ANOTHER FLU SEASON REVS UP - October, 2000
By Edda West
Never in the history of flu season has there been a larger, more aggressive campaign to promote the flu vaccine than this year. Health workers in all hospitals, clinics, and long term care facilities in Ontario and British Columbia are being threatened with suspension from work without pay if they refuse the flu vaccine and if an outbreak occurs. In B.C. an outbreak is defined as two cases of flu. The Ontario government has approved $38 million dollars to purchase flu vaccine, so that everyone in that province can be vaccinated – even children. VRAN is receiving letters of concern from parents about flu shots being promoted in schools.
“My 16 year old son came home from school yesterday all upset because he was told he had to get a flu shot because the flu was really bad this year and he would surely get very sick. He brought home a consent form, not for me to sign, but for him to sign. The form states that he has received and understood the information given to him and is sufficiently informed to consent to immunization. I asked him where this information was, and he said they didn't give him anything yet - just the consent form
What is going on Edda? Why does a healthy 16 year old need a flu shot? Why does anyone for that matter? The scare tactics are unbelievable and peer pressure is so great on our children. No one seems to be speaking out against this. I would like to but I need information to support the risks of flu shots, the compromise they make to our immune systems, and the unnecessary expense to our health care system.
Today, I received in the mail, a four-page glossy booklet from the Ontario government on why everyone needs a flu shot. And I am told that in Thunder Bay alone, their is a campaign on to immunize 100,000 people from age 6 months and up with the flu shot. The population of Thunder Bay is 110,000 - that's quite a campaign - a frightening one at that. Do you have anything you can send me? I appreciate all of your efforts on our behalf and again thank you for responding to my previous e-mail so quickly.”
Warm regards,
Lesley McClure
Long time VRAN member Julie Shams writes from Mississauga, and forwards a letter from her friend in Renfrew County, Ontario. “ The Renfrew County and District Health Unit sent home a request for influenza immunization for parents of elementary school children in the town of Deep River, Ontario. It is only for people who want the vaccine. A fact sheet was sent home, explaining what strains of flu are contained in the vaccine (A/Moscow, A/New Caledonia, B/Beijing). It also states in the very first paragraph that the virus can cause serious illness and death. Of course it does not inform parents of any possible long-term side effects and only briefly discusses mild, moderate, and severe reactions that could occur.”
Says Julie, “Although a form was not sent home from my daughters school, I have over-heard many parents telling one another that they have already had their children immunized. I have read in the newspaper that several high schools will be set up with temporary flu clinics to serve people from the hours of 4pm - 8pm. (this is within the city of Mississauga). What a ridiculous money-making madness!!!!!!”
The Canadian Paediatric Society is a ‘partner’ in the Canadian Coalition for Influenza Immunization, and is committed to promoting flu vaccination as the best way for preventing influenza. “Get The Vaccine Not The Flu: Gearing Up for Influenza Vaccine Campaign 2000” is the title of a lead article in its September 2000 issue of Paediatrics & Child Health. Other partners in the CCII are pharmaceutical manufacturers of flu vaccines as well as numerous medical societies whose information is displayed on the internet at: www.influenza.cpha.ca. This site also allows access to the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture flu vaccines where detailed information on the vaccines is available.
The Canadian Paediatric Society forwards the guideline of the National Advisory Committee on Immunizations that “healthy adults and their children who wish to protect themselves from influenza should be encouraged to receive the vaccine”, but there is also an admission that it is difficult to estimate the impact of influenza infection on young children because “infections from respiratory syncytial virus and other respiratory viruses tend to occur at the same time as influenza”.
“The influenza virus undergoes genetic changes constantly and, as a result, vaccine has to be given to patients every year. Annual influenza injections that are given to children in addition to routine immunizations may be unacceptable to many parents” – but hark, new and better vaccines are coming that may avoid injections – live attenuated vaccines given as nasal sprays are in the works. Is the current massive campaign to vaccinate everyone and their children with flu vaccine a sort of a priming – getting everybody used to the idea that this is now going to be a yearly routine? And what about the viruses that keep mutating – isn’t that worrysome? We’ve already learned that increasing pressure on the microbial world is breeding deadlier varieties of pathogens. Could this kind of yearly mass vaccination campaign accelerate the emergence of ever more virulent organisms? And just exactly what are the profit factors for the corporations here – if every year they can count on most people getting needled?
It was interesting to spend some time in Health Canada’s webpage on influenza and get a perspective on the actual numbers of flu cases that occur. The majority of upper respiratory illnesses that go around during ‘flu season’ are NOT actually the flu at all. In a tally of laboratory confirmed reported cases during the 1998-99 flu season, of nearly 41,000 cases of respiratory illness, only 11% of cases were confirmed to be caused by influenza viruses. We’re talking about the whole country here!!
Quoted from Health Canada - “The 1998-1999 influenza season was characterized by peaks in activity between early to mid-January and early March. From 28 August 1998 to 19 March 1999, the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control (LCDC) received reports on 40,489 laboratory tests for respiratory viruses: 4,449 (11%) were positive for influenza virus; 3,912 (88%) were influenza type A and 537 (12%) were influenza type B.”
And reported so far this year by Health Canada: Since September to mid October, 2000, “the Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention & Control has received 4,035 reports of laboratory tests for influenza viruses of which 2 were positive; one each confirmed as influenza A and influenza B. For updates on influenza in Canada, please refer to the “Fluwatch” website, a service of Health Canada.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/fluwatch/index.html English
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/fluwatch/index_f.html French
Considering the relatively low percentage of respiratory illnesses that are caused by flu virus, the feverish pitch and reckless commitment of scarce health care dollars to this mass vaccination campaign is highly disturbing. What is even more disturbing is the air of obsessive intent with which health officials are forcing the flu vaccine on all health workers in Ontario and British Columbia, the threat of loss of work and wages being the stick with which they beat workers into submission.
People are running scared – caught between a rock and a hard place - scared of losing wages and possibly jobs if they don’t submit to the strong arm of tyranny. And what about human rights, and medical ethics violations? For any government to mandate a vaccination policy that carries the threat of loss of employment as a means to force compliance amongst any group of people is blackmail and a violation of Canadian Medical Law. The legal principles that have arisen from Supreme Court decisions in case law grant that “Every individual has the right to information on material risks and the fundamental right of persons to be free from unwanted physical interference. Medical care is wrongful and a “battery” (as in assault and battery), unless the patient has given consent to it." Furthermore, the person must understand the risks and be willing to submit to a medical treatment for there to be express consent. (1)
This comprises the foundation ethic of informed consent laws that are intended to protect the individual from force, coercion, intimidation and involuntary compliance with medical treatments and drugs. Mandatory vaccine policies of any kind, are in violation of basic human rights and the individual’s right to protect themselves from any physical interference. Forcing health workers to submit to flu vaccination also violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by denying the individual his/her right to “security of the person”.
It is unfortunate that many health care workers have little understanding of their rights under these legal and ethical principals. This creates a dynamic of powerlessness amongst workers, a key factor that enables government policy makers to launch these abhorrent policies in flagrant violation of informed consent laws and constitutional guarantees.
The unions have also been complicit in the erosion of workers’ rights. They have failed to uphold the most basic principals protecting the individual’s right to autonomy and inviolability of the person, and have failed to protect their members from mandates that carry known health risks, and the potential for injury, both in the short term and long term. In British Columbia the Hospital Employees Union has a collective agreement with management that allows an employee’s job to be terminated for refusal to accept required X-rays or vaccines. Nor have the unions addressed concerns about the health injuries workers may suffer from the vaccines, and how they would be compensated when injuries occur.
It appears that the definitive study they are basing these draconian measures on isn't even a study. It's a survey - entitled "Influenza Vaccination of Health Care Workers in Long-Term-Care Hospitals Reduces the Mortality of Elderly Patients" - the lead author being J. Potter - it's out of the University of Glasgow, department of geriatric medicine. It was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases 1997;175: 1-6. It looked at 12 geriatric hospitals. Of 1078 health care workers, 653 were vaccinated. They concluded that there was an associated reduction in total patient mortality from 17% to 10% from “influenza-like illnesses” - a 7% reduction (but not even specifically to the flu, but flu-like illness means the whole gamut of respiratory infections). They also concluded that the vaccination of “elderly patients was not associated with significant effects on mortality." They also point out – “However, there have been no controlled studies to show whether this approach is effective.”
The cornerstone of medical freedom in so far as it protects individuals from unwanted, or risky medical procedures and drugs is the ethic known as voluntary informed consent. This ethic was developed following the Nuremberg trials after the second world war where the doctors and scientists who performed hideous experiments on their human captives were brought to trial and found guilty of violating the most basic human right – the right of the individual to reject medical procedures, or drugs or experiments and the right to self determination and inviolability of his/her person. What was laid to rest at Nuremberg was the presumption of scientific superiority over the right of the individual. In other words, no doctor, scientist, health department or government has the right to force anyone to accept a medical procedure or drug against their will and that the individual’s right to voluntary informed consent when considering any medical procedure is the baseline ethic that is operative in all so called free and democratic societies
For the Ontario and BC government to violate the right of any individual to determine what drug or treatment he/she must accept, or face severe penalties such as loss of wages or employment, is a flashback to nazi Germany where the interests of the pharmaceutical companies, their profiteering and collusion with government policy makers threatens the most inviolable right of every citizen in a free society - the right to self determination, without interference, threat, coercion, or "battery" .
There is an urgency to challenge the medical tyranny that intends to impose it’s will on a large segment of society in the name of “the greater good". In the face of an accelerating erosion of health freedoms and the individual’s right to self determination, we cannot afford to complacently accept government mandated mass medication policies. The utilitarian principal, on which these forced vaccine mandates are based say "for the greater good, everyone must take this vaccine or that drug".
What was argued and put to rest at the Nuremberg trials, and was determined once and for all, is that the right of the individual to self determination is inviolable, and trumps the interests of science and medicine, even if it means that the advancement of science will be delayed. The basis of a free, democratic society begins with the protection of the individual's right to self determination. This vaccine policy undermines and dismantles these principles, and cannot remain unchallenged if we are to salvage what is left of our democratic freedoms - our health freedoms.
Concerns about Vaccine Safety (excerpted from a Brief written by Catherine Diodati and presented to Members of Parliament in Ontario– please view full text of the Brief on VRAN’s new website at: www.vran.org in the Breaking News Section – Plight of Health Workers)
“The influenza vaccine, like most other vaccines, has not been tested for its effect on reproduction. Are there factors affecting fertility; are there teratogenic effects? Some studies (and vaccine package inserts) indicate that the vaccine increases HIV viral replication, indicating that the vaccine has a significant suppressive effect on the immune system. The vaccine has also caused a significant number of side effects and adverse reactions. At least 30% of recipients can expect some sort of reaction. These reactions range from mild, e.g. fever, malaise, tenderness at the injection site, and influenza-like symptoms, to more serious events such as Guillain Barré Syndrome, Transverse Myelitis, facial paralysis, encephalitis, encephalopathy, demyelinating diseases, fatalities, and et cetera. These significant health risks have not been disclosed to the health care workers prior to vaccination. It must be noted, however, that their consent forms included a release of responsibility should adverse events occur. Enforced vaccination, lack of disclosure and this general abandonment of culpability is, to be sure, a severe violation of the Constitution and the Health Care Consent Act (Ontario)”
References
- “Canadian Medical Law – Introduction for Physicians, Nurses and other Health Care Professionals”, by Barney Sneiderman, Professor John O Irvine, Philip H. Osborne – Second Edition, 1995, Carswell Thompson Professional Publishing.
- Catherine Diodati – Brief Submitted to Ontario Members of Parliament – October, 2000
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