Tenth Amendment Center: Central Planning of Your Immune System Is Dangerous
Americans will potentially be subject to a lifetime schedule of mandated vaccines in the very near future. This would be an expansion of the childhood mandates already in place.
Mandated vaccinations constitute state planning of our immune systems and, for the reasons discussed below, are as harmful to our health as state planning is to our economy.
The human immune system, like an economy, is an extremely complex, self-regulating system. Just as natural laws and forces drive an economy, they also drive an immune system.
The Failures of State Economic Intervention
State intervention causes unintended consequences and ignores opportunity costs.
Followers of the Austrian school of economics, a school of free-market economics, understand that a complex system of spontaneous, naturally occurring economic phenomena exist, which harmonize human activity and uplift society. They further understand that state intervention disrupts this system, causing harmful unintended consequences and ignoring opportunity costs.
Examples of unintended consequences of state economic intervention are rent control reducing the incentive to own rental properties, thereby shrinking the supply of rental units, and the minimum wage making labor more expensive, thereby reducing the hiring of unskilled labor.
Examples of economic opportunity costs are when the state usurps funds from businesses through taxation, using the funds to pay bureaucrats’ salaries or for some other purpose, but at the cost of the businesses having fewer funds to hire new employees or to buy new equipment.
State intervention is often a “racket” to promote special interests
The Austrians also understand the “racket” aspect to state economic intervention and planning—that it’s usually driven by a desire to promote special interests, rather than by concern for the public.
An example of this occurred when the first transcontinental railroads were built in the U.S., not driven by the needs of the populace, but rather as a taxpayer-funded scheme to benefit wealthy railroad owners.
“Regulatory capture” is another element of this racket. It occurs when governmental agencies, purportedly in existence to protect consumers, are influenced by the corporations they regulate to protect corporate interests over those of the public.
The historical record is often distorted to support state intervention
The Austrians further understand that there have been distortions of the historical record to garner support for economic intervention. An example of this is the oft-repeated myth that, before the imposition of the Federal Reserve System, the American economy experienced a regular series of financial panics and that the Federal Reserve ended them and caused economic stability.
The above insights from Austrian economics are instructive when applied to mandatory vaccinations.
When the state interferes with the immune system through mandated vaccinations, a multitude of harmful unintended consequences and opportunity costs occur.
Additionally, there’s a “racket” aspect to vaccine mandates, as corporate interests wholly unrelated to the advancement of human health play a role in the mandates and state vaccine policy.
Further, the state narrative on vaccines contains distortions and omissions of fact.
These issues are discussed below, but first, the current status of vaccine mandates is reviewed.
Overview of the Current Status of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.
The administration of vaccines occurs largely outside of normal liability rules
In the U.S., the manufacturers of many vaccines have been afforded highly unusual liability protections.
Under U.S. law, all claims of harm pertaining to vaccines recommended by the CDC for routine use in children must proceed under a special system called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). Under this system, the vaccine manufacturers are shielded from liability, and taxpayers, rather than vaccine manufacturers, fund any award of damages through the payment of an excise tax. The CDC recommends some of these childhood vaccines for use in adults, such as the influenza vaccine, and, for these vaccines, the manufacturers’ shield from liability also extends to adult use.
The federal government has also granted protection from liability to the manufacturers of future COVID-19 vaccines.
In the NVICP process, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the defendant and taxpayer-funded Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys defend against the claims, generally arguing that the reported injuries were not caused by vaccines and for the denial of compensation.
Additionally, under the NVICP process, vaccine manufacturers are not subject to discovery. Discovery is the process that allows parties to seek relevant information and records from each other during litigation, often requiring corporate defendants to produce records such as e-mails and research data and to answer interrogatories and requests for admissions.
The removal of liability and lack of discovery are nearly unique to the vaccine industry and are a stark departure from the legal liability rules applicable to the manufacturers of most products.
To date, over $4 billion has been paid out under the NVICP for claims of harm caused by vaccines.
The business of vaccines occurs outside of the free markets
The administration of vaccines in the U.S. occurs wholly outside of the context of free markets.
The federal government acts as a major player in the purchase of vaccines. It buys approximately half of all vaccines administered to children pursuant to a program called the Vaccines for Children Program.
It’s also a player in vaccine patents and collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to develop new vaccines.
In addition to purchasing vaccines, the state plays another role in drumming up business for the vaccine industry: it mandates the use of its product. This creates forced demand, bestowing upon the industry the benefit of extremely high product sales. This also spares the vaccine industry from marketing costs, which are essentially shifted to the taxpayers.
The factors discussed above make vaccines one of the fastest-growing sources of revenue for the pharmaceutical industry. For example, it’s been reported that a vaccine (Prevnar 13) has recently been the product that generated the most sales for Pfizer, rather than a drug. It’s been estimated that the global vaccine market will reach a total revenue of nearly $60 billion in 2020, almost doubling the size of the market it had in 2014.
Governmental agencies regulating vaccines have failed to require adequate safety testing
There’s ample evidence that the federal agencies tasked with regulating the vaccine industry have fallen prey to regulatory capture.
First, the CDC and FDA have allowed those with financial conflicts of interest to be highly involved in the regulatory process. For example, the CDC has an advisory committee on the use of vaccines and the CDC has permitted members of the committee with financial ties to the vaccine industry, and those with financial conflicts of interest, to participate the committee’s deliberations regarding vaccine use. Such members have also been permitted to advocate positions during the advisory committee process.
Additionally, a “revolving door” exists between U.S. agencies responsible for regulating the vaccine industry and vaccine manufacturers. This has, at times, involved high-level personnel in key positions, such as Julie Gerberding, who was director of the CDC from 2002 to 2009 and, after leaving the CDC, took a position as head of Merck’s vaccine division.
Regulatory capture may at least partially explain why governmental safety testing requirements for vaccines are less than rigorous.
Vaccine safety trials are generally designed and conducted by the vaccine manufacturers themselves.
Further, the FDA classifies vaccines as “biologics” rather than “drugs,” thereby allowing vaccine manufacturers to forego the multi-year, double-blind, inert placebo-controlled studies required for drug approval. Almost all vaccine safety studies are conducted without a control group of unvaccinated individuals receiving nothing but an inert placebo.
Generally, if a “control group” is used during a vaccine safety study, the group receives a substance which is not inert, such as another vaccine or an adjuvant such as aluminum. (An adjuvant is a substance added to some vaccines to increase the immunogenic responses of antigens and to thereby stimulate the immune system.) For example, when Merck conducted clinical studies for the Gardasil 9 vaccine, it used the original Gardasil vaccine as the “placebo” in the control groups and both vaccines contain an aluminum adjuvant.
Just as the FDA hasn’t required individual vaccines to undergo true placebo-controlled studies for approval, the CDC hasn’t required its schedules of recommended vaccines to undergo studies comparing those vaccinated in accordance with the schedules with a “control group” of unvaccinated individuals. This is despite evidence indicating that unvaccinated children and children receiving less than the full CDC schedule of vaccines have better health outcomes than those who receive the full schedule.
Additionally, most vaccines are subject to very short periods of monitoring for adverse reactions, often of 14 days or less.
Any safety testing for a COVID-19 vaccine will likely be even less rigorous than the norm for vaccines, as the Trump Administration has indicated that it will allow for the development of a COVID-19 vaccine under an accelerated timeline.
Such lax governmental safety standards certainly demonstrate a point made by Dr. Mary Ruwart in her book Death by Regulation: How We Were Robbed of a Golden Age of Health and How We Can Reclaim It—that governmental agencies often fail to protect consumers and that consumer protection can most effectively be achieved through private certification companies testing products and rating and/or certifying their safety. Under such a scenario, private certification agencies operating within the free market would compete with each other and be incentivized by market forces to be as accurate as possible in rating and certifying products.
Ruwart cites as an example of this the Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. (UL), a private certifying agency that tests appliances and electrical hardware and grants, to those that meet its standards, its UL Seal of Approval. Most retailers will not sell appliances without the UL Seal of Approval and Ruwart points out that this voluntary, private certifying agency has been successfully keeping consumers safe for decades. She further points out that, if FDA approval for the products it regulates became optional rather than required, third-party drug testing and certification could become part of the “consumer landscape” to protect consumers.
State childhood exemptions are being rolled back and eliminated
Currently, in the U.S., vaccine mandates exist at the state level and apply only to children (with the exception of vaccines mandated for adults in some fields of employment). However, federal mandates appear to be on the horizon and will likely apply to both adults and children.
States have historically allowed all or some of the following types of exemptions from mandates: 1) religious; 2) medical; 3) philosophical. Recently, there’s been a growing trend toward states bolstering their mandates by rolling back or eliminating exemptions. New York, Washington, Maine and California are examples of states that have recently done so.
The pharmaceutical industry has been highly involved in efforts to strengthen state mandates and to roll back exemptions. For example, a lobbying firm with reported financial backing from vaccine manufacturers recently funded an advertising campaign in Maine aimed at defeating a ballot measure to reverse the legislative removal of religious and philosophical exemptions in that state. (The ballot measure was voted upon and did not pass.) Other actions by the pharmaceutical industry along these lines have included, among other things, serving as “information resources” for legislators, lobbying legislators, conducting consumer marking campaigns and even drafting pro-mandate legislation.
Adult mandates, and mandates issued at the federal level, are likely imminent in the U.S.
The pharmaceutical industry has also been supportive of imposing federal vaccine mandates. Although the U.S. currently has no federal mandates, other countries have issued mandates at the national level, and there’s reason to believe that the U.S. may follow suit.
In February of 2019, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, then Commissioner of the FDA, made comments to CNN indicating that the federal government has the authority to mandate vaccines and could step in with mandates if states don’t require more children to be vaccinated. Gottlieb made the comments shortly before resigning as FDA Commissioner in May of 2019 and joining the Board of Directors of Pfizer, Inc., a vaccine manufacturer, in June of 2019.
There’s also reason to believe that any future federal mandates in the U.S. may apply to adults as well as children. The CDC has both a childhood vaccine schedule and an adult one. The feds have explicitly stated the goals of increasing overall vaccination rates and increasing rates specifically in the adult population. These goals are discussed in the National Vaccine Plan (NVP) and the National Adult Immunization Plan (NAIP), respectively, which can be found on HHS’s website.
Further, in 2012, the World Health Assembly endorsed the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), which includes as part of one of its strategic objectives “creating strategies for reaching individuals throughout their life course”. [Emphasis supplied.]
Italy, France, Romania and Germany are exampl
Davis Taylor
April 26, 2020 at 10:32AM
