Barbara Loe Fisher has been a diligent advocate for providing parents with the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding the usage of vaccinations for their children. Her lifetime work has paved the way to bring discussion to the safety and efficacy of so many chemicals that have become mainstream in today's pediatric population. With many parents becoming concerned about the possible safety issues for their children, this interview provides resources to assist them in determining what is right for their family.
Barbara, you are the co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a nonprofit charity. How did your personal experience with vaccinating your own children lead you to spend your life advocating for parents and children's rights? I became a vaccine safety and informed consent advocate after my 2-and-a-half-year-old son, Chris, was injured by DPT vaccine in 1980. Chris was a very healthy, exceptionally bright baby. All that changed after he suffered a brain inflammation within hours of his fourth DPT shot, and was left with multiple learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder. He had to stay in a special-education classroom throughout elementary, middle and high school.
My mom and grandmother were nurses. I had been a writer at a teaching hospital after I graduated from college and before I became a mom. I thought I was well-educated about medical issues, but in the 1970s and early '80s, nobody was talking about the fact that vaccines could damage the brain or cause death. It was shocking to find out that the old, crude, whole-cell pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine in DPT shots was still on the market and required for children to attend school.
After watching the Emmy award-winning documentary, "DPT: Vaccine Roulette," in the spring of 1982, I knew there was something wrong with a public health policy that legally required children to be injected with a toxic vaccine while pediatricians kept mothers in the dark about the vaccine's risks. I joined with other parents of DPT vaccine-injured children in the Washington, D.C., area that year and co-founded the nonprofit organization known today as the National Vaccine Information Center (www.nvic.org). In 1985, medical historian Harris Coulter and I co-authored the book DPT: A Shot in the Dark, which was the first major critique of the U.S. mass vaccination system.
What is NVIC's mission? The mission of the NVIC is to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and protect the informed-consent ethic. We are not doctors and do not advise anyone to use vaccines or not to use vaccines. Our mission is to empower people with accurate, well-referenced information so they can take responsibility for and defend the vaccine choices they make for themselves and their children.
You have a very unique relationship with the chiropractic profession. Can you share how chiropractic has been an integral part of the history of NVIC? I was introduced to the world of chiropractic by ICPA [International Chiropractic Pediatric Association] founder Larry Webster at a moment in NVIC's history when we were dispirited, broke and about to close the organization. It was Dr. Larry and Dr. Arno Bernier, and Mike and Pat McLean, who encouraged me to give a presentation about vaccine risks to about 200 chiropractors attending an ICPA conference in Boston in 1993. The rest is history.
I will never forget that doctors of chiropractic reached out in 1993 with donations and moral support, and saved the organized vaccine safety and informed-consent movement in America. The steadfast support and encouragement NVIC has received from the chiropractic community for 20 years has helped make it possible for our small charity to become a strong and effective voice for vaccine choice today.
I know you've represented the voice of parents and children in Congress and in the media, supporting free choice or exemption options, the opposite side from Big Pharma. How aggressive have they come against you as a result? Over the past three decades, we have been successful in raising public awareness about the connection between mandated use of so many vaccines in childhood and the growing numbers of chronically ill and disabled children filling doctors' offices and special-ed classrooms across the country. The more successful we have become, the more intense and frequent the public attacks have been on NVIC and me by doctors and journalists promoting "no exceptions" vaccine mandates, and by Pharma-funded medical trade groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics.
There is no question that pediatricians are feeling the heat because more parents are refusing to buy the myth that vaccines are risk free and that without using so many of them, babies will not stay healthy.
Being attacked publicly for doing what you know is the right thing to do is not easy, but I have come to view those personal attacks as a measure of our success.
Could you share with the readers of this article why you feel that informed consent is so important for parents making decisions for their children? Parents have the legal and moral responsibility to provide and care for a child until they are old enough to care for themselves. Making well-informed health care decisions for a minor child is part of fulfilling that parental responsibility.
Informed consent means you have the human right to be fully informed about the benefits and risks of a medical intervention, including a pharmaceutical product, and [are] allowed to make a voluntary choice about whether or not to accept the risk for yourself or your minor child. All parents should have the legal right to exercise voluntary, informed consent to vaccination for their children without suffering societal sanctions for exercising that right, especially when vaccine manufacturers and doctors giving vaccines in America are protected from civil liability when vaccines cause a child's brain injury or death.
For the parent visiting NVIC.org for the first time, what are the resources that you have available? Our website is the oldest and largest consumer-operated website featuring information on vaccination on the web. We offer well-researched articles, commentaries and videos including:
Speaking of the NVIC Advocacy Portal, it was launched online in 2010. Can you explain the purpose of the portal and why is it beneficial to get involved? The free, online NVIC Advocacy Portal was created to help empower residents in every state to become effective vaccine choice advocates. Registered users of the portal are sent e-mail notices when legislation is moving in their state that either threatens or expands vaccine exemptions. Then, with one click on the computer or smartphone, users are put in touch with their own state legislators so they can take action.
NVIC worked with parents and chiropractors in Vermont and California last year to preserve personal-belief vaccine exemptions in those states. Now we need help in Oregon, Arizona and other states to fight the powerful Pharma-medical trade / public health lobby determined to eliminate all nonmedical vaccine exemptions in America. Every chiropractor and chiropractic patient should become a user of the NVIC Advocacy Portal if they want to help save vaccine choices under attack right now in many states.
During the past two years, NVIC has joined with Dr. Joseph Mercola and Mercola.com in a "Health Liberty" partnership. Beyond vaccine issues, what is the new initiative about? Dr. Joseph Mercola has been a pioneer in advocating that a more natural, holistic approach to maintaining health is one that will prevent illness and improve the quality of life. In 2008, Dr. Mercola reached out and offered to help support NVIC's mission.
In 2011, we joined with several other nonprofit advocacy organizations in a "Health Liberty" alliance sponsored by Mercola.com to increase public awareness about the right to know and freedom to choose the kind of food we eat, the water we drink, the dental amalgams we get and the vaccines we use. A high-profile Health Liberty initiative last year was the ballot referendum effort in California to require labeling of GMO foods.
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