McCain Addresses Vaccine Safety, Obama Silent

McCain Supports Parental Vaccine Choice. McCain Addresses Vaccine Safety. Obama Silent.

By Rebecca Estepp

I'm a registered independent voter. 

Since autism blew into my life with the diagnosis of my son, Eric, I no longer subscribe to either party. Autism affects the children of Democrats and Republicans equally.  Autism affects Americans.

My party affiliation is now autism/vaccine safety. While there are many other issues facing our country today - our economy, global warming, alternative energy and fighting two wars among them- autism/vaccine safety is my issue.  For the 2008 election, I am a one-issue voter, and I am not alone.   Many voters are concerned about vaccine safety. (HERE)

As the wife of a Marine who has served three war-time deployments overseas over the last five years, you would think the war would be the most important issue to me, but it's not. 

This war will be over at some point, but the effects of vaccine damage will last for generations.  I am extremely concerned about babies that are being injected on a daily basis with neurotoxins that are causing countless medical conditions and stealing their potential for a full life.  It weighs heavily on my heart.   

This is the precise reason I took it upon myself to challenge the Presidential Candidates to issue two executive orders that, if implemented, would begin to address vaccine safety.   
VIDEO (HERE)

After months of hard work, I am pleased to report that, on Monday night, I received an e-mail response to my questions from Douglas Holtz -Eakin, a senior policy advisor to the McCain campaign. 

The McCain campaign directly responded to my request with the following two key points:

1)    Vaccine safety is a concern.  He "will work with all agencies to take all necessary steps in an expedient manner to ensure safe vaccines for every American family."  This will include continuing work to reduce and eliminate thimerosal (containing the known neurotoxin mercury) from vaccines. 
2)   Parental choice is paramount.  "The key to health care reform is to restore control to the patients themselves."

The entire email is available HERE.

To-date, Senator Obama has not directly responded to my request.  This is what we know about Senator Obama's position regarding vaccine safety:

1)   Senator Obama does not appear to support parental choice.   On September 5, 2008, Senator Obama told a concerned parent, "I do not support selective vaccination."
(HERE)

2)   The words "vaccine safety" are not found in any of Senator Obama's campaign materials or speeches.  In response to my video about vaccine safety, the Obama campaign sent me a general autism position letter which did not even include the word "vaccine". 
(HERE)

Senator Obama's aide and friend, Michael Strautmanis has a child with autism.  He recently wrote an excellent Op-ed piece outlining Senator Obama's intentions to help people with disabilities.  While the disability community needs the help Mr. Strautmanis describes, the piece does not mention vaccine safety, which may prevent children from becoming chronically ill or disabled in the first place. (HERE)

Many families are concerned that children are getting too many vaccines, too soon.  Whether parents choose to delay or to skip some of the vaccinations our children receive, the risk and the choice must be ours.  Many families with children on the autism spectrum vaccinate their subsequent children "selectively." 

Parental concerns about vaccine safety are valid.  The CDC admits that "simultaneous vaccination is incompletely studied at time of licensure". (4/4/2008) 
(HERE), p.33.

Whoever is elected as President will appoint 1,100 people to executive branch positions over the next few months.  Our President oversees the agencies that approve vaccine efficacy and safety. 

It is time for strong and courageous leadership from the Commander-In-Chief.  Vaccine Safety needs to be a top priority for those who are appointed by the next President to lead the CDC and the NIH.

Senator McCain says parents should have the final say in how they vaccinate their own children.  Senator Obama appears to disagree.  I sincerely hope Senator Obama misspoke that night in New Jersey.  If so, I hope he clarifies soon.

If either campaign believes the above statements are in error, please say so in public before November 4th. 

Becky

Rebecca Estepp is Parent Support and Media Relations Manager for Talk About Curing Autism.  Becky did the additional presidential video, correspondence and questionnaires as a volunteer, outside the time she works for TACA.

Comments

[Carolyn M. to Victoria O'Neill]

"Thorough and independent review" to be performed by whom? A review could just as easily produce no change or a change for the worse.

I would recommend you read Lin's posted comments (http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/11/texas-based-pro.html) of 11/2/08 for an excellent summation of what each of the presidential candidates has said and done with regard to autism. She also references Senator Obama's answers to the Science Debate questionnaire. In those answers, he uses very positive language toward vaccines; he calls them a "vital product" and expresses a "need for broad-gauged vaccines". He also states, "I have pledged to invest $10 billion per year over the next 5 years in electronic health information systems to not only improve routine health care, but also ensure that these systems will give health officials the crucial information they need to deploy resources and save lives in an emergency." I do not think it is a good idea for the government to be able to easily find out what vaccines any of our children have been given, what special diets/supplements/medications they are using, and whether we are chelating. Such a database would be too prone to misuse. In addition, please note that Senator Obama has stated that he is "not for selective vaccination."

Something else that I would recommend you read is Kelli Ann Davis' comments: both (http://www.ageof autism.com/2008/10/obama-team-on-d.html) and (http://ageof autism.com/2008/10/ask-wolf-blitze.html). Both of them are very recent (11/1/08 and 11/2/08) and concern a bill that is to be introduced by Obama and Durbin. Putting the CDC in charge of anything to do with autism is putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop. She also states that there is no biomedical language in the bill and that "our segment of the community was not involved in the formation of this bill." The question that occurs to me is if our side wasn't involved in writing this bill, then who was?

Senator Obama has said very little with regard to autism to national audiences. He mentioned it at the last debate only to criticize Senator McCain's proposals. Senator McCain has talked about autism several times to such audiences. Senator Obama has used the word "treatment". Senator McCain has stated that he wants to find the cause and a cure. Senator Obama had the perfect opportunity at the last debate to mention what he wanted to do about autism - and thereby score points off Senator McCain if his positions were better - but there was silence from him on that subject.

I am not a one issue voter. However, these are some of the reasons that I am voting for Senator McCain.

[Artist Victoria O'Neill]

I just read the questionarre that Obama filled out. When asked if he would support a federal right for families and individuals to choose for themselves which vaccines they use, he talked about preventative care such as health screenings and that he supported people's rights to refuse health screenings. He went on to say that he supports a THOROUGH AND INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF OUR NATION'S VACCINATION POLICIES!
Isn't that what we need?
Obama is an intelligent man and seems to have the ability to think outside the status quo box, so it seems to me that as he learns more about vaccination, he will come to agree with informed consent for vaccination.
btw, none of my kids are vaccinated.

[Carolyn M. for Lin]

Lin -

I'm sorry my post was unclear. While I thank you for the link you posted to Senator Obama's responses to the A-Champ questionnaire, that was not the link I was looking for. I had previously stated that I thought I had read somewhere that Senator Obama had disavowed the answers to that questionnaire, and I was having trouble finding the link for THAT particular statement. Since I could not find it, I retracted that particular statement. I do, however, appreciate the help.

As I have not had much time to continue the search lately, my retraction stands.

[Lin]

Carolyn M.

Here is the link to Obama's completed questionaire.

http://www.autismactioncoalition.org/Presidential_Candidate_Autism_Statements/Biden/Obama.html

Autism Action Coaltion was previously ACHAMP.

No need to retract anything you stated! ;)

[Lin]

Senator McCain has been interacting with our community and fully committed for many months now.

Nov. 2007 met with ACHAMP representatives and in DEC of '07 requested hearings for the Senator HELP committee. Senator Obama sits on the HELP committee by the way.
http://autismactionnetwork.org/

Feb. of 2008

John McCain Enters the Autism Wars
McCain said, per ABC News' Bret Hovell, that "It’s indisputable that (autism) is on the rise amongst children, the question is what’s causing it. And we go back and forth and there’s strong evidence that indicates that it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines."
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/02/john-mccain-ent.html

http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2008/03/critical-mass-john-mccain-thimerosal.html

Which, leads us to today. John McCain has a long history of supporting us, and our cause.

He has been speaking out against pharma for quite some time and went toe-to-toe with Bill Frist in opposition to the Lily Rider as well.

[Vaccines = Lemons]

From vaccines = yes

"Vaccines are safe enough for regular use so there is no real reason for either candidate to comment. Why would anyone say "cars are safe, except when they're not"?"

You know you bring up a very good point. There is a 1970s paper "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" written by an economist called George Akerlof that discusses the concept of information asymmetry that occurs when a seller has greater information about a product than a buyer. See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

As per this website, the Criteria for a Lemon Market is as under:

"A lemon market will be produced by the following:

1. Asymmetry of information
* no buyers can accurately assess the value of a product through examination before sale is made
* all sellers can more accurately assess the value of a product prior to sale
2. An incentive exists for the seller to pass off a low quality product as a higher quality one
3. Sellers have no credible disclosure technology (sellers with a great car have no way to credibly disclose this to buyers)
4. Either there exist a continuum of seller qualities OR the average seller type is sufficiently low (i.e. buyers are sufficiently pessimistic about the seller's quality)
5. Deficiency of effective public quality assurances (by reputation or regulation)
6. Deficiency of effective guarantees / warranties"

Following the publication of Akerlof's paper, the US government (Democrats) enacted the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in 1975 to protect consumers. See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson-Moss_Warranty_Act

I don't see why vaccines cannot be guaranteed to be safe. They are products and like any other product they should be subjected to rigorous quality inspections. A manufacturer say so and a bumbling FDA reliance on the manufacturer's say so are grossly insufficient. I think the American consumer deserves better.

[Carolyn M.]

Since I am currently having considerable difficulty in locating the link to Senator Obama and his response to the A-Champ questionnaire that I previously referred to, I wish to retract that portion of my post until such time as I am able to locate the information.

However, I stand by the rest of what I wrote.

[Vaccines = yes]

Vaccines are safe enough for regular use so there is no real reason for either candidate to comment. Why would anyone say "cars are safe, except when they're not"?

[Katherine Walker]

In April, David Kirby argued that either candidate would essentially have to follow-up with vaccine safety issues b/c it is on the agenda of the CDC.

See the below link to Huffingtonpost.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/obama-climbs-on-the-vacci_b_97969.html

Additionally, one issue voting is what got us here in the first place, what good will it do to have one issue taken care of if you don't deal with other important issues as well, like the economy, or energy, or environment, or climate change?

We owe it to our children not only to advocate for them and for vaccine safety, but to keep our eyes open and look at the entire horizon.

No intention of offending anyone --

Thomas Jefferson once said "Every Generation needs a new revolution." To me, the Obama campaign seems like a new kind of revolution.

[Cindy Lozano]

To recoveryplease :
Sarah Palin has a child with Down's Syndrome, but her sister has a child with autism. (That's what McCain was referring to.) There are plenty of posts on Denis Leary on this website, just go down a little earlier in the month.

[Carolyn M.]

To "It's getting ridiculous":

I'm having some trouble finding the reference, but I will continue looking. What I remember reading is that Senator Obama claimed not to have seen/filled out the questionaire; either he or his campaign stated that a staffer must have completed it. Upon further investigation, the author of the piece stated that the answers appeared to be in Senator Obama's handwriting. I'm sorry not to be more helpful right now.

I do not believe that Senator Obama has already won the presidential race. This race is still too close to call at this point; too many polls are still within the margin of error and too much (very intense) campaigning is still going on.

[Louise Kuo Habakus]

Hi, everyone. I put this out on my e-blast Wed night and received some confused and annoyed responses back, a la "how can you tell me to vote for McCain? He only did this to get votes!"

We are people brought together by our sick and injured children. We have become a community, brought together by our willingness to talk about the tough issues and the things that matter.

Like money, politics has become the taboo subject of polite society. And it shows. Many people I talk with outside of our community have very little understanding about what's going on at the state or national level. (And to be fair, I am not fully up to speed on all other important issues.) In my opinion, it is clear that we have allowed our freedoms to be taken away from us, one by one by the very people we elected to serve us. These people have served themselves nicely. They are not serving us. We must create political imperative. We must force the dialogue.

I’m not saying you should vote for McCain or Obama. Whether you question the sincerity of McCain's statement, at least he said something on the record. Why won't Obama respond? Why won't he say the words "vaccine safety?" The question must be asked.

I don't pretend for a moment that the answer to that question alone should drive your vote. My goal is to create more national dialogue about vaccination choice. I want to bring our issue into the spotlight. The vote is an entirely different matter… it’s your personal decision based on the sum total of what’s important to you.

Louise

[Angela Warner]

Twyla - while I didn't necessarily agree with the veto on the SCHIP at the time, please check out this link and pay particular attention to the fourth paragraph.

That makes me sick. It has long been said that Big Pharma runs this country, not the government. Big Pharma would love socialized medicine. While I agree that every person in our country should have healthcare, the backing can not come from Big Pharma.

http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/10/pharma-runs-tv-ads-for-supportive-lawmakers/

You may have to copy and paste - sorry for that.

[It's getting ridiculous]

Carolyn M., regarding your statement:
"I also seem to remember reading that Senator Obama had disavowed his answers to the questions on the A-Champ questionaire."
Could you (or anyone) please provide a link?? I had assumed that he at least wanted Thimerosal removed from vaccines. If his A-Champ answers have been disavowed, then that information needs to be out there for all to know, and we should be hammering him about that since he will probably be our next president.

Twyla,
Thank you for spelling out what Obama wants to do in terms of helping our children, but I'm not only a one-issue-voter, I'm a one-SUB-issue-voter: Prevention. Every kid who is PREVENTED from becoming autistic means $3 million that won't have to be spent on care, housing and education. (Not to mention the untold emotional costs on the child and the family and the loss of productivity to society.)

[ANYbody out there?]

"Palin calls that the story of millions of Americans. Her hope is to strengthen the National Institutes of Health 'to make sure we're researching everything about autism and make sure we find out what causes it.'"

Does Palin not know that the National Institutes of Health have already done that and declared the "autism is genetic" verdict? Like years ago?

Is anyone else frightened by the fact that this woman seems to be completely clueless about all areas of public life? And this is AFTER there is autism in the family that she is close to? HELP!

[steph]

in the debate, didn't obama say that research for autism costs money, followed by mccain complaining about obama's desire to spend... yes, mccain it will cost money to fight this ----- somehow the overlap in conversation seemed to get left off the debate manuscript

[Palin to Look to NIH for Autism]

"Palin's eyes well up as she talks about her sister's son, Karcher, who has autism.

"'My sister and I have talked a lot about this. It makes me cry thinking about it,' Palin said. 'She asked with tears in her eyes, she says, 'What happens when Kurt and I, though, are elderly, then what happens to Karcher?'

"Palin calls that the story of millions of Americans. Her hope is to strengthen the National Institutes of Health 'to make sure we're researching everything about autism and make sure we find out what causes it.'"

[One Issue Voter]

This election, I am a one issue voter. My whole life is autism. Every second of every day. Therapy, supplements, research, etc. Autism. Autism. Autism. Autism. The only change I want to see in the world right now is that children stop being harmed because of greed and deception, that our children get the education and therapies they need, the medical coverage to pay for these doctors, etc. Then perhaps, I'll have the time to focus on something else, but right now - McCain would pretty much have to say or do something really stupid to lose my vote. Am I thrilled with his stance on everything he says, of course not - but I do feel that he's a hell of alot more sincere in his statements regarding autism.

[Claudine Liss]

TO: Just Wondering
From: Claudine Liss
(Claudine responds to Just Wondering's questions)

Although your article here on AoA does not include Ms. Liss' comments. I was just wondering what her party affiliation is?

Claudine: (I am an Independent. I have never voted for a Republican Presidential Candidate--in 30 minutes I turn 40, so I have been voting for a few years.)

And I wonder why you excluded this statement from Ms. Liss here?

Claudine(No reason that I know of. Go read my Age of Autims post from early Sept.)

We're putting a lot of emphasis on this 5-10 second interaction with Ms. Liss and Barack Obama.

Claudine: The interaction was actually several minutes.

I don't know if I can make a decision based on this 5-10 seconds.

Claudine: Again, the conversation was several minutes, and you should not have to make a decision on my comments. Both candidates should have the honor, integrity and courage to address this issue with us open and honestly.

Claudine:(In my opinion, nothing regarding the vaccine protocol will change with Obama, still not sure if it would change with McCain either - both candidates have no courage when it comes to discussing the vaccine issue publicly.)

I have to wonder if Mr. Obama had a more lengthy interaction and learned of Ms. Liss's concerns would he have given the same response?

Claudine: (I told Obama my concerns. They did not impact his response. Obama told me that his staffer has an autistic child. From his response re:no selective vaccination, I can only assume that his staffer does not believe in a vaccine/autism connection. Now none of us should have to assume anything these candidates should be openly discussing this issue...an issue that has many US parents very concerned, including myself.)

I thought I was all about the autism-vaccine issue too. Turns out I'm not.

Claudine: In my opinion, both candidates are terrible. Obama will most likely be better for funding services (if there is any money left).I do not blame parents for voting for him for this reason,however, I firmly believe that the root of the problem will be ignored by Obama, and possibly by McCain too. I am Pro-Choice, Anti This War, feel that Bush is a war criminal....I went to a McCain town hall to ask him vaccine questions too. I was not called on...I tried to get his attention. I left the event shaking my head...I left the Obama event shaking my head too.

I feel John McCain is desperate and his delay in responding to your questionare shows that. He'll promise anything at this point. He needs votes.

Claudine: I do not disagree with this statement. However, I still firmly feel that Obama will not change his mind on selective vaccination. He used the word "selective" not me. A friend said the following to me several months ago: the Republicans love vaccines because they are great for big business, the Democrats love vaccines because they help so many children and are for the public good.

I WANT TO HEAR MORE FROM BOTH CANDIDATES. NEITHER HAVE THE COURAGE TO TALK ABOUT THIS ISSUE IN A MEANINGLFUL WAY...WE NEED LEADERS WITH COURAGE...2012??

[Gatogorra]

Hey Nancy,

Yes to the crapshoot. I'll get involved and roll the dice but I just can't be in the "true believer" wagon circles anymore. We're all going to need to reserve judgement and keep demanding change no matter who gets in. Last I checked, the epidemic of autism has a lower prevalence rate than the run of questionable to really bad presidents.