– Dr Tim O’Shea
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Blinding ignorance doth mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes! – Leonardo da Vinci
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Didn’t take much of a fortune teller to predict the attack on the philosophical vaccine exemption in California, which we saw in the April 2011 Newsletter. But it’s here, right now in California. A week ago Bill AB2109 was proposed:
“AB2109 was introduced on February 23, 2012 by Assembly Member Richard Pan, a Democrat physician.
“This bill, if passed, would require parents to obtain the signature of a “health care practitioner” for a personal beliefs/religious exemption. MDs, nurse practitioners, and physician’s assistants can sign. Naturopaths and chiropractors cannot. The signature will need to be obtained on a separate form provided by the Department of Public Health, which states that the health care practitioner has provided risk and benefit information to the parent.”
Wow. Do I see a compliment in there, hidden behind the academic insult? They knew better than to include us DCs.
Let’s see what actions are taken by any chiropractic organizations for this slight.
Gonna save you a lot of time here, as far as what it all means and what’s going to happen. I went through all of this last year with the good people of Washington State and Dawn Winkler, who organized opposition to the exact same bill up there. Read my April 2011 Newsletter for details of that fiasco.
As predicted, Washington was the guinea pig state. Running roughshod over the small amount of opposition, the bill became law in just a few short months. In a flash of “why didn’t we think of this before?” since it was a virtually painless shoo-in, several other states have introduced similar bills – AZ, VT, CA – chaired by the usual mouthpieces for Big Pharma in their respective states. Campaign coffers runneth over.
If California falls, the rest of the domino states are certain to fall in the next 2 years. Remember – you read it here. In Feb 2012.
Once the informed minority of California parents who don’t vaccinate get over the initial outrage of “how could they?” and “who do they think they are?”, etc., there will be some amount of grassroots petitions outside Whole Foods and facebook lists and emails lists, etc., registering opposition. Which I will certainly be a part of. And it might even get to the physical level of a small group assembling at some point at the committee meeting in Sacramento whose job it will be to ram this bill through.
But if that opposition is defused, deceived, and rudely ignored, the bill will pass.
Such a bill probably will have a much easier time being passed in California than in Washington State. Washington has a much higher percentage of informed parents who don’t vaccinate than California, which means a more informed public, and greater likelihood of opposition. But all that is irrelevant.
Grassroots democracy is all but gone in California. Just ask the people of Watsonville how effective their recent referendum against fluoridation was. Or any of a hundred other such stories exemplifying the force of corporate quid pro quo’s upon legislative decisions, which have significant economic consequences for vested interests. Political outcomes guaranteed by corporate stocking-stuffers…
Think you get the picture here without going all Alex Jones on you. It’s as old as Julius Caesar.
Now let’s remove the word vaccination from the whole discussion for a minute here. Let’s pretend this whole issue isn’t about vaccines at all, but rather about any other medical procedure.
OK so then tell me, what kind of political system, or medical system anywhere on earth would presume to make it a law that you must obtain permission to opt out of any medical procedure, which decisions are completely your choice in the first place? Permission not to get medicine? See what I’m getting at here?
What’s next – permission not to be euthanized? Or how about permission not to get chemotherapy?
The lines begin to blur, as more and more we see government as medicine and medicine as government.
Let us be very clear here. This new law is not about trying to inform parents about the value of vaccines. That’s the cover story – the front, the mask they’re using. No, it’s really about one thing and one thing only: making vaccine exemptions all but impossible in California.
So much for the internal dialogue and connecting the dots. But what does it really mean to the young parent who has just finished Vaccination Is Not Immunization or some other well documented literature, and who has decided that no vaccine will pollute the sacrosanct environment of their newborn’s blood?
Now it’s going to cost them money and time to make an appointment with a nurse “practitioner,” P.A., or MD to get ‘permission’ to protect their child. The health care practitioners are going to take this opportunity to educate this poor deluded individual, who is so recklessly putting the child at risk, etc. And those with weak resolve will fall back, roll over, go with the flow, and inject the hapless child.
It may well be that the above named ‘health care’ professionals have no intention of signing anything. If they can’t convince the parent to vaccinate, the parent may leave with an unsigned document, having just wasted their time and money. This is already happening in Washington state.
The CA bill may certainly be passed in the next few months. To follow the progress of the opposition and learn how to voice your opinion, your best resource is certainly Dawn Winkler’s site: hapihealth.org/
A CHIROPRACTIC ISSUE?
To the organizations that say they will take no action because this isn’t a chiropractic issue, they’re missing the mark twice over:
1. We are specifically excluded in the proposed Bill, in favor of those who are not even primary portal doctors. This is a brazen insult, both professionally and academically, as though we are not well enough educated to inform patients about fundamental health issues. Why was our basic science course load identical to that of medical students, by state and national regulation?
2. Who is more informed to counsel patients on a course of natural health that follows the holistic, vitalistic model? This has always been a matter of personal choice. Is that model now to be sidelined, gradually to be made illegal? Who else but DCs [and perhaps NDs] will step up here and speak for natural health care?
WHAT YOU CAN DO
So here are some practical suggestions on how to protect your child’s emerging immune system from this newest and most invidious of legal/corporate machinations, should it pass:
1. Call the sponsor and co-authors and tell them to withdraw their support of the bill:
Sponsor Assembly Member Richard Pan 916-319-2005
Co-Author Assembly Member Felipe Fuentes – 916-319-2039
Co-Author Senator Lois Wolk – 916-651-4005
senator.wolk@senate.ca.gov
2. Ask friends for an enlightened MD who signs the original medical exemptions. Rare, but they’re out there. These exemptions are still valid. This is real one-stop shopping – end of story.
3. For the philosophical exemption, don’t make an appointment with someone where you don’t know the outcome. If you do, likely there will be no outcome. Except the needle. They’re waiting there with the needle. Which is why DCs or NDs can’t sign.
4. Under no circumstances take the child to the appointment.
5. Be impatient. Don’t sit there politely and allow them to spew forth endless mantras. They are insulting you by your very presence. To them you are reckless and irresponsible, someone who is now required by law to listen to their formulaic recitation. Any parent who is ready to sign a vaccine exemption is very likely far more educated than someone who has never seriously taken a look at the vast medical literature that discusses problems with vaccines, no matter what the credentials.
6. The information contained in Vaccination Is Not Immunization may be helpful. They will say – oh that was only written by a chiropractor. Irrelevant – it might have been written by a shepherd. All the references in the book are mainstream medical. All the endorsements are from MDs. Even so, don’t go into a debate that lasts longer than 5 minutes. As soon as it seems that further discussion will be fruitless, you stand up and say:
“I didn’t come here for your opinion. I came here for your signature, and I paid the fee to get it. So please sign this and I’ll be on my way.”
Then stop talking and hand them the paper.
In fact, it might save time to open with that. Don’t lose your sense of constitutional outrage here.
In retrospect, the only thing that will ultimately matter is this: was the child left unmolested? Did you protect that emerging immune system?
All else is smoke and mirrors, and the Science of Lying. And one further incursion of government into areas where it has no business – morally, legally, or constitutionally.
