Image: Public Domain, courtesy of the British Library.
In states across the country (and in other countries too), there is a concerted effort to strip away our rights to make our own medical decisions, and decisions for our children. Earlier this week, this effort manifested itself in the House and Health Insurance Committee hearings on HB19-1312 in Colorado. I remember watching similar hearings in California, for SB277, which removed parents' rights to decline vaccination for school entry based on religious or philosophical grounds – and the parallels here are eerie. It is really as if we are watching the same script being re-enacted over and over again:
Hundreds of parents of vaccine-injured children show up to testify against a bill that will take away their right to make medical decisions for their own families, there are hours and hours of this testimony, all of which goes completely ignored by the legislators who have already decided how they are going to vote.
I am posting here some excerpts from an account written by a doctor who attended the Colorado hearings. You can read the full account here. It is well worth reading in its entirety (see her final comments here especially, about the woman typing next to her), and paints a vivid picture of the nature of the system that is taking away our most basic rights:
The bill being heard was Colorado HB 1312, which essentially plans to treat vaccine injured families who now want to decline even one shot, as ignorant criminals that need to be entered into a registry and tracked, forced into in-person meetings with state bureaucrats to be “educated” and forced into compelled speech by signing a form stating they are harming their child. People who decline one or more of of the 72 required doses, would have their private medical information revealed to the state but those who accept all 72 doses get to keep their medical information private. It also wipes out 99% of medical exemptions, replacing the doctor’s authority for the state’s. It doubles the number of required vaccines and also applies to homeschooled children.
The hearing room was small, holding about a hundred seats. One thousand parents showed up in opposition, packing the halls, rooms and walkways, with kids in tow, many disabled and vaccine injured. They were there hours ahead of time to stand in line for a seat in the hearing room. 575 of those parents signed up to testify. The establishment made sure the people (peasants?) knew their place as most of the chairs were tied off and reserved for lobbyists, vaccine researchers and medical types. Those elites also had their parking and food provided. They showed up late, waltzed in right past the lines of defiant families and left after giving their testimony...
...There were a few non-establishment people that spoke for their side. One was a family who told a heartbreaking story of losing a child to bacterial meningitis, the other an older man who was a polio survivor and the third was a mother whose child had a kidney condition and “could not receive the MMR”, so felt it was important that everyone else get it to protect her.
...The third case was particularly ironic, b/c this bill does not recognize her daughter’s condition as one that would qualify for a medical exemption, so if it passes, the medical exemption that she has enjoyed would vanish. So essentially she was testifying against herself and her daughter’s interests. Even more ironically, the people she was implying were a threat to her, were actually defending her daughter’s right to obtain a medical exemption based on her doctor’s judgement and defending her medical privacy.
...The testimonies of vaccine injury were powerful and heartbreaking. Even more heartbreaking was that these stories of grief, devastation, seizures, regression, disability and death did not touch the 7 Democratic legislators’ stone cold hearts. They were silent, dismissive or combative. A few of them dozed off during the testimony. Much of the time they appeared distracted by whatever was on their phones/laptops. The bill’s main sponsor would come and go a lot and missed much of the testimony, instead choosing to congregate with lobbyists in the hall. The 4 Republican legislators were attentive, listening and clearly touched by the stories. They asked excellent questions of both sides. The contrast between the 2 parties was stark and noticeable to all.
There were 3 exchanges with the Democratic legislators that took my breath away.
The first was from a pediatrician/representative who assailed a vaccine injured mother for speaking about MTHFR mutation. She implied that the mom must be confused or lying b/c she “knew” and stated unequivocally “that anyone who had double MTHFR mutation would have homocystinuria, which is screened for at birth!” She was very confident in her ignorance and could not be swayed. I so wished I had been up there to defend this mom and to let the other legislators know that pediatricians and allopaths in general do not study, utilize or understand epigenetics, detoxification or vaccine injury related to those factors and that their colleague was gravely misinformed. I and many others in that room have homozygous MTHFR mutation and can assure you we don't have the diagnosis of homocystinuria.
...The second exchange was between an African American legislator who seemed not to care at all when presented with information that the CDC had committed scientific fraud around a study looking at autism in African American boys. Her very polite answer was “my nephew is high up in the CDC so I have all the information I need from him, but thanks anyway”.
...The third comment was heartfelt and by a legislator who has a grandchild with autism. She stated that the child was different even before his 2 month shots and she knew that his autism was “just how he was and not a vaccine injury”. I wondered if she knew 4 vaccines are given in every pregnancy, hep B is given a few hours after birth and that the HepB vaccine at birth has a higher correlation to autism than tobacco does to lung cancer?
She went on to say that she found it very hurtful that anyone would suggest that vaccines cause autism because that wasn’t the case for her grandson. Yet she couldn't see that denying the experience of hundreds in the room who had watched their children regress after vaccines was just as hurtful...
...The biggest outrage and wake up call for me, came at the very end of the hearing. The sergeant directs the seating in the hearing room and I was seated next to a woman who I didn’t know, but I assumed was a lobbyist and maybe even the bill’s author. I was annoyed by her constant typing on her computer, jumping up from her seat to gather with lobbyists and being completely oblivious and unconcerned with the heartfelt testimonies being shared, even rolling her eyes when people spoke about toxins.
Her incessant typing involved writing numerous legislators with talking points and followups, reinforcing the legislation and refuting points made by the opposition. I also saw a more formal email that she worked on for quite a while addressed to the bill’s sponsor. She was typing furiously on it, ignoring the father who was crying, describing the death of his infant. I watched her to see if she would even look up, but she just tic-tacked away, cold as ice. Her lack of humanity was disturbing and it saddened me. The email looked like a speech and I thought maybe it was for the next reading of the bill or an interview. But what do you know, as the sponsor began his closing remarks, it was word for word what I had watched her type just hours before.
I admit that I was naive and inexperienced as to how things work in the capitol but it made me sick to my stomach to watch someone so disrespectful and oblivious be able to “speak” through a puppet legislator, while everyone else clearly assumed his words were his own. It also really drove home for me what a David and Goliath fight this is, how it truly is a war by Pharma (with the help of media and legislators) against these already beleaguered families, their providers and the population as a whole.
