SANE Vax Inc.
May 13, 2011
Dear Dr. Pedersen,
I read with great interest recently your blog entry announcing a contest that rewards adolescent students with the chance to get I-pods or a laptop for getting vaccinated. However, while I applaud the underlying intent, the contest raises serious policy concerns:
1. The Contest discriminates against children who cannot participate due to religious and medical exemptions to immunizations. Those children are unfairly excluded for reasons beyond their control;
2. It erroneously places the incentive to vaccinate on children. The decision to vaccinate or not is entirely up to parents. The contest rewards the wrong persons—children who do not control the vaccination decision;
3. It amounts to state endorsement of one choice from among two or more legitimate options for parents. Parents may refuse mandatory vaccines for medical and religious reasons, and non-mandatory vaccines for medical, religious or personal reasons. These are all legitimate options. Public schools should not take sides;
4. It amounts to state endorsement of private industry by encouraging the only choice from among two or more choices that supports pharmaceutical profits. Public schools should not endorse private industry in personal, parental discretionary matters.
Enforcement authority for mandatory vaccination is assigned by law to local health departments. As for non-mandatory vaccines, since the vaccines themselves carry a risk of permanent injury and death—the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out over $2 billion to vaccine victims and their families to date—student vaccination decisions are serious ones that should remain solely in the hands of parents. Public schools should not intrude into this private domain or endorse a position that carries a risk of permanent disability and death. The school district should limit its involvement with vaccines to its legal obligation to document and report student vaccination and exemption status as it pertains to school enrollment.
Dr. Pedersen, did you know that the U.S. is the most highly vaccinated nation in the world—we mandate twice as many vaccines as the average of 30 western nations—yet we are 46th in infant mortality? Or that Poul Thorsen, the researcher the CDC relied on for studies used to refute a vaccine-autism connection, was just indicted for 13 counts of fraud with the CDC and 9 counts of money-laundering? Or that former senior pharmaceutical scientist Helen Ratajczak recently reported that documented causes of autism include vaccination? Or that 95% of infectious disease mortality decline in the 1900’s preceded vaccines?5 Or that during U.S. Congressional hearings in 1962, Dr. Bernard Greenberg, head of the Dept. of Biostatistics for the UNC School of Public Health (and who later became the School’s Dean), testified that polio increased substantially after the first mandatory polio vaccine, and that statistics were deliberately manipulated by the Public Health Service to give the opposite impression? With the utmost respect, the school district should not enter this politically sensitive and complex arena. By law, vaccination decisions and enforcement are up to parents and the health department respectively; the best school policy is to leave them there exclusively.
We are all deeply saddened by the death of the Harrison’s daughter from meningococcal disease, but the school district might just as well protest adolescent vaccines in recognition of the 89 girls who have died from the Gardasil vaccine. For all of these reasons, this contest is bad policy and should be cancelled immediately; or, at the absolute minimum, the district should announce immediately to all school faculty, students and parents that exempt students may enter the contest—without getting vaccinated, of course—and allow their participation in a discrete manner that protects their privacy. But in any event, no such contest should ever be initiated again.
Please contact me at your earliest convenience with your decision on this matter. It not only affects my family personally—my children attend Chapel Hill schools—it is also a matter of national concern. I first learned about the contest through postings on several national Internet groups. I will ersonally be reporting back to those communities with your decision, as the implications reach far beyond our own school district’s borders.
Sincerely,[Note from SaneVax: The staff at SaneVax would like to personally thank Mr. Phillips for taking a stand against the erosion of parental rights regarding vaccination choices. We sincerely hope his community appreciates his efforts as much as we do.]
I sent an e-mail message to Dr. Pedersen. Here is most of it:
Dear Dr. Pedersen,
I refer to the vaccination contest which you are promoting. I am aware that Attorney Alan Phillips has contacted you regarding judicial aspects.
I assume that you are aware that all three vaccines are extremely controversial regarding safety issues. Many serious adverse effects have occurred with these three vaccines and they may, and most certainly in the case of the HPV vaccine, occur up to some years after administration.
For interest, the fact that the HPV vaccine is promoted as one which may prevent cancer is also controversial. The normal phenomenon of replacement is well known in virology – where virus strains which are removed are replaced by other strains. It is not known whether the new strains will be more carcinogenic than the ones which are removed. This information is as yet unknown to the manufacturers and health authorities. In other words, it is not known whether the vaccine will actually increase the risk of cancer.
Polysorbate 80/Tween 80, with its property of making the blood-brain barrier more porous, is included in certain injections in connection with drug targeting, in order to facilitate the passage of chemotherapeutic or psychiatric medicines through the barrier and into the brain tissue.
The HPV vaccine Gardasil contains polysorbate 80 which renders the blood-brain barrier more porous so that toxic substances such as aluminium pass easier through the barrier and lodge in the brain tissue. This property is naturally highly undesirable.
You do no doubt agree that vaccination should be based on informed consent. In order to be informed, each student should personally receive a copy of the original package insert for each of the vaccines and they should be given reasonable time to investigate. All original package inserts may be found in internet.
Information in the inserts is formulated by the manufacturers. In addition, students should be advised to investigate further, for example in http://www.nvic.org
I respectfully request that also you personally carefully study the three package inserts and investigate for example in http://www.nvic.org, so that you are well aware of, and can stand by your recommendations.
An extremely relevant issue is that of co-administration, that is the administration of several different vaccines within a short period of time. It is imperative that there is satisfactory safety data regarding the co-administration of these three vaccines. The combination of these three vaccines when co-administered may result in extremely serious and irreversible adverse effects, irrespective of whether single administration is deemed safe.
For your information, there is no data whatsoever which guarantees safety regarding co-administration for the three vaccines.
This implies that in the case of vaccine injury there will be minimal possibility to prove that the injury is caused by a specific vaccine. The result will no doubt be that there will be no compensation paid for the injury.
Students should be informed in writing about this fact, which in effect implies that there will be no possibility for compensation in the case of vaccine injury.
Apart from possible and serious judicial aspects, in all due respect may I add that you are in fact imposing upon yourself a moral and ethical burden in promoting this competition.
I have faith in assuming that you are aware that the safety of the three vaccines issued singly is extremely controversial.
I also have faith in assuming that you are unaware that the safety of the three vaccines in the case of co-administration cannot and will not be guaranteed.
I take the liberty of requesting therefore that you seriously consider immediate termination of the contest.
Thank you for sharing the great letter you penned.
SV