Vaccine Choice Canada V-Bulletin
  April 2015
Dear VCC Members & Friends,
Report on vaccine adverse events data in Canada

There is an understanding and an expectation that Health Canada is actively monitoring adverse reactions to vaccination, and that citizens can easily access this information in their effort to make an informed medical decision.  

On a recent segment of CBC’s "The Current", host Anna Maria Tremonti responded to a  parent’s concern about access to vaccine adverse reaction data with –
 
“Adverse effects on vaccinations are actually one of the most tracked things we have and they are available through the public health agency of Canada.  You don’t know that?"  “It’s right there." (The Current, February 9, 2015)
 
Unfortunately vaccine adverse events data is not “right there” as discovered by Vaccine Choice Canada (VCC) Board member, Nelle Maxey who recently completed an in depth investigation of Canada’s vaccine adverse events reporting system.  

Originally the object of the report was to compare the Canadian vaccine adverse events reporting system with the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) which has recorded over 30,000 adverse vaccine events a year since 2007. Our goal was to analyze and compare the quality of data available in Canada and in the U.S. as well as compare ease of public access to vaccine associated reaction and injury reports submitted by medical personnel, vaccine manufacturers and the public in both countries. Unfortunately, this proved impossible.

Taking into account the population difference between the two countries, that both countries purchase vaccines from the same manufacturers and have a similar vaccine schedule, one would expect to see in Canada about 10% the number of American reports, or at least 3,000 vaccine adverse reports a year.

Our investigation found that while vaccine adverse events data in the U.S. are readily accessible through a user friendly Med Alerts search engine, Canada operates a dual reporting system that is confusing, lacks transparency and is mostly inaccessible to the public.

Two databases

Our Report reveals that the Canadian government maintains two vaccine adverse events reporting systems. One, known as the Canada Vigilance (CV) database, is maintained by Health Canada. This is where all drug product reactions are reported along with a small number of vaccine adverse events reports submitted largely by vaccine manufacturers. While this database is searchable, only 6.5% of the vaccine related data is from 1988 to the present. The Canada Vigilance database is accompanied by this caveat:
 
“This database contains only a small proportion of adverse reactions reported following receipt of vaccines, and is reflective of serious reactions reported to market authorization holders as required under the Food and Drugs Act. The majority of reports of these reactions are submitted to the Canadian Adverse Events Following Immunization Surveillance System (CAEFISS)."
 
In 1988 a second data base, the Canadian Adverse Events Following Immunization Surveillance System (CAEFISS) was created to exclusively track vaccine adverse reaction reports. This second database, maintained by the Public Health Agency of Canada is where the vast majority of vaccine-associated adverse events reports are routed. CAEFISS is the repository for the bulk of adverse vaccine reports and remains inaccessible to public scrutiny. The only access to the data is through a formal access to information request, or from reports released periodically at the discretion of the government.

Even more disconcerting is the low incidences of adverse reactions reports in the Canada Vigilance database. During the years when the Canadian system had little vaccine adverse reaction data, the VAERS system in the United States showed an increasing number of adverse event reports reflective of the burgeoning increase in the vaccine schedule since the mid 1980s. For example in 2007 the Canadian Vigilance database had 18 reports of vaccine adverse events while the VAERS database documented over 30,000.

As an example of what is hidden and what is revealed, the two full public reports on CAEFISS confirm that in the 20 year period from 1992 to 2012, the CAEFISS database recorded 87,911 vaccine adverse reaction reports.  This is an average of over 4,000 vaccine adverse reports a year, stored in a database kept from public scrutiny, accessible only through cumbersome Access to Information requests.

Compare this to the publicly accessible Canada Vigilance database which recorded 551 reports or less than 1% of all adverse vaccine reaction reports on CAEFISS during those same years.

The periodic government reports on the CAEFISS data require top-notch analytical skills to decipher and are certainly not widely publicized in the press.  When was the last time Canadians were informed that on average over 4,000 vaccine adverse events are reported each year to a database hidden from the public? And at that, it is estimated less than 10% of vaccine adverse events are reported to government health agencies.
Whatever the intent of this dual reporting system, the result is the Canadian public has little access to reports on adverse reactions following vaccinations.

The need for change
 
It is clear the public is getting a very distorted picture of the number of serious adverse events following vaccination. On behalf of the Canadian public we ask, to whose advantage is this dysfunctional system of reporting and tracking? Certainly it is not in the public interest. It is the firm belief of Vaccine Choice Canada that all vaccine adverse reaction data should be incorporated in one (or both) databases and that the public must have full access to that data.

Vaccine injury compensation – comparing the United States & Canada

This March 5, 2015 report from the U.S. Department of Justices disclosed that there were 117 cases compensated for vaccine injuries and deaths in the 3 month period between November 16, 2014 to February 15, 2015. The U.S. government issues quarterly reports detailing the types of vaccine injuries and financial compensation given to victims. The report provides the name of the vaccines, the injury, and the amount of time the case was pending before settlement. These quarterly reports on vaccine injuries and death settlements from the U.S. vaccine court are seldom, if ever, reported in the mainstream media. Since the first National Vaccine Injury Compensation (VICP) claims were filed in 1989, more than $2.9 billion in compensation awards have been paid to vaccine injury victims.

The annual Immunization Awareness Week is a vaccination promo fest. In Canada, not only do we not have access to the huge store of vaccine reaction and injury reports kept hidden by the government, the majority of Canadians also have no access to compensation for vaccine injuries - neither through the courts nor a government vaccine injury compensation plan, although such a plan has been recommended by policy analysts.  The injured person must prove two things, 1) the vaccine caused the injury and 2) the vaccine provider was negligent, a nearly impossible feat. Because the legal bar has been set so high in this country, vaccine injury victims have never been awarded compensation by a Canadian court. Quebec is the only jurisdiction in Canada with a vaccine injury compensation system, established in 1987. Of the 175 vaccine injury claims submitted to the program over 27 years, only 35 claimants have been awarded damages.

National Immunization Week employs Elmo to promote vaccination

To kick off National Infant Immunization Week in the U.S., the Surgeon General teamed up with Sesame Street and Elmo with direct vaccine advertising to your children. “Apparently, the campaign seeks to convince the real decision makers when it comes to childhood and infant vaccination; the children and infants. Having undertones of plain creepiness throughout the advertisement, the Surgeon General implies to your children and Elmo that their bodies can fight germs only with the help of vaccines.”  

This is essentially a drug advertisement aimed directly at children which violates numerous international advertising guidelines. In Quebec, Sweden and Norway, advertising to children under the age of 12 is illegal. In addition Australia, Canada, and Sweden have already adopted regulations prohibiting advertising on programs targeting audiences of young children. Vaccine activist and mother of a vaccine injured child, Ginger Taylor offers powerful commentary on this propaganda directed at children.

In Canada, health minister Rona Ambrose launched the National Immunization Awareness Week(April 25 – May 2) in Surrey, BC. Ambrose wants to make sure that Canadians get their facts about immunization from credible sources like the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Ambrose’s enthusiastic vaccine promotion fails to inform however, that the PHAC, as a “legislated service agency” is also the gatekeeper of CAEFISS, Canada’s hidden depository of vaccine adverse reaction data. The PHAC, as a quasi-independent agency does not fall under the scrutiny of Parliament nor independent oversight process other than the Auditor General of Canada.

Public Health Agency of Canada must have a hefty advertising budget to be able to offer the dizzying array of ‘educational’ materials promoting vaccine use for everyone. There are posters, postcards, brochures, booklets, film clips, contests and cartoons urging you to “Boost Your Power & Get Vaccinated”, and includes a teaching tool on how to “Reduce the Pain of Vaccination in Babies”, and most important – a check list on how to determine whether vaccine information on the internet is trustworthy.

Threats to vaccine exemptions and media censorship

For many months now, families across the U.S. have mobilized their political will to oppose newly introduced Bills in various states intent on eliminating the right to religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions. Without vaccine exemptions, unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children would be barred from public and private schools. For the countless families whose children have already suffered varying degrees of vaccine injury, being forced to vaccinate is unthinkable.  

On Apr. 22, more than 1,000 Californians, many accompanied by their infants and children, lined up outside and packed four floors of the state Capitol building in Sacramento waiting to voice their opposition to SB277 sponsored by pediatrician turned politician Richard Pan. Despite enormous public opposition, testimonies of vaccine injured families, large demonstrations and powerful speeches given by environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other presenters urging the legislators to vote NO, both the Health and Education committees succumbed to the medical industry’s dirty politics.  Their vote to eliminate philosophical and religious exemptions strikes a moral blow against the basic human right to freedom from forced medication.  Hope of stopping this Bill from going further now rests with the Judiciary Committee.  

The ‘capture’ of regulatory agencies, politicians and mainstream media by the medical industry is at the root of this descent into medical tyranny with a goal of imposing “cradle to grave” vaccination on all people. “The political leaders have been subverted in many ways through vaccine money”, said Robert Kennedy Jr. at a recent press conference in New Jersey where he focused on the corruption, collusion and malfeasance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was a scathing report about the ethics of the agency in charge of vaccine safety. Kennedy refers to the CDC as "a troubled agency, in fact, a cesspool of corruption."  How bad is the corruption?  It's "pervasive," according to Kennedy.  He cites the years of studies that have exposed the CDC as "hopelessly corrupt and dysfunctional."

In an interview with Age of Autism’s Anne Dachel, Kennedy said, "The trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry is now the largest advertiser on television, radio and newspaper pages, spending from $3 billion to $5.4 billion annually over the past decade”.

Kennedy cited Dan Shulman, who in 2005, “wrote a scathing and somewhat bewildered critique of the airtight censorship among media organs of any debate over vaccine safety or CDC corruption. He said that many reporters considered covering this issue to be a potentially 'career ending' hazard. Today that censorship extends not just to the mainstream media but also to the so-called 'alternate media' like Salon, Slate, Huff Post and Mother Jones. There is simply no national forum for this debate. We have been forced from the public square”, said Kennedy.  
 
As in the U.S., Canadian regulatory agencies and media have been captured by the pharmaceutical/medical conglomerate. Its controlled and internationally co-ordinated, one sided vaccine messages seek to obliterate all dissent and to quash the natural human impulse to seek optimal ways of creating health without reliance on complex chemical compounds that once injected, cannot be removed if something goes wrong. Increasingly people are seeking a new paradigm of health outside the current destructive medical industry model which inevitably will stimulate foundational changes in medical science. An essential part of nurturing this change is for all of us to continue to educate ourselves and to learn from the exceptional teachers dedicated to presenting a new scientific model of health. Dr. Suzanne Humphries’ is a leader among teachers, and her lecture series is a positive place to start.

 
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Spring Membership Drive
 
If you have not yet become a member Vaccine Choice Canada, we would encourage you to do so.  By joining Vaccine Choice Canada, you become a non-voting member in support of helping individuals and families make informed healthcare choices concerning vaccination. You will receive our internationally acclaimed newsletter mailed to our members twice a year. Each 28 page newsletter offers cutting edge articles by medical professionals, researchers and diverse commentaries on vaccine issues. New members also receive a comprehensive information package totaling over 100 pages of information. As well members have privileged access to our newsletter archive reaching back to 1994.

Your membership helps us continue our educational work as well as maintain an international presence as a consumer watchdog group.  To become a member, please visit our website.  Tell a friend or family member about Vaccine Choice Canada!
 
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Recent items of interest
An Immunologist’s Letter to Legislators by Tetyana Obukhanych Ph.D  

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speech Sacramento (video)

Laura Hayes, mother of vaccine injured children speech Sacramento (video)

What the news isn’t saying about vaccine-autism studies by Sharryl Attkisson

Aluminum is toxic to all life forms: The case against aluminum in vaccines (video) by Suzanne Humphries 

Defending the right to poison by Sherri Tenpenny, DO

Dr. Paul Offit’s aluminum deceptions and academic misconduct 

Brain-Damaged Victims of Swine Flu Vaccine Win $63 Million Lawsuit

Kiwanis Clubs ensnared in Third World vaccine sterilization scandal by Lawrence Solomon  

Australia to stop welfare cash of parents resisting vaccines

First they came for the anti-vaxxers by Bretigne Shaffer

Toronto Star - Health Canada censorship of drug information

What is the risk of dying if you catch measles?

Parents of HPV vaccine victims protest in the streets of Colombia 

Ginger Taylor pushes back against pharma advertising to children

Vaccines: It’s Elmo’s World

Stories of vaccine injured children
 
Aluminum Deceptions and Academic Misconduct by Gary Kohls MD 

UBC neuroscientist has ‘academic freedom’ to look for links between vaccines and autism, university says 

USA Today wrong on mercury, wrong on scientific consensus on vaccines by Lawrence Solomon
 
A Gut Response to Vaccines by Andreas von Bubnoff  
 
 
Measles & Cloudy Thinking by Ralph Campbell MD 
 
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Vaccine Choice Canada is a not-for-profit educational society dedicated to promoting health among Canadians by helping families make fully informed and voluntary choices about vaccination. Vaccine Choice Canada receives no funding from government or corporate sources and is solely supported by our members.  Learn more about vaccines, diseases and how to protect your children from vaccine induced injuries. Become a member of Vaccine Choice Canada and receive our internationally acclaimed newsletters. Contact us through our website, www.vaccinechoicecanada.com  or email us at: info@vaccinechoicecanada.com 
 
 
 
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