René Guiart, La lettre de la tribu.

College Professors Suppressing 1st Amendment Rights RE Vaccine Safety

Update 9:15pm: source : Age of autism

An autism dad with a very severely affected son, Joe Harris from Fort Worth, told me this evening that he called James Hodge today and said, "You don't believe vaccines cause autism? Can you talk to me about this?"

Hodge replied, "I'm not speaking to anyone about autism and vaccines." Then he hung up.

Why is it that a professional making this kind of public statement is unwilling to defend it?

By Anne Dachel

THE U. OF PITTSBURGH et al. SHOULD BE ASHAMED.

This is crazy ...a law professor and medical school professor join forces to call for end to any discussion of a link between vaccines and autism. CENSORSHIP. RETALIATION.

What other product or subject or ideology would ever treated like this??????????? Seriously, I want to know.

We live in a society where drugs are sold to us everyday TV along with their life-threatening/severe side effects.

How about ads that begin, "If your or a loved one took the drug XXX and suffered XXXX, XXXX, XXXXX, XXXXX, you may be entitled to compensation....."

There are recognized risks, contradictions, challenges out there when we talk about anything else.....

When it comes to vaccines we throw these concepts out the window and don't dare apply the same scrutiny.

Not only are state legislators (with huge money ties to the drug industry) working overtime to remove parental rights to choose when it comes to vaccinating children, but now there is a call for the outright of censoring anyone discussing the connection between vaccines and autism, and punishment for those who do.

Here are two prominent educators in Arizona advocating for the end of free speech when the subject is vaccine safety.

James Hodge is a law school professor at Arizona State University. Hodge teaches public health law and ethics. His coauthor, Doug Campos-Outcalt, is a physician and professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.

Jurist.org: Nov 17, 2015, Legally Limiting Lies About Vaccines (This publication is supported by the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.)

Highlights of the piece included a blanket denial of any link between vaccines and autism.

Comprehensive reviews of vaccine safety conducted by CDC, WHO, the Institute of Medicine, and others overwhelmingly support their effectiveness based on the current distribution schedule. These assessments also disprove completely claims of vaccine-linked autism. Prior "research" suggesting a link in the medical journal, The Lancet, has been debunked entirely and retracted from its original publication. . . .

. . .and a list of possible offenders and their punishment, including health officials, politicians, and doctors.

Shutting Down Messengers of Vaccine Lies?. . .

Yet free speech has its limits, particularly when significant public health interests are at stake. In many instances legal ramifications, penalties or liabilities may stymie or derail specific messages. For example, if governmental health officials publicize false statements linking child vaccines and autism, they could lawfully be censored or fired from their positions. They have no constitutional right to spread false statements antithetical to the mission of their agency or office.

Politicians or others who incorrectly suggest that a specific pharmaceutical company's vaccines are known to cause autism could be sued for defaming the company. . . .

Doctors or other health providers who counsel parents to avoid child vaccines because of risks of autism could face potential licensure sanctions and malpractice claims should a patient suffer harm as a result. . . . .

James Hodge and Doug Campos-Outcalt didn't give us a scholarly piece here. They didn't even try. Theirs was just another chorus of "studies show no link." Hodge and Campos-Outcalt retreated to the worn-out promise that all the science is in. Instead of real scholarship where the writers seriously explored the issues being raised by those questioning vaccines, these two cited WHO, CDC, and IOM--three groups known to be under the power and influence of the vaccine makers.

"Comprehensive reviews of vaccine safety. . . disprove completely" a link between vaccines and autism. It's hard to think of a more total denial. It's clear that vaccine safety was never the issue here. There was no possibility that those rare officials, politicians and doctors who speak out might have a case. They only need to be silenced.

Hodge and Campos-Outcalt have willingly closed their eyes to what many people know: the evidence is mounting and nothing is going to make it go away. Their only recourse is try and kill the message.

Serious questions need to be answered by Hodge and Campos-Outcalt and anyone else writing like this.

How can you cite studies as proof of vaccine safety when they each come with suspicious connections to vaccine industry?

How can you ignore the volumes of independent science that show our unchecked vaccine schedule isn't safe?

Why should we trust what the CDC says when they literally have oversight over themselves?

What kind of duplicity is going on when federal agencies vouch for the safety of vaccines while an obscure federal court pays off vaccine injuries that include autism and then keeps the decisions secret?

Why should readers believe you when a leading scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has publicly stated that his agency covered up evidence of vaccine damage involving autism?

Crushing dissent with calls for censorship will never work. The truth is staring us in the face. Phony pharma-funded science can't stand up to independent, legitimate research. The most glaring hole in the argument presented by Hodge and Campos-Outcalt is their failure to show us the real proof that there is no link. That can only come from a simple comparison study of fully-vaccinated and never-vaccinated kids. If never-vaccinated children have just as much autism as fully-vaccinated ones, we'd all be convinced. The parents who "avoid timely immunization of their children" that Hodge and Campos-Outcalt complained about here have created a study group that mainstream medicine refuses to look at.

Removing parental choice and freedom of speech seem to be all that's left to those whose purpose is to shove a one-size-fits-every-child vaccine schedule on America with no liability for those doing it. The University of Pittsburgh, Arizona State University, and the University of Arizona Medical School should all be ashamed.

This article has no comment section. However this was on the bottom.

This article was prepared for publication by Marisa Rodrigues, an Assistant Editor for JURIST Commentary. Please direct any questions or comments to her at commentary@jurist.org

Age of Autism readers with comments should be sure to pass them along to Marisa Rodrigues.

Footnote:

Nov 18, 2015, the Daily Campus, the student newspaper at the University of Connecticut published an opinion piece entitled, Anti-intellectualism & the deceit of the modern politician, by staff columnist Jesseba Fernando

Our country has seen an environment of increasing anti-intellectualism, in which ignorance influences society. This anti-intellectualism weakens the country when the tendency to dismiss rational thinking is exploited by politicians, specifically the political right, in order to manipulate people.

The last time the media brought up the anti-intellectualism movement in America came in 2014, and the time before that was 2012. These were both major election years. This is no coincidence, seeing as our politicians are, at least ostensibly, woefully misinformed in a variety of areas and often proudly supporting their opinions, despite the objection of intellectuals and experts. . . .

One of our prominent GOP presidential candidates, Donald Trump, used the first Republican debate to describe autism as an epidemic and to immediately link it to the use of vaccines according to the Slate. . . .

Fernando feels Trump is wrong about both the increase in autism and link to vaccines. "Vaccines have yet to be proven to be the cause of autism." And as far as autism being an epidemic, that 's not really happening. "Our understanding of the disability has grown and with it our ability to identify it. This is true of other diseases and disabilities as you can see an increase of diagnosis in the past few years for those as well, unless we are currently experiencing an epidemic of every known disease and disability. . . . "

Fernando accused Trump of rejecting "critical thinking" and of glorifying "emotional and irrational feelings and motives."

Op-ed pieces from student newspapers on our college campuses promoting the safety of vaccines, without rational inquiry are quite common. What scares me most is the fact that this is where tomorrow's journalists are learning their craft. Those who refuse to accept the heavily conflicted pronouncements from the agencies and organizations with overwhelming financial ties to the vaccine industry are dismissed as "anti-intellectual." Actually, what Fernando is promoting is blind adherence to the claims from those with everything at stake in denying any link between their vaccines and an epidemic of sick kids. She and writers like her refuse to ask the simple questions in the controversy over vaccines and autism:

Who funded the studies that show no link? What's the autism rate among unvaccinated children? Where are the adults with autism at a rate even remotely close to what we're seeing in our children? Why haven't officials ever studied children who were normally developing little toddlers and who suddenly and inexplicably regressed into autism following vaccination?

Why don't these promoters of truth over emotion ever talk to parents of autistic children, especially parents whose children were compensated by the federal government for vaccine injury that included autism?

Sadly tomorrow's journalists aren't being taught to question and investigate. Their role is merely to repeat the establishment line.