Fw: (CT Birthing Community) 60 Minutes - Vaccines

[Guest guest]

I did not catch this segment on 60 Minutes. Glad I didn't. I am one of those

people who cries when they get really mad. I hate when that happens.

 

Dale

 

 

-

 

TaylorMade Treasures <musicmom wrote:azmamas

" TaylorMade Treasures "

Thu, 4 Nov 2004 13:25:23 -0700

[azmamas] 60 Minutes - Vaccines

 

For those who saw the 60 Minutes edition on vaccines a few weeks ago:

 

LeAnn Contessa

http://www.TaylorMadeSlings.com

~Where Babies Belong~

 

 

Dear Friends of NVIC:

 

I have attached a copy of the letter we sent to Sixty Minutes following the

segment on October 20, 2004. While this has been a very difficult time

for NVIC, we have been lifted up by your steadfast support and words of

encouragement.

 

This is truly a battle of David and Goliath proportions. Even though the

other side is so well funded and has the support of a solid infrastructure,

we will not stop telling the truth about what we know.

 

Please continue to support our efforts on behalf of parents and children.

 

Best regards,

Kathi

 

Kathi Williams

National Vaccine Information Center

421 Church St., Suite E

Vienna, Va 22180

703-938-DPT3

www.NVIC.org

----

October 26, 2004

 

Michael Rosenbaum, Producer

Elliot Kirschner, Producer

60 Minutes (Wed)

524 West 57th St.

New York, NY 10019

 

Dear Michael and Elliot:

 

The sadness I felt after watching the segment you asked me to participate

in (Oct. 20- Saying No To Vaccination) was not just about how you made me

and the three mothers I referred to you look, it was shame for having

believed that you were being honest with me. It was humiliation for having

allowed myself to be deceived into dragging three mothers, who trusted me,

into the most inaccurate and biased broadcast presentation that I have

participated in during the past 22 years of work to prevent vaccine

injuries and deaths through public education. It was a shock when I

realized that, by my participation, I had been used to give you a vehicle

to launch a gratuitous and inaccurate personal attack on Andrew Wakefield,

M.D., while you failed to inform your viewers that the main spokesperson in

your piece, Paul Offit, M.D., is a childhood vaccine patent holder and paid

consultant for Merck, one of the largest childhood vaccine manufacturers.

 

From the first discussion we had on the phone to the last discussion the

three of us had while standing in the lobby of the CBS office the second

time I had flown to New York to be interviewed, you promised me that you

would accurately and fairly portray both sides of the vaccine safety

debate. Elliot, we spoke at length in phone conversations leading up to my

persuading the Moms in New York to invite you and Dan Rather into one of

their homes, about how 60 Minutes was going to take a " different " approach

to the vaccine safety debate. We talked about examining it in the social

context of health care consumers questioning vaccines, just as they are

questioning the current medical model in search of alternative and

complimentary ways of preventing disease and maintaining health. That is

why I referred you to mothers who whose health care providers were involved

in an holistic approach to maintaining wellness.

 

However, even if you had not misled me into thinking this was going to be

your approach, it was unfair to tell me you " did not want a piece that

talked about the scientific studies " and ask me several times not to talk

about " the scientific studies " on camera when your piece was all about how

parents should " trust the experts " and " the scientific studies. " This was

particularly unfair when the main thrust of my argument (which you both

chose not to use) was that the crisis of trust currently existing between

parents and doctors centers on the fact that what government health

officials and doctors are telling parents is true about vaccine safety in

their " studies " is in direct conflict with what parents are experiencing in

their own homes after their children are vaccinated and they watch them

regress physically, mentally and emotionally into chronic illness and

disability.

 

I made that point several times in our filmed interview, including

explaining why we want federal officials to open up their closed vaccine

risk databases to independent scientific analysis. But you did not include

any of this and instead chose to imply I was either ignorant or lying when

I said the appropriate studies had not been done by government health

agencies and industry to answer the outstanding questions about vaccine

safety.

 

I also made the point, several times in our filmed interview, that the

National Vaccine Information Center takes an informed consent position. We

defend the right of parents and all citizens to be fully informed about the

risks and complications of diseases and the risks and complications of

vaccines and be allowed to make an informed, voluntary decision. This is in

the tradition of the right to informed consent to medical treatment, which

is the centerpiece of the ethical practice of modern medicine. We fully

support a parent's decision to use all government recommended vaccines for

his or her child. We worked for 14 years to persuade the FDA and CDC to

license and make available a purified, less reactive DTaP vaccine for

parents who want their children to be vaccinated for those three diseases.

At the same time, we fully support a parent's decision to selectively

vaccinate using an individualized schedule or the decision not to

vaccinate. That puts us in the pro-informed consent or anti-forced

vaccination position not in an anti-vaccine stance but you failed to make

that distinction.

 

At the end of the segment, your correspondent, Dan Rather, inaccurately

implies that today states require few vaccines and only recently began

giving exemptions. He says " You may remember the days when all children

had to be vaccinated before they entered school. While all states still

require some vaccinations for school age children, many now give exemptions

to parents who don't want their children immunized. " If you had done your

research, you would have understood that all states have always required

children to be vaccinated since the turn of the 20th century when one or

two doses of smallpox vaccine was required. For many years, the

overwhelming majority of states have had exemptions to vaccination for

medical, religious and, in about one-third of the states, for philosophical

or conscientious belief reasons. The truth is that, today, all states

require many vaccines - most require at least 31 doses of 10 vaccines for

school entry. The CDC recommends 37 doses of 12 vaccines for " universal

use " by all children and the remainder of these are in the process of being

mandated.

 

Following questioning me on film, your correspondent, Dan Rather, stated

to me that he admired my " passion " and my ability to " articulate " my

position but that he had a " bias " toward " the doctors and the science. "

 

When I reminded him that we maintain that the " the science " is inadequate

quantitatively and qualitatively, he admitted that several of my points

made sense, including the fact that " we might be using too many vaccines "

and that the " government database on vaccine risks should be open for

everyone to see. " I am left to wonder if his " bias " toward unquestioning

belief in the infallibility of doctors like Paul Offit either got in his

way or your way in the editing room.

 

I have debated physicians three times live on the " Today Show " as well as

on other television shows and discussed both the science and the ethics of

mandatory vaccination. I would have gone head to head with any doctor and

talked about the scientific studies, including those concerning pertussis

and pertussis vaccine, which was the subject of the first major book to

critique the mass vaccination system, DPT: A Shot in the Dark (1985,

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), which I co-authored. That book was used as a

reference by the Institute of Medicine in 1991 in its report on the adverse

effects of pertussis and rubella vaccines. I will talk about the scientific

studies anywhere with anyone but you requested that I not talk about them

because you obviously wanted to deceive me about what you really intended

to do.

 

You opened with a mother talking about the dangers of whooping cough,

which was entirely appropriate because it is important to discuss risks of

diseases if you are also going to discuss risks of vaccines. But you did

not discuss vaccine risks except to categorically dismiss their

significance. You did not include a mother talking about what happened when

her child suffered a vaccine reaction. On camera I talked about what

happened to my child after vaccination. I talked about what happened to

other children after vaccination. I gave you a computer CD with several

hundred pages of descriptions of vaccine reactions reported by ordinary

citizens across this country in an on-line petition calling on the CDC to

open up their vaccine risk databases. But none of that was included.

 

You totally ignored the entire point of why there is a crisis of trust

among educated parents when it comes to " trusting the experts " and their

" scientific studies " because you were afraid to address the real issue: too

many educated parents' children are regressing after vaccination and being

left with learning disabilities, ADHD, autism and other brain and immune

system disorders that are preventing them from leading healthy, normal

lives. And these educated parents are too educated to buy the line that it

was " just a coincidence " that it all happened after their children were

given multiple vaccines on the same day. Then these educated parents use

their education to analyze the methodologically flawed vaccine safety

studies, many of which are conducted by doctors paid by drug companies

making and selling vaccines. And then they realize they have been deceived.

 

Just like parents were deceived by doctors and pubic health officials

about the safety of anti-depressants for children.

 

Just like you deceived me.

 

Then they don't trust the experts anymore. Then they demand the right to

say no to vaccination. Because they would rather take their chances with a

disease than allow one more doctor to put a loaded syringe into their child

and pull the trigger.

 

It is really quite simple.

 

Michael, you know exactly what you are doing from choosing the color of

the backdrops, camera angles and lighting for each interview to the

background research you conduct on each person you consider for

interviewing and the edits you make. Elliot, you are young. The next time

you think about setting up someone who trusts you in order to advance your

career, you should remember this: in the end you will reap what you sow in

this life. Always.

 

Very truly,

 

Barbara Loe Fisher

 

cc: Dan Rather, Correspondent

Andrew Heyward, News Division Chief

Les Moonves, President

 

-----------------------

Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

ANY INFO OBTAINED HERE NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS MEDICAL

OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE DECISION TO VACCINATE IS YOURS AND YOURS ALONE.

 

******

" Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down.

Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy

knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information

and religions destroy spirituality " ....Michael Ellner