Wheat harvest protocol in USA- drench wheat fields with Roundup days before harvesters work through fields as withered, dead wheat plants less taxing on farm equipment, allows for earlier, easier bigger harvest

The Real Reason Wheat is Toxic (it’s not the gluten)

NOV 13 • BREAKING STORIES, HEALTH • 

by Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist

The stories became far too frequent to ignore.

Emails from folks with allergic or digestive issues to wheat in the United States experienced no symptoms whatsoever when they tried eating pasta on vacation in Italy. 

Confused parents wondering why wheat consumption sometimes triggered autoimmune reactions in their children but not at other times.

 In my own home, I’ve long pondered why my husband can eat the wheat I prepare at home, but he experiences negative digestive effects eating even a single roll in a restaurant.

There is clearly something going on with wheat that is not well known by the general public. It goes far and beyond organic versus nonorganic, gluten or hybridization because even conventional wheat triggers no symptoms for some who eat wheat in other parts of the world.

 What indeed is going on with wheat?

For quite some time, I secretly harbored the notion that wheat in the United States must, in fact, be genetically modified.  GMO wheat secretly invading the North American food supply seemed the only thing that made sense and could account for the varied experiences I was hearing about.

 I reasoned that it couldn’t be the gluten or wheat hybridization. Gluten and wheat hybrids have been consumed for thousands of years. It just didn’t make sense that this could be the reason for so many people suddenly having problems with wheat and gluten in general in the past 5-10 years.

 Finally, the answer came over dinner a couple of months ago with a friend who was well versed in the wheat production process. I started researching the issue for myself, and was, quite frankly, horrified at what I discovered.

 The good news is that the reason wheat has become so toxic in the United States is not because it is secretly GMO as I had feared (thank goodness!).

The bad news is that the problem lies with the manner in which wheat is harvested by conventional wheat farmers.

You’re going to want to sit down for this one.  I’ve had some folks burst into tears in horror when I passed along this information before.

 Wheat harvest protocol in the United States is to drench the wheat fields with Roundup several days before the combine harvesters work through the fields as withered, dead wheat plants are less taxing on the farm equipment and allows for an earlier, easier and bigger harvest 

Pre-harvest application of the herbicide Roundup or other herbicides containing the deadly active ingredient glyphosate to wheat and barley as a desiccant was suggested as early as 1980.  It has since become routine over the past 15 years and is used as a drying agent 7-10 days before harvest within the conventional farming community. 

According to Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT who hasstudied the issue in depth and who I recently saw present on the subject at a nutritional Conference in Indianapolis, desiccating non-organic wheat crops with glyphosate just before harvest came into vogue late in the 1990′s with the result that most of the non-organic wheat in the United States is now contaminated with it.  Seneff explains that when you expose wheat to a toxic chemical like glyphosate, it actually releases more seeds resulting in a slightly greater yield:   “It ‘goes to seed’ as it dies. At its last gasp, it releases the seed” says Dr. Seneff.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, as of 2012, 99% of durum wheat, 97% of spring wheat, and 61% of winter wheat has been treated with herbicides. This is an increase from 88% for durum wheat, 91% for spring wheat and 47% for winter wheat since 1998.

 Here’s what wheat farmer Keith Lewis has to say about the practice:

I have been a wheat farmer for 50 yrs and one wheat production practice that is very common is applying the herbicide Roundup (glyposate) just prior to harvest. Roundup is licensed for preharvest weed control. Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup claims that application to plants at over 30% kernel moisture result in roundup uptake by the plant into the kernels. Farmers like this practice because Roundup kills the wheat plant allowing an earlier harvest.  A wheat field often ripens unevenly, thus applying Roundup preharvest evens up the greener parts of the field with the more mature. The result is on the less mature areas Roundup is translocated into the kernels and eventually harvested as such.

This practice is not licensed. Farmers mistakenly call it “dessication.” Consumers eating products made from wheat flour are undoubtedly consuming minute amounts of Roundup. An interesting aside, malt barley which is made into beer is not acceptable in the marketplace if it has been sprayed with preharvest Roundup. Lentils and peas are not accepted in the market place if it was sprayed with preharvest roundup….. but wheat is ok.. This farming practice greatly concerns me and it should further concern consumers of wheat products.

 This practice is not just widespread in the United States either. The Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom reports that use of Roundup as a wheat desiccant results in glyphosate residues regularly showing up in bread samples. Other European countries are waking up to to the danger, however. In the Netherlands, use of Roundup is completely banned with France likely soon to follow.   Using Roundup as a dessicant on the wheat fields prior to harvest may save the farmer money and increase profits, but it is devastating to the health of the consumer who ultimately consumes those ground up wheat kernels which have absorbed a significant amount of Roundup!

While the herbicide industry maintains that glyphosate is minimally toxic to humans, research published in the Journal Entropy strongly argues otherwise by shedding light on exactly how glyphosate disrupts mammalian physiology.

 Authored by Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff of MIT, the paper investigates glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, an overlooked component of lethal toxicity to mammals.

 The currently accepted view is that ghyphosate is not harmful to humans or any mammals.  This flawed view is so pervasive in the conventional farming community that Roundup salesmen have been known to foolishly drink it during presentations!

 However, just because Roundup doesn’t kill you immediately doesn’t make it nontoxic.  In fact, the active ingredient in Roundup lethally disrupts the all important shikimate pathway found in beneficial gut microbes which is responsible for synthesis of critical amino acids.

 Friendly gut bacteria, also called probiotics, play a critical role in human health. Gut bacteria aid digestion, prevent permeability of the gastointestinal tract (which discourages the development of autoimmune disease), synthesize vitamins and provide the foundation for robust immunity.  In essence:

Roundup significantly disrupts the functioning of beneficial bacteria in the gut and contributes to permeability of the intestinal wall and consequent expression of autoimmune disease symptoms

 In synergy with disruption of the biosynthesis of important amino acids via the shikimate pathway, glyphosate inhibits the cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes produced by the gut microbiome.  CYP enzymes are critical to human biology because they detoxify the multitude of foreign chemical compounds, xenobiotics, that we are exposed to in our modern environment today.

 As a result, humans exposed to glyphosate through use of Roundup in their community or through ingestion of its residues on industrialized food products become even more vulnerable to the damaging effects of other chemicals and environmental toxins they encounter!

 What’s worse is that the negative impact of glyphosate exposure is slow and insidious over months and years as inflammation gradually gains a foothold in the cellular systems of the body.

 The consequences of this systemic inflammation are most of the diseases and conditions associated with the Western lifestyle:

-Gastrointestinal disorders

-Obesity

-Diabetes

-Heart Disease

-Depression

-Autism

-Infertility

-Cancer

-Multiple Sclerosis

-Alzheimer’s disease

-And the list goes on and on and on …

 In a nutshell, Dr. Seneff’s study of Roundup’s ghastly glyphosate which the wheat crop in the United States is doused with just days before harvest uncovers the manner in which this lethal toxin harms the human body by decimating beneficial gut microbes with the tragic end result of disease, degeneration, and widespread suffering

Got the picture yet?

Even if you think you have no trouble digesting wheat, it is still very wise to avoid conventional wheat as much as possible in your diet!

You Must Avoid Toxic Wheat No Matter What

The bottom line is that avoidance of conventional wheat in the United States is absolutely imperative even if you don’t currently have a gluten allergy or wheat sensitivity. The increase in the amount of glyphosate applied to wheat closely correlates with the rise of celiac disease and gluten intolerance. Dr. Seneff points out that the increases in these diseases are not just genetic in nature, but also have an environmental cause as not all patient symptoms are alleviated by eliminating gluten from the diet.

 The effects of deadly glyphosate on your biology are so insidious that lack of symptoms today means literally nothing.

If you don’t have problems with wheat now, you will in the future if you keep eating conventionally produced, toxic wheat!

How to Eat Wheat Safely

Obviously, if you’ve already developed a sensitivity or allergy to wheat, you must avoid it.  Period.  But, if you aren’t celiac or gluten sensitive and would like to consume this ancestral food safely, you can do what we do in our home. We only source organic, preferably low gluten, unhybridized Einkorn wheat for breadmaking, pancakes, cookies etc.  But, when we eat out or are purchasing food from the store, conventional wheat products are rejected without exception.  This despite the fact that we have no gluten allergies whatsoever in our home – yet.

 I am firmly convinced that if we did nothing, our entire family at some point would develop sensitivity to wheat or autoimmune disease in some form due to the toxic manner in which it is processed and the glyphosate residues that are contained in conventional wheat products.

 What Are You Going to Do About Toxic Wheat?

How did you react to the news that US wheat farmers are using Roundup, not just to kill weeds, but to dry out the wheat plants to allow for an earlier, easier and bigger harvest and that such a practice causes absorption of toxic glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides, right into the wheat kernels themselves?

 Did you feel outraged and violated like I did? How will you implement a conventional wheat-avoidance strategy going forward even if you haven’t yet developed a problem with gluten or wheat sensitivity?

 What about other crops where Roundup is used as a pre-harvest dessicant such as barley, sugar cane, rice, seeds, dried beans and peas, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, and sugar beets?  Will you only be buying these crops in organic form from now on to avoid this modern, man-made scourge?

Credits: Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist

 Sources and More Information

Roundup: Quick Death for Weeds, Slow and Painful Death for You

Glyphosate now commonly found in human urine

Glyphosate, Celiac and Gluten Intolerance

The Glyphosate, Celiac Disease Connection

Hybrid Wheat is Not the Same as GMO Wheat

The Dutch Ban Roundup, France and Brazil to Follow

Is it the Gluten or is it the Glyphosate?

Can Celiacs Eat Sourdough Bread?

Pre-harvest Application of Glyphosate to Wheat

Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases

Yield and quality of wheat seeds as a function of desiccation stages and herbicides

Wheat farmer weighs in on the use of Roundup as a wheat desiccant

Disturbing – Researchers Confirm That Cancer Is A Purely Man-Made Disease

By Editor • On May 14, 2016 • In Health Health 

Researchers from the University Of Manchester, United Kingdom, have concluded that cancer is a purely modern, man-made disease.

In the United Kingdom alone, Cancer claims more than 150,000 lives each year. Statistics also show that about one in three people in the United Kingdom is likely to get cancer.

The researchers spent a great deal of time studying mummies, fossils and classical literature before arriving at their conclusion.

The researchers said the disease is a man-made disease fuelled by the excesses of modern life. This is because tumors were rare until recent times, when pollution and poor diet became an issue.

In the study of Egyptian mummies, for example, the researchers found no signs of cancer in many of them—with the exception of one isolated case. Slivers of tissue from hundreds of Egyptian mummies were rehydrated and placed under the microscope. The researchers found only one case of cancer in the mummies examined.

In the past, some researchers have argued that the ancient Egyptians did not live long enough to develop cancer. To dismiss this weak argument, the researchers pointed out that other age-related disease, such as hardening of the arteries and brittle bones, occurred during this time.

The journal Nature Reviews Cancer reports that fossil evidence of cancer is not solid, with scientific literature providing a few dozen, mostly disputed, examples in animal fossils. Even the study of thousands of Neanderthal bones has provided only one example of a possible cancer.

 Evidence of cancer in ancient Egyptian texts is also tenuous, with cancer-like problems more likely being caused by leprosy or even varicose veins. It is said the ancient Greeks were probably the first to define cancer as a specific disease, and to distinguish between benign and malignant tumors.

The 17th century provides the first descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers. However, the first reports in scientific literature of distinctive tumors only occurred in the past 200 years. Nasal cancer in snuff users appeared in 1761. Scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps was also discovered in 1775.

Lead researcher of this current study, Michael Zimmerman said there should have been plenty of cancer-related evidence available in ancient societies because they lacked effective healthcare.

“In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity, indicating that cancer-causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization,” Zimmerman said.

 Professor Rosalie David, who also played a key role in the analysis of the possible reference to the disease in classical literature, fossil records and mummified bodies, said:

“In industrialized societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle. The important thing about our study is that it gives a historical perspective to this disease. We can make very clear statements on the cancer rates in societies because we have a full overview. We have looked at millennia, not one hundred years, and have masses of data. Yet again extensive ancient Egyptian data, along with other data from across the millennia, has given modern society a clear message – cancer is man-made and something that we can and should address.”

The researchers recommended a healthy diet, regular physical activity and maintenance of a healthy weight. These three lifestyle choices are believed to be able to prevent about a third of the most common cancers known to researchers.

Mumps Being Spread by and Among Vaccinated People

Mumps Being Spread by and Among 

Vaccinated People

By Dr. Mercola  May 9, 2016

Vaccines are a very lucrative business. Pfizer's vaccine Prevnar, which targets 13 strains of pneumococcus bacteria, generated $6.25 billion in revenue last year. And that's just one vaccine.1

Even ineffective vaccines allow vaccine makers to make a mint. One of the most obvious vaccine failures is the mumps vaccine (part of the measles, mumps, rubella, aka MMR).

Again and again, outbreaks among vaccinated populations occur, yet rarely is the truth of the situation addressed, namely the fact that the vaccine is ineffective and doesn't work as advertised.In 2010, two virologists filed a federal lawsuit against Merck, their former employer, alleging the vaccine maker engaged in improper testing and data falsification to artificially inflate the efficacy rating of their mumps vaccine. For details on how they allegedly pulled this off, read Dr. Suzanne Humphries' excellent summary,2 which explains in layman's terms how the tests were manipulated. Just about every media outlet reported the lawsuit, and the hundreds of millions of dollars Merck was said to have defrauded from the U.S. government by selling a vaccine of questionable effectiveness.

As reported by Reuters3 last year, Merck's behavior in and of itself suggests they're trying to cover up fraud:

"Attorneys at Constantine Cannon, who represent the scientists, asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Lynne Sitarski of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to compel Merck to respond to their discovery request, which asks the company to give the efficacy of the vaccine as a percentage.

Instead of answering the question, the letter said, Merck has been consistently evasive, using 'cut-and-paste' answers saying it cannot run a new clinical trial to determine the current efficacy, and providing only data from 50 years ago.

'Merck should not be permitted to raise as one of its principal defenses that its vaccine has a high efficacy, which is accurately represented on the product's label, but then refuse to answer what it claims that efficacy actually is,' the letter said."

So why are people still surprised when mumps outbreaks occur? And why are the unvaccinated still blamed for most disease outbreaks, even when most of the infected are vaccinated?

Vaccinated People Are Spreading the Mumps

Recently, 41 students at Harvard University came down with mumps and, according to the Public Health department in Cambridge, every single one of those students had been vaccinated.4   Four other campuses in Boston are also starting to see cases, as have four universities in Indiana. About 13 cases of mumps have also cropped up in California.

One ridiculous explanation offered by Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security, is that the vaccine only works if the exposure to the virus is low; it can't be expected to work if there are high amounts of exposure, such as in dorms:5

"The exposure that they have to mumps is so high in these situations that it overcomes the ability of the vaccine to protect them," Adalja told Live Science. "It may be that, in these special situations, a much higher level of antibodies [against mumps] is needed to keep the virus at bay."

In 2009, more than 1,000 people in New Jersey and New York contracted the disease. At the time, questions arose about the effectiveness of the vaccine because 77 percent of those sickened were vaccinated. A similar scenario occurred in 2006, when mumps infected more than 6,500 people in the U.S. Most of those cases also occurred among the vaccinated population, primarily among college students who had received two doses of MMR vaccine.

Now, if a vaccine is indeed highly effective, and avoiding the disease in question is worth the risk of the potential side effects from the vaccine, then many people would conclude that the vaccine's benefits outweigh the risks.  However, if the vaccine is ineffective, and/or if the disease doesn't pose a great threat to begin with, then the vaccine may indeed pose an unacceptable risk. This is particularly true if the vaccine has been linked to serious side effects.

Unfortunately, that's the case with the MMR vaccine, which has been linked to at least 98 deaths and 694 disabilities between 2003 and 2015. Considering the fact that only 1 to 10 percent of vaccine reactions are ever reported, those numbers could actually be closer to 980 deaths and 6,940 disabilities.

Meanwhile, death from mumps is "exceedingly rare" according to the CDC,6 and no one has died from mumps during any of the recent outbreaks.

The Myth of Vaccine-Generated Herd Immunity

Download Interview Transcript

Vaccine promoters typically stress the importance of compliance with the federally recommended vaccine schedule in order to create and maintain vaccine-induced "herd immunity." This may require multiple doses of certain vaccines, the MMR included, because no vaccine is 100 percent effective.

However, they never quite seem to be able to explain why the majority of outbreaks occur in areas that are thought to HAVE herd immunity status, i.e. where the majority of people are fully vaccinated and "should" therefore not be able to be infected or transmit infection.

The problem stems from a mix-up of terms. While there is such a thing as natural herd immunity, vaccine-induced herd immunity is a total misnomer. Vaccine makers simply assumed that vaccines will work in the same way as natural immunity, but the science clearly shows that this is not the case.

Vaccination and exposure to a given disease produce two qualitatively different types of immune responses. To learn more, I urge you to listen to the video above, in which Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), discusses the concept of herd immunity. As explained by Barbara:

"Vaccines do not confer the same type of immunity that natural exposure to the disease does ... [V]accines only confer temporary protection … In most cases natural exposure to disease would give you a longer lasting, more robust, qualitatively superior immunity because it gives you both cell mediated immunity and humoral immunity.

Humoral is the antibody production. The way you measure vaccine-induced immunity is by how high the antibody titers are. (How many antibodies you have.) The problem is, the cell mediated immunity is very important as well. Most vaccines evade cell mediated immunity and go straight for the antibodies, which is only one part of immunity."

Ineffective Vaccines May Pose an Unacceptable Health Risk

In essence, vaccines are designed to trick your body's immune system into producing the antibodies needed to resist any future infection. However, your body is smarter than that.

The artificial stimulation of your immune system produced by lab-altered killed bacteria or an attenuated live virus is not the same as your body experiencing a natural viral or bacterial infection, which may or may not make you clinically ill but will confer a longer lasting immunity compared to vaccine acquired artificial immunity that is qualitatively inferior and far more temporary.

So the question is, is it well-advised to protect children against a large number of infectious diseases early in life throughtemporary artificial immunity from vaccines, or might they be better off contracting certain contagious infections in childhood, thereby attaining longer lasting natural immunity that may even last them for the rest of their lives?

And, do vaccine complications ultimately cause more chronic illness and death than infectious diseases do? In the case of the MMR vaccine, this question seems particularly pertinent. While there are 98 reports of death following vaccination between 2003 and 2015, only one child has died from acute measles complications in the decade between 2005 and 2015.7

Democrats Seek Taxpayer Money for Zika Vaccine

While millions suffer from government subsidized diseases caused by obesity and diabetes, and tens of thousands die from prescription opioids and antibiotic-resistant diseases — all of which stem from ill-advised government policies, the White House is now seeking $2 billion of your tax dollars to create yet another vaccine, this time against the Zika virus, just like they did for bird flu, swine flu, SARS, and so many other very profitable false alarms. According to The Daily Caller:8

"Democrats in Congress and the White House say they're convinced the virus could wreak havoc in the U.S. if the nearly 2 billion dollars isn't appropriated right now to keep the virus from spreading ...

The proposal would direct the bulk of the funds to the Department of Health and Human Services, and a much smaller portion to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of State, to fund increased research on the virus, development of a vaccine and an effort to control mosquito populations."

The problem is, while the Zika virus transmitted by mosquitoes was originally blamed for reports of microcephaly among infants born in Brazil, it quickly became apparent that Zika was among the least likely contributors to this birth defect. The Brazilian government also admitted that overly generous parameters resulted in dramatic over-reporting of the condition.

As details started emerging, it became clear that a number of environmental factors could be at play — all of which were far more convincing than the Zika virus. Yet our politicians are still pandering this fear mongering in order to continue lining the chemical and pharmaceutical industries' pockets.

Is Zika Virus Really Responsible for Birth Defects?

For starters, large amounts of banned pesticides are in use in the area where most of the microcephaly cases have occurred in Brazil.9,10,11 This includes heavy regional use of the pesticide Atrazine. According to research12 published in 2011, small head circumference is one potential side effect of prenatal Atrazine exposure.

Lack of sanitation and widespread vitamin A and zinc deficiency are also potential contributing factors to microcephaly increases in Brazil. Vitamin A deficiency has actually been linked to an increased risk of microcephaly specifically,13,14 and zinc is known to play an important role in the structure and function of the brain.15 Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists malnutrition and exposure to toxic chemicals as two of the three known risk factors for microcephaly.

A report16,17 by an Argentine physician's organization called Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns also challenges the theory that Zika virus is responsible for the microcephaly cases in Brazil. They point out that a chemical larvicide that causes malformations in mosquitoes (pyriproxyfen) has been applied to the drinking water in the most seriously affected area of Brazil.

Pyroproxyfen, which has been linked to birth defects, is manufactured by Sumitomo Chemical, a Japanese subsidiary of Monsanto, and has been used in a state-controlled program to eradicate mosquitoes.

Imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, has also been shown to produce skeletal malformation18,19 and, as it turns out, Brazil lifted its ban on aerial spraying of neonicotinoids in October 2012, right around the time the women who gave birth to infants with microcephaly would have become pregnant.20

Addressing these human health issues would mean taking a long hard look at the use of toxic chemicals contaminating the environment, and coming up with more rigorous restrictions on what chemical companies are allowed to pander.

Instead, the government turns a blind eye to the obvious, and comes up with a plan to increase the use of chemicals, both internally and externally, in the form of vaccines and mosquito treatments. In my view, this is a highly irrational decision. It's also a dead giveaway that public health is not their primary focus.

Chinese Parents Question Vaccine Safety

In China, where government mandated mass vaccination programs are a more recent intervention, suspicions about vaccine safety have grown rather quickly, and many parents, whose children have been injured by vaccines, have taken to the streets in ongoing protests. Dong Xiaoxin, whose 4-year-old daughter contracted polio after receiving a polio vaccine, spoke to an NPR reporter, saying:21

"Our daughter has made a great sacrifice for the nation's inoculation program, and we're not afraid to fight for the legal rights she deserves. We had no idea that vaccines could produce this kind of result. We felt that any vaccination given by the state had to be a good thing. We were completely unprepared. The state needs to provide us parents with some sort of safeguard. Only then can parents feel assured and fully trust the government."

In her book "Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History," Humphries addresses the polio vaccine specifically, noting that through her research, she became convinced that the polio vaccine had very little if anything to do with the eradication of polio.

In fact, the successful "eradication" of this disease was accomplished by changing the diagnostic criteria of the disease. What's worse, the initial vaccine actually led to more cases of paralysis than would have developed naturally.

To save the vaccine, they had to make it appear as though it was working, even though it was causing more problems than it solved. The answer they came up with was to change the diagnostic criteria. The original criterion was two examinations within 24 hours. This was changed to two examinations within 60 days. This artificially decreased the polio rate, because within 60 days, most people recover from their bout with poliomyelitis.

They also began using serological testing, and if the polio virus was not found, the patient was not considered to have polio. Since then, virtually every type of polio vaccine has had some kind of issue, including the propagation of mutated strains of the polio virus.

In 1999, when public health officials admitted that the only polio cases in the U.S. were vaccine-induced, there was a switch from the live oral polio vaccine that can cause vaccine strain polio paralysis to the inactivated, injectable polio vaccine that cannot. However, in some developing countries the oral polio vaccine is still used and those vaccinated can become silent carriers of a highly virulent strain of polio that can infect others and cause paralysis.

Protect Your Right o Informed Consent and Defend Vaccine Exemptions

With all the uncertainty surrounding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, it's critical to protect your right to make independent health choices and exercise voluntary informed consent to vaccination. It is urgent that everyone in America stand up and fight to protect and expand vaccine informed consent protections in state public health and employment laws. The best way to do this is to get personally involved with your state legislators and educating the leaders in your community.

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.

National vaccine policy recommendations are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level. It is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights can have the greatest impact.

It is critical for EVERYONE to get involved now in standing up for the legal right to make voluntary vaccine choices in America because those choices are being threatened by lobbyists representing drug companies, medical trade associations, and public health officials, who are trying to persuade legislators to strip all vaccine exemptions from public health laws.

Signing up for NVIC's free Advocacy Portal at www.NVICAdvocacy.org gives you immediate, easy access to your own state legislators on your smart phone or computer so you can make your voice heard. You will be kept up-to-date on the latest state bills threatening your vaccine choice rights and get practical, useful information to help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your own community.

Also, when national vaccine issues come up, you will have the up-to-date information and call to action items you need at your fingertips. So please, as your first step, sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal.

Share Your Story With the Media and People You Know

If you or a family member has suffered a serious vaccine reaction, injury, or death, please talk about it. If we don't share information and experiences with one another, everybody feels alone and afraid to speak up. Write a letter to the editor if you have a different perspective on a vaccine story that appears in your local newspaper. Make a call in to a radio talk show that is only presenting one side of the vaccine story.

I must be frank with you; you have to be brave because you might be strongly criticized for daring to talk about the "other side" of the vaccine story. Be prepared for it and have the courage to not back down. Only by sharing our perspective and what we know to be true about vaccination, will the public conversation about vaccination open up so people are not afraid to talk about it.

We cannot allow the drug companies and medical trade associations funded by drug companies or public health officials promoting forced use of a growing list of vaccines to dominate the conversation about vaccination.

The vaccine injured cannot be swept under the carpet and treated like nothing more than "statistically acceptable collateral damage" of national one-size-fits-all mandatory vaccination policies that put way too many people at risk for injury and death. We shouldn't be treating people like guinea pigs instead of human beings.

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

I encourage you to visit the website of the non-profit charity, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), at www.NVIC.org:

• NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims: View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries, and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
• If You Vaccinate, Ask 8 Questions: Learn how to recognize vaccine reaction symptoms and prevent vaccine injuries.
• Vaccine Freedom Wall: View or post descriptions of harassment and sanctions by doctors, employers, and school and health officials for making independent vaccine choices.
• Vaccine Failure Wall: View or post descriptions about vaccines that have failed to work and protect the vaccinated from disease.

Connect With Your Doctor or Find a New One That Will Listen and Care

If your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don't want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to stop the change in attitude of many parents about vaccinations after they become truly educated about health and vaccination. However, there is hope.

At least 15 percent of young doctors recently polled admit that they're starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents.

It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.

So take the time to locate a doctor, who treats you with compassion and respect, and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child.