Crosstalk: September 22, 2016

Students that have already started school are being told they will be prohibited from attending any more classes if they have not received all of their required immunizations. Workers in the health care profession and even those unrelated to health care are also being told they must have certain vaccinations or their jobs are on the line. The Centers for Disease Control is seeking to expand their powers concerning vaccinations. They even want to take into custody and involuntarily quarantine travelers who either have symptoms or have been exposed to someone who might have a communicable disease.

Joining Jim to discuss these and other vaccine related concerns was Barbara Loe Fisher. Barbara is president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a non-profit charity she co-founded with parents of DPT vaccine injured children in 1982. For over three decades, she has led a national grassroots movement and public information campaign to institute vaccine safety reforms and informed consent protections in the public health system. She has researched, analyzed and publicly articulated the major issues involving the science, policy, law, ethics and politics of vaccination to become one of the world's leading non-medical, consumer advocacy experts on the subject. She is co-author of 'DPT: A Shot in the Dark' and author of 'The Consumer's Guide to Childhood Vaccines' and 'Vaccines, Autism & Chronic Inflammation: The New Epidemic'.

Concerning students in the Baltimore area that would be barred from school for not having the required immunizations, Barbara feels it's outrageous that parents are being put into a corner and threatened. She was reminded of a time in 2007 when she went to a courthouse in Maryland where the public health department had issued a threat to parents around the state who's children had not received Hepatitis B or Chicken Pox vaccinations. They said non-complying parents would be jailed and fined.

Barbara believes that if the vaccines are effective, then there shouldn't be such incredible fear of the children who's parents have filed medical, religious or conscience-based objections. She explained that when parents do take an exemption for their child they usually have good reasons for doing it. The problem is that the medical exemption has been narrowed over the last 20 years so that almost no medical reason or health condition qualifies as a reason for a child not to get a vaccine. In fact, all the medical trade organizations that represent the various types of doctors in America have come out for elimination of all exemptions to vaccines except the medical one. This makes even immuno-compromised children candidates for vaccinations.

Barbara also explained that there's no liability or accountability for anyone who produces, sells or distributes, licenses, recommends or gives a vaccine for universal use or mandates it. If you or your child becomes brain-injured or dies after vaccination, no one is accountable for that injury or death in a civil court of law. This is why Barbara believes informed consent must apply to vaccinations in the U.S. and we should not be held hostage by public health officials and doctors who've taken the no-exceptions approach.

To prove her point, Barbara described the story of a California pediatrician who works with patients under the idea of informed consent as it relates to vaccines. He's under threat of having his medical license taken away for giving a medical exemption to a child because under a previous round of vaccinations, the child exhibited certain reactions.

What punishments are yet to come? Could some people see their jobs disappear? Could people be denied access to hotels, buses, planes or even certain sporting events? Where will this end? Become informed so that you can make a difference when you review this edition of Crosstalk.