommended schedule is up and corroboration is easy to find. An article in the journal Pediatrics in August 2016 reported that the number of pediatricians encountering parents who either question vaccine safety or refuse one or more vaccines or want to use an alternative vaccination schedule for their children increased from just under 75 percent in 2006 to 87 percent by 2013. Some physicians resort to denying medical care to children if parents refuse to give their children all federally recommended vaccines according to the CDC’s recommended schedule.

What’s the Difference Between Companies Selling Cigarettes and Companies Selling Vaccines?

Do you know the difference between companies that sell cigarettes and companies that sell vaccines in America? When cigarettes injure or kill people, tobacco companies are financially liable in civil court. But when vaccines injure or kill people, drug companies are not. That’s right. If you get lung cancer from smoking cigarettes, you can sue the tobacco company. But if you or your child suffers brain damage or dies after getting a vaccine, the drug company cannot be sued. And you can’t hold any person who licensed, recommended, gave or voted to mandate the vaccine accountable in a court of law, either. Here is why: In 1986, Congress gave drug companies a partial civil liability shield for vaccine injuries and deaths. In 2011, the US Supreme Court effectively banned all vaccine injury lawsuits, ruling that vaccines are - quote - “unavoidably unsafe.” Then, in 2016, Congress lowered licensing standards for experimental vaccines so that drug companies can fast track them to market without conducting large clinical trials. Now, drug companies and their friends in medical trade are lobbying state legislatures to strip vaccine exemptions from state public health laws. That’s right. Even though drug companies and doctors have been given an unprecedented liability shield removing all responsibility for vaccine injuries and deaths, they want more. They want “no exceptions” vaccine laws forcing you and your children to use every dose of every government endorsed vaccine without your voluntary, informed consent.

Calls for Violence Against Those Who Practice Freedom of Speech Opposing Vaccines Reaches Mainstream Media

The latest example of the disturbing trend of prominent doctors, attorneys and journalists calling for severe punishment, including physical violence, against people refusing the medical intervention known as vaccination is a recent editorial titled “Preying on parents’ fear” published in the Boston Herald on May 8, 2017. The article, written by the “editorial staff,” is yet another in a long series of attack pieces published by the mainstream media attacking freedom of thought, speech and conscience when it comes to vaccination. It ends: "Vaccines don’t cause autism. Measles can kill. And lying to vulnerable people about the health and safety of their children ought to be a hanging offense." A “hanging offense”? The editorial staff, led by editorial page editor Rachelle Cohen, is calling for people who criticize vaccine safety to be executed? Really?

NVIC Now Monitoring 173 Vaccine Bills in 40 States

We are three months into the 2017 state legislative sessions and our NVIC Advocacy Team has already tracked 173 vaccine related bills across 40 states and two federal bills on the NVIC Advocacy Portal. We have added 39 new bills since our last update at the end of February. Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana and Michigan are five new states that have bills introduced for the first time this session! If you live in one of the following states, there have been bills filed that can affect your rights: AL, AR, AZ, CO, CT, FL, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NE, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OK, OR, PA, RI, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, and WV (states in bold have bills that are still active and need your action and states not bolded have bills that have already passed or died.) The following states are priority OPPOSITION alert states as they now have active bills to restrict or eliminate vaccine exemptions: CT, MN, NY, PA, RI, and TX. The following states are priority SUPPORT alert states as they now have active bills to add or expand vaccine exemptions: CO, MI, NJ, NY, OK, OR, RI, TN, TX, and WA. Please log in to NVICAdvocacy.org and click on your state team tab to see what is happening in your state and what you can do to help. If there is no immediate emergency action alert information posted, scroll down and look at the “bill information” section for all bills in your state, our position, updated status, current requested action, and links to more information.

The Vaccine Revolution for Truth

We are gathered in our nation’s Capitol representing many thousands of Americans and their families, who cannot be here today because they are sick or caring for someone who is sick. We are here for families and physicians living in fear they will be discriminated against and punished if they speak honestly in their communities about what they know to be true. We have come to defend freedom of thought, speech, and conscience, the inalienable natural rights that unite us, regardless of where we live, the color of our skin, the faith that sustains us, or the philosophies that define us. We are calling on the government to do its job and protect the people’s health - instead of protecting profit-making industries doing business with government and manipulating information released by the mainstream media. We are advocating for the right to know the truth about the safety of the food we eat, the water we drink, the drugs doctors prescribe and the vaccines Americans are forced to get to attend school, and receive medical care, and hold a job. And we are here to witness the suffering of our children, who have no voice and have no choice except the one that we, their mothers and fathers, give to them. We want government officials to explain to us why our country, which spends the most on healthcare and has one of the highest child vaccination rates in the world, is crippled by a chronic disease and disability epidemic that costs more than two trillion dollars a year and has created the sickest child and young adult population in America’s history.

H.R. 1313 Bill Would Require Medical Procedures Like Vaccines as Requirement for Employment

Please immediately contact your Congressional Representative and 2 U.S. Senators to OPPOSE H.R 1313 Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act. This bill is sponsored by Rep. Foxx, Virginia [R-NC-5]. It is attempting to coerce employees into employer disease prevention wellness programs. Section 3 (a) 2 refers to “workplace wellness programs and programs of health promotion or disease prevention offered by an employer.” The words disease prevention are concerning since not everyone agrees with the use of vaccines to prevent disease.

Science Teacher Found Guilty of Professional Misconduct for Proving Vaccines are Toxic in Science Lab

In March 2015, science teacher Timothy Sullivan approached public health nurses administering vaccines to high school students at his school in Waterford, Ontario, Canada and asked whether they had appropriately informed the students about the potential risks of the shots they were giving. He noted that the teenagers were required to give informed consent and the nurses, therefore, had the obligation to make sure they were fully informed. Mr. Sullivan also made the point that, “some of the components in the vaccines were deemed ‘toxic’ in his science lab.” The nurse allegedly answered that they alerted parents and teens about common vaccine risks like fever or soreness at the injection site and she claimed that “a screening tool allows nurses to assess if there are any underlying conditions that would trigger a more serious reaction among students” and added that “the risk of death from receiving a vaccine is so very, very rare.” Mr. Sullivan has now been found guilty of professional misconduct by the disciplinary board of the Ontario College of Teachers. With the conviction of Mr. Sullivan, the college is asking for penalties including a formal reprimand, a month-long suspension, and completion of an anger management course. In deciding on the penalty phase, the board could strip Mr. Sullivan of his teaching certificate and impose fines of up to $5,000. The complaint against Mr. Sullivan holds that he was out of line in addressing the students, and that it is a parent’s place, not a teacher’s to address vaccine concerns. Mr. Sullivan said, “I teach science. You don’t just teach one side of the story.”

Will Refusing Vaccines Soon Lead to CPS Kidnapping Your Children for “Medical Neglect”?

Amidst the ever changing, controversial white waters of vaccine safety, parents who choose natural immunity are being targeted by certain members of the medical, legal and public health communities as being guilty of medical neglect. As readers of Health Impact News' MedicalKidnap.com website are fully aware, "medical neglect" is a broad term frequently used against parents who dare to disagree with doctors over the healthcare of their children, and can result in Child Protective Services (CPS) taking the children away from their families by force. The latest example of this usurping of parental rights, which is being pushed and orchestrated by vaccine extremists who insist on pushing a one-size-fits-all approach to immunity, appears in the February edition of ​the ​American Journal of Public​ Health, in an article entitled "Parental Refusal of Childhood Vaccines and Medical Neglect Laws.” The paper, authored by Efthimios Parasidis, JD, M.BE, and Douglas J. Opel, MD, MPH, sets out to examine court cases where vaccine refusal is categorized as "medical neglect" under child welfare laws.

Missouri Laws to Ban Mercury and Foreign DNA in Vaccines

In January 2017, State Representative Lynn Morris introduced HB 331 in the Missouri House of Representatives prohibiting vaccines containing mercury or other metals used for preservation or any other purpose from being administered to a child or adult in a public health clinic in Missouri. If passed, the legislation would take effect on Aug. 28, 2018. A second bill, HB 332, introduced by Rep. Morris, seeks to restrict the use of certain vaccines containing foreign human DNA. It requires that chicken pox and shingles vaccines administered to patients in public health clinics must not contain foreign human DNA contaminates. The two bills are in response to public concerns regarding vaccine safety. Vaccine mandates and policies at the state level are generally based on the vaccine schedule and guidelines recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control Prevention’s (CDC). HB 331 and HB 332 aim to invalidate the CDC’s recommendations of vaccines that include mercury and other toxic substances. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains that “All forms of mercury are quite toxic, and each form exhibits different health effects,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to minimize the dangers of mercury in vaccines. The FDA admits that thimerosal (a mercury based preservative) is still being used in vaccines in varying amounts.

Medical Freedom at Risk in 2017 as Many States Seek Laws for Mandatory Vaccines

In 2015 and 2016, NVIC monitored over 200 vaccine-related bills introduced in more than 40 state legislatures, including 31 bills in 21 states that tried to restrict of eliminate vaccine exemptions. With tens of thousands of Americans actively using the online NVIC Advocacy Portal, NVIC led a grassroots effort of concerned citizens and supportive parental rights and health freedom groups to educate legislators with well-referenced information about diseases and vaccines. Forced vaccination bills were defeated in 29 out of 31 states, including in Virginia, where NVIC is headquartered. By February 2017, vaccine legislation had been introduced in 30 states that threaten vaccine freedom of choice, including bills in eight states to restrict or eliminate vaccine exemptions in Arkansas (withdrawn), Connecticut, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas. Freedom. It is a human right to exercise freedom of thought, speech, conscience and religious belief. But, when it comes to vaccination, those basic human freedoms are being taken away in America, one state at a time.

30 States Move to Enact Vaccine Bills Including Tracking and Mandatory Vaccines

We have only finished the first full month of the 2017 legislative session, and already we are tracking 103 vaccine related bills across 30 states on the NVIC Advocacy Portal. To put the sheer volume of bills in perspective, we tracked a total of 106 bills in the entire legislative session last year. If you live in one of the following states, there are already vaccine bills filed that can affect your right to refuse vaccines or have your privacy violated by being listed in a database as opposing vaccines: AR, AZ, CT, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, ME, MN, MO, MS, MT, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OK, OR, PA, RI, SD, TN, TX, VA, and WA. The following states are priority opposition alert states as they now have bills to restrict or eliminate vaccine exemptions: AR (withdrawn), CT, IA, MN, NY, OK, PA, and TX. The following states are priority support alert states as they now have bills to add or expand vaccine exemptions: HI, IA, MS (died), NJ, NY, OK, RI, and TX.

CDC Publishes New Rules for Quarantine and Isolation on Last Day of Obama Presidency

There are new U.S. government rules that can force travelers into quarantine or isolation if they are suspected of having a contagious disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published their revised rules explaining how they will intervene to protect the public from the spread of quarantinable communicable diseases such as Ebola. For those of us who prefer to minimize our contact with the conventional medical care system and its pharmaceutical products, these new rules should cause us to carefully consider our health status when traveling across state lines or traveling back to the United States during a CDC health emergency. If we have symptoms of illness that might be confused with a communicable disease, then it might be wise to carefully consider our travel plans. The rules were released on the last day of the Obama Administration, 1/19/2017, and will take effect on February 21, 2017. Under these rules, if a CDC medical professional examines and quarantines you under a public health order, certain medical procedures, such as mandatory vaccinations, could be required as a condition of your release.

Why Are Nurses and Healthcare Workers Across the U.S. Refusing Mandatory Flu Vaccines?

In this investigative report by Claire Dwoskin, the founder of the Childrens Medical Safety Research Institute, we learn what the true motivations are behind hospital policies that mandate the annual flu shot for healthcare workers. As nurses who have lost their jobs for refusing the flu vaccine are beginning to win legal battles across the U.S., Ms. Dwoskin reveals that these mandatory flu vaccine policies are based not on the vaccine efficacy or safety, but on financial incentives. One owner of 5 hospitals even reveals that he himself will never get the flu shot again after a negative reaction, and that employee absenteeism increases after administering the flu shots, and yet he keeps the mandatory flu vaccination policy in place for financial reasons. Even more troubling is the report that some pediatricians are now secretly administering the flu vaccine to children without parental consent.

New Government Cancer Task Force to Increase Spending and Mandate Ineffective Treatments

Cancer is a $125 BILLION dollar industry that is growing, not declining. The industry is dependent on more cancer patients, not less. A "cure" for cancer would put millions of people out of work, and destroy the U.S. economy. At the beginning of the last century, one person in twenty would get cancer. In the 1940s it was one out of every sixteen people. In the 1970s it was one person out of ten. Today one person out of three gets cancer in the course of their life, and that percentage will soon be one out of two. With the regime change in American politics about to take place, it appears that the outgoing administration is attempting to empower the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps in an attempt to secure future careers beyond politics. We recently saw evidence of this with the lame-duck Congress passing the 21st Century Cures Act. Outgoing Vice President Joseph Biden recently released the first report of a new government cancer task force, the Cancer Moonshot Task Force. We had investigative health reporter John P. Thomas look into just what this task force entails for the American public, and it appears that it increases cancer spending resulting in more profits for pharmaceutical companies, depends on no cures, and potentially will remove medical privacy and give government power to punish people who do not follow their medical advice.

World Health Organization Documents How to Respond to “Vaccine Deniers”

The controversy surrounding mandatory vaccines seldom is debated on science or merit. Government training materials written to persuade the public to accept mandatory vaccines rely on persuasion and even intimidation, and not facts or science. Health Impact News has previously reported how the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) and other government health officials have tried to silence the media in publishing anything contrary to their controlled information regarding vaccines, and have produced training documents for health workers to combat those opposed to mandatory vaccinations. Vaccine injury data is seldom, if ever, published, and the statistics on vaccine injuries and deaths are purposely withheld from public information. Dr. Suzanne Humphries, when lecturing on vaccine safety, often references a slide presentation from Dr. Jacobson of the Mayo Clinic. It is a slide presentation developed to train doctors on how to deal with patient objectives to vaccines. Jefferey Jaxen has published something similar obtained from the World Health Organization (WHO), which is the agency responsible for world-wide sales of vaccines and distribution, particularly in poorer countries.