A Parent's Horrid Nightmare: Coming Soon to YOUR State?
Posted By Dr. Mercola | September 16 2011 | 55,728 views
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By Dr. Mercola
The state of California has just passed bill AB499, which will permit minor children as young as 12 years old to be vaccinated with sexually transmitted disease vaccines like Gardasil without parental knowledge or parental consent. This means that if you live in California, school or medical personnel would be allowed to vaccinate your child against an STD without your ever knowing it.
At issue, of course, is whether 12-year-olds are mature enough to fully analyze the benefits versus risks of vaccination (or any medical treatment for that matter), or recognize the alternatives to STD prevention, such as abstinence. Meanwhile, a child could suffer a vaccine reaction and the parent, not knowing the child had been vaccinated, could mistake it for the flu or another condition, delaying getting help until it is too late.
But, perhaps the greatest issue of all is whether this law violates your basic right to be involved in important decisions regarding your child's health.
How Can Parental Consent be Completely Ignored?
As Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has stated, informed consent is a human right.
"The right to voluntary, informed consent to a medical intervention, including use of a pharmaceutical product such as a vaccine that can injure or kill you or your child, is a human right. While the State may have the legal authority to mandate use of vaccines, nobody has the moral authority to FORCE you to get vaccinated or vaccinate your child without your voluntary, informed consent," she says.
We as parents, who know and love our children better than anyone else, we, by U.S. law and a larger moral imperative, are the guardians of our children until they are old enough to make life and death decisions for themselves. We are responsible for their welfare and we are the ones who bear the grief and the burden when they are injured or die from any cause.
We are their voice and by all that is right in this great country and in the moral universe, we should be allowed to make a rational, informed, voluntary decision about which diseases and which vaccines we are willing to risk their lives for -- without fearing retribution from physicians employed by the state."
Not only does AB499 remove a parent's right to give their informed consent, but parents will not even have the right to be informed if their child is vaccinated. As Age of Autism recently reported, this could be disastrous for the child's well-being for a number of reasons:
- "A child will most likely not know his or her family history of allergies, autoimmune diseases, or adverse reactions to other vaccines or medications, all of which are essential to consider before the administration of any vaccine.
- A child is not capable of weighing the risks and benefits of vaccination, and under this bill, a parent will not be present to ask the appropriate questions to elicit this important risk/benefit information.
- A child can be easily swayed by a person of authority, his or her peers, and by misinformation
- ... Who will determine if the child falls within the category of those who should not be vaccinated on the label (especially in the absence of the child's medical records and the child's parent)?"
Informed consent is especially important when it comes to vaccination, because there is no way for you or your physician to predict if your child will be one of the children who has a devastating vaccine reaction, such as brain inflammation, immune dysregulation, or even death.
AB499 More About Profits than Health
Pharmaceutical and medical lobbyists were heavily involved in pushing AB499 through the state legislature. After all, by stripping parents of their right to make informed decisions about medical procedures that could harm their children, they have tapped a new market for their Gardasil vaccine. And, at a cost of $108 per dose to the government, Merck, the vaccine's manufacturer, stands to profit handsomely.
Meanwhile, California taxpayers will likely foot the bill for the multi-millions of dollars this law will cost to implement. Parents are NOT responsible for the costs (how could they be if they're not even informed that a vaccine was given?), so the bulk will come from the government (i.e. the taxpayers). As Fisher states:
"This proposed law would cost the cash-strapped state of California multi-millions of dollars to implement. Most of that money will go to Merck and other vaccine corporations to pay for multiple doses of each vaccine that will be aggressively promoted to young children, who are not yet physically, mentally or emotionally mature enough to make fully informed decisions about risk-taking, including whether or not to take a medical risk."
Further, has anyone considered who will be held responsible if a child is permanently injured or killed from receiving a vaccination without their parents' consent? Neither physicians nor drug companies have any legal liability, so the parents will ultimately be the ones who will have to carry the financial burden if their child suffers damage from the vaccine.
If You Live in California, Talk to Your Child About Gardasil Risks!
You have the legal right to know the risks and complications of vaccines BEFORE you make the choice of whether or not to allow your child to be vaccinated. If you live in California, this right may soon be taken away, unless you ACT NOW to stop the Governor from signing it into law. Still, it would be prudent to discuss this issue with your child now, before they are given the opportunity to receive this vaccine, so they will be able to make an educated decision when and if the time comes.
In the four short years since Gardasil came on the market, there have been more than 21,000 reported incidents of adverse effects and death, despite the fact that only two out of every 10 women in the approved age group have gotten the vaccine so far.
Add to this the fact that an estimated 90 to 99 percent of all adverse effects are never reported, and the abnormally large risks of the HPV vaccine compared to other vaccines should give most people reason to pause. Further, you and your child should know that:
- Gardasil is NOT a cancer vaccine. It is simply a vaccine for two strains of human papillomaviruses (HPVs) that in some instances can lead to cancer in some women (Gardasil's other two HPV strains are for genital warts, which don't cause cancer). There is absolutely no proof and no clinical trials that show Gardasil protects against cancer in the long-term.
- Since there are at least 15 HPV strains that can lead to cancer, Gardasil-vaccinated girls can still get cervical cancer from the other 13 HPV strains not contained in the vaccine.
- The vaccine doesn't work if you've already been infected with the HPV strains in the vaccine.
In the United States, infection with HPV is very common, and it is estimated that about 20 million Americans have an HPV infection at any given time. In fact, HPV is so common that most sexually active people will get it at some time in their lives.
The important thing to know about HPV is that in almost all cases, it clears up on its own without any adverse health effects within two years in most healthy people. So not only is the HPV vaccine one of the most unnecessary vaccines on the market, it is also the most dangerous! If AB499 is not vetoed, it's important, if you live in California, to arm your children with these facts in advance.
Urgent Action Alert for ALL Parents
If California parents can be stripped of their legal right to make informed medical decisions for their minor children, so too can parents in any state. I encourage you to get involved with the work that NVIC is doing to protect your right to choose which vaccines you want your children to get, including the legal right to use all, some, or no vaccines at all.
Register for the free NVIC Advocacy Portal that educates you about how to communicate effectively with your elected state representatives and protect vaccine exemptions in your state. Stay informed about what is happening in your state and make your voice heard.
Go to www.NVICAdvocacy.org and register today to take action.
For those of you who live in California, it is imperative that you take part in NVIC's urgent action alert. If Governor Brown does not veto AB499, vaccine exemptions for sexually transmitted disease vaccines become NULL and VOID in California. Please take just 5 minutes to help support this cause by:
- Forwarding NVIC's Urgent Action Alert to everyone you know
- Posting the link to this alert on Facebook, blogs, or other social media sites:
http://nvicadvocacy.org/members/Resources/VetoAB499.aspx- Contact Governor Jerry Brown and ask him to VETO AB499. The most effective way is to call the Governor's office. They've already added a simple voicemail button for a "yes" or "no" vote on the legislation.
- Call: (916) 445-2841
- Fax: (916) 558-3160
- Email Web Form: http://govnews.ca.gov/gov39mail/mail.php
- Register for the NVIC Advocacy Portal so you can receive updates
The more people who get involved, the better chance there is that California will get the message that parents will not lie down while their parental rights are removed. Together we can make a difference and keep this legislation from standing, and influencing the right to informed consent in the rest of the United States as well.
Our entire country needs to come together and send the state government of California the strong message: Keep your hands off our kids!
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