Over the last few years, the drumbeat of “mandatory vaccination” has
been intensifying in North America and Australia.
Mainstream media whips itself into a frenzy of fear and loathing over
every small outbreak of so called “vaccine preventable” diseases while
suppressing the real risks and health injuries caused by today’s
aggressive vaccine schedule. Rarely is vaccine failure or waning immunity mentioned as an underlying factor in disease outbreaks. Only a few decades ago, society viewed
these same diseases (measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox) as benign
childhood illnesses which everyone knew conferred the benefit of long
term immunity, and protection later in life when the risks are much
higher. Today, a heavy pall of medical denialism blinds doctors, public health agencies, politicians, government and
the media to the fact that the aggressive vaccine schedule, delivered
multiple times in the first two years of life during the most vulnerable
time of brain and immune system growth, is wreaking havoc on children’s
health. Conveniently overlooked is the fact that the neuroscience
literature has shown for decades that overstimulation of the immune
system in early life can lead to brain injuries. Willfully ignored is the fact that vaccines are powerful biological
drugs comprised of complex bioactive and chemical compounds. Once
injected these have a profound impact on the fragile micro-environment
of infants and young children, and are a precipitating factor in the epidemic of
neurological and immune system injuries afflicting children today. What is clear from the government’s own records, as discussed in our
recently updated Report of vaccine adverse events reports released by the Canadian
government, is the increase in serious adverse events (SAE) in babies
under 2 years old who, in 2014 experienced 61% of all serious events.
Disturbingly, it is young children (less than 7 years old), toddlers and infants who experience
72.5% of all serious adverse events following immunization, the most
common types of adverse events being neurological and immune system
disorders. Earlier this summer in lock step with the recent attacks on health
freedoms in the U.S. culminating in the loss of personal belief
exemptions in California, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) announced its intention to
introduce a “mandatory vaccination” resolution to be voted on at its
annual meeting in late August. In protest, Vaccine Choice Canada (VCC)
launched the No Vaccine Mandates in Canada petition to coincide with the CMA convention in Halifax. Garnering over 5,000 signatures in the first week it was on-line, and
close to 2,000 individual comments opposed to “mandatory vaccination”,
the petition took on a life of its own as an outpouring of the
collective public psyche saying NO to forced vaccination and YES to the
protection of basic human rights, health freedoms and informed consent. On September 3, 2015 we closed the petition and declared Victory! VCC evaluated all of the public comments received on the petition site
and produced a detailed Comments Review which, along with our cover
letter has been sent to the Canadian Medical Association and can be
viewed here on our website. Several members of the VCC Board watched the Members voting on
resolutions on Wednesday Aug 26 and then reported to petition signees on
the events. You can read the Petition Update where we explain that the
CMA back-stepped from their original resolution announced in June, which
would have allowed only medical exemptions to vaccinations and require
proof of vaccination status for school registration, to a more moderate
requirement of presenting vaccination records when registering their
children.
A resolution recommending a National Compensation Program for
debilitating vaccine injuries did NOT pass. The motion failed with 70%
against a compensation plan and 27% in favour. Only three doctors spoke
for the motion (as a matter of justice). All the other doctors spoke
against the motion arguing about the difference between vaccine-caused
injuries and vaccine-associated injuries. One doctor said there was no
scientific proof that vaccines even caused injury! Many doctors who
spoke against the motion were concerned that a compensation program
would be “used by” the “anti-vax” movement or that it would frighten
parents away if they thought their children could be injured by
vaccinations. Doctors seemed completely unable to come to terms with the
fact that vaccines do cause injuries.
As we state in the Petition Update linked above: “Obviously the CMA
realized that mandates without personal or religious exemptions would be
going a step too far…However that didn’t stop them from recommending
that parents, like schoolchildren being sent to the principal’s office,
must meet with public health officials to have their “social conformity”
adjusted. Yes, the rationale for this motion actually states: Just
having to declare their children’s immunization status makes parents
more aware of the importance of vaccination and has a social conformity
effect.” Even this modified resolution is problematical however. As the Nova
Scotia Chief Medical Officer remarked in a CBC article, “calling for
parents to declare their child's immunization status, is good in theory
only…I think it's an interesting idea, but there's a number of very
practical issues which make it, perhaps, not very feasible to
implement," he said. He went on to discuss the lack of public health
staff to speak with parents as the resolution called for, lack of
immunization electronic databases and privacy issues. "I think there are
some privacy questions around it, that would need to be explored
carefully."
Following the adoption of the CMA resolution, the CMA Journal issued an article (pdf download) quoting incoming President, Dr. Judy Forbes,
saying a national registry of immunization is “essential”. However, this
“good in theory only” resolution and another CMA resolution calling for
a national medical records database are not in line with the state of
the development of electronic health records in Canada. The CMA is well
aware of the problem as this article (pdf download) from the CMA Journal
explains: “Despite a $2.1-billion federal investment in Canada Health Infoway
since 2001 to create nationally interoperable patient records, Canada
ranked second-last among 11 nations in a 2014 Commonwealth Fund survey of primary care physicans' use of electronic medical records (EMRs). The
survey estimated that less than 60% of Canadian physicians use EMRs.”
The article then goes on to quote Dr. Alex Jadad, director of the Centre
for Global eHealth Innovation at the University of Toronto: "We are squandering hundreds of millions of dollars in almost every
province. So far what we have mostly built is a fragmented collection of
computer repair shops.” And then the article quotes an industry professional as follows: “Dr. Karim Keshavjee, CEO of Toronto-based InfoClin, a medical records
consultancy for health care providers, also describes Canada's
performance in realizing the potential for ehealth solutions to improve
the management and utility of patient records as "abysmal."
So it certainly looks like after 14 years and more than $2 billion,
Canada is not much closer to implementing electronic medical records
that are interoperable even within local regions, let alone at the
intra-provincial level.
What this lack of records means is that no one really knows what vaccine
coverage rates are on a national basis, nor how many Canadians
are applying for vaccine exemptions for medical (including natural
immunity), religious or philosophical reasons. All data at all levels is
simply estimated based on samples from fragmented provincial records or
from the StatsCan immunization coverage surveys. These national level
surveys in themselves are only estimates. The childhood survey linked
above is based on sampling less than 0.4% (four tenths of one per cent)
of the actual population under age 18. VCC made an Access to
Information request for the results of this latest survey, but was
turned down. The rationale was that all information collected in the
survey was “confidential” and that there was no Public Use Microdata
file available. Until the Public Health Agency of Canada releases their
promised report, we know little about the real results of the survey
except that coverage rates have dropped for children age 2 and under.
You can see a comparison of 2011 and 2013 rates in the Database Update Report on our website.
However the Canadian mainstream media remains blissfully unaware of the
problems of implementing the CMA resolution on records for school entry.
Rather, since the resolution passed, it is being used as a springboard
to fill the media with stories of low coverage rates in schools and to
talk about “required” (or even “mandated”) vaccines for school entry.
Occasionally media reports mention the exemption option, however no
reference is ever made to the statement in the 1996 Canadian National Immunization Report that immunizations are not mandatory in Canada and
cannot be made mandatory in Canada because of the Canadian Constitution.
So regardless of the facts of the matter the spin goes on.
Now we see the political parties in Canada caught up in the swirling
vortex of mandatory vaccination illegality. A citizen recently contacted
VCC to inform us of an online site where one can see how their
beliefs align with the platforms of the main political parties. They
wrote:
“So I get to the end of the poll and it tells me what party I’ve most sided with. For one of my most important concerns I find":
"Should the federal government require children to be vaccinated for preventable diseases?
Liberal: Yes
Conservative: Yes
Green: Yes, but only for deadly transmittable diseases
New Democratic: Yes, they are essential to protecting other children who are too young to be vaccinated
Communist: Yes
You: No”
You can read the communication VCC sent to all the political parties
requesting they state their position on the question of “required”
vaccinations and the responses we have received to date on our
website.
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