In 2012 the most radical proposal in US history to end a parent’s right to make medical decisions for the child was introduced into the California state legislature. Masterfully disguised as a measure to better inform parents about the value of vaccines, AB2109 requires co-signature by an MD for the time-honored Personal Beliefs vaccine exemption – the philosophical exemption.
For the past 60 years, CA parents who didn’t want their children vaccinated simply signed an exemption form, and that was that. One form, no shots. But despite the schools’ best efforts to keep the forms a secret, and $12 billion in marketing by the pharma industry, the number of parents opting out had quietly increased year by year. Nationwide.
As the first incursion into California of Offit’s agenda to end vaccine exemptions in the US [335], AB2109 was the most powerful response Medicine-As-Government could come up with. Insisting that all medical doctors would sign the new form, and that the new law was no big deal, CA state legislators pushed the bill through, magisterially ignoring all opposition.
All MDs will sign? The opposite is true: almost no MDs will ever sign the exemption forms. Worse yet, most parents who inform their pediatrician that they want out of vaccines are dismissed from the practice. Everybody knows that.
The sordid details of the machinations that made this bill a law in CA are beyond the scope of this book. But they are easily accessed [1-6, ]
If you don’t live in CA, you need to read about what is likely coming to your town very soon. How this proposal plays out in your state will gauge how much residual democracy is still left there, as we saw in Vermont and Arizona.
GOVERNMENT AS MEDICINE / MEDICINE AS GOVERNMENT
In one fell AB2109 swoop, we entered a whole new era in government intervention. If the state can come in and say that suddenly after all these decades parents now need permission to have a personal belief about a medical procedure for their own children, what other doors does that open? Permission to opt out of a controversial, unproven medical procedure. What’s next? Permission not to euthanize? Permission not to get chemotherapy if one is diagnosed with cancer? It’s all possible.
WEST COAST GUINEA PIG
“They did it in California” is the slick new sales hook. Now that all the bugs are worked out, this legal trick to end vaccine exemptions will certainly appear in every state within the next 2 years. Just as the last edition of this book predicted, the spread of this disease is right on schedule. Get ready to see it up close and personal very soon at your school. Not exaggerating, not even a little.
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