V-Bulletin January 2015

Many of us who have worked long and hard to counter the prevalent myth that “the benefits of vaccines far outweigh the risks”, take issue with the blanket reassurance of safety and efficacy. We take issue with being labeled the “anti-vaccination movement” because we are concerned about vaccine risks and injuries. There is no “anti-vaccine” movement. What there is, is a growing storm of heartbroken families whose children have been damaged to varying degrees by the aggressive, one-size-fits-all vaccine schedule which demands that a child receive up to 41 doses of 14 vaccines by the time he/she is 18 months old. At issue is CHOICE and INFORMED CONSENT and upholding the right to refuse or delay vaccines if we believe the injection of complex biochemical ingredients starting at 2 months of age is not in our child’s best interest.

We were all trustingly “pro-vaccine” when we obediently allowed our children to be vaccinated according to the state sanctioned, out of control vaccine schedule. Following the vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths of our precious children, increasing numbers of families are taking a hard look at what happened and making a choice to either delay or reject vaccines.

We now know that the pseudoscience of vaccinology was developed in an era when virtually nothing was known about the complexities of the immune system or the impact of vaccines on the cellular level. Vaccines are pushed relentlessly without regard for the immaturity or fragility of the infant immune system and developing brain. One thing we do know with certainty, is how little they actually know – “….the immune system remains a black box,” says Garry Fathman, MD, a professor of immunology and rheumatology and associate director of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection . . . “It’s staggeringly complex, comprising at least 15 different interacting cell types that spew dozens of different molecules into the blood to communicate with one another and to do battle. Within each of those cells sit tens of thousands of genes whose activity can be altered by age, exercise, infection, vaccination status, diet, stress, you name it. . . . That’s an awful lot of moving parts. And we don’t really know what the vast majority of them do, or should be doing…”

Today, parents are taking back their power and the responsibility for their children’s health. We are learning, we are studying the medical and scientific literature, and we are sharing with others the emerging research about the mechanisms that have injured our children. As well we are learning about the health modalities which can help our vaccine injured children recover their health. After one or several children in a family have suffered a vaccine injury, trust in the vaccine paradigm fades, which leads parents to make carefully considered choices as to whether or not to vaccinate subsequent children.

We stand in solidarity with the Vermont Coalition for Vaccine Choice and other groups defending informed consent today, “As the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and the government increasingly dominate health care, it becomes ever more urgent to hold onto our right to informed consent regarding all medical choices–including the highly personal matter of whether to accept vaccination for oneself or one’s children. Informed consent, a cornerstone of medical ethics, is summarized by the AMA as a communication process to “elicit a better understanding of the treatment or procedure, so that he or she can make an informed decision to proceed or to refuse a particular course of medical intervention.”

We provided CBC’s The Current with the following statement:

The term "anti-vaccination movement" is a polarizing and insulting phrase used by the media to describe anyone or any group with concerns about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Vaccine Choice Canada was formed by families whose loved ones have suffered severe reactions, injuries and death following vaccination.

Many parents in Canada, the US and elsewhere strive to inform others of their children's vaccine injuries because vaccine risks and injuries are real, are unpredictable and cannot be quantified in advance of getting a vaccine. They do this NOT because they are anti-vaccine, but because they bear witness to what happened to their own child in the wake of vaccines in the hope of preventing more vaccine injuries, and more suffering in other families.

An example of the cost of vaccine injuries, to date, the U.S. vaccine injury compensation system has paid out close to $3 billion to vaccine injury victims. This disclosure from the U.S. Department of Justice of adjudicated settlements for vaccine injuries for a 4 months period - February to June 2014, gives you an indication of the kinds of injuries associated with various vaccines: http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/dojpresentation.pdf. Canada has no comparable vaccine injury compensation system, except for the province of Quebec.

We encourage families to make educated, voluntary and fully informed health care decisions when considering vaccination. As with any other invasive medical procedures that carry a risk of injury and death, we believe that full disclosure of all risks must be made prior to vaccination in order for a person to give fully informed consent.

In an era when disease outbreaks are occurring in fully vaccinated populations and vaccine injuries remain unacknowledged and unsupported by the Canadian government and vaccine policy makers, we believe that a deeper and more thorough understanding of this complex issue better enables people to make fully informed decisions about the risks associated with a disease, or a vaccine.

Our mission is to protect health freedoms and the individual's right to exercise the basic human right to voluntary, informed consent to any medical intervention or drug, including vaccines, that carry a risk of injury or death.

We continue the work started many years ago by the Committee Against Compulsory Vaccination whose efforts in 1984 won an amendment to Ontario's Immunization of School Pupils Act to include an exemption of conscience clause, which to this day, enables children in Ontario to attend school regardless of their vaccine status.