Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturbo
Protecting Vaccine Choice in Colorado: Part 1
Colorado is one of sixteen states in the US in which parents are allowed, by law, to claim personal belief, religious, or medical exemptions from vaccinating their children. Thirty-two other states allow for religious and medical exemptions. Only two states, California and Mississippi, deny all exemptions except by doctor approval.
Although these rights have been protected by statute in Colorado since 1963, there are constant corporate, legislative, and administrative attempts to restrict and even eliminate these rights. California, for example, recently passed legislation which eliminates nearly all vaccine choice; every child, every shot, no exceptions, no exemptions.
The rare medical exemption can still theoretically be obtained. Californian doctors, however, must follow stringent official guidelines and they risk persecution from the medical establishment if they dare to follow their own professional judgment in providing exemptions. Engaged citizens are doing everything we can to prevent that from happening in Colorado.
Contrary to official mythology, vaccine refusal did not begin with Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy.
Opposition to vaccination has existed as long as the practice of vaccination itself. In 1885 the town of Leicester, England held a demonstration in which 80,000-100,000 citizens protested compulsory vaccinations. The city decided to forgo mandatory smallpox vaccines and developed instead a sanitation and quarantine program to effectively deal with the disease.
Leicester’s vaccination rates dropped to below 10%, yet, the city’s death rate was one third of the country’s vaccinated population. In 1898 the British government introduced a “conscientious objector” exemption. This clause allowed parents to opt out of compulsory vaccination and is the origination of the term which would later become associated with those who refuse join the army.
On April 19, 1982 NBC aired the Emmy award winning documentary called DPT: Vaccination Roulette. This prime time broadcast detailed adverse reactions to the DPT shot.
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) was also founded in that year and launched the vaccine safety and informed consent movement in America.
NVIC is the nation’s oldest and largest consumer led organization advocating for vaccine safety and informed consent. In 1985, Harris Coulter and Barbara Loe Fisher, one of the cofounders of NVIC, published the unprecedented book, A Shot in the Dark. This was the first book to alert the public about the link between vaccinations and neurological injuries.
The right to vaccine exemptions in Colorado was codified in 1963 and reenacted in 1978. Specifically, CRS 25-4-903 states that a parent may obtain an exemption from vaccines by:
“…submitting to the student’s school a statement of exemption signed by one parent or guardian … is an adherent to a religious belief whose teachings are opposed to immunizations or… has a personal belief that is opposed to immunization.”
For more than fifty years, most parents who chose to opt out of one or more vaccines simply signed the back of the State’s “Certificate of Immunization” stating their preference. (The word ‘Immunization’, it must be noted, is inaccurate and, by its very use, is misleading.
The act of getting a prescribed shot, or series of shots, does not absolutely confer immunity. It is estimated that as much as 10% of the population receive no immunity from any given shot. The correct term really is ‘Vaccination’, the root word of which is ‘vacca’ which means cow. The original smallpox vaccination was the pus from the udder of a cowpox infected cow, smeared into an open cut on one’s arm.)
The vaccine exemption process in Colorado has always been simple, effective, respectful, and, because it was provided directly to the school, protected by the Federal Educational Records Privacy Act (FERPA). For most parents who choose to forego or limit vaccines, it is not an act of protest or outrage.
It is simply the result of their careful consideration of the potential harm versus the potential benefit for the suggested vaccines. In 1983, 12 shots containing 34 vaccine doses were recommended, today in 2017, the schedule has expanded to more than 70 doses by age 18.
In 2007 the passage of what is known as the Immunization (there’s that word again!) Registry Act C.R.S. 25-4-2403, established, among other things, the state’s ability to create “a comprehensive immunization tracking system with immunization information gathered by state and local health officials”.
Nowhere in the 2007 law was it proscribed that the registry, now expanded to a privately run, multi-million dollar data tracking system known as the Colorado Immunization Information System (CIIS), be mandatory. As a matter of fact, clear provisions were made in the law to keep the system voluntary, confidential, and not for profit.
An often ignored piece of this legislation states that any notice that provides information on vaccinations shall also inform the recipient of “the option to refuse an immunization on the grounds of medical, religious, or personal belief considerations”.
In 2014, House Bill 1288 was introduced to curtail vaccine exemptions and closely track those who chose to use them. At that time there were only a few parents in Colorado who were actively involved in the legislative and legal protection of vaccine choice.
Others found out about the bill through an action alert from NVIC and came to the Capitol to testify against the bill. Even though their efforts were largely unorganized, the testimony offered was, according to one legislator, “the most coherent and intelligent of any group” he had ever seen.
A deeply amended version of bill did pass. But the most onerous part of the bill, which would have forced exempting parents to complete a state and industry sponsored on-line ‘reeducation’ module, was removed. [url=http://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/safeschools/Legislation/HB 14-1288.pdf]HB 14-1288[/url], as passed, merely instructs schools to have their aggregate vaccine uptake rates available to the public and directs Colorado Department of Health and Environment (CDPHE) to promulgate rules regarding the frequency of submission of exemptions.
Thanks to active citizen engagement, the law does not authorize CDPHE to demand the use of “official” exemption forms, it does not give CDPHE permission to alter the legislatively approved exemption process, and it does not restrict vaccine choice in Colorado.
References:
This article originally appeared in the Q3 2017 Regenerate Magazine.
Photo Credit
Protecting Vaccine Choice in Colorado: Part 2
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is a rouge state agency that frequently operates outside of their jurisdictional limits. The Vaccine Division of this agency, in particular, is so obsessed with their mission to vaccine every child that the law, it would seem, is a trivial inconvenience to be ignored.
Late in 2015, they gave a presentation to school nurses in which they claimed a new law had authorized CDPHE to create an official vaccine exemption form. The “new law” they referred to was not proposed until the introduction of HB 16-1164 in early 2016. Larry Wolk, Director of CDPHE, actually testified that CDPHE had indeed “jumped the gun” and created the new forms before the bill was even introduced.
In January of 2016, a State Auditor’s report on the CDPHE and their use of Tobacco Settlement Funds found gross conflicts of interest in the agency and declared that “the department lacks authority to enforce compliance with school entry immunization requirements”.
Then, in early 2016 CDPHE and their legislative allies finally did introduce HB 16-1164 with the intention of providing CDPHE with the funding and the authority to enforce the use of proposed new online exemption forms. Coloradan parents once again came together to defeat unnecessary anti-choice legislation.
This time we showed up not just well informed but also unified and organized as the Colorado Coalition for Vaccine Choice (CCVC). Representative Dan Pabon, the main sponsor of the bill, tried in testimony to portray it as a ‘simple bill’ that merely offered their ‘really quite neat’ online form as a convenient ‘service’ to parents.
Parents saw it for what it was: an attempt to circumvent federally protected privacy rights and data mine student information. The bill passed through committee but when an amendment was proposed to make CIIS an opt-in rather than opt-out system, the bill sponsors let the bill die because, in Dan Pabon’s own words, “no one would opt in.” (please see my guest editorial in Denver Post)
That summer two pivotal things happened. CCVC was incorporated as an official Colorado non-profit organization and CDPHE continued to pursue their agenda as if 1164 had become law.
In July, CDPHE revealed their new website and exemption form to the public; telling school nurses and administrators that parents must use this new system, preferably online.
They did not, however, tell parents that the new forms contained compelled speech implicating parents of knowingly endangering their child’s health or that by using the forms parents would forfeit medical privacy rights. CCVC, along with parents around the state, immediately called attention to the legal and ethical errors of CDPHE’s demands.
Attorneys from the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) threatened CDPHE with legal action and the agency backed down, rearranging the compelled speech to be slightly less offensive. CDPHE continued, though, to violate Colorado law by coercing parents to use their legislatively unapproved form.
One aspect of 1288 that has been followed is the careful compilation of vaccine exemption data from schools across the state. The intention of this was ostensibly to provide parents with the information they needed to choose a ‘safe school’ with high vaccine acceptance. Interestingly, when the data is compared with schools’ test scores, the schools with the highest exemption rates also happen to be the schools with the highest performing students .
On January 9, 2017 there was a hearing regarding CDPHE and an evaluation of their compliance with what is known as the SMART Act. The “ART” in this act stands for Accountable, Responsive, and Transparent. Once again parents showed up voice concerns about CDPHE’s utter lack of all of these traits.
The CDPHE’s 1 1/2 hour presentation brilliantly illustrated that their attitude towards vaccine exemptors appears to be the same attitude they have towards everyone. Fish dying in the river? No worries, probably just coincidental to that last chemical spill. There are ‘natural’ pollutants too you know. Kids getting asthma near gas drilling? Don’t panic, we can’t read too much into that because there are many causes of asthma.
As the legislative session opened last January there was a clear change in direction. In light of CDPHE’s history of trying to circumvent the law, a bipartisan bill was proposed to clarify that existing statute only requires a written statement of exemption be submitted to a child’s school.
The bill, SB17-250, was simple and straight forward: No official exemption form can mandated. After more than three hours of testimony, the majority of which was in favor of the bill, SB17-250 passed the Senate Health Committee 3-1. Testimony, and ultimately a legislator’s vote, on any given bill, by rule, is supposed to focus on the content and intent of the bill in discussion.
The opposition completely disregarded this rule and turned the discussion into one about their perceived fears of vaccine exemptions. On April 19, because fear tactics do work, the bill failed to pass the Senate floor vote. However, it is important to note that the CDPHE now has a letter posted on their website stating that, in fact, the parents of Colorado are correct and no official form is required.
The rights of parents to decide what does and does not get injected into their children’s bodies should be unassailable.
Yet, this innate passion for a mother to protect her babies is under constant and carefully orchestrated assault. Colorado will not go the way of California’s draconian compulsory vaccination laws. We are organized, unified, and deeply informed. Our children are among the healthiest in the country and our adults are among the best educated. Our vaccine exemption rights are well established and, for now, well defended.
This article originally appeared in the Q3 2017 Regenerate Magazine.
References
Thanks to: https://vactruth.com
Colorado is one of sixteen states in the US in which parents are allowed, by law, to claim personal belief, religious, or medical exemptions from vaccinating their children. Thirty-two other states allow for religious and medical exemptions. Only two states, California and Mississippi, deny all exemptions except by doctor approval.
Although these rights have been protected by statute in Colorado since 1963, there are constant corporate, legislative, and administrative attempts to restrict and even eliminate these rights. California, for example, recently passed legislation which eliminates nearly all vaccine choice; every child, every shot, no exceptions, no exemptions.
The rare medical exemption can still theoretically be obtained. Californian doctors, however, must follow stringent official guidelines and they risk persecution from the medical establishment if they dare to follow their own professional judgment in providing exemptions. Engaged citizens are doing everything we can to prevent that from happening in Colorado.
Contrary to official mythology, vaccine refusal did not begin with Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy.
Opposition to vaccination has existed as long as the practice of vaccination itself. In 1885 the town of Leicester, England held a demonstration in which 80,000-100,000 citizens protested compulsory vaccinations. The city decided to forgo mandatory smallpox vaccines and developed instead a sanitation and quarantine program to effectively deal with the disease.
Leicester’s vaccination rates dropped to below 10%, yet, the city’s death rate was one third of the country’s vaccinated population. In 1898 the British government introduced a “conscientious objector” exemption. This clause allowed parents to opt out of compulsory vaccination and is the origination of the term which would later become associated with those who refuse join the army.
On April 19, 1982 NBC aired the Emmy award winning documentary called DPT: Vaccination Roulette. This prime time broadcast detailed adverse reactions to the DPT shot.
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) was also founded in that year and launched the vaccine safety and informed consent movement in America.
NVIC is the nation’s oldest and largest consumer led organization advocating for vaccine safety and informed consent. In 1985, Harris Coulter and Barbara Loe Fisher, one of the cofounders of NVIC, published the unprecedented book, A Shot in the Dark. This was the first book to alert the public about the link between vaccinations and neurological injuries.
The right to vaccine exemptions in Colorado was codified in 1963 and reenacted in 1978. Specifically, CRS 25-4-903 states that a parent may obtain an exemption from vaccines by:
“…submitting to the student’s school a statement of exemption signed by one parent or guardian … is an adherent to a religious belief whose teachings are opposed to immunizations or… has a personal belief that is opposed to immunization.”
For more than fifty years, most parents who chose to opt out of one or more vaccines simply signed the back of the State’s “Certificate of Immunization” stating their preference. (The word ‘Immunization’, it must be noted, is inaccurate and, by its very use, is misleading.
The act of getting a prescribed shot, or series of shots, does not absolutely confer immunity. It is estimated that as much as 10% of the population receive no immunity from any given shot. The correct term really is ‘Vaccination’, the root word of which is ‘vacca’ which means cow. The original smallpox vaccination was the pus from the udder of a cowpox infected cow, smeared into an open cut on one’s arm.)
The vaccine exemption process in Colorado has always been simple, effective, respectful, and, because it was provided directly to the school, protected by the Federal Educational Records Privacy Act (FERPA). For most parents who choose to forego or limit vaccines, it is not an act of protest or outrage.
It is simply the result of their careful consideration of the potential harm versus the potential benefit for the suggested vaccines. In 1983, 12 shots containing 34 vaccine doses were recommended, today in 2017, the schedule has expanded to more than 70 doses by age 18.
In 2007 the passage of what is known as the Immunization (there’s that word again!) Registry Act C.R.S. 25-4-2403, established, among other things, the state’s ability to create “a comprehensive immunization tracking system with immunization information gathered by state and local health officials”.
Nowhere in the 2007 law was it proscribed that the registry, now expanded to a privately run, multi-million dollar data tracking system known as the Colorado Immunization Information System (CIIS), be mandatory. As a matter of fact, clear provisions were made in the law to keep the system voluntary, confidential, and not for profit.
An often ignored piece of this legislation states that any notice that provides information on vaccinations shall also inform the recipient of “the option to refuse an immunization on the grounds of medical, religious, or personal belief considerations”.
In 2014, House Bill 1288 was introduced to curtail vaccine exemptions and closely track those who chose to use them. At that time there were only a few parents in Colorado who were actively involved in the legislative and legal protection of vaccine choice.
Others found out about the bill through an action alert from NVIC and came to the Capitol to testify against the bill. Even though their efforts were largely unorganized, the testimony offered was, according to one legislator, “the most coherent and intelligent of any group” he had ever seen.
A deeply amended version of bill did pass. But the most onerous part of the bill, which would have forced exempting parents to complete a state and industry sponsored on-line ‘reeducation’ module, was removed. [url=http://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/safeschools/Legislation/HB 14-1288.pdf]HB 14-1288[/url], as passed, merely instructs schools to have their aggregate vaccine uptake rates available to the public and directs Colorado Department of Health and Environment (CDPHE) to promulgate rules regarding the frequency of submission of exemptions.
Thanks to active citizen engagement, the law does not authorize CDPHE to demand the use of “official” exemption forms, it does not give CDPHE permission to alter the legislatively approved exemption process, and it does not restrict vaccine choice in Colorado.
For Colorado Residents
If you are a Colorado resident and want to join the grassroots movement to protect vaccine exemptions in our state, then please visit the Colorado Coalition for Vaccine Choice homepage https://ccfvc.org/. Sign up for their email list to stay informed of legislative action and make a donation to support their efforts. Every donation helps this organization lobby, educate, and form a vocal community to counter the continuous threats to our liberty and freedom.References:
- State Vaccine Exemption Laws
- Leicester, England
- DPT: Vaccination Roulette
- National Vaccine Information Center
- [url=http://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/safeschools/Legislation/HB 14-1288.pdf]Colorado Statute HB 14-1288[/url]
- State Auditor’s report
- HB 16-1164
- Colorado Coalition for Vaccine Choice
- HB 16-1164 Guest Editorial
- CDPHE 1164 agenda
- New exemption form
- Forfeiture of privacy rights
- HSLDA legal action
- Colorado exemption law
- Vaccine exemption data
- Test score / exemption rate comparison
This article originally appeared in the Q3 2017 Regenerate Magazine.
Photo Credit
Protecting Vaccine Choice in Colorado: Part 2
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is a rouge state agency that frequently operates outside of their jurisdictional limits. The Vaccine Division of this agency, in particular, is so obsessed with their mission to vaccine every child that the law, it would seem, is a trivial inconvenience to be ignored.
Late in 2015, they gave a presentation to school nurses in which they claimed a new law had authorized CDPHE to create an official vaccine exemption form. The “new law” they referred to was not proposed until the introduction of HB 16-1164 in early 2016. Larry Wolk, Director of CDPHE, actually testified that CDPHE had indeed “jumped the gun” and created the new forms before the bill was even introduced.
In January of 2016, a State Auditor’s report on the CDPHE and their use of Tobacco Settlement Funds found gross conflicts of interest in the agency and declared that “the department lacks authority to enforce compliance with school entry immunization requirements”.
Then, in early 2016 CDPHE and their legislative allies finally did introduce HB 16-1164 with the intention of providing CDPHE with the funding and the authority to enforce the use of proposed new online exemption forms. Coloradan parents once again came together to defeat unnecessary anti-choice legislation.
This time we showed up not just well informed but also unified and organized as the Colorado Coalition for Vaccine Choice (CCVC). Representative Dan Pabon, the main sponsor of the bill, tried in testimony to portray it as a ‘simple bill’ that merely offered their ‘really quite neat’ online form as a convenient ‘service’ to parents.
Parents saw it for what it was: an attempt to circumvent federally protected privacy rights and data mine student information. The bill passed through committee but when an amendment was proposed to make CIIS an opt-in rather than opt-out system, the bill sponsors let the bill die because, in Dan Pabon’s own words, “no one would opt in.” (please see my guest editorial in Denver Post)
That summer two pivotal things happened. CCVC was incorporated as an official Colorado non-profit organization and CDPHE continued to pursue their agenda as if 1164 had become law.
In July, CDPHE revealed their new website and exemption form to the public; telling school nurses and administrators that parents must use this new system, preferably online.
They did not, however, tell parents that the new forms contained compelled speech implicating parents of knowingly endangering their child’s health or that by using the forms parents would forfeit medical privacy rights. CCVC, along with parents around the state, immediately called attention to the legal and ethical errors of CDPHE’s demands.
Attorneys from the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) threatened CDPHE with legal action and the agency backed down, rearranging the compelled speech to be slightly less offensive. CDPHE continued, though, to violate Colorado law by coercing parents to use their legislatively unapproved form.
One aspect of 1288 that has been followed is the careful compilation of vaccine exemption data from schools across the state. The intention of this was ostensibly to provide parents with the information they needed to choose a ‘safe school’ with high vaccine acceptance. Interestingly, when the data is compared with schools’ test scores, the schools with the highest exemption rates also happen to be the schools with the highest performing students .
On January 9, 2017 there was a hearing regarding CDPHE and an evaluation of their compliance with what is known as the SMART Act. The “ART” in this act stands for Accountable, Responsive, and Transparent. Once again parents showed up voice concerns about CDPHE’s utter lack of all of these traits.
The CDPHE’s 1 1/2 hour presentation brilliantly illustrated that their attitude towards vaccine exemptors appears to be the same attitude they have towards everyone. Fish dying in the river? No worries, probably just coincidental to that last chemical spill. There are ‘natural’ pollutants too you know. Kids getting asthma near gas drilling? Don’t panic, we can’t read too much into that because there are many causes of asthma.
As the legislative session opened last January there was a clear change in direction. In light of CDPHE’s history of trying to circumvent the law, a bipartisan bill was proposed to clarify that existing statute only requires a written statement of exemption be submitted to a child’s school.
The bill, SB17-250, was simple and straight forward: No official exemption form can mandated. After more than three hours of testimony, the majority of which was in favor of the bill, SB17-250 passed the Senate Health Committee 3-1. Testimony, and ultimately a legislator’s vote, on any given bill, by rule, is supposed to focus on the content and intent of the bill in discussion.
The opposition completely disregarded this rule and turned the discussion into one about their perceived fears of vaccine exemptions. On April 19, because fear tactics do work, the bill failed to pass the Senate floor vote. However, it is important to note that the CDPHE now has a letter posted on their website stating that, in fact, the parents of Colorado are correct and no official form is required.
The rights of parents to decide what does and does not get injected into their children’s bodies should be unassailable.
Yet, this innate passion for a mother to protect her babies is under constant and carefully orchestrated assault. Colorado will not go the way of California’s draconian compulsory vaccination laws. We are organized, unified, and deeply informed. Our children are among the healthiest in the country and our adults are among the best educated. Our vaccine exemption rights are well established and, for now, well defended.
For Colorado Residents
If you are a Colorado resident and want to join the grassroots movement to protect vaccine exemptions in our state, then please visit the Colorado Coalition for Vaccine Choice homepage https://ccfvc.org/. Sign up for their email list to stay informed of legislative action and make a donation to support their efforts. Every donation helps this organization lobby, educate, and form a vocal community to counter the continuous threats to our liberty and freedom.This article originally appeared in the Q3 2017 Regenerate Magazine.
References
- State Vaccine Exemption Laws
- Leicester, England
- DPT: Vaccination Roulette
- National Vaccine Information Center
- [url=http://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/safeschools/Legislation/HB 14-1288.pdf]Colorado Statute HB 14-1288[/url]
- State Auditor’s report
- HB 16-1164
- Colorado Coalition for Vaccine Choice
- HB 16-1164 Guest Editorial
- CDPHE 1164 agenda
- New exemption form
- Forfeiture of privacy rights
- HSLDA legal action
- Colorado exemption law
- Vaccine exemption data
Thanks to: https://vactruth.com
