During an interview on Dr Phil, HHS Secretary RFK was asked by an audience member his advice on vaccine safety. His response was, “We live in a democracy and part of the responsibility of being a parent is to do your own research.
You research the baby stroller, you research the foods that they’re getting, and you need to research the medicines that they are taking as well.”
Great quote and it’s certainly an idea I agree with but here’s my question for the Secretary, exactly how are we supposed to do that. Virtually every mechanism consumers use to research every other product on the market is totally absent when it comes to vaccines.
Comparison Research
For instance, if I want to research a stroller, it’s a fairly straightforward process. I can type “stroller comparisons” into the magic Google machine and have my pick of hundreds of sites that will walk me through several stroller features, how they are rated for safety, price, etc. I can in about an hour of research have a fairly good view into the world of strollers and make a decision.
Where is that for vaccines? Are there multiple types of MMR vaccines? (Just Googled this and found out there are including one that also vaccinates against chickenpox)
How about lot numbers? Are certain lot numbers more dangerous than others? (Again in researching this, I found lot numbers of MMR vaccines that caused an outbreak of Mumps. How many cases happened before they figured that out?)
There is no easily accessible and understandable way to compare vaccines and even if there where, what difference would it make?
If I can’t find a stroller that works for me, I’ll just carry my kid. If I can’t find a vaccine that works for me, then what? I can’t enroll my kids in school without exemptions and some pediatricians won’t see my kids. How do I as a parent navigate this problem?
Safety Research
If I buy a stroller and that stroller has a higher percentage of injuries than what is normal for a stroller, there is a fairly standardized process for what follows. The parents file lawsuits against the company and in response to that, the company generally issues a recall order for the stroller.
We had a baby swing that had a recall and all I had to do was send them a picture of the swing with the straps that held it up cut so it was unusable and they sent me a new swing. The whole process was quick and painless.
Do you know why companies are so responsive to customer complaints and quick to solve problems that come up? Because they are on the hook for liability for any problems their products cause.
They know they are putting the profits and possibly the future of their companies at risk if they don’t solve problems quickly. They have entire departments at these companies dedicated to putting out the safest products they possibly can.
But since the 80’s, Big Pharma has almost total liability protections for all their vaccine products. In fact. our government has a vaccine court where you can complain about a vaccine and if you can prove you were injured by a vaccine (Only about a third of complainants win) your payout comes courtesy of the American taxpayer, not the pharmaceutical company.
If our car companies had the same liability protections as Big Pharma, we would all still be driving around in Ford Pintos that explode into fireballs when you rear-end them.
In short, there is almost no way to hold pharmaceutical companies liable for putting defective products out to market so there is no incentive to constantly improve their products.
What About the Future?
The third way that researching strollers and vaccines are different is the chances of putting your kid in the wrong stroller as a baby and that causing health issues 20 years down the road for the kid is virtually non-existent.
I have no doubt that giving your kid an MMR vaccine will reduce the chances of your kid getting measles but will it increase the chances they get autism, asthma, or autoimmune disease? I have no idea. Until RFK showed up, I don’t think anyone was even looking into the issue.
We do know that we are living through an absolutely unprecedented explosion in long-term chronic disease. What is causing that? While my personal belief is that the biggest problem is in our food supply, could vaccines be causing part of the problem?
Does our food have such a terrible impact on us because our immune systems have already been weakened by the dozens of vaccines we give our children? I don’t know but I sure am happy that someone is looking in to the problem.
