AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL US LAWMAKERS REGARDING THE US VACCINE PROGRAM

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Age of Autism visitors can read an Op Ed submission that the NYT would not publish.  Mind you, the NYT already knows most of this information, as they published the AP investigation into the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and titled it, “Court Heaps Grief on Vaccine Victims, Makes Them Wait Years.“

From: Pam Long
Date: Sunday, June 30, 2019 at 5:48 PM
To: <opinion@nytimes.com>
Subject: Op Ed submission from CPT Pam Long, US Army

New York Times editor,

I respectfully ask you to consider publishing this Op-Ed.

You can let freedom of speech ring this Fourth of July.

Thank you, Pam Long

The New York Times asserts that “Vaccine Injury Claims Are Few and Far Between” (Belluck and Abelson, June 18, 2019). Two health writers have provided the public an over simplistic data approach on the very disconcerting and concealed Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and summarize a cost-benefit analysis with two deceiving measures.

First, given billions of doses of administered vaccines, resulting in only a few hundred reported vaccine injuries, government agencies assess the current vaccine program as a health success. Second, the incalculable dollars in diseases, hospitalizations, and deaths that were not incurred, are assumed to be a cost savings to the $4.15 billion paid in rare compensation to vaccine injuries, therefore the vaccine program is a financial success. Despite this affirmative narrative, there is currently a heavy handed trifecta of vaccine manufacturers, sponsored media, and incented health agencies lobbying to remove parental vaccine exemptions in every state, therefore I urge you to reevaluate the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program as a matter of national security with an unprecedented level of transparency. It is imperative to challenge the marketing mantra that vaccines, with now 72 doses recommended for children, an untested schedule for cumulative effect during brain development of infants, and without any civil liability for harm are “always safe and effective” and injuries are one-in-a-million-doses. There is evidence to the contrary.

Start with the 1980s aftermath of the whole cell version of the DTP vaccine causing brain damage and seizures in children, which resulted in the National Child Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA 1986) granting vaccine manufacturers civil immunity from lawsuits. Children were harmed by a product, and lawmakers incredulously removed any future incentive for manufacturers to produce safe vaccine products. Once the VICP was established, parents became subjected to a combative quasi-legal process at a federal court that can span for a decade or more with lawyers on retainer at $430 an hour, where Department of Justice lawyers defend their government brothers and sisters at CDC, and where vaccine manufacturers are not required to provide any discovery about their products. Under the new era of liability-free vaccines, manufacturers created the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the world. The CDC vaccine program tripled the recommended doses for children, under the Advisory Council of Immunization Practices (ACIP) board that allows vaccine industry employees to vote to accept recommendations for their company’s product for all US children. The VICP is designed for maximum attrition and dismisses two-thirds of claims that enter the daunting system.

Is the US vaccine court under VICP an alternate universe where vaccines are “guilty until proven innocent?” If so, this rigorous scrutiny would bolster public confidence in vaccines at a time when the WHO contends that “vaccine hesitancy” is the greatest public health threat, even greater than malnutrition and lack of clean water. Transparency demands that these VICP records and proceedings should be open to the public, immediately. Are these claims of people with sick children looking for an easy, quick payout from the government? Seems unlikely. Or are these claims of healthy children who suffered an undeniable disability or death from a vaccine? Let consumers have access to this valuable information so that contra-indications can be identified and screening can be improved.

Beyond the data that shows that most cases are dismissed and the assertion that injuries are rare, the public should also know what eligible participants in the program report about the VICP. CBS Journalist Sharyl Attkisson reported in 2008 on parents’ perspectives on VICP,

“Unfortunately, vaccine court is little-known. It’s believed only a small fraction of the total number of claims ever makes its way to this court. In my reporting, I often ask families who believe their children were injured by vaccines whether they’ve filed a claim in vaccine court. None of them had ever heard of this court. Several said something like, ‘How would we ever have time to pursue such a thing? We’re spending all our time trying to care for our injured child.’”

By design, the court deters the average person to attempt a claim knowing that cases are dismissed collectively without ever being heard as an individual case. For example, over 5,000 cases of vaccine induced autism were dismissed in the 2010 omnibus proceeding, following Hannah Poling’s compensation in 2008 for vaccines causing her autism in 2000, after two years of collecting medical evidence, five years in court, and two years in negotiations on compensation. How can any parent “win” in this system?

Furthermore, vaccine litigation lawyer Robert Moxley describes a cruel process:

“I practiced in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Program for more than 25 years after its inception in 1988, and have been personally involved in over 100 vaccine-injury cases. I represented an entire fragile population in omnibus proceedings … I have seen the injured and their families cruelly oppressed.

The VICP creates a classic moral hazard, granting immunity from suit to the vaccine industry while providing insurance against any loss …The vaccine-industrial complex has become a thriving giant … Its lobbying money drives agency denial of the reality of vaccine injury, which in turn permeates policy decisions in a sinister fashion.”

How do scholars and data experts evaluate the VICP? A Stanford professor reports that VICP is a “failure” and the CDC data experts summarized a narrative that is completely incompatible with messaging that vaccine reactions are rare. In 2011, the CDC commissioned the Harvard Pilgrim Health grant to study adverse reactions and it calculated 2.6 adverse events for every 100 doses, with every child now receiving over 70 doses, and it estimated that only 1% of adverse events are reported.

Are vaccine manufacturers perpetually creating vaccine products that have demonstrated need or vaccine products that an industry can mandate and sell to an entire country?

Using Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (CDC MMWR 1989, Vol. 37, No.54), it is critical to objectively evaluate the justification of the additions to the US vaccine schedule starting in 1988 with the additions of Hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza type b. Hepatitis B was reported in 289 children under five years old in the US with 21.8 million children age zero to five. This is an extremely rare disease in children with infected birth mothers, often prostitutes, and a sexually transmitted disease with a total of 23,177 reported cases in the US in 1988. Recommending this vaccine for all US infants at birth was irresponsible as it will wane any potential benefits by adulthood. There is no justification based on prevalence or protection to recommend this vaccine to children. Likewise, Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) is so exceedingly rare that it was not even reported in the MMWR report of Summary of Notifiable Diseases 1988. Hib averaged 20 cases per 100,000 children under five between 1980 and 1990. Most children develop natural immunity to Hib by age five, and most adults never needed or received this vaccine. Again, prevalence data does not justify mandating this vaccine for every US child. The CDC forfeits credibility by misleading the public to value a 99% reduction of Hib to depict the raw data of a reduction of 20 cases per 100,000 to 1 case per 100,000. It is even more shocking to compare the low prevalence of Hib disease to the high reports of Hib vaccine injuries to VAERS as summarized by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC),

“Using the MedAlerts search engine, as of March 31, 2019, there have been more than 80,024 reports of Hib vaccine reactions, hospitalizations, injuries and deaths following Hib vaccinations made to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), including 2,682 related deaths, 16,228 hospitalizations, and 1,604 related disabilities. Over 88% of Hib vaccine-related adverse events occurred in children three years old and under. Of these Hib-vaccine related deaths reported to VAERS, nearly 94% of the deaths occurred in children under three years of age. Of these reported deaths, 2,035 occurred in infants under the age of 6 months.”

It is time to start questioning the leadership guiding US public health priorities for the past thirty years. In 1988, where were the media reports on 719,536 cases of Gonorrhea reported in the MMWR? Year after year, Gonorrhea (555,608 cases in 2017), Chlamydia (1,708,560 cases in 2017), and Syphilis (101,567 cases in 2017) continue to lead the US infectious disease reports by orders of magnitude over the vaccines created for children for very rare diseases, and some non-communicable diseases (tetanus). And yet the media and health officials engage in fatalistic reporting on a normal annual trend of measles. In 1977, the year my brother started Kindergarten, the US reported 57,345 cases of measles with 15 deaths. Measles is endemic, meaning all strains can never be eradicated, and it is only fatal in rare situations with immune compromised health. Many of the current measles cases are among people who were vaccinated with the MMR, demonstrating a percentage of vaccine failure. Public health officials have revealed with the 2019 measles fear-mongering that they have colluded with the media and pharmaceutical sponsors to sell vaccine products.

It is time for brave leadership to stand up and question the US vaccine program, and compare it to other countries with less vaccines and better health outcomes. There is substantial evidence that the overloaded schedule is contributing to an epidemic of chronic diseases in children. Do we believe that we have a pharmaceutical drug deficiency? A 72-dose vaccine schedule for children in the First World with clean water, sanitation, and good nutrition needs examination, compared to the dozen shots that most adults received. Should the government sound the alarm on educated parents who scrutinize the same industry that caused the opioid epidemic, and aggressively sold harmful products for profit for years? Parents would like to sound the alarm on 1 in 2.5 children with an allergy, 1 in 6 children with a developmental disability, 1 in 9 children with ADHD, 1 in 11 children with asthma, 1 in 13 children with severe food allergies, and 1 in 36 children with autism. How much does chronic disease in children cost the US each year? We can longer afford to protect an industry over the lives of the next generation of Americans.

Pam Long is a West Point graduate and former Army Captain, Medical Service Corps, and Medical Intelligence Officer.