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By
Dr. Ron Paul
A controversy over
vaccines, specifically the smallpox vaccine, is brewing in
Washington. The administration is considering ordering mass
inoculations for more than one million military personnel
and civilian medical workers, ostensibly to thwart a smallpox
outbreak before it occurs. Yet dangerous side effects from
the vaccine -- ranging from mild flu symptoms to gangrene,
encephalitis, and even death -- cause many to question the
wisdom and need for such inoculations.
As a medical doctor,
I believe mandated smallpox vaccines are bad medicine. The
available vaccine poses significant risks, even though the
more serious complications affect only a statistically small
number of people.
As with any medical
treatment, these risks must always be balanced against the
perceived benefit. Remember, not a single case of smallpox
has been reported, despite the near hysteria that characterized
recent news reports. Even if some individuals became infected,
smallpox spreads only with very close contact. Those in the
surrounding community could then decide to accept vaccines
based on a much more tangible risk.
As a legislator,
I believe mandated smallpox vaccines are very bad policy.
The point is not that smallpox vaccines are necessarily a
bad idea, but rather that intimate, personal medical decisions
should not be made by government. The real issue is individual
medical choice. No single person, including the president
of the United States, should ever be given the power to make
a medical decision for potentially millions of Americans.
Freedom over one's
physical person is the most basic freedom of all, and people
in a free society should be sovereign over their own bodies.
When we give government the power to make medical decisions
for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.
The possibility
that the federal government could order vaccines is real.
Provisions buried in the 500-page homeland security bill give
federal health bureaucrats virtually unchecked power to declare
health emergencies.
Specifically, it
gives the secretary of the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) -- in my view one of the worst of all federal
agencies -- power to declare actual or potential bioterrorist
emergencies; to administer forced "countermeasures,"
including vaccines, to individuals or whole groups; and to
extend the emergency declaration indefinitely.
These provisions
mirror those found in the Model Emergency Health Powers Act,
a troubling proposal that was rejected by most state legislatures
last year. That Act would have given state governors broad
powers to suspend civil liberties and declare health emergencies.
Yet now we're giving virtually the same power to the secretary
of HHS. Equally troubling is the immunity from civil suit
granted to vaccine manufacturers in the homeland security
bill, which potentially could leave individuals who get sick
from a bad batch of vaccines without legal recourse.
Politics and medicine
don't mix. It is simply not the business of government at
any level to decide whether you choose to accept a smallpox
vaccine or any other medical treatment. Yet decades of federal
intervention in health care, including the impact of third-party
HMOs created by federal legislation, have weakened the doctor-patient
relationship.
A free market system
would allow doctors and patients to make their own decisions
about smallpox inoculations, without the federal government
hoarding, mandating, nor prohibiting the vaccine. Instead,
we're moving quickly toward the day when government controls
not only what vaccines patients receive, but what kind of
health care they receive at all.
Dr.
Ron Paul
is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
Submitted
by Dawn Richardson of PROVE
(Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education)
E-mail:
prove@vaccineinfo.net
Website: vaccineinfo.net
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