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SMALLPOX AND FORCED VACCINATION:
WHAT EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO KNOW

Part 3

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Contraindications: According to Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, contraindications to vaccinia virus vaccine include: B or T cell immune system disorders, eczema, pregnancy, disorders of the central nervous system, neoplasms of the reticuloendothelial system, and use of immunosuppressive drugs.19

The CDC now lists the following contraindications in the absence of an emergency (actual exposure to smallpox):20

* Persons who experience anaphylactic reactions to polymyxin B sulfate, streptomycin sulfate, chlortetracycline hydrochloride and neomycin sulfate should not be vaccinated with Dryvax;

* Persons with eczema or other skin conditions: "Vaccinia vaccine should not be administered to persons with eczema of any degree, those with a past history of eczema, those whose household contacts have active eczema, or whose household contacts have a history of eczema. Persons with other acute, chronic or exfoliative skin conditions (e.g., atopic dermatitis, burns, impetigo or varicella zoster) might also be at higher risk for eczema vaccinatum and should not be vaccinated until the condition resolves."

* Persons Infected with HIV;

* Persons with immunosuppression (leukemia, lymphoma, generalized malignancy, solid organ transplantation, cellular or humoral immunity disorders, therapy with akylating agents, antimetabolites, radiation or high-dose corticosteroid therapy);

* Infants and Children under age 18;

* Pregnant Women: "Vaccinia virus has been reported to cause fetal infection on rare occasions, almost always after primary vaccination of the mother. Cases have been reported as recently as 1978. When fetal vaccinia does occur, it usually results in stillbirth or death of the infant soon after delivery."

Other contraindication considerations: Although the CDC does not list herpes infection as a contraindication in non-emergencies, the case reports of progressive vaccinia in persons with herpes suggest that use of the vaccinia virus vaccine today may result in many more cases of progressive vaccinia than in the past. Herpes infection, like HIV, is more widespread today than it was prior to the early 1970's, when routine vaccinia virus vaccination was discontinued.

CDC Eliminates Absolute Contraindications In Emergency: The CDC states that:

"No absolute contraindications exist regarding vaccination of a person with a high-risk exposure to smallpox. Persons at greatest risk for experiencing serious vaccination complications are also at greatest risk for death from smallpox. If a relative contraindication to vaccination exists, the risk for experiencing serious vaccination complications must be weighed against the risk for experiencing a potentially fatal smallpox infection. When the level of exposure risk is undetermined, the decision to vaccinate should be made after prudent assessment by the clinician and the patient of the potential risks versus the benefits of smallpox [vaccinia virus] vaccination."

Other Considerations: Whether a person dies from a disease or a vaccine, a death is a death, and one cause of death is no more important than another when individual human life is valued. Because there are no genetic or other biomarkers to definitively predict ahead of time who will be harmed by vaccination, there must be strict adherence to the informed consent ethic, especially during times of emergencies when all contraindications are officially suspended. To do any less, places public health officials and anyone, who forces vaccination on a person without that person's informed consent, in the role of judge and executioner of the genetically and biologically vulnerable.

Preventing Contact Transmission of Vaccinia Virus: Care must be taken to prevent spread of the vaccine virus from the vaccination lesion site to other areas of the body or to another person. Use of gauze or porous bandages (to allow air to dry the site lesion) is advised with bandages changed every 1 to 2 days. No salves or ointments should be placed on the vaccination lesion. The most important action for preventing vaccinia virus transmission is frequent hand washing with soap and water or disinfecting agents after contact with the vaccination site. Disposal of bandages that have covered the site in sealed plastic bags and decontaminating clothing or materials that have contact with the site by laundering in hot water with bleach is also important.20,52

Recombinant Vaccinia Virus Vaccine Transmission: Scientists are using vaccinia virus as a vehicle for creating new vaccines. Genes from herpes simplex virus, hepatitis B virus, HIV and malaria reportedly have been inserted into the vaccinia genome.19 In the 1970's and 1980's, as researchers began experimenting with genetically engineering different strains of vaccinia viruses to contain and express foreign DNA to induce protection against infectious agents such as HIV, there were reports of laboratory-acquired infections with vaccinia or recombinant viruses.20,24

In 1991 the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) advised that health care workers, who were exposed to volunteers in new vaccine trials using genetically engineered vaccinia virus, be vaccinated with vaccinia virus vaccine. The CDC recommendations stated that::

"With the initiation of human trials of recombinant vaccines, physicians, nurses and other health-care personnel who provide clinical care to recipients of these vaccines could be exposed to both vaccinia and recombinant viruses. The exposure could occur from contact with dressings contaminated with the virus or through exposure to the vaccine. The risk of transmission of recombinant viruses to exposed health care workers is unknown…however, because of the potential for transmission of vaccinia or recombinant vaccinia viruses to such persons, the ACIP suggests that health care personnel who have direct contact with contaminated dressings or other infectious material from volunteers in clinical studies be considered for vaccination."24

Health Secretary Orders 300 Million Doses of Vaccine: One month after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, DHHS Secretary Tommy Thompson called on industry and government to produce and stockpile 300 million doses of vaccinia virus vaccine by the end of 2002. He said that all Americans should know they "have their name on a vaccine shot in our inventory." Cost estimates range from $500 million to nearly $2 billion.1,15,78 In order to be able to accomplish this goal, some in industry are calling for cutting the number of participants in vaccine trials and bypassing standard safety and efficacy requirements to quickly create a stockpile of vaccine.16,17,25

Industry Asks for Immunity From Lawsuits: Drug companies competing for the multi-million dollar contract to produce enough vaccinia virus vaccine to vaccinate every American are asking Congress to pass legislation shifting all liability for vaccine injuries and deaths to the government (American taxpayer). Already, there are bills being drafted in Congress to create a federal fund to compensate victims of bioterrorism vaccines, such as vaccinia virus vaccine.79

New Office of Preparedness Created: DHHS Secretary Thompson has appointed D.A. Henderson, founding director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University and architect of the worldwide smallpox eradication effort, as well as Philip Russell, a retired Army major general specializing in vaccine development, to head a new Office of Preparedness that will expand new vaccine programs and develop strategies to respond to public health emergencies. Dr. Henderson has been quoted as saying his top priority is to improve the "communications system" that will allow the medical community and government to mount a coordinated response.80

Emergency Plan Will Militarize Public Health System: The Working Group on Civilian Biodefense has stated "The discovery of a single suspected case of smallpox must be treated as an international health emergency."49 Although it is very important to have a well crafted bioterrorism emergency response plan in place, along with enough vaccine for everyone who wants to use it, it is difficult to envision the necessity for giving public health officials the kind of sweeping police powers now being advocated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

With funding and direction provided from the CDC, a lawyer at the Georgetown University Center for Law and the Public's Health, Lawrence Gostin, has created model state legislation that will allow public health officials to mobilize and use "all or any part of the organized militia" to isolate, quarantine and force vaccination and medical treatment on American citizens in states where a Governor has called a "state of emergency" for 30 days or more. (Go to www.publichealthlaw.net to read the law).

Public health officials would be given the power to "coordinate all matters pertaining to the public health emergency," including the right to seize private property such as "communications devices, carriers, real estate, fuels, food, clothing and health care facilities" and take control of "the use, sale, dispensing, distribution and transportation of food, fuel, clothing and other commodities, alcoholic beverages, firearms, explosives and combustibles" as well as take control of roads and public areas.

If passed by the states, the law would give unprecedented police powers to public health officials and those they designate to charge citizens with misdemeanors and imprison them if they refuse to comply with vaccination, medical treatment or isolation orders without being able to go to court first. Those who participate in enforcing the law would not be held liable for any injury, death or loss of property which resulted.

In the preface to this model state legislation, Gostin justified the law he wrote for the CDC by referring to the 1905 Supreme Court decision Jacobsen v Massachusetts, which upheld the right of US states to pass mandatory vaccination laws. Gostin, who is a longtime forced vaccination proponent, will be working with the National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, National Association of City and County Health Officers, and National Association of Attorneys General to get this legislation passed in every state. It has already been introduced in Massachusetts.

Jacobsen v Massachusetts Revisited: How did we get to this point in America, where public health officials would presume to appropriate the kind of police power they are now saying they should be given? It all goes back to a man name Jacobsen who, in 1905, sued the state of Massachusetts for requiring him and his son to get a second vaccinia virus (smallpox) vaccination or pay a $5 fine. Jacobsen refused to get revaccinated or pay the fine, saying that he and his son had had a bad reaction to a previous vaccination for smallpox and were afraid they would be injured or die from a second one. Jacobsen maintained that forcing him to be revaccinated was "an assault upon his person" and violated his constitutional rights.

In its majority opinion in Jacobsen v Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11(1905), the Supreme Court rejected the evidence Jacobsen presented to show that the vaccine can cause injury and death and that doctors cannot distinguish between those who will be harmed and those who will not be harmed. The Court concluded, "The matured opinions of medical men everywhere, and the experience of mankind, as all must know, negative the suggestion that it is not possible in any case to determine whether vaccination is safe."

Doctors Cannot Predict Who Will Be Harmed: The fact the Supreme Court at the turn of the 20th century did not have accurate medical information upon which to base their precedent-setting decision is unfortunate. It has been proven in the succeeding 96 years, most recently in the US Court of Claims in Washington, D.C. where nearly two billion dollars has been awarded to families whose children have been killed or been injured by mandated childhood vaccines, that often doctors cannot predict ahead of time which individuals will react to vaccines and die or be left with mental retardation, medication-resistant seizure disorders, paralysis, learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, chronic arthritis, or other immune and brain dysfunction.6

Cruel and Inhuman To The Last Degree: This is a critical point in measuring the consequences of assigning police powers to public health officials for the purpose of enforcing vaccination, particularly in cases where parents suspect their children are at increased risk for reacting to vaccines - even though government health officials, anxious to achieve a 100 percent vaccination rate, disagree. In their opinion, the 1905 Supreme Court justices acknowledged that vaccination must not be forced on a person whose physical condition would make vaccination "cruel and inhuman to the last degree. We are not to be understood as holding that the statute was intended to be applied in such a case or, if it was so intended, that the judiciary would not be competent to interfere and protect the health and life of the individual concerned."

Therefore, when interpreting Jacobsen v Massachusetts in 2002, it is important to remember that, although the Court agreed that states may enact "such reasonable regulations established directly by legislative enactment as will protect the public health and the public safety," the Supreme Court made it clear that mandatory vaccination laws must not be applied unreasonably so as to result in harm to individuals. In other words, the state does not have the right to command that an individual sacrifice his or her life in the name of the public health.

Utilitarianism Was in Fashion: What, then, did the 1905 Supreme Court mean when it went on to declare that "it was the duty of the constituted authorities primarily to keep in view the welfare, comfort and safety of the many, and not permit the interests of the many to be subordinated to the wishes or convenience of the few?" The "wishes or convenience" of the few certainly does not translate into the "lives" of the few, but still, the historical context in which this declaration was made is very important.

In 1905, the political doctrine known as "utilitarianism" was a popular philosophical tenet, which judged the rightness or wrongness of an action by its consequences and held that an action that is moral or ethical results in the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers of people. With its emphasis on numbers of people, utilitarianism became a convenient way to justify state legislative policy. Karl Marx used utilitarian principles to formulate his economic theories and modern cost benefit analyses are also descendents of utilitarianism.12

Individual Autonomy Must Come First: In 1927, jurist Oliver Wendall Holmes embraced the utilitarian rationale when he used Jacobsen v Massachusetts to justify the forced sterilization of a mentally retarded woman to, in effect, protect the public welfare. Writing for the majority in a 8-1 Supreme Court decision, Buck v Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), Holmes said "The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes."

Not long after, Hitler would embrace the same kind of rationalization used by Holmes in that stunning 1927 legal opinion and go on to pursue his own brand of social engineering to eliminate from society those persons the Third Reich had judged to be genetically inferior, physically or mentally compromised, or socially unacceptable (homosexuals, political dissidents) because they were thought to be a threat to the public health and welfare.81 The tragic moral failure of utilitarianism was finally revealed at the Doctor's Trial at Nuremberg after World War II, where it was discredited by the Nuremberg Tribunal as a pseudo-ethic.11 In its place stands the Nuremberg Code, which places the right of individuals to self determination and autonomy above the right of the state, science and medicine to derive benefits from them.

The human right to informed consent to medical interventions that can injure or kill is the centerpiece of modern bioethics. It insures that the individual has control over decisions and actions involving life and death, which are the most sacred of all decisions and actions humans are ever called upon to make.

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EDITORIAL: Vaccinating America at Gunpoint

by Barbara Loe Fisher

Like every American, I never imagined that I would experience the kind of shock and horror that came on September 11 with the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. While our world has changed forever, there are some things that never change. Truth does not change. What it means to be free does not change.

In response to the fear and anxiety that still hangs like a bad dream over our nation, in the mad scramble to "do something" to make Americans feel safe again, government officials employed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have stepped forward to suggest that they and their state health department counterparts are the only ones who can keep us safe whenever they decide there is a "public health" emergency - if only we will give them the power to use the state militia to arrest, quarantine and forcibly vaccinate and medicate us. Not satisfied with that, they also want the power to seize our private property, including our homes, as well as our telephones, fax machines, computers, cars, fuel, food, clothing, firearms, prescription drugs and the alcoholic beverages in our refrigerator. Just in case you were thinking you could make it to the border before the public health militia comes to get you, they want the power to take over all roads in and out of your city and state, too.

And to make sure they can't get sued by anyone for anything they do, they are asking for total legal immunity for destroying your property or killing you or your children when they enforce the law. They are joined in this quest by the drug companies making "bioterrorism" vaccines, like the notoriously reactive smallpox vaccine never tested for safety in clinical trials. Not only are the drug companies demanding that Congress give them total legal immunity for all vaccine-induced injuries and deaths, they are also demanding that the bioterrorism vaccines they produce be exempt from normal federal safety and efficacy standards.

What is wrong with this picture?

Certainly, America should have enough smallpox vaccine or other "bioterrorism" vaccines for everyone who voluntarily wants to use them: but not ones that haven't been properly tested. Certainly, America should have a sound, workable emergency plan in place in the event of a bioterrorism attack: but not one that places the life and liberty of the majority of citizens in the hands of an elite few, who will have the power to take both from citizens without their consent.

This CDC-funded and initiated legislation treats us like runaway slaves in need of subjugation. The law's proposed elimination of the informed consent principle, which has governed the ethical use of medical interventions that can injure or kill ever since the Doctor's Trial at Nuremberg after World War II, is clear indication that public health officials want the sole authority to decide who will live and who will die and under what conditions.

No state of emergency in a free society justifies the sacrifice of the most sacred human right: The right to voluntarily decide what you are willing to risk your life for or your child's life for. What it means to be free doesn't get more basic than that.

I have said many times during the past decade, that if the state can tag, track down and force citizens to be injected with biologicals of unknown toxicity today, then there will be no limit on what individual freedoms the state can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow. Now, tomorrow is here.

In this time of great sadness, fear and confusion, Americans have a choice to make: Either we defend the individual freedoms our forefathers fought and died to give us, or we sacrifice those freedoms, and let the terrorists win. What we do will define who we are as a nation for many years to come.

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Click here for part 4 of 4 (References and Barbara Loe Fishe's bio)