Note: We're pleased to share our own John Stone's work as it appeared on the Children's Health Defense site this week. We need to cross-pollinate  at every opportunity, share each other's work and support the greater community outside direct autism. Now is the time to expand our thinking, not retreat into a shell of narrow thought. The Age of Autism, and I mean the age, not just this site, the actual era and age of autism has produced and influenced thinkers far outside the autism community because of the bravery of those of us who have been sounding alarms for now close to 20 years. I think Dan Olmsted would be quite proud of this legacy.

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By John Stone, UK Editor, Age of Autism

Recently, the somewhat notorious Oxford bio-ethicist, Alberto Giubilini, posted a blog on the Oxford University web-journal Practical Ethics. Giubilini, was advocating in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, both for the compulsory tracking of global citizens and their compulsory vaccination (which was already a favourite theme of his before the advent of COVID-19). To the credit of the journal and Dr. Giubilini, I was able to post comments on the blog. Perhaps, less to their credit I have yet to receive an answer. This was my first comment:

Alberto

I have never understood with you bio-ethicists what it is you are doing except privileging your own opinions, often as not licensing the powerful to do what they want to the less powerful. And while there may be some conceivable benefit to licensing – as it were – this or that medical intervention you always seem over-optimistic about how it is monitored. Frankly, a scientist engaged in developing a product is going to be naturally dismissive of harms. As far as I can see you are playing a game in which the scientists are heroes and anyone who protests they have been hurt (or someone close to them) is trash almost by virtue of opening their mouths. But in fact there are myriads of ways that a product can go wrong, often quite frequently and admitted by the manufacturer (if not always disclosed by those administering). For instance, I have recently been referring to the Bexsero PIL which according to the U.K. schedule could give 3 in 1000 children Kawasaki Disease.

Let’s say with this present project that by the autumn, or even the end of next year, we will have little idea how to balance the danger of COVID-19 against the manifold products and simply professions of good intent will scarcely be enough. These products may well have the potential even to do immutable harm to human stock. Meanwhile, you are demanding that the population surrender rights over their bodies in perpetuity to inherently fallible bureaucracies and powerful industrial interests. I don’t see how you have knowledge to do that (or the reasoned acumen) and I don’t see where traditional checks and balances are engaged which could offer reasonable reassurance – frankly the agencies have been captured.
… in the event of a bad reaction the parents will probably just receive advice from the GP to give acetaminophen and go away and stop making a fuss – but they may have to deal with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

The second addresses Giubilini’s response to the challenge of another commenter. Giubilini had written as follows:

Thanks for the link. For the UK, that amounts to about 900 claims in over 40 years. Some of those vaccines are no longer in use and 40 years ago we knew less about risk groups. Today vaccines are not administered to groups at risk. Safety is basically 100%. If you look at the same document, you will see that the risks of non-vaccination are vastly larger. 20 million of cases of measles and thousands of deaths have been prevented in the UK alone thanks to the vaccine for instance.

Read more at Children's Health Defense.