Want a NOOK? Explore Now
For the first time in paperback, the essential book on the explosive vaccine controversy.
Public health officials state that vaccines are safe and effective, but the truth is far more complicated. Vaccination is a serious medical intervention that always carries the potential to injure and cause death as well as to prevent disease. Coercive vaccination policies deprive people of free and informed consent—the hallmark of ethical medicine. Americans are increasingly concerned about vaccine safety and the right to make individual, informed choices together with their healthcare practitioners. Vaccine Epidemic focuses on the searing debate surrounding individual and parental vaccination choice in the United States.
Habakus, Holland, and Rosenberg edit and introduce a diverse array of interrelated topics concerning the explosive vaccine controversy, including the ethics of vaccination mandates, corrupting conflicts of interest in the national vaccine program, and personal narratives of parents, children, and soldiers who have suffered vaccine injury.
Newly updated with additional chapters focusing on institutional scientific misconduct, mandates for healthcare workers, concerns about HPV vaccine development, and the story behind the Supreme Court’s recent vaccine decision, Vaccine Epidemic remains the essential handbook for the vaccination choice movement and required reading for all people contemplating vaccination for themselves and their children.
nmb751
Posted February 12, 2011
Great Read, smart, inciteful and full of important information. A book that will stand the test of time.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Ada56
Posted February 10, 2011
The compilation of all twenty six chapters is what makes VACCINE EPIDEMIC an eloquent literary work. Each chapter presents a thorough view of the current vaccination protocol from a unique lens. Regardless of which lens one looks through,it points to a distorted picture in need of adjustment. The prelude to Part II, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," by Ursula K. Le Guin, is the icing on the cake- universal clarity. This short story will resonate in the minds and hearts of all the readers, regardless of background- the social injustice of our vaccination protocol. It is an effective illumination of a public policy in which neither, "the ends justify the means," nor "the means justify the ends." In light of history, science, law, and ethics today, this urgent call mandating a shift in vaccination paradigm can no longer be ignored. Le Guin's short narrative parallels George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, cleverly illustrating the fallacy of a superficially Utopian state, doomed to failure, by virtue of undermining and violating individual human rights. For the sake of human dignity and democratic principles, I urge ALL to read VACCINE EPIDEMIC.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.KnowYourRights
Posted June 16, 2011
I didn't have this book when my babies were born. So my consent was not informed. Is yours?
Yes, vaccines protect against disease. They have a place in the toolkit, and in the discussion between doctor and patient.
But government has meddled so much, it has taken a useful medical intervention, and made it incredibly dangerous:
- Govt mandates the product for virtually all children. "No shots no school."
- You can't sue pharma and doctors if you're harmed. "All profits, no liability."
- Govt removed the most important protection we have. "No legal duty to make safer vaccines."
- Govt drives a wedge between physician and patient. "One size fits all medicine."
Facts:
- Every vaccine you get carries with it the risk of severe harm or death
- There's no due process for the families of people who are harmed and die
- The science is incredibly inadequate and doesn't support current policy
- Govt does no safety testing. It relies on vaccine makers to do it.
- Vaccine injuries/deaths are hugely underreported because it's little understood (and optional!)
- International human rights norms uphold free and informed consent to all medical interventions
- Industry will not do what it is not forced to do
- If you don't fully vaccinate your children, you could lose them
- Govt says vaccines are important but allows industry to take away vaccine options (why was Merck allowed to stop making separate meales, mumps, and rubella vaccines)?
Should children have the right to contract chickenpox and measles in early childhood when the vast majority recover without incident, so they can have lifelong immunity? As adults, these diseases become deadly. Vaccine immunity comes at a price, and its protection is neither guaranteed nor lifelong. Does govt have the right to force people to receive vaccine boosters throughout life?
Throughout history, we've punished scientists and others who dare to challenge conventional wisdom. Google Semmelweis and learn there's a name for this: the "Semmelweis Reflex."
It took the US govt over 30 years to admit cigarettes cause lung cancer and to do something about it. Thalidomide was on the market for 6 years. Vioxx for 5 years. Since you can't sue for vaccine injury, this is going to take a very, very long time to sort through.
There's no conspiracy. Only good intentions and unintended consequences, with a liberal helping of good old American greed.
Pro? Anti? People will always disagree. But the crux is: who gets to decide?
Suspend judgment for a moment to read the first ten pages. Even if you vaccinate fully, the right to vaccination choice is still a human right. If a right is taken away that you didn't know you had, is it still a violation?
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.jfrancis
Posted February 12, 2011
Anyone who would take medical advice from a lawyer and someone with a master's degree needs to have a vaccine-preventable illness befall him or her. That would be both ironic and an prime example of natural selection in action. :)
2 out of 13 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted March 26, 2012
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted September 18, 2012
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted March 1, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
For the first time in paperback, the essential book on the explosive vaccine controversy.
Public health officials state that vaccines are safe and effective, but the truth is far more complicated. Vaccination is a serious medical intervention that always carries the potential to injure and cause death as well as to prevent disease. Coercive vaccination policies deprive people of free and informed consent—the hallmark of ethical medicine. Americans are increasingly concerned ...