Tag: liability

Who Is Arthur Caplan?

Plenty of folks claim to be experts on vaccines.

Some are experts because they study epidemiology, others because they study immunology or infectious disease.

And then there are the experts in vaccination ethics.

Who Is Arthur Caplan?

With a Ph.D. in the history of philosophy of science, Dr. Art Caplan went on to co-found The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute.

Arthur Caplan does a good job of calling out folks who push anti-vaccine misinformation.
Arthur Caplan does a good job of calling out folks who push anti-vaccine misinformation.

He has since written dozens of books and nearly a thousand articles in peer-reviewed journals, working most recently at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, where he is the founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics.

“When politicians ignore the evidence, fail to cite appropriate medical authorities, and rely on hearsay and rumor, with the result that people — out of ignorance or error — don’t vaccinate their children, we can and should deny them elective office. When a doctor does so, we should demand that he forfeit his right to use his medical degree to misinform, confuse or lie.”

Arthur L. Caplan on Revoke the license of any doctor who opposes vaccination

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Art Caplan has a lot to say about vaccines.

“Faulty ethical thinking is to blame. We are elevating parents’ rights to make misinformed decisions over the rights of children to get important vaccines. Infants and young children are blocked from receiving their routine childhood immunizations by parents who espouse an aberrant ideology of choice or are being duped by anti-vaccine groups. In so doing, they are violating children’s rights to health, welfare and equal opportunity.”

Arthur L. Caplan and Peter J. Hotez on Anti-vaccine misinformation denies children’s rights

He also has a lot to say about measles, other vaccine-preventable diseases, and how to get control back before these outbreaks turn into true epidemics.

“What should we be doing to protect our communities, our children, and ourselves? We should halt the spread of anti-vaccine misinformation and take steps to stop nonmedical vaccine exemptions. We need to restore vaccines and vaccinations as the “new normal” in America.”

Arthur L Caplan on Let’s Treat Measles Seriously

Are you still thinking about skipping or delaying your child’s vaccines?

After reading some of Dr. Caplan’s work, you should know that it’s not safe, has no benefits, and isn’t the ethical thing to do.

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Kennedy Has a Fundraiser in the Middle of the Largest and Longest Measles Outbreak in Recent New York History

Remember when Andrew Wakefield went to Minnesota during their large measles outbreak?

It’s reminiscent of the NRA holding one of their conventions in a city after a big shooting, isn’t it?

Kennedy Has a Fundraiser in the Middle of the Largest and Longest Measles Outbreak in Recent New York History

While it seemed like a big outbreak at the time, those 13 cases would actually be considered rather small these days. In fact, a more recent outbreak in Minnesota, in 2017, had at least 79 cases!

And not surprisingly, anti-vaccine folks also visited the state to try and keep that outbreak going!

Do these folks ever learn?

Flash forward to 2019…

Since September of 2018, New York has seen over 332 cases of measles in two big outbreaks in Brooklyn and Rockland County.

So where does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. choose to go for a fundraiser?

Where does he show up on TV to push his message about vaccine dangers?

Yup, New York City.

Lori Stokes: “Can I switch gears for a minute and talk about vaccines…”

Kennedy: “When I was a kid, we got three vaccines. That I took. My kids got 64 mandated vaccines.”

Rosanna Scotto: “How many? 64?”

Kennedy: “64”

Rosanna Scotto: “Wow!”

Kennedy: “Mandated doses. Today’s kids get 72, by the end of next year it will be 75. It’s all driven by profit. Most of these diseases are illnesses that you don’t need to be vaccinated for. “

Fox 5 Good Day New York

Wow indeed. That sounds like a lot because kids typically only get 13 vaccines that protect them against 16 vaccine-preventable diseases. We don’t even have 64 vaccines!

You only get to a number like 64 or 72 or 75 if you inflate the count to make it sound scarier.

In reality, if you count a yearly flu vaccine, kids get about 54 doses of vaccines through age 18.

Are any for diseases that you don’t need to be vaccinated for?

Which disease do you want your kids to get?

Do you want them to get tetanus, meningitis, epiglottitis, diphtheria, meningococcemia, cancer (hepatitis B and HPV infections) or to have grandchildren with congenital rubella syndrome?

Vaccines are safe, with few risks, and are necessary.

Ask yourself why folks like this are still allowed to push this kind of misinformation on folks, especially in the middle of an outbreak.

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About Those Lawsuits That Almost Put Vaccine Manufacturers out of Business

So you likely know that there were a bunch of lawsuits against manufacturers of the DPT vaccine in the early and mid 1980s.

“As the number of lawsuits grew to hundreds during the early 1980s, the pharmaceutical companies making vaccines saw their liability insurance bills soar. Worried not only about multimillion-dollar settlements, but also even the legal costs of defending themselves successfully, several companies simply stopped making vaccine.”

How a Media Scare On Vaccine Started a ‘near-Epidemic’

That’s why the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act passed in 1986, creating the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the Vaccine Court.

About Those Lawsuits That Almost Put Vaccine Manufacturers out of Business

But did those DPT vaccine lawsuits prove that vaccines aren’t safe?

Is that why vaccine manufacturers needed help to limit their liability?

“The total amount claimed in 1984 DTP vaccine suits ($1.3 billion) is more than 20 times the total value of 1984 sales of DTP vaccine at the market price of $2.80 per dose.”

Hinman on DTP Vaccine Litigation

Of course not!

While the older DPT vaccine did cause more local reactions, pain, and fever than the newer DTaP vaccine that replaced it, all of the serious reactions that triggered the lawsuits were later found to not be caused by the vaccine.

Most of the DPT lawsuits were thought to be frivolous.

That’s not surprising, as the same vaccine lawsuits that were succeeding in driving vaccine manufacturers out of business in the United States were failing in the UK and Canada!

This included the Loveday judgment in Great Britain’s High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division and the Rothwell judgment in the Supreme Court of Ontario, Canada, both decided in 1988, with justices ruling that there was “insufficient evidence to demonstrate that pertussis vaccine can cause permanent brain damage in children.”

Similar cases were succeeding in the US though..

“The number (and dollar value) of suits increased in 1982, a year when broadcast and print media began to devote considerable attention to the alleged hazards associated with the use of pertussis-containing vaccines. Most of the media coverage has emphasized alleged risks of pertussis vaccines and has given relatively little attention to the benefits of their use.”

Hinman on DTP Vaccine Litigation

Most experts knew that most of the lawsuits were frivolous, but they weren’t able to stop the damage that was to come, as:

  • the DPT: Vaccine Roulette special aired on TV
  • Barbara Loe Fisher, believing that her child was damaged by the DPT vaccine, formed the Dissatisfied Parents Together organization and wrote the book DPT: A Shot in the Dark, which later influenced Bob Sears
  • there were temporary shortages of DTP vaccine in 1984, as “two of the three American manufacturers of the product decided to halt or restrict its sales.”

What else happened? I mean besides all of the studies proving the DPT vaccine was safe?

Parents who had been scared by the DPT controversy were ready and primed when Andy Wakefield showed up and told them that they had something new to worry about – the MMR vaccine and autism.

And of course, pertussis is now returning, as more parents are scared to vaccinate their kids and the newer DTaP vaccine isn’t as effective as DPT.

More on Those Lawsuits That Almost Put Vaccine Manufacturers out of Business

Del Bigtree on the Government’s Plan to Force Inject Stuff into Your Body

Del Bigtree considers himself to be an expert on vaccines.

Bob Sears doesn't consider media talk show hosts to be expert sources of medical information.
Does Bob consider Del an expert source of medical information?

Either Bob Sears disagrees or he really does think that measles is a deadly epidemic…

Del Bigtree on the Government’s Plan to Force Inject Stuff into Your Body

What makes Del Bigtree an expert on vaccines?

Del’s claim to fame is that he “was an Emmy Award-winning producer on the daytime talk show The Doctors, for six years.”

Del Bigtree shared a Daytime Emmy Award with 27 other producers...

So he shared a Daytime Emmy Award with 27 other producers…

And he produced Andrew Wakefield‘s Vaxxed movie. The whistleblower movie that didn’t actually include the whisteblower…

It sounds like pure anti-vaccine propaganda…

So what did Del have to say in Washington?

“These crowds are gathering all over the nation because we are talking about having the government force inject free citizens. Think about it. Take vaccines out of it. We are going to force inject children of free parents.

Now there are people that are really worried about Donald Trump. He is forcing a wall to be built on the border of this country, but now we are not worried about a forced injection by the government?

If someone worse than Trump, someone more dangerous, more controlling… This person puts in the CDC, the head of the CDC, the head of the FBI, the head of the NIH, the head of the EPA… Do we really want to give the government power over our bodies where we have no say on what it injects into us? This isn’t an issue about vaccines. This is an issue about the last thing we can control in a free country which is our bodies.”

Del Bigtree

Of course, no one is talking about forcing anyone to vaccinate their kids. That’s not what a vaccine mandate to go to school does.

But that’s not all…

Alex Jones Del included a lot of standard anti-vaccine misinformation that we hear over and over again:

He also mentioned his lawsuits against the HHS and FDA which he thinks “proves that none of this science is really there.”

“I actually want my children to have the measles. This is a disease that only affected killed 1 in 500,000 in 1960 before the vaccine ever arrived. You’ll hear 1 in 1,000, that’s a lie. Technically, 1 in 10,000 people who get the disease could die from it. Those are tiny numbers. That’s the same number that autism used to be.”

Del Bigtree

Tiny numbers?

Just remember that in 1960, there were 434 measles deaths in the United States.

And while the great majority of people did indeed survive having measles, it was hardly a walk in the park. Most people describe kids with measles as being miserable, with a high fever for a week, a cough, and other symptoms, which is why they often end up going to the ER several times before they finally get diagnosed.

Which brings me to perhaps the only time I might ever agree with Bob Sears – folks like this should not be considered medical experts!

“But I would think when you have a child with autism, you know, or on the spectrum, you have no reference point. You have no…

I don’t want this to sound wrong, but it’s a little bit more like having a dog or a Doberman or something that you don’t understand how it thinks, you don’t know. I mean, I mean a better figure than animal reference except… you don’t have their brain.

Or you hear about stories of people that bring home of exotic you know of chimpanzee or something where they can’t, and this is not sounding right.”

Del Bigtree

Not about vaccines, and certainly not about autism.

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