Anti-vaccine leader tells parents to fight immunization bill

[n2doc]

Andrew Wakefield, the British scientist and former physician whose discredited research linking autism and immunizations helped launch a worldwide anti-vaccination movement, encouraged Californians Friday to fight back against a state Senate bill that would make childhood vaccinations mandatory.

Speaking at Life Chiropractic College West in Hayward, Wakefield told hundreds of students packed into two or three classrooms that they needed to be the “pitchforks and torches” in Sacramento demanding that state legislators reject SB277.

“Your rights are being ripped from you,” Wakefield said. “Parents are no longer going to be in charge of their own children. This is the fight that has to be taken to Sacramento.”

Wakefield’s lecture, full of dark warnings of what could happen to the state’s children and families if vaccines were made mandatory, marked his first foray into California’s political movement to end personal belief exemptions, a long-standing policy that has allowed parents to opt out of school-required immunizations for any reason.

more

http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Former-doc-who-linked-vaccines-to-autism-tells-6222613.php

[NuclearDem]

1. Go away, Andy. You're a fraud.

[onecaliberal]

2. There is no way anyone in Sacramento is going to listen.

The latest measles outbreak has a lot of people wanting this legislation. That's why it will pass easily.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. It will pass, we all think,

The Governor has signaled he will sign it easily though is not quite the word I would use. The senate Education committee had to amend it already from original, and these people are... Well, I'd better self censor. But the added security for Senator Pan should tell you something

[BlueJazz]

3. Maybe I'm wrong but wasn't there a new study by some reputable group that blew the link..

..between Autism and vaccines out of the proverbial water ??

'course that would not make any difference to the type of people that support the above clown.

[onecaliberal]

6. You are correct. But being wrong doesn't mean a think to these people.

They think they have the right to put other people in danger. They don't care about science. They are dangerous. Thank goodness out state legislature has the intellect to make sure this gets done.

[shenmue]

5. He should be in jail

[SwissTony]

7. Didn't Wakefield want his own vaccine to be used instead of the government mandated one?

He had a conflict of interest. He wasn't anti-vaxx back then. Just "their" vaxx.

I'm in no way defending Wakefield. If he got hit by a truck tomorrow, I'd crack a champers.

I hate anti-vaxxers with a passion.

[beam me up scottie]

8. "But to parents and others opposed to vaccines, Wakefield is almost hero-like"

He had more threatening forecasts, too. If immunizations are made mandatory, he said, Child Protective Services could “take your children away, and they will vaccinate them. And then they will bring them back and leave it to you to pick up the pieces.”

...

But vaccine proponents say the damage was done as soon as that first paper was published. And now some are furious that he’s started speaking out against SB277.

“Andrew Wakefield is a discredited physician from another country who has come here, and now he’s meddling in our politics and our policies and jeopardizing the health of our children,” said Leah Russin, a Palo Alto mother who founded Vaccinate California, which promotes efforts to make childhood immunizations mandatory.

Russin said she knows of an infant, too young to be immunized, who got measles during this year’s outbreak and may have long-term vision problems now. “That’s crazy,” she said. “And that is Andrew Wakefield’s fault.”

But to parents and others opposed to vaccines, Wakefield is almost hero-like, and he presents himself as a martyr who keeps challenging mainstream science and medicine despite repeated attempts to discredit and disgrace him.

A martyr, just like Dr. Oz and RFK with his vaccine "Holocaust" analogy.

This man should be in prison.