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Michelle Malkin: Vaccine Skeptics Under Siege; Informed Skepticism Does Not Make One a Health Menace
Townhall ^ | 03/07/2019 | Michelle Malkin

Posted on 03/07/2019 12:29:28 PM PST by SeekAndFind

Watch out. Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley have locked their sights on the next targets of a frightening free speech-squelching purge: independent citizens who dare to raise questions online about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

I'm vaccinated. My children are up to date. There's no dispute that vaccines have saved untold lives. But over the years, I've voiced my concerns about vaccine claims and government coercion in my newspaper columns and blog posts. These concerns include my objections to Gardasil mandates for schoolchildren in Texas and California; schools' threatening parents with jail time for refusing chickenpox shots for their kids; ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine; contamination issues at vaccine plants abroad; lack of data on vaccines' long-term and synergistic effects on children; and pharma-funded politicians' financial conflicts of interest.

In 2004, I recounted my family's firsthand experience with bully doctors who balked at even the mildest questioning of the wisdom of the newborn hepatitis B immunization. When my husband and I asked if we could simply delay this particular shot, as the vaccine is for a virus that is contracted mostly through intravenous drug use and sexual contact, my son's pediatrician angrily kicked us out of her practice.

Does this informed skepticism make me and other like-minded parents public health menaces, as the World Health Organization has proclaimed? Are we "sociopaths," as a journalist at The Atlantic once sneered? Apparently so.

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Washington state's public health secretary, John Wiesman, demanded that the feds launch a national campaign to counter "anti-vaccine" groups that are spreading what he condemned as "false information." Weisman called for increased funding from the Centers for Disease Control to combat opponents of the state's push to prevent parents from opting their children out of immunizations for personal or philosophical reasons. Health officials have blamed vaccine critics' social media influence for recent measles outbreaks. So Wiesman further urged Twitter, Facebook and Google to "use whatever mechanism they have available to stop promoting pseudoscience."

Let's be clear: Misinformation of all kinds abounds on the internet. The world's most influential "mainstream" media websites and celebrity social media accounts, for example, recklessly fanned the flames of the recent Covington Catholic High School and Jussie Smollett hate crime hoaxes. No one in Washington has called for the boycott of The Washington Post or TMZ over their false and misleading stories. But for some reason (hint: pharmaceutical big business), politicians and government bureaucrats are now hell-bent on deplatforming any and all dissenters who challenge mandatory vaccine regimens.

Under pressure from Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Amazon pulled the documentaries "Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe," "Man Made Epidemic" and "Shoot 'em Up: The Truth About Vaccines" from its Prime Video streaming service. Last week, Google-owned YouTube moved to demonetize "anti-vaccine" channels, tweak algorithms to suppress vaccine "conspiracy" videos and combat "vaccine hesitancy." Pinterest blocks users from using the search terms "vaccine," "vaccinations" and "anti-vax," no matter the quality of the results. Facebook plans to downgrade vaccine skeptics' content on newsfeeds, recommended user groups and ads.

Is there junk science on the "anti-vaccine" side? Sure. But you can't address this issue without also addressing the problem with physicians and public health flacks who are unwilling to discuss the full risks of vaccines as well as their benefits; pro-vaccination groups that provide incorrect information about vaccines' duration of protection; physicians who refuse to care for children who are not "fully" vaccinated; and the comparative risk-benefit ratios of different vaccines.

As for efficacy, consider this new data: A recent whooping cough outbreak at the private Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles last week resulted in 30 students contracting the illness, all of whom were vaccinated. Of 18 unvaccinated students, none caught the disease. Will pointing this out on my Facebook and Twitter accounts bring down the Silicon Valley ban hammer?

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who happens to be a physician and parent himself, was the lone voice of dissent at the Senate hearing this week. While acknowledging that the benefits of vaccines generally outweigh their risks, he noted the plain truth that "it is wrong to say there are no risks to vaccines." He added that over $4 billion has been paid by the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program for adults and children who have been injured or died as a result of receiving federally recommended childhood vaccines.

Is it unacceptable fearmongering to raise that point? How about to share information on vaccine manufacturers' astonishing exemption from product liability? Or to point parents to new research findings on brain injuries caused by vaccines, which can be found at VaccinePapers.org? Or to link them to a recent statement by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which "strongly opposes federal interference in medical decisions, including mandated vaccines."

When it comes to protecting our children, skepticism is always the best medicine. We need more free speech, not less. Those who seek to suppress debate and discussion in the name of the "public good" are the true health threats.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: skepticism; vaccine
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To: ifinnegan
But vaccines are one of the things that define our society, history and culture as a Judeo-Christian civilization.

Seriously? You don't think that's a bit of a stretch?

Make ya a deal. You convince Big Pharma to give up the blanket immunity that they received against liability suits (an immunity enjoyed by NO other American industry by the way), and I'll give up my anti-vaxxer "lunacy".

They won't take me up on that. They lobbied for it for a reason.


21 posted on 03/07/2019 1:48:45 PM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: hinckley buzzard
As a first amendment issue, I agree with Malkin. As a scientific issue, the anti- vax campaign has long since been discredited as junk science. It belongs in the same trash heap as crop circles and chem trails.

Yeah - and globull warming is settled science.....right?

22 posted on 03/07/2019 1:50:10 PM PST by trebb (Don't howl about illegal leeches while not donating to FR - it's hypocritical.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Hep B is only transmissible through infected needles, infected blood on an open sore, or sex.

Less than 20,000 get it a year.

This is the vaccine they want babies to get the day they are born.

I think it’s because doctors expect one-day olds will have unprotected sex or exchange infected needles. I guess the doctors are the ones expecting to force it on them.

23 posted on 03/07/2019 1:51:45 PM PST by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.g)
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To: hinckley buzzard
I see no reason why vaccines can’t be delayed. You never had the Hep B shot at one day of age. I didn’t even get it until I asked for it at 40.

The schedule the CDC pushes is extreme and unwarranted and NOT risk-based.

24 posted on 03/07/2019 1:55:42 PM PST by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.g)
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To: so_real

“So in your opinion Michelle Malkin and the folks like her are “lunatics””

Michelle Malkin is not an anti-Vaxxer.

You didn’t even read the article.


25 posted on 03/07/2019 1:57:23 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

You can go back to polio and smallpox and measles and mumps.

Just move to a backward third world place and stop trying to turn the auS in to one.


26 posted on 03/07/2019 1:59:08 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: ifinnegan

I did. And I agreed with her in Post #7 wholeheartedly. I assumed your posting so negatively in the context of Michelle Malkin's article implied that you attributed the moniker of "anti-vaxxer" to her. I stand corrected. I guess I don't know who the "anti-vaxxers" are then, because Michelle's stand agrees with my own on this topic, just as it does with probably 99.9% of those of us on this forum concerned with vaccine overreach who have been branded "anti-vax" regardless of how little that title fits us. I guess none of us are "anti-vaxxers" then. And I appreciate that being pointed out. Thank you!


27 posted on 03/07/2019 2:04:16 PM PST by so_real ( "The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools.")
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To: Buckeye McFrog

convince Big Pharma to give up the blanket immunity that they received against liability suits (an immunity enjoyed by NO other American industry by the way)

Bingo. Do that and watch the health concerns with regard to poor product and aggressive schedules disappear overnight.


28 posted on 03/07/2019 2:06:45 PM PST by so_real ( "The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools.")
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To: SeekAndFind

Unless one does a braindead 180 and doesn’t get themselves or their kids vaccinated.


29 posted on 03/07/2019 2:07:42 PM PST by Catmom (We're all gonna get the punishment only some of us deserve.r)
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To: so_real

No problem.

There, though, are anti-Vaxxers here.

I always thought the anti-vaccine lunacy was from the left, but it has infected certain conservative or non-left thinking.


30 posted on 03/07/2019 2:12:21 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: ifinnegan

_Some_ anti-vaxers are lunatics. Some of them are just very normal citizens asking if the benefits of a particular vaccine outweigh the risks.

I have refused to take a flu vaccine ever—and my lady doc is a sweetheart—we joke about it.

Follow my doc’s lead—and lighten up...


31 posted on 03/07/2019 2:47:01 PM PST by cgbg (Hidden behind the social justice warrior mask is corruption and sexual deviance.)
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To: cgbg

I don’t consider the latter anti-Vaxxers.

I have never taken flu vaccine and see no need.

But I see no problem for those who choose to.


32 posted on 03/07/2019 2:56:36 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: ifinnegan

All that Hitachi powder just waiting for your body, too..... /s sort of.


33 posted on 03/07/2019 2:58:17 PM PST by combat_boots (God bless Israel and all who protect and defend her! Merry Christmas! In God We Trust!)
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To: SeekAndFind; All

FYI Big Pharma essentially making vaccines from “chop shop” baby parts – where’s the outrage?

https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-03-07-big-pharma-making-vaccines-from-chop-shop-baby-parts.html

Natural News) Many people don’t know this, but it’s impossible to be both pro-life and pro-vaccine. That’s because “fresh tissue” from aborted human babies is “absolutely essential,” according to vaccine industry scientists, for researching and developing new vaccines.

Speaking before a recent congressional hearing about the alleged need for continued federal funding, Sally Temple, the former president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, made the claim that aborted baby body parts are “unique,” and that there’s no alternative replacement as it concerns vaccine creation.

She contends that “chop shop” fetal remains collected from baby butcher mills like Planned Parenthood are a critical part of the process of developing “models” that encompass “the most complete human immune system.”

YIKES HOW CAN ANYONE SUPPORT THIS ????????????????/


34 posted on 03/07/2019 3:34:04 PM PST by PraiseTheLord (.Q.)
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To: SeekAndFind

I am very informed, and very skeptical.

At the least, apologists for unquestioned, compulsory, invasive compound-vaccinations for infants with small body masses and nascent immune systems - nullifying any parental Fourth Amendment rights - should be willing to follow the money here as diligently as they do with that other “settled science”: global change.

I argue that Antoine Beauchamp was more right than Louis Pasteur, and that much of the benefits accorded to the advent of vaccines was due to coeval development of modern sanitation in sewage and concomitant hand washing by physicians in practice.

Regardless, the multi-vaccines of today are monstrously powerful, and far different from a single vaccine circa 1960 - just as marijuana today is far more potent than such in 1960.

The Federal Vaccine Court alone is evidence of fascistic conspiracy between Big Government and Big Pharma.

Follow. The. Money.


35 posted on 03/07/2019 4:02:12 PM PST by YogicCowboy ("I am not entirely on anyone's side, because no one is entirely on mine." - J. R. R. Tolkien)
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To: SeekAndFind; All

NATURAL NEWS just happens to have one more featured article today on vaccines, so get a load of this:

REVEALED: How Big Pharma and government health agencies DECEIVE us into getting vaccines

https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-03-07-ow-big-pharma-and-government-health-agencies-deceive-us-in-to-getting-vaccines.html

blah blah However, is this a message based on sound science and spread for the greater good of all, or is it nothing more than propaganda designed to protect Big Pharma’s BIG profits?

blah blah This might sound logical and sensible, but the facts don’t back this theory up for the simple reason that nowhere near 95 percent of adult Americans are vaccinated.

blah blah So somehow, despite the fact that the majority of U.S. adults aren’t “properly” vaccinated against most “vaccine-preventable” diseases, and despite the fact we are well below the threshold required for so-called herd immunity, we STILL aren’t seeing an epidemic of measles, hepatitis, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis.

What’s the real driving force behind vaccination?

So, if 95 percent of people aren’t getting vaccinated and yet we aren’t seeing outbreaks of these diseases, we know there has to be another reason that government agencies and pharmaceutical companies keep insisting they’re necessary. That reason is simple: money.

The U.S. gives more vaccines than any other country in the world. Our childhood schedule for under the age of one has twice as many vaccines as other developed countries. What else do we have? The highest infant mortality rate of any developed nation. Finland has the lowest. They only give 11 by age six. …

What we have with vaccines is the highest profit margin pharmaceutical drug on the market. Drug companies make more money off vaccines than they do any other pharmaceutical drug, in terms of profit margin. There is a lack of rigorous safety studies. And they don’t have the incentive to do them because they have no liability.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For those who haven’t heard, recently RFKjr won a lawsuit to show and prove there is a law that the drug co’s must test these properly -— but they have not been doing so.


36 posted on 03/07/2019 4:16:33 PM PST by PraiseTheLord (.Q.)
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To: ifinnegan


37 posted on 03/07/2019 5:25:44 PM PST by aMorePerfectUnion
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To: ifinnegan


38 posted on 03/07/2019 5:26:18 PM PST by aMorePerfectUnion
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To: ifinnegan


39 posted on 03/07/2019 5:26:48 PM PST by aMorePerfectUnion
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To: ifinnegan


40 posted on 03/07/2019 5:27:11 PM PST by aMorePerfectUnion
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