Informed Choices

We have worked hard to present the information that you are probably not getting as you investigate these issues.  If you want to make an informed choice, you must  do your research, consider the various perspectives and motivations, and identify the risks and benefits before you can make an educated decision. 

Vaccine Promotion Is Big Business

Billions of dollars are spent in this country on the promotion of vaccines, individually and collectively, to hail their invention as a miracle of modern medicine and the greatest public health triumph of modern times. If you total the promotion budgets of the CDC, vaccine manufacturers and the so-called independent charitable and other organizations fronted and significantly supported by Pharma, the numbers are staggering. 

Take a look at the Immunization Action Coalition whose 2009 sponsors to-date include the CDC, Merck, sanofi, Novartis, Wyeth, MedImmune, Baxter and the American Pharmacists Association. 

And check out Every Child By Two (ECBT), a non-profit that boasts board members Paul Offit, Walt Orenstein and other long-time vaccine luminaries whose careers and pocketbooks rely upon continued public confidence in vaccination.  Their advisors also have significant leadership experience in the following areas: The American Immunization Registry Association, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and APCO Worldwide, a major global strategic marketing, branding and public affairs firm.

ECBT is engaging in a full frontal assault on those who are raising concerns about vaccine safety and possible links to chronic disease and neurodevelopmental disorders.  Their comprehensive marketing plan features public service announcements, policy-related and media outreach, special events and a brand new website called Vaccinate Your Baby.  Presumably to counter the impressive inroads that Jenny McCarthy has been making to reach mainstream parents, ECBT recently hired actress Amanda Peet to help sell vaccines.  She is featured prominently on the new website and you can read about her views in Cookie magazine.  She  is quoted in the magazine saying: "Frankly, I feel that parents who don't vaccinate are parasites."  She subsequently apologized for the "mean and divisive" use of the word. 

Your Concerns Matter

Let's step back for a moment.  We are so very quick to defend prevailing practices and protocols. It's not just vaccines. There is a tremendous amount of money involved in all aspects of our health care system.  If you are asking questions, as an educated layperson, you deserve to be satisfied with nothing short of the truth. Before you allow yourself to be dismissed as dangerous or uninformed, ask if you believe that public health officials, doctors, industry and the media are productively engaging in the dialogue and answering our questions and concerns with the respect they deserve.  Parents are told that non-vaccinators are irresponsible.  In any outbreak, the media typically "outs" the unvaccinated Typhoid Mary and accuses him of spreading the disease.  Public health officials deliver propaganda and cram down more vaccine mandates. Doctors kick us out of their practices and the American Academy of Pediatrics supports this.  The CDC is more concerned about promotion than safety.  The FDA is beset with internal strife and is not protecting us. Parents can't sue vaccine makers for most injury and death resulting from childhood vaccines.  No one can explain why our children are so sick.  With so much money spent on health care, parent support groups are still obliged to fill the information gap about safety, effectiveness and exemptions, on their own nickel.  We are learning the hard way about personal responsibility.  Buyer beware.  Do the research.