On June 7, 2019 the New Brunswick Legislature passed the First Reading of Act Respecting Proof of Immunization, which “would remove non-medical exemptions from the mandatory immunization requirements for public school and licensed early learning and child care admissions. The amendments are to the Education Act and the Public Health Act.”
Press Release from the New Brunswick government.
CBC – New Brunswick moves toward mandatory immunization for students – Legislative amendments introduced Friday would remove all non-medical exemptions
New Brunswick residents can find their MLA here. More information here: New Brunswick Mandates – Take Action
Correspondence from VCC to Education Minister Cardy is below, as well as an e-mail to New Brunswick MLAs.
From Vaccine Choice Canada
Vaccine mandates |
Fri, 7 Jun 2019 22:56:10 -0400 |
London VCC <london@vaccinechoicecanada.com> |
To: gilles.lepage@gnb.ca, guy.arseneault@gnb.ca, daniel.guitard@gnb.ca, brian.kenny@gnb.ca, denis.landry2@gnb.ca, isabelle.theriault@gnb.ca, robert.gauvin@gnb.ca, keith.chiasson@gnb.ca, lisa.harris@gnb.ca, michelle.conroy@gnb.ca, jake.stewart@gnb.ca, kevin.a.arseneau@gnb.ca, megan.mitton@gnb.ca, jacques.j.leblanc@gnb.ca, brian.gallant@gnb.ca, robert.mckee@gnb.ca, roger.l.melanson@gnb.ca, monique.a.leblanc@gnb.ca, cathy.rogers@gnb.ca, ernie.steeves@gnb.ca, sherry.wilson@gnb.ca, bruce.fitch@gnb.ca, mike.holland@gnb.ca, ross.wetmore@gnb.ca, bruce.northrup@gnb.ca, gary.crossman@gnb.ca, blaine.higgs@gnb.ca, hugh.flemming@gnb.ca, glen.savoie@gnb.ca, trevor.holder@gnb.ca, gerry.lowe@gnb.ca, dorothy.shephard@gnb.ca, bill.oliver@gnb.ca, kris.austin@gnb.ca, gregory.f.thompson@gnb.ca, mary.wilson@gnb.ca, jeff.carr@gnb.ca, david.coon@gnb.ca, stephen.horsman@gnb.ca, rick.desaulniers@gnb.ca, carl.urquhart@gnb.ca, stewart.fairgrieve@gnb.ca, andrew.harvey@gnb.ca, chuck.chiasson@gnb.ca, jean-claude.d’amours@gnb.ca, francine.landry@gnb.ca, benoit.bourque@gnb.ca, andrea.andersonmason@gnb.ca
To the members of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick:
Re: Proposed legislation to remove all non-medical exemptions for vaccines for school attendance
Your legislature is currently considering legislation that is sweeping in its implications and certainly is deserving of more than the minimal time currently given to truly understand the broad and deep implications, not the least of which is the violation of Sections 1, 2, 7, and 15 of the Canadian Constitution, the Nuremburg Code, and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.
We respectfully ask that you read the attached letter just sent to Minister Cardy and delay any consideration of this legislation until you fully understand this issue from the legal, medical, ethical, moral and fiscal perspectives. This issue is infinitely greater than the very small number of measles infections in your province.
Your constituents deserve good leadership that avails itself of accurate, up-to-date, unbiased, scientific information.
Kindly contact us if we can be of assistance for further information.
Regards,
Gisele Baribeau
Director
Vaccine Choice Canada
vaccinechoicecanada.com
Attachments:
Letter to NB Education Minister June 2019 (pdf)
VCC Measles in Canada Report 2019 (pdf)
June 6, 2019
Dominic Cardy, Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development
Dominic.Cardy@gnb.ca
Place 2000
P. O. Box 6000
Fredericton, NB
E3B 5H1
Minister Cardy,
Overriding Constitutionally protected rights by mandating vaccines is a very serious matter, not to be under taken lightly or without fully understanding the issue and implications. We understand the thought process that leads one to propose removing the freedom to consent to this medical procedure; however, it is faulty. Allow us to explain our concerns.
Protected rights to informed consent
Mandatory vaccine policy is a clear and direct violation of the Nuremburg Code, Sections 1, 2, 7, and 15 of the Canadian Constitution, and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights which states in Article 6:
“Any preventative, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be expressed and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.”
Over-riding Constitutionally protected rights should only be considered under extreme circumstances. In light of that, temporary vaccine mandates should only be considered if these conditions are met:
None of the current infections and their related vaccines meet these criteria. There is no medical justification to impose vaccine products by coercion rather than consent.
Once informed consent rights are violated, the risk of ongoing erosion is high as recently seen in California where conscience and religious exemptions were removed in 2015, and now current proposed legislation, B276, would make medical exemptions a bureaucratic decision rather than a doctor-patient decision.
Undermining doctor-patient trust
It is a clear that free (un-coerced) and fully informed consent is one of the highest values in medicine. Vaccine injury is often unrecognized by parents and medical professionals, under-reported, and under-stated in safety reporting by public health authorities. (1) Vaccines are a class of drugs, each vaccine having its own ingredients, manufacturers, purpose, and method of action. No two work the same. To say every vaccine is “safe and effective” is akin to saying every chemotherapy drug is “safe and effective”. Honesty, transparency, up-to-date expertise and fully informed consent are fundamental for a physician to maintain the trust of his or her patients. A mandatory vaccine policy that is not based on fact will cause serious damage to this trust relationship that has already seen erosion over the last decade.
Herd Immunity and the Immunocompromised
All vaccines wane in effectiveness. Most individuals lose their elevated antibody levels two to ten years after being vaccinated. Approximately ten percent of the population has no increased antibody response to a vaccine. At any given time, a significant portion of the population has no increased antibodies to the diseases they had been vaccinated against. Hence, no artificially generated herd immunity exists, and the relative absence of disease begs the question of whether vaccines are necessary.
Contrary to popular understanding, some vaccines do spread disease through viral shedding. (2) These include live-virus vaccines for: measles, mumps, rubella, nasal flu, shingles, rotavirus, chicken pox, oral polio and yellow fever. (3) This shedding may last for days or months, and often the individual is unaware, being asymptomatic. Vaccinating family members of seriously immune-compromised individuals then is questionable.
For the most seriously immune-compromised, avoiding general public exposure is prudent as many bacteria and viruses circulate in public places, including cold, influenza, RSV, hand-foot-and mouth, tuberculosis, hookworms, pin worms, rhinovirus, and norovirus. The best protection for seriously immune-compromised individuals is provided at home. For less seriously immune-compromised individuals, vaccines are recommended by PHAC. (4)
Consequently, mandating that all children be vaccinated for a very few seriously immune-compromised children who are best protected at home, makes no medical or fiscal sense, especially given lack of proper safety testing of vaccines, officially under-recognized, under-reported and under-stated adverse reactions, and the human and financial costs related to these adverse reactions.
Vaccine Adverse Reactions Reporting and Vaccine Injury Compensation
Canada’s passive adverse reaction reporting system is grossly inadequate (1), even less adequate than the US Vaccine Adverse Reactions Reporting System (VAERS) that commissioned a study by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. which showed less than 1% of adverse reactions are reported to VAERS. Read the results on page 6 of the report commissioned by the US Dept of Health and Human Services. (5)
Canada is the only G7 nation without a national vaccine injury compensation program. (6) These other nations recognize vaccines cause injury and death and compensate for significant injury and death. The US National Vaccine Injury Compensation Plan (NVICP) has paid out over $4B in compensation since 1989, which is understated since their own research shows less than 1% of injuries are reported.
Vaccine Safety
There is such an abundance of science on the issue of vaccine safety; we will simply provide an overview.
Measles as a “Crisis” Driving Mandates
Disease incidence records from Canada, the US and the UK all show measles and other such illnesses declined well prior to wide spread use of vaccines. (13&14) The mortality of measles declined 99% prior to the introduction of the measles vaccine. While the MMR vaccine has succeeded in stopping the cyclical rounds of measles in children, there is a big cost. By preventing measles at the most appropriate and safe age, the measles vaccine has eliminated the broad population-based naturally induced herd immunity that had evolved over millennia. The measles vaccine does not and will not eliminate measles outbreaks in the general population. This is because 2 – 10% of individuals are “non-responders”, and another 8 – 9% of individuals stop producing antibodies within 2 – 10 years.
Thus, instead of eliminating measles as claimed, the measles vaccine has shifted the risk of measles from children to adults because of the waning protection of the vaccine. This has created a paradoxical situation whereby in highly vaccinated societies measles occurs primarily among the adult population. It is well known that the risk of measles morbidity and mortality is much higher in adults than when contracted in childhood.
This attached report Are Measles Deadly? Annual Measles Deaths in Canada: 1924-2016 (15) summarizes measles incidence and mortality, information critical to making fully informed decisions on infection management and properly informing the Canadian public. In this PMC published paper (16), Dr. Gregory Poland made a call for a new measles vaccine in 2012 because of the recognized failure of the MMR vaccine to effectively and safely eliminate measles. (The Re-Emergence of Measles in Developed Countries: Time to Develop the Next-Generation Measles Vaccines?)
What this all means is: the current outbreak of measles is due to vaccine failure,
not a failure to vaccinate.
Open and honest dialogue
Honesty, openness, and public accountability are important safeguards. Currently, the media, the medical community and official government sources actively discourage open dialogue and honest debate about vaccine safety, efficacy and necessity. Slurs, mis-representations of our position, and censorship simply lead more people to distrust all three of these authorities, as evidenced by the growth of the vaccine risk aware (VRA) movement.
Our request is that you serve your constituents with integrity – by engaging in an open, honest and well-informed dialogue with your citizens on this critical topic.
Regards,
Gisele Baribeau
Director
Vaccine Choice Canada
www.vaccinechoicecanada.com
info@vaccinechoicecanada.com
CC
Hon. Blaine Higgs, Premier of New Brunswick
premier@gnb.ca
Chancery Place
P. O. Box 6000
Fredericton, NB E3B 5H1
Hon. Hugh J. A. (Ted) Flemming, Q.C. Minister of Health
Hugh.Flemming@gnb.ca
HSBC Place
P. O. Box 5100
Fredericton, NB E3B 5G8
New Brunswick Teachers’ Association
P.O. Box 752
650 Montgomery Street
Fredericton, NB E3B 5R6
George Daley, President george.daley@nbta.ca
Larry Jamieson Executive Director larry.jamieson@nbta.ca
Media
Toronto Star city@thestar.ca
CTV News newsonline@ctv.ca
Globe & Mail publiceditor@globeandmail.com
Times Colonist dobee@timescolonist.com
Global News ViewerContactHalifax@globalnews.ca
Sources:
Attachment:
VCC Measles in Canada Report 2019 (pdf)