New information coming out of Washington, D.C., is confirming the worst fears of Californians who opposed the state’s new “School Vaccine Bill.” On the flip side, it is also arming them with the strongest argument yet against mandating vaccination for all school-aged children — with exemptions only for medical conditions — across the state.
This week, U.S. Congressman Bill Posey (R-Florida) made a statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives calling on Speaker John Boehner and his colleagues in Congress to not turn a blind eye to the important testimony of Centers of Disease Control (CDC) Senior Scientist, Dr. William Thompson. Posey said he was surprised that during a recent Senate hearing on vaccination safety, there was no one mention that the federal government has paid out over $3 Billion in settlements to families with children injured by vaccines.
Calling it a matter of public integrity, Posey asked the Speaker to enter a few quotes from Dr. Thompson’s statement into the Congressional record. Most troubling among them are confessions that Dr. Thompson and his CDC colleagues intentionally withheld statistically significant information that would have affected the outcome of an important vaccine safety study. On top of that, they brought a big garbage can into a meeting room to discard data from the study that would have suggested a link between the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine and Autism.
“Mr. Speaker, I believe it is our duty to ensure that the documents Dr. Thompson provided are not ignored,” said Posey, a fourth-term congressman who serves on the House Financial Services committee. “Therefore I will provide them to members of Congress and the House committees upon request.”
In 2004, Thompson co-led an important study commissioned to investigate a possible link between Autism and the MMR vaccine. Last year, Thompson, who many now refer to as “The CDC Whistleblower,” admitted that he and his colleagues omitted key data that suggested African-American males who received the MMR vaccine before they became 36-months-old were at increased risk for Autism, the developmental disorder associated with repetitive behaviors and difficulties in social interaction and interpersonal communication.
California’s mandatory School Vaccination Law was co-authored by Sens. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) and Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on June 29. It prohibits all public and private schools and all daycares from accepting any child who has not received all of the vaccines on California’s school immunization schedule. The bill will universally mandate dozens of doses of vaccines for 10 different illnesses ranging from highly infectious illnesses like measles, to blood-borne illnesses like hepatitis B, to non-communicable illnesses like tetanus.
Like Posey, many Californians who oppose California’s School Vaccine law insist that they are not anti-vaccination. According to Noelle Foster a Sacramento area concerned mother “many parents want more attention paid to the safety of the shots administered to children; more awareness of all side effects; reasonable precaution to make vaccines safer; and flexibility to schedule vaccines when parents and their doctors decide it is best for a particular child,” said Foster.
Posey’s statement comes at a time when fired up opponents of the School Vaccine Bill have undertaken a campaign to recall Sen. Pan who is also a pediatrician. The petition, which was approved last week for the signature-gathering phase, will have to be signed by 35,926 registered California voters in Pan’s district by December 31.
“Considering the nature of the Whistleblower’s documents as well as involvement of the CDC, a hearing and a thorough investigation are warranted,” said Posey.
Source: Sac Bee
