The Pro-Mandate agenda now advises doctors to ignore these vaccine safety questions and focus on the fear of disease to manipulate parents into compliance.
But shouldn't these seminars be designed to help doctors take a closer look at vaccine safety in order to better understand the legitimate concerns parents have?
The main reason more and more parents are now opting out of vaccination is safety. No doctors can discuss vaccines transparently with their patients without revealing the many possible side effects both the CDC and FDA disclose. Ironically, safety is the one aspect of vaccination that Pro-Mandate supporters don't want doctors to talk about. But isn't an honest conversation really what informed consent is all about?
The only goal of these Pro-Mandate conferences is to reduce vaccine refusal, regardless of how legitimate parental concerns are. Those who support this agenda are recruiting doctors to help. The problem is doctors are supposed to be impartial. They are supposed to be invested in the well-being of each patient individually, which means any course of treatment can vary depending on the child. Addressing parental concerns about vaccine safety acknowledges that there is risk, that parents should be fully informed about the risk, and that we need to better understand why some people have reactions. Instead, the new directive in these conferences is to use emotional tactics to persuade parents that vaccines are safe enough without admitting there is any risk.
This new strategy has been featured in several recent news magazines sent to all pediatricians and was unveiled at the Confronting Vaccine Resistance Conference in New York, hosted by Senator Pan (D-California) and Dr. Offit (creator of the rotavirus vaccine). They've determined that pediatricians who capitalize on the emotion of the doctor-patient relationship may be more successful in persuading parents who won't follow the full vaccine protocol to change their mind.
Comment: According to Robert F, Kennedy Jr: Dr. Offit is a "thorough charlatan, a snake oil salesman and he has everyone flimflammed. That made me angry. After that, I learned that he was also venal."
RS: What do you mean "venal"?
RFK, JR: Well, my original assumption was that he was lying in service to the vaccine program. I later learned that vaccines were a lavishly profitable enterprise for Dr. Offit.
RS: How so?
RFK, JR: He is on permanent retainer to Merck to "right vaccine wrongs". And, both Merck and the CDC have rewarded his service with extraordinarily lucrative opportunities. In 1999, the CDC allowed him to sit on the committee that voted the rotavirus vaccine onto the schedule, even though he was working on his own rotavirus patent. Electing not to recuse himself, he cast his vote to add rotavirus to the schedule. That version of the rotavirus vaccine caused so many agonizing childhood deaths from intussusception that the CDC had to withdraw it a year later, making room for Offit's version, a turn of events that made him a vaccine tycoon. His rotavirus vaccine patent sold for $182 million; his cut was at least $29 million. When I learned about this caper and his other money schemes, I just thought, "Well, he's a hoodlum."
RS: He's also a misogynist and a bully.
RFK, JR: It's disturbing because the media treats him like a deity. And, like all bullies, he's a coward. He dismisses women who question him as superstitious hysterics. He lobs vicious bombs at the mothers of vaccine-injured children from the editorial pages and national TV shows which give him a platform for his poison. But, he refuses to debate me or anyone else who knows what they are talking about.
RS: Do you think, when Paul Offit says that babies could safely be given 10,000 vaccines at the same time, that he really believes that?
RFK, JR: I don't feel competent to psychoanalyze Offit. It's hard to look into another person's mind. And Offit's brain has got to be a really dark and scary zip code where I don't really want to spend time. In his defense, we all have some capacity for self-deception and it's possible that Offit is as gifted at deceiving himself as he is at deceiving the public. Upton Sinclair observed that, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." But I do think it's more likely that he knows that what he's saying is dishonest. For years, he claimed Bill Thompson's 2004 study was "the definitive proof" of thimerosal safety. He's been silent about that since Thompson disavowed his own study. That suggests a purposeful mendacity. Like a lot of other people, Offit seems to have made the self-serving calculation that all of the dead and damaged children are just collateral damage—unfortunate sacrifices in a program that serves the greater good.
RS: Is that even a legitimate moral calculation?
RFK, JR: You mean to kill one child in order to save fifty? Ethicists and theologians could argue the point. But that isn't Offit's real moral dilemma. Offit's moral Donnybrook is his absolutist defense of the industry position that all vaccines are always safe for all people and that the safety of thimerosal is unassailable. That approach has unnecessarily damaged vulnerable subgroups that could easily have been protected and sacrificed millions of kids, not for the greater good but for the bottom line. As the vaccine industry's lead pitchman for thimerosal, Offit's been extraordinarily successful at crafting a persuasive alternative to fact-based reality and selling it like a carnival barker. He has made himself the high priest of the weird dogma that it's somehow safe to inject mercury into babies.
But no parent should be emotionally manipulated. Educated parents who research vaccine safety on a deeper level conclude that vaccines have more risks than they are being told by their doctors. And many parents just don't trust much of the vaccine safety research anymore due to conflicts of interest in the pharmaceutical industry. Parents now know that many of the doctors and researchers (including the former head of the CDC) who determine vaccine policy receive funding from vaccine manufacturers.
The Pro-Mandate agenda now advises doctors to ignore these vaccine safety questions and focus on the fear of disease to manipulate parents into compliance. But compliance isn't a real solution. Improved vaccine safety is a solution. A less aggressive vaccine schedule is a solution. Giving fewer combination shots and less doses per visit are solutions. And that should be the goal of these medical conferences.
Asking questions about whether or not vaccines are safe enough doesn't make you anti-vaccine. It makes you pro informed consent.
About the author
The article was reprinted with permission. It was originally published by the Immunity Education Group - a community of medical and legal professionals, businesspersons, educators, journalists, and advocates who are passionate about immunity education and the right to informed consent.
People are no longer asked, "Do you want a flu shot?"
Instead, the manipulative wording is, "Have you had your flu shot yet this year?"