"But at the end of 2014 there was a measles outbreak in Disneyland which infected over 100 people and they travelled to different states and that got a tremendous amount of publicity.  In the immediate aftermath of that episode, legislation was introduced in about 37 states in the United States to restrict or to abolish exemptions from mandates. So it's been a very pressing issue for those concerned about vaccine rights."

. . .

"They still haven't found who the index case was from Disneyland.  It's suspected that it was somebody from the Philippines.  The research that I've done, based on information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention itself, suggests that over 50 percent of the people who were infected were adults--they were over age 20.  That suggests that it shows that vaccines wane, their effectiveness wanes over time.  They didn't close a single school in California as a result of the outbreak, which they have the opportunity and the power to do. Again, suggesting that clamping down on mandates in schools is not necessary and is not an answer. 

"There are problems with vaccines.  I think this is just sort of something that industry and health officials have wanted to do and the Disneyland episode seemed to suggest a causal connection I don't believe exists in fact."

...

"Certainly there are more and more categories of adults who are suggest to mandates.  Nurses, for instance, and doctors in certain hospitals will be fired if they're not vaccinated.  When I was in California recently to deal with exemptions for public school children, there was a bill that was being debated in the California Senate to require all preschool teachers to be vaccinated.  Teachers are certainly on the firing line, police officers, all public service workers, I think, are next in line to be mandated.

"And then the questions are whether religious exemptions, medical exemptions, philosophical exemptions apply to them. Mandates are big business."

. . .

"Jacobson is a case from the U.S. Supreme Court from 1905, and it was actually started here in the Boston area.  It related to an ordinance in Cambridge that said that all adults, all citizens, had to get a small pox vaccine or pay a fine.  And it was a fine of $5, which in today's dollars would be about $125.   And there was even kind of a carve out for young children. who they thought would be too vulnerable to get a vaccine. 

"Rev Jacobson objected as a matter of his own personal beliefs. . . .  And he took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.  And the Supreme Court held in 1905 that a state does have the right to impose a mandate, but it's not without conditions.  There has to be a harm avoidance principle, so if a person can show that they would be harmed by the vaccine, they get to be out of it.  It can't be discriminatory; it can't sort of say certain groups get the vaccine, but other groups don't.  It has to be necessary, there has to be some sort of imminent harm--in that case, small pox is a deadly disease, it's airborne. . .

"But it says, there's sort of precautionary language in the opinion that says we could imagine there could be a time when vaccine mandates would be so oppressive; they'd be so disconnected from any real necessity, that it would require courts to step in and decide whether nor not they were legitimate mandates.

"As it's happened since 1905, there's been tremendous change in the law when it comes to bodily integrity, the right to refuse medical treatment, control over reproductive rights, control over sexual autonomy.  There're been tremendous changes in those areas.  But the way in which Jacobson itself as applied specifically to vaccine mandates, has not changed very much.  Courts have been highly deferential to the Jacobson precedent in saying, well, you know, if the legislature has passed these mandates, if this is based on the best science of the day, who are we courts to second guess them? 

"I don't see it that way.  I think that there is this fundamental conflict in today's world between the rights to bodily integrity, the right to informed consent, the right to refuse medical treatment, and this right of a state to make sure it's preserving itself and its citizens.  I think we will see in the next ten years certainly, important litigation that's really going to pit those two different concerns against one another. They are in conflict to some extent."

. . .

"There's a fundamental liberty interest in being free of unwanted medical intervention.  And in common law, not as a constitutional matter, ...there is a right of informed consent before there's any medical procedures. . . .

"Unfortunately, from my perspective, there are laws in many states now allowing children as young as nine years old to consent to vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases.  So nine year olds, without their parents knowledge or consent, could "approve" a nurse or a doctor suggesting to that child to get a Hepatitis B or an HPV vaccine and potentially other ones. . . .

"Since World War II when Nazi medical crimes came to light, there is a generally accepted principle that human beings can't be used as subjects in experiments.  And that's now been incorporated into hospitals and science, . . . That too has evolved since the 1940s to say, no, you have the human right to refuse not only to be a subject in an experiment, but you have the human right to refuse any unwanted medical treatment. . . . 

"One has the right to prior free and informed consent for all medical interventions, including preventive ones."

". . . I think our legislation in the United States around mandates is simply out of step with the global standard on informed consent.  We have this conflict and I think it will come to a head relatively soon. The mandate situation in the United States, in my view, is somewhat out of control.

"It's the notion that government can simply--that the state legislatures--and now even local cities and school boards or hospitals can mandate a serious medical intervention when they want to basically."

. . . "The public relations around vaccines is that they're safe and effective.  More is better and what could possibly go wrong?  But as a legal matter, that's not really how the law sees them.  There's  a statute from 1986 that  Congress passed that acknowledges that vaccines can cause injury and death, and they have. . . unavoidable adverse effects. . . .   They're deemed unavoidably unsafe under the law. . .     And there's this table of injury, . . .and there's a vaccine injury compensation program . . . They were supposed to make vaccines safer, but the other dimension is that it gave virtually blanket liability protection to industry, and . . . to the medical professionals who administer vaccines.  And what that has led to very directly is an enormous increase in the number of vaccines that get mandated. 

"And what's not to like as a corporation?  What's not to like?  You don't have to pay for marketing, people have to buy it, you have no liability for the product--you can't be sued in a normal court,  . . . you don't pay any damages if someone is hurt. . .   All of the incentives go toward more vaccines.  In fact, we know that there are hundreds of vaccines in the pipeline, and it's the dream of every vaccine manufacturer to have it be federally recommended and then there's no liability. 

"It's a big problem; there are no checks and balances in this system.  Our whole government is structured on the notion that we must have checks and balances.  In this system, we don't have them and that's the problem."

. . . (Regarding thimerosal) 

"It was a mistake. They screwed up.  Mercury should never be used in any medical product anywhere.  God knows it should never be used around fetuses and pregnant women and infants.  But it was used as a preservative.  It finally came out as a preservative in routine federally recommended childhood vaccines by 2003, but the association between thimerosal and autism is very very clear to those who look extensively at the science.  There's an enormous amount of science that confirms that. 

"It's still being use in "trace amounts," and there's a very fine film that just came out, . . . called "Trace Amounts," which shows just how neurotoxic ethyl mercury is, and how what are still in vaccines in trace amounts, which is used in the industrial process, is still extremely toxic. So thimerosal clearly shouldn't be in vaccines.

"Another serious heavy metal, aluminum, is in vaccines in high levels, in particular the Gardasil vaccine.  And the new version of it has very high levels of aluminum in it. 
These are things every person should be concerned about.  We're concerned about mercury and aluminum in the environment, how can we not be concerned about when we're injecting it into young children?"

. . ."Most of these vaccines have not been approved for use by pregnant women, and yet vaccines are recommended to pregnant women routinely to this point. . .

"Certainly at a minimum, we need to have the right to say no.  In a sense the lack of checks and balances we see here is that the legislatures . . .are doing the bidding of major corporate donors.  . . .The courts have basically bowed out.  The executive branch has more or less bowed out.  And so then we really come to the levels of the parents, and if the parents can't say no on behalf of a child, then we're really in a situation where there are potentially huge injuries.

"We see today that over 50 percent of kids have some kind of chronic disability.  We certainly don' t know that that's fully attributable to vaccines, but we don't know that there's no role either.  So at a minimum, based on the norms of informed consent, we have to have parents and individuals be able to say no to unwanted medical interventions.

. . . (Regarding the "revolving door" between government and pharmaceutical companies)

"I think there's a very big problem with the revolving door between industry and government in this area.  So Dr. Gerberding was the head of the CDC . .  and under her watch the Omnibus Autism Proceeding . . . and the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program found that there was no connection between vaccines and autism--very convenient for the industry.  At the same time she was the head of the CDC, Gardasil vaccine, also a Merck product, MMR is a Merck product-- Gardasil was fast-tracked through the FDA and was then federally recommended by the advisory board to the CDC.  A year and a day after she stepped down from the CDC, she became head of vaccines at Merck. 

"Was there some kind of communication with Merck before she stepped down?  We know at the Simpsonwood Conference Center [2000] where they were discussing thimerosal and the work of Thomas Vertraeten, who was the internal CDC scientist, we know there was a representative from Merck at that meeting.  We know CDC officials were there. 

"So what happened?  I don't think we know, but the revolving door is a very problematic phenomenon. Even more so in our book.. . ., Vaccine Epidemic, there's a chapter by Mark Blaxill and Dan Olmsted that goes into the Gardasil vaccine in particular, where Gardasil and the National Institutes of Health . . . have a stake in the patent and the royalties from this commercially produced vaccine.  It's a tremendous conflict of interest.  How can they be effective regulators if in fact they're deriving royalties?   It's an obvious conflict of interest.  Again--our whole government is based on this notion of checks and balances.  We don't have them in this area.  I don't know of any other area of commercial products where there's no liability to the manufacturer and it can be mandated by the state.  I don't know anything else like it.  It's deeply troubling." 

. . . "There are some very important whistleblowers right now that I think potentially have the opportunity to get us information about what's going on in the inside.

"One is a Dr. Thompson.  He's still on the payroll of the CDC, but he has come forward in taped recordings to say that he was pressured to falsify science with a group of other authors regarding the measles, mumps, Rubella vaccine and autism. He has said that the initial data showed that African American males were more likely to get an autism diagnosis after administration of the MMR than other children.  They manipulated the data to make that signal go away.  Many people are very interested in having him testify before Congress [and] I hope that happens. 

"Another very important whistleblower case going on right now is being brought by two scientists  within Merck. . .   They have alleged that they were pressured to manipulate and falsify the effectiveness information about the mumps component in the measles, mumps, Rubella vaccine.  There have been significant, large-scale outbreaks of the mumps over the last 10 years. That information is consistent with their allegations  That case is in federal court.  It's already proceeded past the motion to dismiss stage.  So that case has legs, if you will, and so within the next two years, we should have an actual trial in that case."

. . ."Thompson most recently has been talking about the MMR work that he did.  There's another case regarding thimerosal, Poul Thorsen.  Poul Thorsen was a scientist within the CDC.  He's absconded from the United States.  He's on a list of most-wanted felons. . .  He's in Denmark.  There's seems to have been very little done to bring him back and to extradite him.  He embezzled millions of dollars while overseeing the thimerosal science, which is really the basis on which the Omnibus Autism Proceeding decided there was no connection. 

"So the MMR work by Thompson, the thimerosal work by Thorsen, are the foundation for the decisions in the U.S. Court System that there's no connection between autism and vaccines. 

"Pretty shaky, pretty shaky."

. . . "So they're still running with the mandates and they're still defending the science that involves both Thompson and Thorsen. Which is extraordinary.  Thorson is an indicted criminal and Thompson is a whistleblower within the CDC, having claimed that he and his co-authors falsified the science for the MMR and autism connection.   

"This will be blown up.  This will not stay static.  That's impossible. How it blows up is yet to be seen, but this is an area where there will be, I believe, enormous change over the next five years."

(Regarding the way state legislatures are pushing to remove exemptions)

"The way in which state legislators are justifying it today is that their public health officials, I think, . . . don't look at all the science.  They believe vaccines are good. They believe they're safe and effective. And I think there's a couple of things going on. I think lawmakers tend to be differential to the health authorities, but don't forget, they're getting huge campaign contributions.  So Merck and others in the pharmaceutical industry, the state medical associations, they have been pouring money into the coffers, largely of the Democratic Party, in the states in order to pass these mandates.  Money talks.  I don't think we have to speculate about that. 

"So if you look at the different states where there's this legislation to abolish exemptions, there is a money trail from the pharmaceutical industry and the medical associations to legislators."

(Regarding the explosion in autism starting in the 1990s)

. . ."The '86 law had gone into effect.  They added Hepatitis B, they added Hib, they added more boosters of DPT, they added boosters of MMR,  and we just see a curve like that.  And we see the autism rate go correspondingly.  Is it causal?  That still hasn't been fully established, but there's an awful lot of science showing--there's no controversy that vaccines can cause neurological damage.  That's absolutely incontrovertible.  So we see this epidemic of neurological damage.  We should be looking at that.  The science hasn't been done."

. . ."Over 50 percent of kids have some sort of chronic condition, be it asthma, allergies, eczema, obesity, ADHD, autism, cancer. Kids are sick today."

(Regarding the religious exemption)

. . ."Religious exemption exists in 48 states.  That has been critical. In some states there's this additional philosophical exemption. Remember that Jacobson did not create a religious exemption, so it's not a matter of constitutional law today that one has a religious right to exempt oneself. However, if there is a religious exemption, one can't be discriminated against on the basis of a particular religion or membership in a particular religion. So the religious exemption has worked in a broad way for many people.  But there is certainly an effort by industry and by the medical associations to end religious exemptions.  And that's a very, very serious assault--and that's not going to end this year. . . ."

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.