Why are legislatures imposing vaccine mandates now? My testimony to the New Brunswick, Canada legislature on August 27, 2019
... I am a veteran of the vaccine war in the US, and today I feel compelled to speak about what I saw in that war. Legislators were forced to change their votes to revoke vaccine exemptions and rescind the historic right to consent to medical procedures. The vaccine war is a dirty war, in which platitudes about protecting the most vulnerable are invoked by the same pharmaceutical companies that paid $2.7 billion in criminal penalties in the US between 2012 and 2015. The vaccine industry generates enormous profits (estimated 10-40%), benefits from a government-guaranteed market, and receives almost total liability protection. No other industry can rival these benefits. And this industry's rapacious desire to grow and guarantee its Canadian market is the reason we are here today.
Let me add context to this discussion by noting
that in 2014, the NY Times said it
cost $2200 to fully vaccinate one child.
At that price, it cost $163 billion dollars to fully vaccinate every US
child.
May I apologize at the outset for using mostly
US data? I provide Canadian and New
Brunswick information when available.
1.
Pharma's Pilgrimage to New Brunswick
Since
March 2019, representatives
of the three largest vaccine manufacturers in North America: GSK, Merck and Sanofi, have made their way to
New Brunswick to meet with ministers, public servants and lawmakers. This is not coincidental.
Pharmaceutical companies are colluding to expand on legislative victories
gained in the US. Using a media storm over measles, censorship
of numerous vaccine-related websites, new support for mandates from professional
organizations that have benefitted from industry largesse, and deals with
Democratic party leaders, the right to religious and philosophic vaccine
exemptions has been voted away by legislatures in California, New York and
Maine. In the recent case of New York, the Speaker
of the NY Assembly was caught on videotape directing a committee member to
change his vote in order for the mandate legislation to move forward.
This was
not an idle pilgrimage to one of Canada's smallest provinces. For Pharma it is the
gateway to all of Canada.
The
vaccine industry in 2019 is at a crossroads.
On the one
hand, the vaccine business is booming.
Several vaccines have been newly licensed, a robust
industry-FDA revolving door has been established, and the children of North
America are receiving more vaccines than ever before. Merck,
for example, reported increased sales in the second quarter of 2019 for Gardasil HPV vaccine of 46% (to over $3
billion US annually) compared to last year, and increased sales of 58% for its MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella and
varicella) vaccine. These are Merck's 3d and 4th biggest sellers. This year's US measles outbreak (about 1200
cases) and media-driven fears
of contagion contributed to vaccine uptake.
On the
other hand, the industry does not want to shoulder the considerable expense of
developing, testing and licensing new vaccines--over 100 of which are in
development--without a government guarantee that they will be purchased.
Vaccine mandates guarantee a
vaccine market, now and in the future. Mandates put in place today will enforce
the uptake of vaccines on the currently required list, plus other vaccines yet
to be added.
Industry
Challenges
In 2019,
the vaccine industry faces threatening legal challenges:
a) An expert witness for the US Department of
Justice (DOJ) in the 2007 omnibus vaccine autism case (affecting the outcome
for thousands of cases of alleged vaccine injury leading to autism), neurology
professor Andrew Zimmerman, MD recently filed an affidavit stating that his expert
testimony was altered by DOJ lawyers--that he told them that in certain cases,
autism can be a consequence of vaccination. The case for which Prof. Zimmerman's testimony was allegedly changed resulted in a denial of benefits for thousands of families with autistic children. It also led to a negative conclusion in the US Vaccine Court, for all future cases, that autism might be a consequence of vaccination. Potentially thousands of denied cases will need to be re-litigated.
b)
Gardasil, a
Merck vaccine used to prevent HPV infections and putatively cancer, is facing lawsuits
around the world for neurologic injuries and deaths. The Japanese government rescinded its recommendation
for Gardasil due to the
widespread side effects reported. Recall
that Merck, the manufacturer of Gardasil,
MMR, varicella and other vaccines, hid the lethal side effects of Vioxx for nearly five years, paying
out $4.85 billion US dollars to settle 27,000 injury claims. FDA scientist
David Graham, MD estimated
that 39,000 to 61,000 excess deaths occurred due to Vioxx.
c) Danish physician and anthropologist Peter
Aaby, and the group he leads, have been studying vaccines in Africa for 40
years. After completing hundreds of
vaccine studies, they have concluded that the DPT vaccine increases infant mortality, by 100% or more, in African infants. His group notes, "All studies
of the introduction of DTP have found increased overall mortality." You may be interested in his