Message from Edda West, President of VRAN
Dear Members & Friends,
In June of this year, our new not-for-profit society, Vaccine Choice Canada (VCC) was formed by families whose loved ones have suffered vaccine reactions and injuries. We continue the educational work of VRAN – Vaccination Risk Awareness Network which, for many years, served as Canada’s leading watchdog group reporting on the vaccine controversy. Our mission is to continue this work to empower families to make educated, voluntary, and a fully informed decision when considering vaccination.
We’re pleased to announce that the Vaccine Choice Canada website has now been launched and can be viewed at www.vaccinechoicecanada.com. VCC will continue to serve you as a trusted source of news and research on vaccination, related health issues, as well as personal stories attesting to vaccine injuries. Our Science page offers an extensive section on studies linking vaccines to health risks.
In an era when disease outbreaks are occurring in fully vaccinated populations and untold numbers of vaccine injuries remain unacknowledged, Vaccine Choice Canada aims to provide you with a deeper understanding of this complex issue. We work to protect health freedoms and the individual’s right to exercise the basic human right to voluntary, informed consent when considering pharmaceutical products like vaccines which are known to carry a risk of injury and death. We believe these health freedoms are worth protecting and invite you to join us in this important work.
Thirty years ago, a small group of determined parents won their fight against the Ontario government’s ‘mandatory’ Immunization of School Pupils Act. We formed the Committee Against Compulsory Vaccination in protest of this oppressive new law giving the government the power to threaten our children’s education if we refused to medicate them according to their rules.
Our two year lobby effort culminated in an amendment to the Act on December 14, 1984 granting parents the right to obtain philosophical vaccine exemptions for their children. On this thirtieth anniversary, it seems fitting to revisit our victory and the long road we’ve travelled since.
The haste with which the legislation was passed blindsided many families whose children were vaccine injured and those philosophically opposed to vaccination. Although medical and religious exemptions were permitted, few had religious affiliations that prohibited vaccination. Medical exemptions were difficult if not impossible to get even if a child had suffered a vaccine injury. Many of us faced the possibility that our children wouldn’t be able to attend school.
The new law threatened our most basic human right – the right of autonomy over our own bodies and the right to self determination. It violated our fundamental Constitutional guarantees of ‘freedom of conscience and religion’ and ‘security of the person’. Government had suddenly gotten bossier, pushier and nastier as it moved toward medical tyranny. At stake was the sacred right to determine what is best for our children and to protect them from harm.
This quote, taken from a Brief we presented to the government in protest of the new law, is as relevant and inspiring today as it was 30 years ago;
“The state has no business telling us what we must think, believe, read, eat or what medicines we and our children must take. Such imposed conformity is antithetical to the ideals of a free society. The state acts completely illegitimately when, for instance, it compels us all to accept the tenets of a particular religion. And the government acts with equal illegitimacy when it decides what particular medical point of view all individuals in society must accept and adopt. Such a question is in the realm of culture and there are, understandably, a great variety of opinions about which methods are best as there are varieties of opinions on other cultural matters. There is no room in a free society for a state-mandated medical dogma which we all must accept.”
Perpetuating the ‘mandatory’ vaccination lie
Although our victory in 1984 set an important legal precedent that dissuaded most other provinces from adopting similar coercive vaccine laws, health officials have never stopped trying to force vaccines on the people. Parents are still lied to and told, “your child must be vaccinated to attend school or daycare” – even in provinces without laws governing vaccination of children. The ‘mandatory’ vaccination mantra drones on and on, and unless parents plug into networks like ours, and are somewhat politically savvy, they are easily duped by the lies.
Mainstream media is equally complicit in the ‘mandatory’ vaccination lie as it
willingly prints the disinformation handed them by health officials. For decades, media articles have consistently omitted mention of legal vaccine exemptions leading the public to believe that vaccination is mandatory for school attendance.
The Mature Minor doctrine
The “mature minor” doctrine is another insidious legal maneuver used by public health officials to coerce underage children to submit to vaccines, usually in the school setting. In Canada, children as young as 10 or 11 can be vaccinated without parental knowledge or consent. The “mature minor” clause is incorporated into most provincial health care Acts and permits under age children to make their own decision about vaccines, obtain birth control and abortions.
Every year parents contact us, outraged that their children have been vaccinated without their consent. Recently an Ontario mother informed us that her 11 year old son had been injected with hepatitis B vaccine and meningococcal vaccine without her consent. The child was threatened with suspension if he didn’t get the shots. Fearing he would be barred from school he signed a consent form without an opportunity to speak to his parents first. He received NO information about the risks and side effects of the vaccines, nor was he given the option of a legal vaccine exemption. This child’s consent was NOT informed. Worse, it was obtained fraudulently in violation of Ontario’s Health Care Consent Act, the same Act that bizarrely also enables the medical treatment of minor children without parental consent.
The “mature minor” doctrine usurps parental authority giving governments the power to coerce children into making health care decisions that conflict with family values. Every reasonable person knows that an 11 year old child does not have the maturity or life experience to evaluate the risks or benefits of receiving one or multiple vaccines. A child this young is incapable of making an informed decision about complex medical issues. Added to this insult is the pro-vaccine propaganda disseminated in the public school system which paints a rosy picture of vaccines without disclosing the very real risks of injury associated with all vaccines. It is one of the most challenging vaccine issues we face in Canada.
We thank you, our members for your ongoing support and would like to remind you to renew your membership for 2015. For those who are not yet members, we invite you to join and receive our acclaimed newsletter, The Vaccine Choice Journal. Please email us if you’d like to receive a sample issue. Your membership donation enables us to continue this important work and is easy to do via our secure PayPal account.
Wishing you and your loved ones a happy holiday season and best of health for the New Year.
Edda West, President,
Vaccine Choice Canada