VERMONT Tells Vaccine Industry to SHOVE IT!

[link to www.ageofautism.com]

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Advocates for vaccine choice rights delivered a humiliating defeat to the vaccine industry in Vermont this week with the defeat of S 199, a bill that would have eliminated the right of Vermont parents to refuse mandatory vaccines to attend school for “philosophical” reasons. A coalition of citizens and health rights organizations stopped the very well funded effort by the vaccine industry in the first full-scale attempt to repeal a state’s philosophical exemption law. And this victory is bound to resonate in the statehouses were similar efforts are under way.

S 199 was introduced by State Senator Bill Mullin, the Vermont Chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Chairperson for Vermont. ALEC is lobbying organization that attempts to pass legislation in the states that reflect the interest of the large corporations that fund it , which includes all the giant drug and vaccine companies. In the Vermont House of Representatives the bill was introduced by George Till, MD, an OBGYN. Dr. Harry Chen, the Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health Services, pushed hard for the bill claiming that vaccination rates for young children were declining. Chen continued to make this claim throughout the debate even though the Center of Disease Control claims that vaccination rates for the DTP, MMR and Polio vaccines are at their highest levels ever recorded in Vermont and have gone up in children aged 3 ever year for the past three years. Chen’s argument features an odd logic: if people exercise their rights then that right must be taken away.

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