Deidra Imus - A Forum on Vaccines - View the Webcast

View the Webcast by scrolling down to "Replay Webcast"

This webcast took place on October 23, 2008. It was the first time that two representatives from the American Academy of Pediatrics appeared to debate concerns regarding our current vaccination program.

My overview: The AAP representatives came to the table showing very little sign that they understand the basis for the concern shared by so many parents and at very minimum they certainly had no real answers addressing the concerns that were so very well defined by author David Kirby, Dr.Lawrence Rosen and Environmental Activist Deidra Imus.

I was particularly disappointed with the Dr. Margaret Fisher, chair, Section of Infectious Diseases, American Academy of Pediatrics, and medical director, The Children’s Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center. It seemed that she truly believed that we didn't understand that all vaccines go through a standard protocol of research and trial before licensing and that we don't understand the need for public health policy concerning infectious disease.

I look forward to a day when most pediatric physicians do understand that we want true studies in causation, not just for autism and increased chronic disease, but also for the widely accepted injuries that vaccines can cause some children, like encephalitis and seizures. Also, to a day when physicians understand the concerns we have regarding the ingredients in vaccines and the lack of safety studies around those ingredients. Even if physicians don't agree with us it would be nice to see them come to the table understanding what the actual concerns are and able to have a discussion based on those specific concerns.

Dr. Fisher is obviously a physician who is very passionate about her desire to protect children from dangerous and occasionally deadly disease. It would be nice if she, and the medical community, were as passionate about learning how to identify children who might be susceptible to injury for the sake of protecting them from that injury and vaccinating them in an individually appropriate way.

I wish that we could understand what mechanism's caused Amelia's injury and that we knew how to test Joseph for the same. If I had that answer, I could probably vaccinate Joseph in some modified way to protect him from harm and protect him from infectious disease at the same time...but unfortunately that is not possible right now. I've certainly read too many stories exactly like ours for there to be any convincing me that vaccines do not play a role in the increase rate of autism and chronic immune related disease that we see in today's children.

"Vaccines : It's Your Child, Your Choice"

From Age of Autism - June 1, 2008

This is an excellent article about vaccine choice.

CNN - Should I Vaccinate My Baby

Update: After watching this CNN segment, you may want to visit my newer post "Should I Vaccinate My Baby - Vaccine Safety - Why the Controversy?" This new post includes a list of articles and research references, including a link to the CNN segment below. To see the updated post go here.

Yesterday, CNN ran two Segments called "Should I Vaccinate My Baby" and "The Empowered Parent."

Great job CNN! They got a couple points wrong about Hannah Polling but great job none the less. Hannah Neurologist father says the vaccines caused/triggered her mitochondrial disorder which led to her autism and the genetics support this.

Watch - Should I Vaccinate My Baby.

Read - For more information, from CNN, about how to work with your Pediatrician to take precaution's.

As CNN recommends in their report, you may follow Dr. Robert Sears modified vaccine schedule to keep your child up to date yet "be on the safe side". His book is called The Vaccine Book.

Keep in mind that even Dr. Sears recommendations can not grantee that your baby will not suffer a vaccine reaction.

A - Reactions to individual vaccines, for a small subset of kids, are well know and documented. Thus the government compensation program called the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System.

B - Because the government followed the recommendation of the 2004 IOM Vaccine Safety Report, no research has been conducted to look for a link between autism and vaccines. Therefore, if there is a link we do not know what it is about the vaccines that might be causing it. As the former head of the NIH, Dr. Bernadine Healy has said, "The question simply has not been answer." (Watch her interview)So until the question has been answered the recommendations of Dr.s like Robert Sears are the best we can do to, hopeful, diminish any possible risk of adverse reaction.

The American Academy of Pediatrics in an Awkward Position after CDC Takes Thimerosal Safety Studies Off the Table

This afternoon I sent the following letter to the AAP and Dr. Bradley Dyer, in light of the newly released position by the AAP regarding parents who have vaccination concerns and the report submitted to Congress by Julie Gerberding, Director of the CDC reporting that the VSD data, by which the CDC based their studies claiming Thimerosal in childhood vaccines does not cause Autism, was "Uninformative and Potentially Misleading."

I really think the American Academy of Pediatrics might want to reconsider the gross disrespect they've shown parents interested in making the best decision for their child.

David Kirby, of the huffington POst, on the Julie Gerberding report
Barbars Lowe Fisher, of the National Vaccine Safety Center on the AAP Guidelines



To: Renee R. Jenkins., AAP President

Considering that the CDC, in an official report to Congress, has just taken every study they had to offer regarding the safety of thimerosal in vaccines off the table I am wondering if you shouldn’t reconsidered the vaccine policy written by Dr. Bradley Dyer and recommended to all other pediatricians in your May ’08 newsletter.

The CDC says vaccination saves 33,000 lives per year, that’s 1 in 10,000. Autism is currently at a rate of 1 in 150 and Julie Gerberding says in her report to Congress "CDC concurs," Dr. Gerberding wrote again, "that conducting an ecologic analysis using VSD administrative data to address potential associations between thimerosal exposure and risk of ASD is not useful."

Read that sentence one more time. The head of the CDC is saying that its most powerful and convincing piece of exonerating evidence for thimerosal is, in effect, "useless.". This is in reference to the Verstraeten study. Full text of David Kirby’s article here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/cdc-vaccine-study-design_b_108398.html

1 in 150 only accounts for autism and does not include the shocking increase in autoimmune diseases we have seen over the past 2 decades. In absence of sound scientific safety studies, we have no idea what the true risk/benefit of the current vaccine program is. A sound vaccination program is critical to public health. The problem is that the CDC is not offering us a sound, scientifically validated program. We may well have traded rare devastating outcomes in acute illness for common chronic disease and neurological disorders.

Parents who are concerned about vaccination are neither selfish nor emotional. They are well informed and have logical and reasonable concerns; and they know they may be playing Russian Roulette with their child’s health with either decision, to vaccinate or not.

You should be ashamed of yourself for ridiculing parents for doing the thing that is most instinctual…protecting their own. As a parent, it is my responsibility to put my child first. And your responsibility to “do no harm”

With due disrespect,


Pamela Felice

The Center Will Not Hold As Parents & Doctors Question Vaccine Policy, by Barbara Lowe Fisher

The Center Will Not Hold As Parents & Docs Question Vaccine Policy

by Barbara Loe Fisher

It was only a matter of time. For 26 years parents of vaccine injured children and a few brave doctors have challenged the one-size-fits-all approach to mandated use of multiple vaccines in the absence of sound scientific evidence that policy is safe for all children. Now, when 1 in 6 child in America is learning disabled and 1 in 150 develops autism, more rank and file pediatricians are speaking out about the need to provide pediatric care for unvaccinated children and respect parental choices to use fewer vaccines.

Last week in a CBS-TV interview, HPV vaccine researcher Dr. Diane Harper supported more scientific research as well as the ethical principle of informed consent to vaccination when asked whether HPV vaccine should be mandated. She said "We don't know yet what's going to happen when millions of doses of the vaccine have been given and to put in process a place that says you must have this vaccine, it means you must be part of a big public experiment....... There isn't enough information to have a mandate that you can't go to school until you have this vaccine. It does not make any sense."

This week in another CBS-TV interview, former NIH Director Bernadine Healy, M.D., stood up and spoke out about the need to scientifically investigate the causal association between vaccines and autism, especially the potential for certain individuals to be genetically susceptible to being harmed by vaccines. She said "I think that the public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational.... there may be this susceptible group. The fact that there is concern, that you don't want to know that susceptible group is a real disappointment to me. If you know that susceptible group, you can save those children. If you turn your back on the notion that there is a susceptible group.....what can I say?"

At the same time that enlightened pediatricians, researchers, and former health officials are calling for a re-examination of scientifically questionable vaccine policies that have failed to identify and screen out high risk children and respect parental rights to make informed, voluntary vaccine choices, some British health authorities and politicians are calling for MMR vaccine mandates for British children. The leading proponent for mandates in Britain said "The MMR vaccination rate is at 85% and the target figure is 95%, so it's about catching children who may have moved or lost contact with their health visitor but also saying to parents your child has a right to live free from vaccine preventable diseases." The head of Britain's Medical Association called the proposal "morally and ethically dubious" and added "A Stalinist approach like this would be likely to backfire on an unprecedented scale and increase opposition to vaccinations."

After 26 years, U.S. health officials are also wrestling with how to prove to parents and doctors that current vaccine policies have adequately addressed evidence that more and more children are regressing after vaccination and suffering brain and immune dysfunction. A transcript of the April 11, 2008 National Vaccine Advisory Committee workshop at which parents and doctors expressed their concerns about vaccine safety is now available at http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/nvac/transcript_apr08.ht ml

In the meantime, 19 parent organizations are endorsing a call for Presidential candidates to pledge to issue two executive orders within 100 days of taking office which would (1) remove mercury from all vaccines by Jan 1. 2010 and (2) require a moratorium on the addition of new vaccines to the recommended list for children until the current vaccine schedule can be proven safe. Supporting organizations include A- CHAMP, Autism One, Autism Research Institute, Autism United, Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology, Environment of Harm Yahoo Group, Generation Rescue, HEAL Foundation, Moms Against Mercury, National Autism Association, National Vaccine Information Center, No Mercury, Safeminds, Schafer Autism Report, Spectrum Magazine, TACA -- Talk About Curing Autism, Treating Autism (UK), Unlocking Autism, and World Mercury Project.

On Wednesday, June 4, 2008 a "Green Our Vaccines" rally will be held in Washington, D.C. questioning the safety of vaccine components and the government's current vaccine schedule.

Also by Dr. Bernadine Healy, Fighting the Autism Vaccine War

Dr. Bernadine Healy is the former head of the National Institutes of Health, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the current Health Editor for U.S. News and World Report. Read Fighting the Autism Vaccine War here.

Former Head of the NIH Explains Why the Government is Acitvely Avoiding Research that Might Prove a Link Between Vaccines and Autism

Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of the National Institutes of Health and a member of the Institute of Medicine breaks with her colleagues in this exclusive CBS News interview: Dr. Healy says the government has been too quick to dismiss the possibility of a vaccine-autism link, and that it should be explored with renewed vigor.

Here is the CBS video of the interview.

The NIH is an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC reports to the NIIH. Dr. Healy gives some interesting insight as to why the government has actively avoided research that might prove a link between vaccines and autism

Here is an excellent article written by David Kirby, author of Evidence of Harm.