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Polis and Reis at home with their then-9-week-old son, CJ, in 2011. Photo credit: Kathyrn Scott Oslert/The Denver Post via Getty Images.
Governor Polis, I'm afraid you have not fully comprehended Colorado's vaccine exemption bill and you believe it to be a moderate compromise. That couldn't be further from the truth. Let me explain why
Dear Governor Polis,
In March I breathed a sigh of relief when you gave a statement expressing your concern that "restrictive vaccine exemption laws would backfire," interfering with public confidence in the vaccination program. Yet, the fake grassroots organization behind Representative Kyle Mullica's House Bill 1312 felt confident enough in your support to file one of the worst vaccine bills America has ever seen. This causes me to think you have not fully comprehended this bill and believe it to be a moderate compromise because it doesn't seek to remove vaccine exemptions. That couldn't be further from the truth.
House Bill 1312 is an attempt at a total government takeover of personal, religious, and medical beliefs. It would destroy medical freedom and medical privacy. It would bring about the death of doctor-patient relationship in Colorado. It would create seamless approval to mandate every single vaccine recommended by federal agencies that the state does not recommend, in addition to all other vaccines the state is later influenced to recommend, without a hearing or public input. Once this bill is signed into law, we are guaranteed they will come back to remove the personal and religious exemptions in Colorado.
On Monday night nearly 700 people stayed at the Capitol to make their voices heard, 95% of them in opposition to this bill. This is only the beginning of the backfire you were afraid of. It will get worse from here.
HB-1312 is taking away the final authority of parents to submit their exemptions to schools and hands that authority directly to the health department. The same parents who put years of vaccine research on display in 12 hours of testimony would be forced to sit through a re-education seminar on the benefits of vaccination. They will be forced to sign a form against their beliefs, stating that they are endangering their child, and the health of all children around them. A doctor who has a personal relationship with a medically-exempted child would no longer have the authority to write an exemption based on previous vaccine reactions, autoimmune disease, family history, or genetic tests. The final say on medical exemptions would rest with a public health officer who has never met, and will never examine, the child applying for exemption.
In 2014 the Colorado Legislature rejected the hijacking of vaccine exemptions, yet here we are again five years later, when there has not been any health emergency in Colorado in that time.
Colorado simply does not have low vaccination rates. 94.35% of kindergarteners are fully vaccinated with the DTaP vaccine, which is of no comfort considering the shocking announcements from our government agencies about the pertussis vaccine in 2013. The CDC revealed that the pertussis bacteria has mutated and is not a match for the vaccine the majority of the time, and that vaccinated children seem to be "primed" to contract the mutated strain of pertussis far more than unvaccinated children. The FDA announced that the pertussis vaccine could be symptom-reducing in vaccinated people but that it cannot stop transmission of an infection. The CDC states that unvaccinated children are not the driving force behind pertussis outbreaks.
94.53% of Colorado kindergartners have received two doses of the MMR vaccine, which, again, is not a great comfort considering that 5% of MMR recipients break out with a measles rash that is indistinguishable from the measles, and 39% of all measles cases in the US in 2015 were traced back to the vaccine-strain of measles.
Vaccines are not perfect and it is time we are honest about that.
Every parent who was in that hearing room wants to do what is best by their child, but the needs of the most medically fragile among us do not supersede the rights of parents to make medical decisions for the children they know best. We heard one mother who supports this extreme bill testify that her child has an autoimmune kidney disorder that prevents her from receiving a second MMR vaccine. While her physician is currently within his rights to exempt this child from vaccination, this mother didn't realize her daughter's autoimmune condition is not a contraindication to the MMR vaccine under the CDC's rules, and she is testifying in favor of a bill that would remove her daughter's medical exemption.
Furthermore, the perfect storm of unlikely circumstances that would need to occur in order for an unvaccinated child to be exposed to measles, become infected, and then expose an immunocompromised child who also becomes infected is incalculable. In fact, there is no documented incidence of this ever happening-it would have been headline news if it did. We are allowing this urban myth to shape school acceptance policies in America, to the educational detriment of children.
Vaccination is an issue that belongs solely with parents and their child's physician. Lobbyists, pharmaceutical companies, and medical advocacy groups should have no voice in this matter. But that is not what we're seeing with HB-1312.
The Colorado Medical Society (CMS) is a non-profit physicians' advocacy group. CMS partners with the American Medical Association (AMA) to enact laws that benefit its member interests. The AMA happens to share lobbyists with Eli Lilly, Merck, and Pfizer, and its foundation lists 10 pharmaceutical company donors, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer, and Sanofi, as "Corporate Roundtable Members." The relationship between CMS, the AMA, and the pharmaceutical industry is a cozy one.
CMS sank $120,000 into the 2018 Colorado elections. The largest recipient of CMS money was the HB-1312 sponsor, Kyle Mullica. His campaign received a $9,250 injection from CMS, which was more than 7% of all funds he raised. It was $3,000 more than the next-largest CMS recipient, and $4,000 more than the third-place CMS recipient. Coincidentally, number 17 on that list is Chairwoman Lontine, who oversaw HB-1312's hearing, and who relied on CMS money in her initial campaign.
Governor Polis, our FDA and CDC have done zero studies on the impact of injecting aluminum into infants. None. Until that day comes, public health departments should not intervene in the doctor-patient relationship and a doctor's professional opinion on a child's susceptibility to neurological and immune disorder from injecting aluminum.
We need to get honest about the health of our herd. 1 in 400 children now has Type 1 diabetes. 1 in 166 has epilepsy. 1 in 40 has a potentially deadly peanut allergy. 1 in 25 boys is on the autism spectrum. 1 in 12 kids has asthma. Our "herd" is the sickest it's ever been in the history of America and that does not reflect well on the state of our public health program.
Late into the evening on Monday night one father summed it up best when he said to the committee, "As you've seen tonight, the ‘vaccine-hesitant' group is the very last group that needs further education about vaccines."
Thank you for reading, Governor. Please speak out in opposition to HB-1312 now.
Thank you,
Robyn Charron
Stapleton, Denver
Hyperlinks
Colorado vaccination rates
https://www.cohealthdata.dphe.state.co.us/Data/Details/21
The pertussis vaccine has mutated: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/4/18-0812_article
Vaccinating with pertussis primes children for infection: https://academic.oup.com/jpids/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jpids/piz005/5359449
The pertussis vaccine cannot stop transmission: https://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170111161009/http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm376937.htm
CDC states unvaccinated are not the driving force behind pertussis outbreaks: https://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/about/faqs.html
39% of measles in 2015 was vaccine strain: https://jcm.asm.org/content/55/3/735
CDC vaccine contraindications list: http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p3072a.pdf
The AMA shares lobbyists with Big Pharma: http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/200906110008
AMA Foundation donors: https://amafoundation.org/donors/corporate-donors/
Colorado Medical Society donations: https://www.followthemoney.org/show-me?d-eid=6346#[{1|gro=y,c-t-id
Kyle Mullica fundraising: https://www.followthemoney.org/entity-details?eid=44154746&default=candidate
Contact RFK Jr. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/about-us/contact/
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