Manufacturing consent for coercive vaccination policy

Health Select Committee Report: "Manufacturing consent for coercive vaccination policy"

On June 22, the government is due to respond to the report produced by the Health Select Committee following its Inquiry into how to increase vaccination rates.

The report was published on the parliamentary website on March 24, 2011, [1] and while it has received little media attention to date, it has caused substantial concern among members of the public due to the coercive recommendations it contains.

A new organisation No Forced Vaccines [2] has been established to oppose those recommendations in the report that impinge on parents' rights to make free and informed decisions about vaccination.

According to Katherine Smith, the organisation's spokeswoman:

"If the government were to adopt the recommendations in the Report, it would usher in a new era of medical coercion in New Zealand. There are many recommendations in this Report that are of serious concern specifically the one directing the Ministry of Health to consider linking children's vaccinations to 'existing parental benefits'. If this recommendation is adopted I shudder to think how it might be implemented. Could parents who choose not to vaccinate or to choose for their children to have some vaccines, but not others, potentially face loss of government financial support such as Family Support payments or even the family's major (or sole) source of income such as the government benefits upon which many people in Christchurch now depend, given the recent devastating earthquakes?"

Other recommendations in the Report, Smith say, encroach on the right of children to education, with a recommendation in the Report to require parents to supply information about their children's vaccination status in order to enroll them in an early childhood education centre or school. It appears from the Report, Mrs Smith maintains, that children who have received some vaccines, but not all those recommended for their age, might be unable to enroll in an ECE centre or school if this recommendation were accepted. She also warned that partially vaccinated children might lose eligibility for 20 Hours Free ECE funding.

Smith also states that the report contains substantial and serious "factual errors and omissions".

Among her criticisms of the report are its inclusion of tables purporting to list side effects following vaccination against a number of diseases, including polio, measles and pertussis (whooping cough) that omit most of the side effects that are even acknowledged by the manufacturers of the relevant vaccines on the NZ market. [3]

"The failure to list large numbers of potential vaccine adverse effects makes vaccination appears to be very much safer than it actually is, she says. Smith questions whether "there may have been an intention to mislead parliament (and the NZ public) on the part of whichever person(s)/organisation(s) provided information relating to vaccination side effects."

She also criticises the chairman of the Health Select Committee, Dr Paul Hutchison, for including the tables in the Report on the basis that "he is a doctor and would likely have known that the information [relating to vaccination side effects in the tables] was inaccurate."

Misleading information about vaccination is nothing new, according to Smith, who states that information intended for parents on the websites of the Ministry of Health and the Immunisation Advisory Centre (which is partly funded by the Ministry of Health and also acknowledges funding from "private industry")[4] similarly omits large amounts of information relating to vaccine side-effects necessary for parents to make an informed choice about whether or not to vaccinate their children.[5] However, the context of the "factual errors and omissions" relating to vaccination side effects in the Report of the Health Select Committee is new, and worrying, according to Smith.

"The Report contains recommendations that appear to be designed to coerce parents into making a choice between their child having either all recommended vaccinations, or none at all," Smith says.

"They are an obvious assault on parents' rights to make informed decisions about their children's health care. The fact that the Health Select Committee that has made these recommendations also chose to omit most of the possible side effects following vaccination for several key diseases on the NZ national childhood vaccination schedule from its Report, is in my opinion, indicative of the Report's author(s)' desire to manufacture consent for a new coercive vaccination policy that tramples human rights."

Ends

[1] http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/BADCF722-D377-4451-8602-1E00938BFC74/188894/DBSCH_SCR_5060_Inquiryintohowtoimprovecompletionra.pdf
[2] www.noforcedvaccines.org
[3] www.noforcedvaccines.org/complaint/
[4] http://www.immune.org.nz/?t=1021
[5] You can prove this assertion for yourself by comparing the information about vaccine side effects on the MoH website and the pages on the IMAC website intended for parents with the information on the manufacturer's datasheet (available on Medsafe's website) for the relevant vaccine.