The Beginning of the Vaccine Police State?

By Alan Phillips Tue 11th Oct 2011 

On September 24, 2011, Sacramento’s News10 reported that Natomas school officials were “going door to door with a traveling nurse to give whooping cough shots to unvaccinated students.”[i] A recently enacted California law requires all 7^th – 12^th graders to get the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccines before the start of the 2011-2012 school year in response to recent outbreaks (never mind that the outbreaks may involve mutated strains reportedly caused by vaccines themselves that may have rendered current vaccines ineffective,[ii] and that the pertussis vaccine itself can cause permanent disability or death[iii]). As the deadline for getting the whooping cough vaccine passed, thousands of CA students remained unvaccinated, and many school districts were “defying state law and allowing [the students] on campus.” While those with conventional beliefs about vaccination and infectious disease may be encouraged by the news, those familiar with vaccine politics or who care about personal liberty in “the land of the free” are likely to be very nervous about the implications of unsolicited, door-to-door visits by government employees who are pushing unwanted shots, especially in a state that allows parents to refuse shots for any reason.[iv]

Meanwhile, on September 28, 2011, Natural News reported that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is calling U.S. households and demanding child immunization records as part of a vaccine Surveillance and tracking program.[v] The CDC is sending letters as part of a “National Immunization Survey” alerting citizens that they will be called by the “NORC at the University of Chicago” and that they should have their child’s immunization records handy when answering questions by the NORC. Those with mainstream vaccine views may view this is a minor inconvenience aimed at improving public health, but those with awareness of vaccine politics or who believe in personal privacy may view this as an over-reaching government intrusion into personal privacy and a violation of personal privacy rights.

Disturbingly, both of the above events were forecasted in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.[vi] Section 4204. IMMUNIZATIONS. reserved millions of dollars to “award grants to States to improve the provision of recommended immunizations for children, adolescents, and adults through the use of evidence-based, population-based interventions for high-risk populations.” State funds must be used to “implement interventions that are recommended by the CDC’s Task Force on Community Preventive Services.” These interventions may include “providing immunization reminders or recalls for target populations of clients, patients, and consumers”, “educating targeted populations”, “carrying out immunization-promoting strategies for participants or clients of public programs”, and “providing for home visits that promote immunization through education, assessments of need, referrals, provision of immunizations, or other services”. Federal grant money also supports “immunization information systems to allow all Sates to have electronic databases for immunization records.” Finally, States must submit evaluations of progress “made toward improving immunization coverage rates among high-risk populations within the State” at least every 3 years, and DHHS must report to Congress at least every 4 years on the effectiveness of the program and recommendations about whether to continue and expand the program. So while I have no specific information as to the funding for California’s door-to-door vaccine efforts or the CDC’s/University of Chicago’s vaccine inquiries, these are activities that we are likely to see more of in the future as state grants are awarded under the recent healthcare legislation.

Meanwhile, states and private industry have been acting aggressively to increase the number of vaccines mandated and to implement entirely new vaccine requirements, while taking steps to unlawfully restrict access to vaccine exemptions. I’ve recently been contacted by entirely new categories of people seeking help with legally avoiding new vaccine requirements. Healthcare workers from around the country have encountered new flu and other vaccine mandates ever since the so-called swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010, following decades of recommended flu shots only, while pharmacists are increasingly required to get and give flu shots—and in some instances, to say, “would you life fries with that?” to every customer at the counter (though of course they are required to push flu shots). On the state front, Washington State recently passed a law that unconstitutionally restricts access to vaccine religious exemptions;[vii] New York narrowly avoided passage of a bill that would have allowed minors to consent to vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases, but California may soon pass such a law; and disturbingly, North Carolina already has a law allowing “any child”—even a toddler—to consent to a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease, or any reportable disease.[viii] Such laws are blatantly unconstitutional, because parents in the U.S. have a 14^th Amendment Constitutional due process right to parent their children, unless and until they are proven to be unfit to do so. So, when a state gives that authority to anyone else, it violates the Constitutional rights of the all parents within the state.[ix] That violation is further aggravated when the authority is taken away from parents and given to their children, who by both legal and medical definitions are not capable of making important healthcare decisions for themselves without parental input. Clearly, such laws are nothing more than a political “end run” around parents’ rights, likely due to parents’ growing awareness of the reality that vaccines can permanently disable or kill their children, and the availability of safer, more effective and less expensive alternatives to vaccines—children, of course, are much easier to coerce into getting vaccines directly.[x]

“The term ‘police state’ describes a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive.”[xi] While the term ‘police state’ is probably excessive for the above-cited actions, collectively, they represent an aggressive, coercive move in that direction that should raise serious red flags for those who value true health, freedom and personal autonomy. Unfortunately, few employees are in the position of being able to risk losing their jobs over an employer vaccine mandate, and many in the healthcare industry won’t even assert their objection, even though most have a legal right to do so, for fear of being singled out as a “trouble-maker” and fired.[xii] So, employers are in the position to force new vaccine mandates with virtual impunity. As for state government, when activists in Washington State took my Constitutional assessment of their new vaccine bill to the governor and asked her not to sign into law a bill unconstitutionally restricting access to religious exemptions, the governor’s response was that the question of ‘Constitutionality’ was one for the courts to decide, thereby disingenuously dismissing the concern altogether. This means that it is now up to Washington citizens to challenge the law in court or to garner support for a new legislative effort to repeal the law, and we’re all left with the bitter reality that states can and do enact unconstitutional laws, despite citizen objections, anytime the legislators and governors decide to do so.

Extensive conflicts of interest between our government agencies and the vaccine industry are well-documented.[xiii] Industry dictates policy and law using the government as a tool, an extension of itself for self-serving purposes. This includes using government to suppress legitimate scientific information that directly contradicts the self-serving policies and laws. The ongoing aggressive, coercive behaviors aimed at forcing an increasing number of vaccines on children and adults, while suppressing both scientific information to the contrary and legitimate, Constitutional rights of (supposedly) free citizens are egregious violations of our liberty. Worse yet, the more we allow this to continue and do nothing, the more egregious the violations are likely to become, and less power we may have to do about it. The vaccine industry has only two simple goals: 1) To increase the number of vaccines required of everyone who is already mandated to get one or more vaccines, and 2) To move anyone not currently mandated to get any vaccines into the first goal category. It’s really that simple. There is no end to the vaccine agenda. If we sit by idly, our freedom to make decisions about what goes into our own bodies will continue to diminish to the financial benefit of the pharmaceutical industry with growing harm to the lives of innocent citizens. So, we must become legislatively active, to the fullest extent that each of us is reasonably able. Two great ways to get started are to join the PReP email list at http://www.pandemicresponseproject.com to be kept up on vaccine news, and to join the NVIC’s Advocacy Portal at http://nvicadvocacy.org/members/Home.aspx to stay current on your state’s vaccine legislative activity so you can join forces with other concerned citizens when the time is right. In the meantime, I’m here to support directly vaccine legislative initiatives anywhere in the U.S. For information on some of my prior projects, see http://www.vaccinerights.com/legislativeprojects.html.