Incredibly, despite a 1999 FDA conclusion that children who received the recommended number of vaccinations were being exposed to unsafe levels of mercury, the core medical establishment elevated its collective denial to nearly psychotic heights. While some doctors preferred to blame the environment or offer other, equally untenable, theories for the tragic rise in autism, others simply wrote off the oversight as a clinical error without ever turning it back to the pharmaceutical companies who had manufactured the vaccines for public use. Dr. Neal Halsey, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases from 1995 to 1999 (the period in which the mercury levels reached their peak) was quoted in the same Times Magazine article:

It was not until the 1999 FDA recommendation that vaccine manufacturers “voluntarily” drop Thimerosal from their formulas that anti-vaccine coalitions gained some political traction and public support for their claims against the major pharmaceutical companies. But, for hundreds of thousands of behaviorally impaired children, this realization may have come too late. In what could well be one of the most potentially tragic stories of the last half century, the medical establishment has acted about as expediently as the Catholic Church in dealing with pedophiliac abuse by its priesthood. In fact, many doctors continued to administer Thimerosal-laced vaccinations right up until the last dosages left the manufacturer plants. A practice that seems, at the least, professionally negligent when you consider the volume of anecdotal evidence and public outcry that was being leveled at the practice of giving children mercury-inclusive vaccinations.

And so it is under this climate of intense scrutiny and potentially devastating class action litigation that the Senate passed the Homeland Security bill, with its future and retroactive liability protection for the vaccine-manufacturing pharmaceutical sector. Just at a time when mainstream news publications have finally begun to publicly air and corroborate long-standing accusations of a major cover-up by pharmaceutical companies of their guilt in producing mercury-poisoned vaccines to a generation of child immunization patients, many of whom have developed autism and other forms of neural damage as a result. And it may not end there. In a radio interview broadcast after the Senate vote, Dr. Len Horowitz, one of the leading voices for increased public scrutiny of the pharmaceutical sector, warned:

Putting this all into perspective, Big Tobacco could have learned a lot from the pharmaceutical giants.

One of the chief beneficiaries of the Homeland Security provisions is Eli Lilly, a former Thimerosal producer who has become the poster child for mercury poisoning class action law suits. When executives of Eli Lilly were interviewed about the last minute provision for a November 16 article in the St. Petersburg Times, they said they were “pleased with the amendment but [had] no idea how it wound up being attached to the homeland security bill.” And, while the paper did allude to the fact that Lilly had contributed $1.6 million to congressional candidates before the November 5 election, the most of any pharmaceutical corporation, it did not report that Sydney Taurel the firm’s Chairman, President and CEO was

Nor did it recount the particularly troublesome fact that, in 1977, George Bush Sr. was made a director of Eli Lilly, a position that was offered to him by former Vice President Dan Quayle’s father, who then owned a controlling interest in the company. The legacy of the Bush family’s ties to U.S. pharmaceutical interests and, specifically, Eli Lilly, is an exhaustive subject of research itself. Suffice it to say, there is ample evidence for us to understand the current Bush Administration’s desire to provide sanctuary for the company from its ever increasing number of alleged victims. What is, perhaps, more alarming than this blatant level of political cronyism is the little known MEHPA legislation and the direct implications it holds for citizens and doctors who refuse to trust the vaccines forced upon them by this government and its allegedly, criminally, negligent pharmaceutical backers.

To backtrack, the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act was first drafted in December, 2001. Four days before Christmas, actually, so we can safely assume that it was not something that was encountered with the most reassuring degree of public scrutiny. But, as with much of the post-9/11 legislation, the Act came into being and was swiftly endorsed by one of the Bush Adminstration's seemingly endless entourage of white knights. In this case, Dept. of Health and Human Services Secretary, Tommy Thompson. In describing the new legislation, even the typically bland USA Today Health and Science reporter Mimi Hall could not veil its ominous potential:

In other words, the worst-case-scenario interpretation of the legislation is that U.S. citizens living in MEHPA adopting states will:

Furthermore,

Now, as far as the powers granted to the State Governor under the provisions of the Act, they are what you would expect. The Governor is granted unrestricted power to declare an emergency at his own discretion. The legislature can not interfere for at least 60 days and, even after that deadline, a two-thirds vote of both chambers would be needed to block the dictatorial powers.

Since the latest reports regarding the number of states that had passed the law were from last summer, we cannot confirm their accuracy. But, as of late July, USA Today reported that "16 states and the District of Columbia have passed all or parts of the model law. It has been rejected or stalled in 22 states." One of the first states to pass it was Secretary Thompson's own Wisconsin (he was formerly the Governor). And, as Barbara Flynn, founder of CHERUBS reported, the criminalization of vaccine-resistors is hardly symbolic:

In describing the way that Federal agencies are using monetary incentives to fuel pro-MEHPA legislation, Flynn cited this case from her home state of New Jersey:

So, as you can see, there was a very strong movement coming from the Administration's core clinical assets for the passage of this Act. And, as history proves, this is not the first time that the American citizenry has faced this kind of authoritarian directive from the medical establishment. Here is a quote from Jamie Murphy's seminal book on vaccines, What Every Parent Should Know about Childhood Immunization:

Incredibly, the Supreme Court was basing its decision on the widely held, public conception of vaccines instead of any empirical, scientific evidence. Which can be a dangerous thing. Especially, as we have seen, when it comes to vaccination. The new Homeland Security bill has now, once again, pushed the debate over vaccines and their potentially harmful effects outside of the public realm. Reacting to the news of the Senate vote, National Vaccine Information Center president Barbara Loe Fisher summed it up thusly:

In his remarks following the Senate vote, President Bush called the new Homeland Security legislation “the most extensive reorganization of the federal government since the 1940s.” And while there is no doubt about the fact that he is at the helm of a verifiable dismantling of the American socio-political super-structure – a process upon which the citizenry seems to have very little impact - we must not lose sight of the one physical realm that we should, at all costs, remain autonomous over.

Our bodies.

If this Administration is allowed to progress, unchallenged, with this new assault on the human right to consensual medical treatment, we will have fallen to the status of guinea pigs... defenseless before the poking and prodding by State practitioners with all manner of biological technologies. If ever there was an issue that should congeal the masses around the protestation of this ever-advancing incursion on our civil liberties, it should form as the last barrier to that final border.

Our skin.

And perhaps we should begin by demanding answers to the most basic of questions. Namely, if the vaccines are so effective, then why are those who opt out of them considered such a risk to the immunized populace? Especially to the extent that they are going to be criminalized and fined? And, furthermore, if such drastic measures are being contemplated in respect to the collective health and welfare of the U.S. population, why can't more scrutiny and funding be allocated for an investigation into the rise in autism among child immunization clients, as well as an entire generation's sudden affliction of "attention deficit disorders"?

Otherwise, we may just wake a little too late from our collective political somnambulism... but just in time to hear the benevolent nurse whisper,

Stephen Marshall is co-founder and Creative/Strategic director of GNN.

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