Mandating Vaccines Or Not?

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Hello. My name is Joanna Karpasea-Jones and I set up Vaccination Awareness Network in 1997, together with my husband and 3 other couples.
My interest in vaccination was sparked as a 13 year old teenager when I was called up for my BCG jab. I lined up dutifully with all the other children and was given the jab. Afterwards, the nurse handed me a blue card stating side-effects of the vaccine. I was shocked and thought I should have been told this information prior to being vaccinated. I had no idea that vaccines caused any side-effects and I would have said no if I’d seen the card beforehand. What happened to me could not be described as informed consent. I told myself that day I would research vaccination before I had any of my own children.
5 years later after deciding not to vaccinate my daughter, we were removed from 3 GP practices for ‘not complying with their efforts for preventative health’. After the third time we were struck off, I was so annoyed we could be denied a doctor just because we didn’t vaccinate, that I called the local News station and the TV crew came and parked outside the doctor’s surgery. Parents began writing to us to ask for vaccination advice, and that was how the charity was born.

The way the Nuffield Bio Ethics paper was written, only presented a positive side to vaccination. I wanted to be here today to discuss the negative side.
Every time a child is vaccinated, doctors are breaking the Hippocratic oath. According to the department of health’s own website, immunisation.org.uk, children may experience fevers, sickness, diarrhoea, altered consciousness (being floppy and unresponsive), seizures and even a high pitched cry which is indicative of encephalitis.
Given that most babies are completely healthy before they are vaccinated, this breaks a doctor’s ‘First Do No Harm’ oath of good medical practice.
The consultation paper makes several sweeping statements in regards to vaccination, such as the need for vaccination in achieving ‘herd immunity’.

The herd immunity theory was originally coined in 1933 by a researcher called Hedrich. He had been studying measles patterns in the US between 1900-1931 (years before any vaccine was ever invented for measles) and he observed that epidemics of the illness only occurred when less than 68% of children had developed a natural immunity to it. This was based upon the principle that children build their own immunity after suffering with or being exposed to the disease. So the herd immunity theory was, in fact, about natural disease processes and nothing to do with vaccination. If 68% of the population were allowed to build their own natural defences, there would be no raging epidemic.
Later on, vaccinologists adopted the phrase and increased the figure from 68% to 95% and then stated that there had to be 95% vaccine coverage to achieve immunity. Essentially, they took Hedrich’s study and manipulated it to promote their vaccination programmes.

Applying this theory to vaccination is unethical. It assumes that all children are the same and should be treated the same way, yet all of us have a different physiological make-up. Some people can take paracetamol and others are allergic to it. Doctors usually exercise caution in distributing drugs, but for some reason, the same caution is never applied to vaccination.
Using the herd immunity theory to promote vaccination is also a form of emotional blackmail, fostering the belief that parents are responsible for everyone else’s children as well as their own child. This isn’t the case.
If you give your child MMR and then he becomes disabled, it is only you and your family who have to deal with the consequences, not the pregnant woman whom you were trying to protect from congenital rubella syndrome.

According to page 18, bullet point 4 of the consultation paper, Nuffield Bio Ethics suggests that vaccination is responsible for the eradication of whooping cough and other diseases. This isn’t the case.
The Journal of Infectious Diseases, vol. 179, April 1999; 915-923 is entitled ‘Temporal trends in the population structure of bordetella pertussis during 1949-1996 in a highly vaccinated population.’ This paper goes onto say: ‘"Despite the introduction of large-scale pertussis vaccination in 1953 and high vaccination coverage, pertussis is still an endemic disease in The Netherlands, with epidemic outbreaks occurring every 3-5 years." One factor that might contribute to this is the ability of pertussis strains to adapt to vaccine-induced immunity, causing new strains of pertussis to re-emerge in this well-vaccinated population.

During the 1970’s DPT and brain damage publicity, many parents elected not to vaccinate their children, and according to Archives of Disease in Childhood, vol. 59, no. 2, February 1984, pp. 162-5): in a piece entitled ‘Severity of whooping cough in England before and after the decline in pertussis immunisation’, "Since the decline of pertussis immunisation, hospital admission and death rates from whooping cough have fallen unexpectedly… The severity of attacks and the complication rates in children [who were] admitted to hospital were virtually unchanged. – i.e. hospital admissions and death rates reduced when people WEREN’T getting vaccinated and those who did suffer it, didn’t get it any more severely than when there was full vaccination coverage.
These are both reputable medical journals written by doctors and there are hundreds of other papers just like these, showing that diseases are still around.

Perhaps the most famous case of whooping cough in the vaccinated that occurred in recent years, was that of baby Mia, daughter of the actress Kate Winslet, who starred in Titanic. According to peoplenews.com ‘Kate Winslet had to race her baby to hospital after she was diagnosed with potentially fatal whooping cough. The 25-year-old was advised to take five-month-old Mia in for treatment and observation.. Friends of the Titanic actress said she had been 'distraught' with worry when she discovered that what she thought was a cold could be far more serious. Mia caught whooping cough despite being immunised against it at the age of two months. A friend of the couple said: 'Kate and Jim made sure she had the injections but Mia still appeared to pick it up.’
Therefore to say that whooping cough has been eradicated by vaccination is untrue.

Myself and the thousands of British Parents who have been part of VAN UK since it’s inception, find the idea of mandatory vaccination abhorrent and unethical. A person’s own body is owned by himself and he has the right to control what happens to his body.
If a man were to force a woman to have sex, he would be charged with rape. If a doctor forces a person to commit to vaccination without their will, then this is medical rape. No one has the right to do to another’s body, what they do not want, regardless of their intention.
There are always going to be vaccination side-effects. Even minor ones like fever are of importance. With this being the case, vaccines should never be mandated. There are also many babies who CAN’T be vaccinated because they are allergic to them or people such as vegetarians who can’t take vaccines because they all contain animal products. There are people who are against abortion and the use of fetal tissue in vaccines. To ignore a person’s philosophical and cultural convictions is disrespectful to the individuality of human nature and is blanketing all human beings as the same.
Drug companies make billions of pounds from vaccination and GP’s receive handsome financial incentives to vaccinate at least 90% of their patients. The regulatory bodies which monitor the safety of vaccination are often run by people with shares in the companies that make the vaccines so they have a vested interest to prove vaccine safety. Drug companies also sponsor medical schools and would withdraw funding if their product was not promoted.
For instance, in the GP magazine, Pulse, 20th November 1999, there is an article entitled: ‘Earn Top Rates For The Meningitis C Programme’. It goes onto say:
The new meningitis C programme will start on November 29. This will bring a very worthwhile clinical gain as well as a reasonable windfall for GPs. How can you fit it in for minimum hassle?
Each GP stands to gain around £1,332 in the first year of the programme and £453 in subsequent years.
Luckily, the priority group is babies under four months and those attending for their first MMR at 13 months.
This is essentially a captive audience so no extra recall system is needed initially
Dr Couch also adds, further in the article: "Every vaccination will be recorded so that we can easily find the non-attenders and chase them."
This does make me wonder at the reasoning behind mandating vaccination and I do think it is morally objectable to force a procedure which is so steeped in financial gain for all those involved in it’s production.
Finally, I would like to say that if vaccination was really the wonder cure with no side-effects that it is made out to be, there would be no need to mandate it, because parents would be cueing up to have the life-saving drug. The fact that mandating it is even a discussion leads the public to believe that there is something inherently wrong with vaccination.
Disrespecting of parental concerns and choices also leads to distrust. Without respect and rational discussion of the issues, people are gradually stopping believing in professional’s abilities to be objective. Every time a bad study comes out on MMR, doctors rush to it’s defence. They did everything in their power to discredit Andrew Wakefield’s work and those who found similar findings.
This only damaged the department of health’s credibility in the eyes of a large percentage of the general public because of their refusal to look at opposing data.
I thank you for giving me the chance to speak. It was an honour to be here.

Nuffield Bio Ethics wish to state that they are not trying to mandate vaccinations and they do not have a bias one way or the other, they are simply interested in discussing public and professional views surrounding the issue of vaccinations in order to gain insight into people's opinions of this subject.

Links To Other Vaccine Choice Groups

NJVaccinationChoice.org - NJ Coalition for Vaccination Choice (NJ CVC) - Working to pass a NJ law for Conscientious Exemption from Mandatory Vaccinations.