Pro Choice Pro Vax Anti Choice Anti Vax in America
By Dara Berger
The shooting in Colorado Springs this past Friday made me think about our own movement regarding vaccines. I pondered whether the pro vaccine group would ever become violent. They certainly go to extreme lengths to hurt people who don’t share the same opinion as them. The choice about vaccines in many ways is very similar to the fight about abortion. One group would like to have the legal and moral choice to decide for themselves while the other side would like to take all choice away. Sound familiar? In essence, they want choice to be illegal. Another similarity is that we are dealing with the choice to make a decision about ones own physical body. Why would another person think that they even bare the right to govern what someone does to their own body? Why would they even want to? Shouldn’t we all be created equal?
Now if you explore the reasons behind each movement, we can see on the surface that they are driven by a different motivator. One is purely about money and profits. Pharmaceutical companies are not making vaccines out of the goodness of their heart. They make money and a lot of it! That’s the one thing that has always killed me when we talk about forced vaccinations. How can you force someone to take something made by a for profit company? Many of these companies make so much money that I forget if it is in the billions or trillions. It’s that insane. The other movement seems to be driven by religion. But these are just the surface reasons. The real driving factor behind all the chaos surrounding both movements is that one side wants to control the other. One side has definitively decided that they know best and theirs is the only opinion that matters.
One side in the abortion movement goes so far that individuals kill or maim others that don’t follow their belief systems. How can violence be the answer to a difference in opinion? When you get right down to it, we are talking about a difference of opinions. The same thing goes for the vaccination movement. There are individuals who resort to using nasty tactics especially online to anyone who posts an opinion that vaccines might be dangerous or cause Autism. I think they cause Autism. However I am fine that others don’t. But they don’t need to barrage me with online insults, use of profanity and try to drive me off the internet. Many of us parents with vaccine injured children have gotten pretty used to these online trolls as we call them. We have also had to get used to getting into heated arguments with people around us whenever this difference of opinion on vaccine safety and effectiveness comes up. Why can’t the pro vaccine people just let us have our own opinion? Why do they need to go to extreme measures to hurt us for expressing that vaccines injured our children.
The argument doesn’t even make sense to me. Vaccines are a pharmaceutical drug. We all know very well that pharmaceutical products come with inherent risks. I think that even pro vaccine groups can admit to this fact. Can anybody watch 10 minutes of commercials these days without seeing four different drugs advertised talking about how they can hurt, maim or kill you? The answer is NO. Vaccines are also a medical procedure, since they can't be picked up at the pharmacy like a prescription that you go home and do to yourself. Medical procedures also carry risks. So vaccines actually carry double the risk of many simple procedures that are done to people every day in a doctors office. They are a pharmaceutical drug and a medical procedure. Why would someone think that there is zero risk? It's such an extreme view, but I still feel that people are entitled to their own opinion. But there is no reason to get nasty and try to jam it down my throat.
I recently wrote another post on AOA about how people try to bully those who speak out about vaccines. The article got mixed reactions as anything written does. We are all never going to agree on any one thing. What I thought was humorous is that I got someone on twitter really trying hard to antagonize me. But I wouldn’t budge and engage with them. I know it will eventually lead to them saying horrific things. They would probably end up calling me a baby killer or something terrible like that. Another funny reaction was that someone name Orac took my piece and analyzed it painfully line by line. I took this as the biggest compliment. He must have taken at least 45 minutes to an hour to write his review of my post. My husband commented that he is probably getting paid, since we know many of the extremely argumentative online antagonists do get paid by pharmaceutical companies.
So getting back to the question of will they ever become violent. Well I think in an indirect way they already have become violent. They are trying to force our children to take vaccinations against our will. They are trying to get our previously vaccine injured children to take more vaccines and don’t care that we feel it will put them in grave danger. They are also trying to force the siblings of this vaccine injured child to get vaccines, even though they may have the same genetic makeup and susceptibilities. Where did this all start? A couple years ago Paul Offit said that he wanted to do away with the religious exemption. He wanted the small percent of unvaccinated children to be vaccinated. Why? So he could make millions of dollars! So what did he do? He wrote a book on the subject that didn't happen to garner the best reviews. He worked tirelessly with pharmaceutical companies and lobbyists to pay off senators and other lawmakers to get them to introduce bills such as SB 277 in California that stripped away a parents right to decide, by using their child’s education as leverage. In California, you now have to vaccinate your child in order to be able to attend a public school in 2016. Unfortunately, many families need a dual-income and may have to succumb to giving vaccines in order for their children to go to school. They may not have the ability to leave their job and move to another state. And not everybody has the ability or can afford to home school their child. Some of these children may become injured as a result. Vaccine injury is a violent act against a child especially if it is forced and without consent. Vaccine injury can leave a child with permanent brain damage. Anyone who lives with a vaccine injured child knows how absolutely devastating life after vaccine injury can be. And the pharmaceutical company who produced the vaccine offers no help and is nowhere to be found.
Now back to the abortion movement for a moment. I have never had an abortion nor do I believe I would ever get one. When I was younger I felt much different, since that was before I had children. However I do believe that all human beings should have the choice to decide what they do with their own body. I want my own daughter to have that right and all the other rights she is entitled to. My only hope is that people do not use abortion as birth control. And even if they do, I believe every person should govern their own body. It is not for me to make that decision for them or resort to extreme measures to force them.
I would never take a vaccine but I do think the option should be available for other people to take any and all the vaccines that they want. I just wish the more extreme pro vaccine people would respect my decision and not try so hard to strip me of my basic human rights to govern my own body.
I really wish one day I could wake up in the morning and realize that this was all a bad dream and that people don’t really resort to extreme tactics when you don’t agree with their views or opinions on things.
Dara Berger is currently a screenplay writer that just finished writing her first feature length film about her experience raising a child on the autism spectrum.
She is a also a documentary filmmaker that started her own production company in 2003 to produce documentary projects on important topics such as mental health issues.
Dara is enrolled in the Institute for Integrative Nutritions program to become a Holistic Health Counselor.
my correction to the main passage in brackets:
[a lack of] Vaccine injury is a violent act against a child especially if it is forced [on the child] and without consent. [a lack of] Vaccine injury can leave a child with permanent brain damage. Anyone who lives with a [lack of] vaccine injured child knows how absolutely devastating life after vaccine [prevented disease] injury can be...
Posted by: one how cares | March 31, 2016 at 02:49 PM
I've been struggling to write my opinion to this author's post for the past hour in an effort to get my opinion across in a "politically correct" way. But why? after all isn't that basically what we are fighting about here? our freedom of speech, thoughts, ideas and knowledge? therefore I am going to just speak it out:
I find it difficult to understand how an anti-vaccer can at the same time be "Pro-Choicer". Isn't that an oximoron? Fighting for the life and health of our infants and children on one hand and injuring and killing them with our other hand? It is without a shadow of doubt that an infant's life begins at 6 weeks (or sooner) of conception. When we make a decision to abort this infant's life aren't we ending it? Isn't that the same (or worse) than Big Pharm?
Posted by: Jacqueline | December 24, 2015 at 01:33 AM
Hi Amanda,
Vaccines do cause pathogens to change. The following is just one example and is from the CDC:
"An important issue is whether vaccination has selected for the ptxP3 strains. Several lines of evidence support this contention. First, ptxP3 strains were not found in the prevaccination era. Furthermore, although ptxP3 strains were found in high frequencies in vaccinated populations in the 1990s, they were not detected in Senegal, where vaccination was introduced in 1987 (32). Several studies have provided evidence that increased host immunity may select for higher virulence. Vaccination against 2 avian viruses, the Marek disease virus, and the infectious bursal disease virus, were associated with the emergence of more virulent strains (33). An important role of host immunity in selecting for virulence is also suggested by the co-evolution of the myxomatosis virus and rabbits (34). Furthermore, immune pressure was shown to select for more virulent Plasmodium chabaudi parasites in mice (35). Based on mathematical modeling, vaccines designed to reduce pathogen growth rate and/or toxicity may result in the evolution of pathogens with higher levels of virulence (36)."
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/15/8/08-1511_article
Re the profitability of vaccines, if you look at the Pharma trade sites, you'll see that they are all giddy over the vaccine market. In 2014, they made $34 billion. Their goal is $100 billion. This is their new cash cow. About 300 vaccines in development and they are buying up politicians and public health officials right and left to have them all mandated. If a vaccine fails or maims or kills, they have no liability either. You can't sue a vaccine manufacturer or the doctor or nurse or pharmacist who gives you a vaccine that harms you. Pharma likes that. Did you know that $.75 of the cost of every vaccine goes to a fund to pay those injured? Actually, it's $.75 for each disease in each vaccine. So, the MMR would have a built in $2.25 that the public pays for that goes to the fund. A 9 in one shot would have a $6.75 tax that goes into the fund.
But listen, really, please see this interview that just was posted last week. It's with scientist Dr. Judy Mikovits. She is highly qualified and explains how vaccines make people sick. I just saw it yesterday and it really is not to be missed:
https://vimeo.com/146831570
Then I hope you'll come back and talk.
Posted by: Linda1 | December 03, 2015 at 04:36 PM
Thanks to vaccines the average age of life expectancy has dropped substantially...Gates,Murdoch et-al pharma applauds you.
MMR RI
Posted by: angusfiles | December 03, 2015 at 03:44 PM
Cost of vaccines < cost of treating one case of communicable illness. It's a ridiculous statement to say pharmaceutical companies sell vaccines simply because it makes them the millions, and not because they have interest in controlling disease and infection. The difference in profit is astounding... I think to say the overuse of vaccines will lead to resistance is also an uneducated statement. Vaccines don't alter the function or form of the infectious organism, it "schools" the immune system on fighting the organism with a featherweight or dead opponent. Every substance on earth has potential to harm you, if you are allergic or sensitive. Vaccines do NOT cause autism, says science. Says many, many peer reviewed studies. There is a market for vaccines, but there is a much larger market in making and keeping people actually ill...think if the almighty dollar were the only impetus for vaccines, the royal they would be better suited to discourage their use and let measlespertussistetanusmumps run wild...
Posted by: Amanda | December 03, 2015 at 03:00 PM
I was around before the era of abortion and believe me there was abuse then as well such as doctors who insisted on sleeping with women before they gave them the abortion. Now we have abuse again from the other side. Why does this remind me of the 1986 Vaccine Law brought to us by Henry Waxman. I don't think anyone could have imagined the level of abuse and power grab of the vaccine manufacturers. What I don't understand is how this law and its kangaroo court have been allowed to exist this long and gain more and more power. We need to be able to sue doctors for vaccine injury, sue pharmacies for vaccine injury, sue pharmaceutical companies for vaccine injury: this is a big emergency. In terms of the abortion clinics people have to make the right moral decision. Do you want to abort a healthy baby whose body parts will be sold on the open market, do you want to inflict that much suffering on your unborn child? On the other hand if a woman finds out she is carrying a child that is severely damaged and will never have a normal life will she be able to take care of that child? Why, though, does our government support the right of a woman to make those choices and yet won't allow a mother to make choices for her baby like vaccines that are just as drastic.
Posted by: kapoore | December 01, 2015 at 01:03 PM
@Brian Costello
yes I found the secret videos of PP leaders selling the foetuses all very amusing (amusing because of their bare faced lies - leaders or criminals , perhaps its the same thing .)
but for me , Autism is a form of "live" abortion .
A vaccine derived lobotomy.
And its the most painful process imaginable .
So I'm on your side yes , particularly when you learn of the 54M abortions in the US since 1975 . Its easy to see how the abortion and autism stories are all part of the same govt state sponsored policy .
Posted by: Georg Elser | December 01, 2015 at 07:17 AM
Wow. It seems to me that Dara knows very little about the pro-life movement and the beautiful people that belong to it. She is using the exact same tactics that the vaccine industry uses to try to demonize people she disagrees with. She is also under the impression that mothers are making the decision to abort their children with full knowledge of the dangers both medically and psychologically that are involved. The man in her life is usually the one pressuring (or forcing her her) to abort so he can be off the hook. The abortion industry, like the vaccine industry, thrives when it can keep people in the dark about its practices. The recent revelations about abortion giant Planned Parenthood came as no surprise to the informed. There have been whistleblowers in the past from PP itself. The only difference now is that the information can't be buried by the mainstream media due to the internet. Like the vaccine proponents the pro abortionists will try anything and everything to silence any opposition to their money supply. The pro life movement, like the truth in vaccine movement, is comprised of many mothers,( and fathers) who have been exploited and damaged by the two most unregulated industries around- Big Pharma and the abortion industry. The truth will prevail. Love Age of Autism!
Thank you for all the information unavailable anywhere else!
Posted by: Brian Costello | November 30, 2015 at 11:39 PM
Vaccines ARE magic! Put any toxin into a syringe that contains a vaccine. Presto! It is no longer toxic! Just ask Mockter Pan.
Posted by: Anita Domnelly | November 30, 2015 at 07:43 PM
Thank you Dara. I agree completely. What I find amazing is the pro-vaxxers are undermining their own right to make choices. I assume they would complain loudly if they were forced to accept a medical intervention not of their own choosing. Seems they are so captured by the magic of vaccines that their ability to think logically has been incapacitated. Then again, maybe this is one of the side effects of vaccination that we haven't recognized as yet.
Posted by: Ted Kuntz | November 30, 2015 at 06:46 PM
Perhaps “Planned Vaccines franchises” could be opened right next to all the Planned Parenthood offices… under the direction of a Dr. Nancy type. This would provide another option to harm children who were not eliminated to begin with.
It is only a matter of time before the public vaccine staff is marching from house to house with law enforcement shooting up whoever they want.
Posted by: go Rand | November 30, 2015 at 01:50 PM
I agree 100%. I think vaccines should be available for people who want them, although I do think that overuse of vaccines will take us down the same path as overuse of antibiotics, that is, one day we won't have any vaccines because the microbes will have mutated under pressure from the vaccines as has happened with whooping cough, maybe mumps, and hepatitis B... Still, that is not my battle. My battle is my right to choose and the right of my children to choose and that is being taken away. I am not even bothered that much by innocent pro-vaxers, but I am bothered a lot by a vicious media campaign against us, by corruption in the CDC, by the National Vaccine Compensation Act, by a government that has lost its moral ground and lies about vaccine safety and effectiveness. I am bothered by Big Pharma buying off legislators to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and a legislature that grimly ignores while thousands of citizens line the halls to protest against unfair and coercive legislation that denies the right to education to 5 year olds that haven't been vaccinated against blood born sexually transmitted diseases--makes you wonder what has happened to the kindergarten curriculum doesn't it? So I am bothered, no I am driven practically insane by the above. By making me crazy they win because I could be spending life doing something else that I enjoy more than trying to keep up with their evil agenda.
Posted by: kapoore | November 30, 2015 at 12:54 PM
Forced vaccination (which includes coerced vaccination) = Medical assault
There are no 2 ways about it.
Any doctor, nurse, pharmacist, legislator, or government regulator who supports, condones, and/or participates in forced (including coerced) vaccination is guilty of violent assault...both against the person being vaccinated, and in the case of a child, also against the child's parents who are being coerced/forced to submit against their will.
Therefore, please inform those you know, be they "medical professionals", elected officials, government regulators, or law enforcement officers, that they are GUILTY OF VIOLENT ASSAULT if they in any way support, condone, participate in, or enforce coerced/forced vaccination, or coerced/forced medicine of ANY sort.
Remind them, also, that these vaccine medical assaults ALWAYS cause some level of harm...including harm that often results in permanent disability, chronic illness, and death. Furthermore, the harm also results in forever forfeiting natural lifetime immunity for oneself, forever forfeiting the immune system benefits of contracting these childhood diseases during childhood, and forever forfeiting passing on naturally-acquired immunity, untainted blood, and unaltered DNA to future children and grandchildren.
SHAME ON ANY PERSON complicit in or supportive of vaccine mandates.
Posted by: Laura Hayes | November 30, 2015 at 12:27 PM
Such good points, Dara Berger and "Just my perspective".
Posted by: Twyla | November 30, 2015 at 11:33 AM
I agree with you 100%, Dara. I made this very same argument years ago on one of the listservs discussing this issue. I was told in no uncertain terms by a person who is very active in the "truth in vaccines" movement that abortion is murder and is never, ever right! Unfortunately, I am sure you are going to hear from that faction soon and some of them will be as vicious, or even more vicious, in their words than the pharma trolls.
Our society is swirling downwards due to our tolerance of people who are intolerant, and the increasing lack of civility, understanding, and thoughtful conversation. I find it highly ironic that those who seem the least tolerant and most hateful claim themselves to be either followers of a religious leader, Jesus, who taught forgiveness, understanding, and love for all others, or devout followers of "peer-reviewed science." The latter promote science with all the zealotry (and intolerance) of religious fanatics, apparently without stopping to consider the limitations of current science or the foibles, weaknesses, and assumptions of the researchers who conduct, review, and edit all that "peer-reviewed" stuff. What, if it is in a high impact journal, it is scripture?
How someone who thinks murder is never right can then go out and murder people who disagree with them is nonsensical! Those who say everyone must get vaccinated because vaccines save lives is just about as nonsensical in their thinking. If vaccines prevent a person from getting a disease, then those who choose to take them won't get sick from being around those who are sick, let alone from those who aren't sick but just didn't get the vaccines. If they do, then the vaccines clearly didn't work so what was the point? Somehow too many people in our society seem unable to think clearly.
I think a terrible part of the problem is that we are living in a mercury-poisoned, drug-poisoned society. What does mercury do to one's ability to think and reason, and put things in proper perspective? What does mercury do to one's ability to control one's emotions and anger?
I think I have some insight because I was mercury-poisoned by my amalgams, but fortunately figured out the problem and was able to get them out and detox myself--using over-the-counter DMSA with Andy Cutlery's protocol. The changes I observed in myself afterwards were partially portrayed by the film-maker of "Trace Amounts." Cloudy thinking. Irrational fears. Depression. Inability to sleep. Almost uncontrollable outbursts of rage. For me, all of these issues unexpectedly disappeared. My eyesight improved. My physical health improved. I thank my lucky stars I didn't choose prescription drugs, like most people do, in their attempts to treat such problems.
To my chagrin, I have now learned that the all-knowing FDA has pronounced DMSA "prescription-only" - making it effectively unavailable to the vast majority of people, who might have benefitted if they knew the values of carefully using it to get mercury out of their system (after amalgam removal!).
Not only that, but against the advice of a panel of independent scientific reviewers, the FDA did NOT outlaw use of mercury-laced amalgam fillings. And now the CDC advises everyone to get injected YEARLY with mercury-laden flu shots!
Apparently they (the FDA and CDC) want us to all live in a mad, mad, mad world. And we do.
All the better for pharma and gun manufacturer profits, apparently.
Posted by: Just my perspective | November 30, 2015 at 10:00 AM