Should bioethicist be liable for promoting vaccine injury and death?

Should bioethicist be liable for promoting vaccine injury and death?

(NaturalNews) Bioethicist Art Caplan, Ph.D. of New York University has
argued that parents of unvaccinated children should be held liable for
illness or death allegedly caused by their unvaccinated children.[1]
This article rebuts Caplan's position, and explains why liability should
fall, if with anyone on this issue, on him, for the deliberate or
negligent use of his academic status and authority, supported by false
information, to promote a flawed vaccine policy resulting in avoidable
vaccine injury and death.

Dr. Caplan's primary premises, for
purposes of the parental liability question, are essentially that: 1)
Unvaccinated children put others at risk, 2) Unvaccinated children, as
such, cause actual harm to others, and 3) Non-vaccinating parents know
these first two premises, and should, therefore, be held liable for the
harm caused by their failure to get their children vaccinated.

I. The Real Ethical Issue

Dr.
Caplan's concern puts the cart before the horse. He has missed the
target, a far more fundamental ethical question underlying his position,
by mistakenly assuming that parents who refuse vaccines for their
children are necessarily negligent for doing so. But the matter is not
nearly so simple. Given the medically and legally established fact that
vaccines cause permanent disability and death,[2] no parent can be
reasonably categorized as "negligent" for choosing not to vaccinate
their child. The real ethical question, then, is not whether or not
parents should be held liable for their choice not to vaccinate, but
instead, whether or not parents should be required to place their
children at risk of vaccine injury
or death in the first place. This seriousness of this question is
underscored by the fact that the risk for any individual child is
indeterminable, and the presumed benefit to the vaccinated child or
others is only hypothetical--by definition, because vaccines
are a treatment given to a healthy person to protect against a future
hypothetical exposure to disease; and additionally because exposure to a
disease doesn't necessarily mean that the exposed child will become ill
or spread a disease. Put more generally, the more pertinent ethical
question here is:

Who, if anyone, should risk their life for
the sake of a hypothetical future benefit to others; and when and for
whom, if ever, should doing so be mandatory?

Assuming that
vaccines work (a flawed assumption, since 90-95% of infectious disease
decline preceded vaccines, some vaccines temporarily reversed
preexisting declines, and outbreaks routinely occur in highly vaccinated
populations[3]), this more fundamental ethical question concerning vaccine
injury and death is, at best with regard to Dr. C's parent liability
issue, one on which reasonable people could disagree. On that basis
alone, Dr. Caplan's parent liability issue crumbles to dust. But we've
only scratched the surface. Since 90% or more of vaccine adverse events
are never even reported, according to the CDC, FDA and AAPS--more than
99% according to former FDA Commissioner David Kessler[4], we have no
idea what the true scope of vaccine injury and death really is. Clearly,
then, there's no objective basis for mandating vaccines at all (let
alone holding anyone liable for not vaccinating), because no one can
tell you if they provide a net benefit to society at all, let alone if
they are safe for *your* child in particular. So again, for this reason, we don't even reach Dr. Caplan's parental liability concern.

Add
to this the documented corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and
government health agencies, and Dr. Caplan's issue just fades further
into oblivion. For example, in 2011, the non-profit corporation
Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs obtained information through the
Freedom of Information Act revealing that the CDC deliberately withheld
data showing that autism rates in Danish children dropped when mercury
was removed from vaccines, and then fraudulently promoted a study
falsely claiming that vaccines do not cause autism.[5] Also in 2011, Dr.
Poul Thorsen, a researcher hired by the CDC to organize studies
refuting the vaccine-autism connect, was indicted on 13 counts of fraud
with the CDC and 9 counts of money-laundering, bringing into question
all of his work with the CDC (and Dr. Thorson was one of the authors on
the fraudulent vaccine-autism study). In 2008, Dr. Marcia Angell of
Harvard Medical School, after serving as editor of the New England
Journal of Medicine for two decades, announced: "It is simply no longer
possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or
to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical
guidelines."[6] Finally, In 2012 and 2009, Glaxo and Pfiser got $billion
*criminal* fines respectively; criminal and civil fines in the $100's
of millions are common in the pharmaceutical industry. So, the vaccine
controversy cannot be reduced to the simplistic parental liability issue
Dr. Caplan asserts. Life and quality of life should never be bargained
away via this utilitarian formula: "Risk your life now so that someone
else *may* benefit in the future," but that's exactly what we are doing
with vaccine mandates--and to innocent newborns and other children. In
the real world, where fake facts are invented and real facts suppressed
to serve private and political agendas, and where this is documented in
both industry and government, our governments should never be permitted
to impose a life-threatening therapy on anyone. (I do not mean to
suggest that everyone in industry and government is corrupt; quite the
contrary, I believe very few people are, they just happen to be
concentrated in key decision-making positions.)

Look - there's no
100% safe option. Life is, by definition, unpredictable. Both vaccines
and infectious diseases can injure and kill. But in the absence of
adequate data to enable a credible comparison, Dr. Caplan lacks a
legitimate basis for raising the question about parental liability
altogether. But even if vaccines were proven to provide a net benefit,
the ethical question about whether or not any given parent should be
required to risk sacrificing their child for the benefit of the
community remains valid. Many of us would, given the opportunity and
complete information, would opt to take reasonable steps to protect
others, and those steps could include vaccinating. That's fine, if it's
an informed choice. But just as clearly, others would refuse. Both are
ethically viable responses.

The only civilized response to the
broader vaccination question, given the reality of vaccine injury and
death, and the absence of data on that as well, is to allow all parents
to make informed choices based on what they believe is best for their
child. If government is to be involved at all outside of emergencies, it
should conduct independent research to bring further clarity to the
issue. For example, a current bill pending before Congress now would
require a study comparing autism rates in vaccinated and non-vaccinated
populations.[7] The only reason such research hasn't occurred to date
is, of course, is the risk it poses to the $ billions in pharmaceutical
profits from vaccines (predicted to increase by 12% annually for the
next several years [8]), and the further and additional erosion of
pharmaceutical profits that would come from the precipitous drop in
childhood chronic diseases as vaccination rates plummeted once the
findings in such studies were publicly released. But even if such data
ultimately favored vaccines, it would still not justify mandating that
every child risk his or her life for a presumed benefit to others,
especially when the individual risk is indeterminable and the benefits
hypothetical. Finally, Dr. Caplan's suggestion of parental liability
looks absurd when you consider the documented alternatives to
immunization that are more effective, a fraction of the cost of
vaccines, and that don't pose a risk of disability or death. [9] Why
should anyone ever be penalized for doing something that is better than
vaccines, in place of vaccines? The answer is that the alternatives are
not profitable for the pharmaceutical industry, and therefore, awareness
of them is actively suppressed; and that currently, these are not legal
alternatives to mandatory vaccines.

II. Legal Contradictions

Next,
there are fundamental legal problems with Dr. Caplan's position. First,
the extent to which non-vaccinating parents are exercising legal
exemptions (which likely comprises the vast majority of non-vaccinating
parents), Dr. Caplan isn't qualified to address the matter
authoritatively, as this is a legal concern. But it doesn't take an
attorney to see that holding someone liable for exercising a legal right
makes no sense. By implication, then, Dr. Caplan is suggesting that we
repeal all non-medical vaccine exemptions. But what does it mean,
legally, that 48 states and all U.S. territories and federal
jurisdictions have opted to provide philosophical and/or religious
exemptions? Legislatures are presumed to have considered whether or not
the exercise of an exemption would pose a significant health risk.
Indeed, they are ethically obligated to engage in such investigations,
and given the competing pharmaceutical interests, you can be sure that
they did. If, in so doing, our legislatures had determined that the
exercise of an exemption would cause any significant health risk, they
would not have enacted the exemptions in the first place, since the only
Constitutionally required exemptions are medical exemptions.[10]
Accordingly, the enactment of a statute providing a vaccine exemption
carries with it a legal presumption that the exercise of the exemption
does not pose a significant health risk, as a matter of law. Dr. Caplan
not only misses the obvious - that one can't be held liable for
complying with the law in the exercise of a vaccine exemption - he
stands apart from and opposed 48 state legislatures whose non-medical
exemptions do not pose a significant health risk to anyone, as a matter
of law - law that is based on these legislatures' own scientific
investigations. Given that all U.S. legislatures share Dr. Caplan's
pro-vaccine stance (all have enacted vaccine mandates), this puts Dr.
Caplan at odds with an overwhelming percentage of his pro-vaccine
allies.

III. False (or Fraudulent?) Support

Finally, Dr. Caplan bases his position on false and misleading information. In particular, Dr. Caplan recently asserted that:

1)
"Vaccines are 92 - 95% effective."However, the CDC says that vaccines
are 85 - 95% effective, and that the majority of disease outbreaks occur
in vaccinated children.[11] The flu vaccine, which Dr. Caplan also
discussed but did not distinguish from other vaccines with regard to
efficacy, is only 60% effective according to a recent Lancet study, and
even that figure has been refuted by medical experts and peer-reviewed
medical studies.[12] Even the CDC admitted, last year, that vaccine
exemptions were not responsible for recent pertussis outbreaks.[13]2)
"Newborns have no immunity."This is misleading. Historically, mothers
passed protective antibodies to their infants through breast milk that
these mothers acquired from their own childhood illnesses. In more
modern times, mothers lack natural antibodies to pass on to their
infants due to their having been vaccinated as children (since vaccine
immunity, unlike natural immunity, is only temporary). So, if newborns
are vulnerable, we have vaccines to thank for that. But today's infants
lack of immunity doesn't mean that these divine little beings should be
required to risk injury or death from a vaccine. There are other more
effective, safer, and less costly ways of dealing with infectious
disease concerns.

3) "We must have a 90% vaccination rate to protect the community (presumably per the widely accepted 'herd immunity' theory)."
Based
on the CDC's assertions about vaccine efficacy, you could have 100%
vaccination coverage, something Dr. Caplan admits is not realistic, and
still not achieve the immunity level required for herd immunity with at
least some vaccines (it is clearly impossible to achieve herd immunity
with the flu vaccine). But if you examine the medical literature over
time, you see that the immunization level required to achieve herd
immunity has been a moving target. The number has continually gone up
over recent decades as outbreaks have occurred in increasingly more
vaccinated populations. The only thing driving a possible consensus on
vaccination rates needed for herd immunity, then, is industry profits;
the higher the immunization rate needed for herd immunity, the more
pressure there is to vaccinate more people. However, the truth is, no
one knows what immunization rate, if any, will ever impart true "herd"
immunity, as the entire theory has been repeatedly called into question
if not outright disproven. There have been ongoing documented outbreaks
in highly vaccinated groups. The CDC even documented a measles outbreak
in a 100% vaccinated population. A meta study looking at multiple
studies documenting outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations concluded
that the higher the immunization rate for measles, the more measles
becomes a disease of vaccinated populations.[14] Herd immunity is a
flawed, disproven theory perpetuated for the sole purpose of supporting a
highly profitable vaccine industry. Mainstream medicine clings to the
failed theory because is provides the one explanation as to why, with
vaccines, you don't get to decide what goes into your body - why *you*
have to get vaccinated to protect *others*--and *they* to protect *you*
too, of course. Herd immunity may be a real phenomenon with natural
infectious disease, but it is completely unreliable with vaccines.

IV. Summary and Conclusion

While
my profound disagreement with Dr. Caplan is clear, I do not genuinely
mean to suggest that he should be liable for it - he is entitled to his
opinion just like anyone else. But in law, we have a principle, "knew or
should have known," that sometimes holds people accountable for what
they reasonably should have known, even if they didn't actually know it.
Ignorance is not always an acceptable excuse. I don't know if Dr.
Caplan actually believes parents should be liable or not. I do believe,
however, that anyone claiming to be an authority on a matter has an
ethical responsibility to be adequately informed about their topic when
speaking publicly about it. It is unethical to use one's power and
authority who to promote a private or personal agenda under the guise of
protecting the public. For an ethicist, of all people, to raise an
ethical question about parental liability for non-vaccinating parents
without bothering to mention that vaccines carry a risk of injury and
death is at best professionally negligent. As to non-vaccinating
parents, they should never be sanctioned for making an informed choice
to protect their children from a risk of vaccine injury and death,
especially when the political system from which vaccine mandates arise
is rife with corruption, where vaccine policy is designed first and
foremost to serve and support a fast-growing multi-billion dollar
vaccine industry. Given this reality, there should never have been
imposed on anyone a vaccine mandate at all.

source:-
http://www.naturalnews.com/040620_vaccine_injury_bioethics_vaccinations.html