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.