To: The Honorable Governor Cuomo
Da: 6.6.19
Re: Protecting Families in NY
S2994a/A2371a has undoubtedly brought up some important issues regarding protecting the health of families in New York State. Here are some questions we hope you will consider when making your decision on this bill:
1. Why do New York legislators claim that religion has nothing to do with a parent’s right to decide whether or not to vaccinate their child when there are in fact many reasons vaccinations may not be a part of someone’s religious beliefs? Here are some examples:
• Production for some vaccines involves use of aborted fetal cells.
• Vaccine manufacturing production involves the use of material from other species (cows, pigs, chickens, monkeys, etc) creating the potential for contamination with the DNA of other species.
• Vaccines are not kosher.
• God created humans in His image. The human body is perfect and we must honor our bodies and keep them clean of foreign substances.
• The 6th Commandment is Thou shalt not kill. Vaccines can kill. More than 600 vaccine deaths have been compensated under Vaccine Injury Compensation Act.
• God has gifted us with the most beautiful blessing — our children. Scripture tells us:
“Children are a gift from God to the parents. (Psalm 127:3) “Parents are entrusted with the care and welfare of the child.” (I Timothy 5:8) “Human blood is to be kept pure under all circumstances and free of contaminants like animal parts and blood.” (Genesis 9:4)
The Courts have repeatedly held that membership in an organized religion is not necessary, all that matters is the personal beliefs of an individual. Even so, there are longstanding doctrines and practices of Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Dutch Reformed Church, Seventh Day Adventist, the Amish and Old Order Mennonites, among many other traditions, that conflict with some or all vaccinations. In addition, the Catholic Church issued a document from the Pontifical Academy for Life under the direction of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict 16 in 2005 that addressed the moral and religious objections to vaccines due to use of cell lines and aborted human fetal tissue. The Russian Orthodox Church just adopted a policy objecting to state-mandated compulsory vaccines and Islamic courts in Indonesia addressed a recurring problem given use of gelatin derived from pork tissue in MMR.
•https://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=2410
•http://pk-semya.ru/novosti/item/7319-o-pravakh-roditelej-v-sfere-zaboty-o-zdorove- rebenka-i-immunoprofilaktiki.html
•https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/indonesian-vaccine-fatwa-sends-measles- immunization-rates-plummeting
•https://pjmedia.com/trending/religious-leaders-in-new-york-come-out-against-mandatory-vaccinations/
2. Why do doctors, the CDC, pharmaceutical companies and New York legislators continue to claim that vaccines are safe when the US government has paid over $4 billion through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program since 1986? The United States Congress has legally classified vaccines as “unavoidably unsafe.” Vaccine manufacturers have liability protection BECAUSE their products are unavoidably unsafe. Yet the pharmaceutical industry and the government bear false witness, marketing vaccines as “safe and effective.”
3. Why are vaccines the only drug that is not required to go through rigorous testing that includes double-blind placebos, the gold standard for safety testing? We urge you to review the ICAN white paper on the lack of vaccine safety studies taking place: http://icandecide.org/white-papers/ Publications-Regarding-Vaccine-Safety.pdf
4. Why are vaccines excluded from informed consent? Mandatory vaccination violates the principles of The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, (http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php- URL_ID=31058&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html) which states that the individual takes priority over the state and that prior, free and informed consent are required before administering a vaccine.
And MOST IMPORTANTLY...
5. Why aren’t more legislators listening to the mothers and fathers who stopped vaccinating because they know their children best and know they were injured by vaccines? Why are they being labeled as “anti-vaxxers” when they have in fact vaccinated their child and had the heartbreaking experience of their child either become permanently brain damaged or in some cases even die? These parents are being ridiculed, silenced and oppressed. They are not anti-vaxxers, they are EX-VAXXERS who turned to God and discovered that vaccines are not in alignment with their religious beliefs.
6. What will you do to change this?
Please work to pass legislation to protect the health of children by fighting for:
• Protection of our first amendment right to religious freedom so we can make health decisions for our children based on what our God commands us to do.
• liability for vaccine manufacturers
• better safety studies for vaccines
• informed consent on vaccines so parents can learn the risks and make decisions BEFORE vaccinating their children.
You CANNOT say you care about the health of children if you are not listening to parents whose children's lives have been destroyed by vaccines. More children have died or been damaged from the MMR than the measles itself. (The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System/VAERS has received 449 adverse FATAL events from the MMR.) Just because it hasn't happened to your family does not mean it won't. You, your children, your grandchildren and your friends and family are all at risk for vaccine injury. Please be open to learning more about this and listen to parents who have real stories to tell.
Knowing what we know, having seen or experienced the detrimental damage vaccines can cause, we cannot knowingly put our children at risk for brain damage, neurological damage, auto-immune disease or death as we’ve seen happen to other families and is acknowledged by the US Government and indicated under adverse reactions on vaccine package inserts. Our faith in God prevents us from knowingly putting our children in harm’s way.
The religious exemption law was established in New York decades ago to protect first amendment rights under the United States Constitution. To take this right away, and deny children an education in New York State, in the United States of America is unconstitutional under the first amendment and a gross violation of human rights.
Furthermore, healthy children are not a public health threat because healthy children cannot spread a disease they do not have. The proper way to prevent diseases from spreading is to quarantine those individuals who are infected and New York State law has a provision that provides this protection and requires unvaccinated children to remain at home during an outbreak. https://regs.health.ny.gov/content/section-66-110-exclusion-event-disease-outbreak
A well-known immunologist explains that the recommended childhood vaccines cannot prevent transmission of disease – either because they are not designed to prevent the transmission of infection (rather, they are intended to prevent disease symptoms), or because they are for non-communicable diseases. https://thinkingmomsrevolution.com/an-open-letter-to-legislators-currently-considering-vaccine-legislation-from-tetyana-obukhanych-phd-in-immunology/
A few hundred cases of the measles, a benign childhood disease that most people recover completely from without any complications, is not a reason to chip away at the Constitution.
Please oppose S2994a/A2371a.
Not doing so is an American tragedy.
Sincerely, #TeamParentsNY
Additional info:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8053748
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3821823
https://physiciansforinformedconsent.org/immunocompromised-schoolchildren/rgis/
https://www.nvic.org/vaccines-and-diseases/measles/measles-vaccine-injury-death.aspx
https://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/m/mmr_ii/mmr_ii_pi.pdf