Tag: vaccines

State Bar Passes Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination Recommendation

The New York State Bar Association on Saturday passed a resolution urging the state to consider making it mandatory for all New Yorkers to undergo COVID-19 vaccination when a vaccine becomes available, even if people object to it for “religious, philosophical or personal reasons.”

The resolution, which was passed by a majority of the bar association’s 277-member House of Delegates, includes conditions limiting its scope. Those include that the state government should only consider making vaccinations mandatory if voluntary COVID-19 vaccinations fall short of producing needed levels of population immunity; that an assessment of the health threat to various communities be made so that perhaps the mandate can be targeted; and that a mandate only be considered after there is expert consensus about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy.

In a statement Saturday afternoon, Mary Beth Morrissey, chair of the bar association’s Health Law Section’s Task Force on COVID-19, which in May released a controversial report that had first proposed the idea of a vaccine mandate, said, “The authority of the state to respond to a public health crisis is well-established in constitutional law,”

“In balancing the protection of the public’s health and civil liberties, the Public Health Law recognizes that a person’s health can and does affect others,” said Morrisey, a lawyer who also holds a doctorate degree in gerontological social work research.

The Health Law Section’s May report generated an uproar online, over the spring and summer, among anti-vaccine groups and lawyers who represent people injured by vaccines. But the relevant part of the 83-page report proposing a vaccine mandate was broader in scope, and more direct, than the resolution passed by the bar association Saturday. And most of the conditions contained in the resolution had not been contained in the report.

The report had recommended that it should be mandatory for all Americans to undergo COVID-19 vaccination, despite people’s objections, with the one exception being doctor-ordered medical reasons. There had been no language about a mandate being limited to New York state residents, and no language saying a public recommendation made to the state government should only be for it to “consider” a mandate.

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Vaccine ‘intended for cattle’ given to children in mother-and-baby homes

Newstalk has reported that experimental drug trials were conducted on at least 290 children across 10 mother-and-baby homes in the 1960s and 70s.

The trials were said to be conducted at homes at Bessborough in Cork, St Peters in Westmeath, St Clare’s in Stamullen, The Good Shepard in Dunboyne as well as six Dublin Homes.

In one of the trials, 80 children allegedly became unwell after they were given a vaccine intended for cattle in a trial at five care homes and orphanages in Dublin in the mid 70s.

The information is contained in a report from the Chief Medical Officer of the Department of Health’s report to the Oireachtas in the year 2000, obtained by Newstalk.

Susan Lohan, co-founder of the Adoption Rights Alliance, says that any claims that the parents of the children gave permission for the trials to take place are “not credible”.

“The mothers of the children were not consulted on anything regarding their childrens’ welfare,” she said.

“I find it, frankly, nor credible, that the managers of those places would have made an exception when it came to the vaccine trials.”

The news comes as the Government decides what powers and scope a potential inquiry into the homes could have.

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Researchers Warn Some Covid-19 Vaccines Could Increase Risk Of HIV Infection

Some of the Covid-19 vaccines currently in development could increase the risk of acquiring HIV, warned a group of researchers in the The Lancet medical journal Monday, potentially leading to an increase in infections as vaccines are rolled out to vulnerable populations around the world. 

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Kids as young as 11 years old would be able to consent to vaccinations under a new bill proposed in Washington, DC

A bill passed in Washington, DC, could allow children as young as 11 years old to get recommended vaccinations without permission from their parents or legal guardians.

The “Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act” bill passed in the DC Council by a 12-to-1 vote. It says if a doctor determines that a minor is “capable of meeting the informed consent standard,” then they could get government-recommended inoculations, like the HPV vaccine, even if their parents object to it for religious reasons. 

“A child needs to be protected against the dangers of things like measles, other diseases that cause death, and the community needs to be protected so that diseases that were once thought to be eliminated are not coming back,” Council member Mary Cheh said in an online press conference Tuesday, according to the DC Post. Cheh introduced the bill in March 2019.

The bill requires the Department of Health to produce information about vaccines that are age-appropriate. And, if it becomes law, the bill stipulates that doctors would be required to bill insurers directly, and send the vaccination records to the kid’s school “if the parent is utilizing a religious exemption.” 

The Washington Post reported that Trayon White Sr., who is the only council member to vote against the bill, said he believes age 11 is too young to make an independent medical decision about one’s health. 

“Parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education and care of their children,” White said, later falsely claiming vaccines are dangerous for children.

The Post reported that White, who has a 12-year-old child, cited the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to argue the point, but that agency has been widely used by conspiracy theorists.

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South Korea sticks to flu vaccine plan despite safety fears after 25 die

South Korean officials refused on Thursday to suspend a seasonal influenza inoculation effort, despite growing calls for a halt, including an appeal from a key group of doctors, after the deaths of at least 25 of those vaccinated.

Health authorities said they found no direct links between the deaths and the vaccines.

At least 22 of the dead, including a 17-year-old boy, were part of a campaign to inoculate 19 million teenagers and senior citizens for free, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.

“The number of deaths has increased, but our team sees low possibility that the deaths resulted from the shots,” the agency’s director, Jeong Eun-kyeong, told parliament.

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Immunoexcitotoxicity as the central mechanism of etiopathology and treatment of autism spectrum disorders: A possible role of fluoride and aluminum

Our review suggests that most autism spectrum disorder (ASD) risk factors are connected, either directly or indirectly, to immunoexcitotoxicity. Chronic brain inflammation is known to enhance the sensitivity of glutamate receptors and interfere with glutamate removal from the extraneuronal space, where it can trigger excitotoxicity over a prolonged period. Neuroscience studies have clearly shown that sequential systemic immune stimulation can activate the brain’s immune system, microglia, and astrocytes, and that with initial immune stimulation, there occurs CNS microglial priming. Children are exposed to such sequential immune stimulation via a growing number of environmental excitotoxins, vaccines, and persistent viral infections. We demonstrate that fluoride and aluminum (Al3+) can exacerbate the pathological problems by worsening excitotoxicity and inflammation. While Al3+ appears among the key suspicious factors of ASD, fluoride is rarely recognized as a causative culprit. A long-term burden of these ubiquitous toxins has several health effects with a striking resemblance to the symptoms of ASD. In addition, their synergistic action in molecules of aluminofluoride complexes can affect cell signaling, neurodevelopment, and CNS functions at several times lower concentrations than either Al3+ or fluoride acting alone. Our review opens the door to a number of new treatment modes that naturally reduce excitotoxicity and microglial priming.

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AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial Brazil volunteer dies, trial to continue

Brazilian health authority Anvisa said on Wednesday that a volunteer in a clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca AZN.L and Oxford University had died but added that the trial would continue.

Oxford confirmed the plan to keep testing, saying in a statement that after careful assessment “there have been no concerns about safety of the clinical trial.” Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that the volunteer had been given a placebo and not the trial vaccine, citing unnamed sources.

Anvisa provided no further details, citing medical confidentiality of those involved in trials.

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