A Central Valley assemblyman blasted a controversial vaccine bill, saying unvaccinated children who would be forced to be home-schooled might feel like they're in "internment camps.". . .

Patterson later said his remarks were a "bad choice of words," but went on to say it's not fair to segregate children who aren't ill. . . .

Earlier this year, vaccination critic Robert Kennedy Jr. slammed SB 277 during an appearance in Sacramento and made comparisons to The Holocaust.

"They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone," Kennedy reportedly said to an audience in April. "This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country."

June 9, 2015,  Fresno Bee: Fresno lawmaker invokes concentration and internment camps at vaccine bill rally

During a rally against a California bill making vaccines mandatory for school children, a Republican lawmaker from Fresno galvanized the crowd by invoking forced internment camps.

Senate Bill 277 would make vaccination a condition of enrolling in private and public schools, which opponents have castigated for depriving children of an education. That argument temporarily derailed the bill in the Senate Education Committee and was featured prominently in Tuesday's rally.

"I wouldn't call it a concentration camp," said Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, "but they're suggesting (children) go some place other than public school."

Later in his speech, Patterson said that he "thought we apologized for internment camps," an apparent reference to the separation and confinement of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Asked after the rally to explain his comments, Patterson said it was a "bad choice of words" but reiterated that SB 277 is "excessively punitive." . . .

Incendiary rhetoric has marked the debate over SB 277 before. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent critic of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has traveled the country warning about vaccines, apologized after suggesting that injuries linked to vaccines were causing a "holocaust."

Another speaker at Tuesday's rally, Minister Tony Muhammed, referenced the biblical tale of the Pharaoh ordering the murder of first-born babies and drew a parallel to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which the U.S. government experimented on African-American men.  

June 9, 2015, Boulder (CO) Daily Camera: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Doing the math on meningitis vaccinations

This past Thursday, the University of Colorado-Boulder student government passed a resolution asking the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to recommend meningococcal vaccines for all incoming college students. ACIP will consider CU-Boulder's resolution on June 24. ACIP's first agenda topic will be the debate over recommending the meningococcal B vaccines for adolescents and college students.

The Albany Times Union has covered Kennedy quite a bit lately. Finally, they allowed him to write a commentary.

June 1, RFK Jr. Albany Times Union RFK Jr to speak against meningitis vaccine measure

June 2, 2015, Albany Times Union: RFK Jr. blasts Albany proposal to mandate meningococcal vaccine

June 2, 2015, Albany Times Union: RFK Jr. in Albany to oppose bill that mandates meningitis vaccine

June 4, 2015, Albany Times Union: Editorial: No thanks, Mr. Kennedy

June 9, 2015, Albany Times Union: Reasons for proposed meningitis vaccine don't add up, By Robert Kennedy, Jr.

New York lawmakers should do some simple math before voting on the proposed Bills (A791C and S4324A) to compel all New York school children to receive the meningococcal meningitis vaccine.

Because immunization from the meningitis vaccine wanes rapidly, the proposed law will force New York school children to take the current meningococcal vaccines twice; first in the 7^th grade and again in the 12^th grade.  Every year about 400,000 7^th and 12^th graders would be vaccinated or banned from school.

Meningococcal meningitis is exceedingly rare.  There were only about 390 cases in the US last year  and the rates were dropping before the vaccines came into use.  In a population of 319 million, that is 1 case in 817,949 people.  Most cases - 98.5% - are sporadic – not part of an outbreak.  CDC has licensed three vaccines for the A, C, Y and W135 strains of meningitis: Menactra, Menveo and Menomune which still contains massive mercury concentrations in multi-dose vials. These vaccines are only effective in providing immunity in about 85% of inoculated children.  Thirty percent of the meningitis cases are the B strain, against which these vaccines are completely ineffective.  

According to their package inserts, the current vaccines have "serious adverse event" rates of 1% for Menactra and Menveo and 1.3% for Menomune with its’ hefty mercury load. According to the CDC Pink Book, .3% of those with "serious adverse events" from meningitis vaccines will die.  So here is the math calculation that thoughtful New York lawmakers must mull over; by inoculating 400,000 New York schoolchildren, they may spare 4 children from contracting meningococcal meningitis at a cost of 4,000 seriously sickened children and 12 dead.  

That’s not the worst part. The FDA recently approved two B strain meningococcal vaccines, Trumenbu and Bexsero. Vaccine makers are pushing CDC to add them to the recommended schedule. Critics have faulted the expedited safety and efficacy testing for the new B strain vaccines citing glaring lapses in safety protocols. Neither vaccine has been tested for carcinogenicity, mutagenicity or effects on male fertility. The B vaccines product inserts indicate grim predictions; 2%, or 8000 New York students sickened with serious adverse events and 25 dead according to the CDC Pink Book.

There are budgetary costs as well.  At an average total cost of about $150 per shot, there is huge corporate incentive to get these vaccines mandated.  Nationwide, with about 4 million children in each birth cohort, the old meningitis vaccines alone are worth between $600 million and $1.2 billion annually to big pharmaceutical companies. For those with private insurance, premiums will increase.  For those without insurance, the federally funded “Vaccines for Children” program will pay.  This CDC entitlement program, with a current budget of over $4 billion, was originally intended to ensure that low-income kids in California received the measles vaccine.  It has since mushroomed into a cash cow for any vaccine added to the recommended schedule – regardless of the communicability of the disease or cost-effectiveness of the particular vaccine.

It gets worse; language in the Senate and Assembly bills automatically mandate meningococcal B vaccines once CDC recommends them. Administration of Bexsero will cost $320 per student according to the CDC vaccine price list - or $128 million annually.  Adding this to the cost New Yorkers will pay for the old vaccines – $52 million annually – the total cost of this legislation will be $180 million every year.

The costs of this Bill, in both dollars and children’s lives could make sense only to cold-blooded bean counters at the companies’ marketing these vaccines and to the politicians who have pocketed those companies’ “contributions”.  And pharma fingerprints are in other places than the generous checks they have given the Bill’s sponsors.  

The legislation is unusual in that it supersedes the traditional authority exercised by the New York State Department of Health officials over the vaccine schedule for New York school children.  The legislation’s authors mean to transfer that authority to the CDC’s vaccine division, which has been plagued by a series of recent scandals and four scathing federal investigations, criticizing the agency’s shoddy science and its corrupt conflicts of interest with vaccine manufacturers.

Before we relinquish our sovereignty, squander our treasury and sicken our children, we should do the math.

The Dachel Media Update is sponsored by Lee Silsby Compounding Pharmacy and OurKidsASD.  Lee Silsby is one of the most respected compounding pharmacies in the country and is committed to serving the needs of the Autism community. OurkidsASD is an online retailer for nutritional supplements for patients with special needs. OurkidsASD carries thousands of products from more than 60 brands and offers free ground shipping on all orders.

Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism and author of  The Big Autism Cover-Up: How and Why the Media Is Lying to the American Public, which is on sale now from Skyhorse Publishing.