Smallpox in America: Into the Garden of Delights
By
Jennifer Van Bergen
t
r u t h o u t | Report (click to get original)
Tuesday
14 January 2003
[Coleridge]
said ... there were only three things which the government had brought into
that garden of delights, namely itch, pox, and famine.
--
Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits(1856)
We
are told that there is new grave threat to our welfare. Smallpox.
If
we are indeed in danger of a smallpox outbreak (which is contradicted by medical
testimony), the threat appears to be inflated.
A
far more grave threat, however, is the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA,
MEHPA, or EHPA), portions of which were incorporated into the Homeland Security
Act (HSA). The EHPA provides for forced vaccinations and confiscation or
destruction of personal property under the mere threat of a threat of an
outbreak.
Representative
Ron Paul (R.-TX.), who also is a medical doctor, writes:
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 _ 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 [MEHPA],
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.(2)
Rep.
Paul omits that the smallpox vaccine can be fatal. The MEHPA sounds almost like
state-sponsored population control. But this is not only population control via,
say, contraception. It is by state-mandated and enforced, vaccine-induced
illness and death.
That
is frightening. In the name of fighting terrorism, we are now going to kill off
a small percentage of our own people.
Health
and welfare issues have traditionally been state issues. Since 1824, the
so-called "police power," which includes "the authority to
provide for the public health, safety, and morals," has been the exclusive
province of the states.(3)
Sandy
Mintz, who writes on Vaccination News, states: "The Homeland Security Bill
as now written, however, appears to be an effort to circumvent states' rights,
by federalizing declared emergencies related to "public health". It
seems to have been decided that declaring a federal emergency using federal law
would allow states' rights to be by-passed." (4)
She
continues, "This effort seems to be, at least in part, a reaction to the
failure of all states to pass, or in some cases to even consider passing thus
far, an MEHPA bill."
Florida
and The Model Emergency Health Powers Act
The
MEHPA has been passed in only one state: Florida.(5) Adopted home of Jeb Bush.
Land of electoral madness. Home to alligators and other swamp creatures. The
garden of delights.
Joanna
Rohrback, a health activist in Broward County, Florida, who has been trying to
raise awareness about the Florida EHPA, says: "Some of the worst
ramifications would include forced vaccinations on the WHOLE population as well
as the ability to seize our property and quarantine us."(6)
Mintz
writes that the dubiously titled Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, which,
as I understand it, is identical to the Florida EHPA, "give[s] the power of
life and death over citizens to each state's governor."
Mintz
delineates a few specific things the MEHPA does:
1.
Grant the governor of each state power to declare a "public health
emergency" as defined in the act, with or without consulting anyone.
(Article IV, Section 401)
2.
Require medical examination and/or testing and force isolation or quarantine
if it is deemed that refusal "poses a danger to public health".
(Article VI, Section 602(c))
3.
Require treatment and/or vaccination and "isolate or quarantine"
those "unwilling or unable" to do so. (Article VI, (Article VI,
Sections 603(a)(3) and 603(b)(3))
4.
Constitute as a misdemeanor, "failure to obey these provisions" (for
examination, testing, isolation or quarantine). (Article VI, Sections 604(a)
and 604(c))
5.
Provide that there be no liability for any "State or local official"
causing harm to individuals in their efforts to comply with the provisions of
the act, unless there is "gross negligence or willful misconduct".
(Article VIII, Section 804(a))
6.
Provide for similar absence of liability for "any private person, firm or
corporation" and their "employees" or "agents".
(Article VIII, Section 804(b)(2) and 804(b)(3))
7.
Allow for the destruction of property without compensation if "there is
reasonable cause to believe that [the property] may endanger the public health
pursuant to Section 501". (Article V, Sections 506 and 507)
8.
Limit legal recourse. (Article VI, Section 605)
9.
Allow for "the public safety authority (to) request assistance from the
organized militia in enforcing the orders of the public health
authority." (Article IV, Section 404).
In
other words, martial law. If you have not seen "Minority Report" or
read Orwell's "1984," you might want to do so now.
The
MEHPA, which was enacted as the Florida EHPA, is the model for those provisions
in the Homeland Security Act that deal with emergency health issues.
Conflicts
and Dangers
Toni
Krehel of Vaccine Awareness of Florida writes that the Center for Disease
Control (CDC) "attempted to rush anti-terrorism legislation through state
legislatures" giving power to the state to impose "medical procedures
on people, using any means necessary, including the kind of restraining methods
that law enforcement use to apprehend criminals (guns, militia)."7
Rohrback
reports that the CDC, along with the National Health Institute, will be
receiving "extraordinary funding" under the Homeland Security Act.
Rohrback points out that, according to the Congressional Committee for
Government Reform back in 1999, there were numerous "conflicts of
interest" in the CDC's endorsement of these laws. One blatant example is
that the "Chairman of CDC's advisory committee until recently owned 600
shares of stock in Merck, a pharmaceutical company with an active vaccine
division."(8) That was 1999 and the conflicts of interest have continued.
Dr.
Marcia Angell, in an interview on ABC Lateline in which she discussed the
control that the drug industry has taken of medical research, said that the drug
companies use medical researchers "as though they were hired guns."
Researchers are paid to do what these companies want them to do. "[D]rug
companies increasingly design the studies," and "don't even let the
researchers see the data."(9)
Dr.
Leonard G. Horowitz, President and Publisher of Tetrahedron Publishing Group,
wrote in a June 6, 2002 letter to a CDC Working Group: "The little known
fact is that the primary smallpox vaccine producers, Aventis and Baxter
corporations, or their parent companies, are highly untrustworthy. They have
been implicated on more than one occasion in committing genocide. *** Both firms
settled out of court ..."(10)
Horowitz
further remarks that "Baxter is a subsidiary of American Home Products (AHP),"
and AHP, "like Bayer, Hoechst and BASF, is a progeny of I.G. Farben -
Germany's leading industrial organization that virtually directed the Third
Reich and Hitler's economic war engine." He adds that Aventis is a
subsidiary of Hoechst.
Horowitz
pleads: "Please, for the sake of millions of people, public healthy,
medical respectability, and the future of this great nation, DO NOT SUPPORT ANY
POLICY REQUIRING FORCED SMALLPOX VACCINATIONS."
Dr.
Tom Mack of the University of Southern California School of Medicine, whose
"credentials include probably spending more time working up
population-based outbreaks of smallpox than virtually anybody ever has,"
spoke at the Meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices
on June 19-20, 2002. Remarking that "I made the arrogant assumption that
you might actually be interested in my opinion about the three questions that
are open to you, and so I'm going to give it," Dr. Mack said that "were
there no smallpox eradication program, my guess is that smallpox would have died
out anyway."(11)
One
report states that: "By the 1920s, several British medical researchers
documented that smallpox was not only more common among the VACCINATED, but that
the DEATH RATE from smallpox was actually higher among those who had been
vaccinated."(12)
Dr.
Mack states that the smallpox vaccine is "the single most dangerous live
vaccine."
While
these doctors state that smallpox vaccinations are dangerous, they are also
clear that the threat of bio-attacks is slim and that even if there is
bio-attack, it can be readily contained and mass vaccinations thus are not
justified.
Dr
Mack -- asking, "What do we expect if there were a terrorist
introduction?" - concludes: "I would expect a small number of cases. I
don't think suicide dissemination is a very likely possibility because of the
severity of the disease. I think that airborne spread would be relatively
inefficient and I don't think many cases would occur."
Informed
Consent & Lack of Logic
The
National Vaccination Information Center (NVIC) maintains that Section 304 of the
Homeland Security Act is the "fulfillment of a federal plan in development
for several years to allow public health officials to force vaccination and
medical treatment on Americans without their informed consent while removing all
accountability from drug companies and those who participate in enforcement of
the policy."(13)
The
legal doctrine of "informed consent" requires that a person who is
being subjected to any medical procedure be informed of the nature and risks of
that procedure so that s/he can weigh the risks against the benefits and decide
whether to consent to allowing the physician to carry out the procedure.
Medical
procedures, including vaccinations, involve some type of intrusion on the body,
as well as various risks. Without informed consent, any medical procedure is
actually technically a battery. In civil law, battery involves intentionally
"harmful or offensive" touching of any part of the body. In criminal
law, battery involves "unlawful application of force to the person of
another."
NVIC
states that "a voluntary decision about whether to take the risk has been
the centerpiece of bioethics ever since the Nuremberg Code was adopted after
World War II and the doctrine of informed consent was introduced into U.S. case
law in 1957."
Two
major hospitals have already refused to vaccinate their employees because
"the risk of dangerous side effects of the vaccine and inadvertent
transmission to patients outweighs the remote threat of an attack with a
virus."(14) The Boston Globe reported that the decisions "underscore
the reluctance of some health workers to return to a decades-old vaccine known
for its serious side effects. In rare instances, the vaccine has caused
life-threatening cases of encephalitis and some deaths."
''There
is a lack of logic to the current proposal,'' said Dr. Richard Wenzel, chairman
of the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth. ''If our
government in all its intelligence thinks smallpox exists in enemy hands, why
would we creep up on that policy? We would rush to vaccinate everybody right
now.''(15)
Military
Intervention
(Mr. Repost's note: FEMA
Detention camp? See endnote below.)
The
MEHPA provides for military intervention. According to one news report:
"The Bush administration is taking initial steps to plan for a potential
military role in enforcing a massive quarantine, if smallpox or another highly
contagious virus were to break out somewhere in the United States."(16)
Remarkably, according to this report: "The possibility of a biological
attack on the United States is receiving increased attention as the nation
contemplates war against Iraq, which experts fear may have 'weaponized'
smallpox, anthrax or other biowarfare agents."
This
report also states that "some federal officials, public health analysts and
national security experts anticipate a large-scale quarantine would almost
surely incite public panic and could require the use of federal troops to
restore order."
How
ironic.
The
Bush Administration says it is going to war with Iraq in order to ensure our
safety, but experts fear that Saddam may counterattack with bio-weapons, which
means we must forcibly inoculate several million people here with a dangerous
vaccine, causing mass panic that will require restoring order with the military.
This
surely is the way to make America safe.
Yesterday
I, along with several other members of the ad hoc Broward Bill of Rights Defense
Coalition, met with a County Commissioner here in Broward County to discuss
passing a resolution asking for the repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act. This
Commissioner told me that she was ready to give up the Bill of Rights in
exchange for safety. She felt we were in grave danger. As an example of what she
would accept, she told me that an airport search was "an unreasonable
search and seizure."
Search
and seizure law is immensely complex and the "rules" for what is a
reasonable search vary according to the context. Airport searches of persons
entering the boarding area have been deemed constitutional since 1973, as long
as the intrusiveness is limited by the administrative need (which is, in this
case, flight safety) and the passenger is able to avoid search by electing not
to fly. Searches that are minimally intrusive and intended to protect passengers
are not violations of the Fourth Amendment. More importantly, we do not give up
ANY individual rights by consenting to an airport search. (I am not discussing
reports of excessively intrusive and embarrassing public searches that have
occurred since 9/11, which, in my opinion, are unreasonable as well as
unnecessary.)
If,
however, we allow such laws as the PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Act, and
the Emergency Health Powers Act to stay on the books, we HAVE thrown away our
Bill of Rights. We have made the United States Constitution a nullity.
This
Administration is taking us down a perilous road. This Administration is putting
its own citizenry in grave danger. Forced vaccinations benefit only the
producers of those vaccines.
If
we genuinely want peace and safety, then unlawfully invading foreign lands,
unlawfully assassinating targeted people overseas, unlawfully divesting our own
citizens of their rights and invading their persons -- in other words, violating
the most sacred and certain of domestic and international laws -- will not do
it.
These
unlawful methods cannot continue long without bringing world war. Bin Laden did
not attack us because we have a Bill of Rights. He attacked us, as he himself
declared, because we had invaded sacred Muslim lands. There is no justification
for Bin Laden's attacks on innocent Americans, but neither is there any
justification for the United States to invade lands that do not belong to it, or
the bodies of persons it does not and cannot ever own.
Our
bodies belong to us, not our government. There is no genuine power without
consent. Any power obtained through force is illegitimate and eventually
rebounds back on those who apply it.
While
in the short term, Bush might maintain "order" (a term hauntingly
reminiscent of the Nazi aphorism "Alles in Ordnung") by forcing his
will and his way on the world, it will not last, and we Americans will be the
ones to suffer for his mistakes.
There
is no replacement for the Bill of Rights or the Constitution of the United
States. Whatever "garden of delights" we have enjoyed will be forever
lost.
-------
1
(Into the Garden of Delights, From Title) Grateful thanks to Joanna Rohrback for
her assistance in researching and writing about this topic. A health advocate
and activist in Broward County, Florida, Ms. Rohrback is a former social worker
with the Florida Health & Rehabilitative Services and has a Bachelor of
Health Services, specializing in Health Administration, from Florida Atlantic
University. She heads the Citizen's For Democracy group in Broward and has a
patented fitness program called Prancercise(r). Her report on the MSEHPA
(hereafter Rohrback Report) is available at: http://63.206.217.42/jvb/reff.ART/Model_to_Monstrosity.doc
or via email from me.
2
http://www.mercola.com/2002/dec/28/government_vaccines.htm; http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul66.html
3
Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc. 501 U.S. 560 (1991). The landmark case that
determined that states retain full authority to legislate in any field and to
achieve any objective, subject only to the limitations imposed in the
Constitution itself is Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1 (1824).
Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that such powers included "that immense
mass of legislation, which embraces every thing within the territory of a state,
not surrendered to the general government; all of which can be most
advantageously exercised by the states themselves. Inspection laws, quarantine
laws, health laws of every description, as well as laws for regulating the
internal commerce of a state ... are component parts of this mass." In
1827, Marshall dubbed this power "the police power." Brown v.
Maryland, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 419. In 1878, the Supreme Court decided that
the states may not bargain away their police power to corporations. Boston
Beer Co. v. Massachusetts, 97 U.S. 25. But not every state law enacted in
the purported interests of public health, safety, welfare, and morals, is
automatically presumed to be Constitutional. Where a police power enactment
infringes on rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, a federal court may strike
down a state law. U.S. v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938).
Additionally, the General Welfare Clause (Article I, section 8 of the U.S.
Constitution) empowers Congress to "collect taxes ... to pay the debts and
provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."
This has traditionally been interpreted as a federal taxing power only, but also
permitted the Supreme Court in 1937 to sustain the Social Security Act. Steward
Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548.
4
http://www.vaccinationnews.com/Scandals/Nov_22_02/Scandal43.htm (All citations
to Mintz are to this URL.)
5
Rohrback Report, p. 4.
6
Email from Joanna Rohrback to JVB, 26 December 2002.
7
www.know-vaccines.org/bioterror5.html
8
Rohrback Report, pp. 1 & 2. See this Report for other examples.
9
www.vaccinationnews.com/DailyNews/August2001/ConflictInt&Vax.htm (cited in
Rohrback Report, p. 2-3).
10
Leonard G. Horowitz to ACIP-NVAC Smallpox Working Group, CDC, June 6, 2002,
www.wahale.to/a/horowitz.html. See also: www.tetrahedron.org.
11
http://www.vaclib.org/news/drmack.htm
12
www.vaclib.org/basic/twenty.htm (citing a 1993 book or article titled
"Vaccination" by Dr. Viera Scheibner)
13
www.909shot.com/Newsletters/spsmallpox.htm; http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/nuremberg.php3
(cited in Rohrback Report, p. 8) (further quotes from NVIC are from the same)
14
www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/352/nation/2_large_hospitals_refuse_smallpox_shots-.shtml
15
Id.
16
Inside the Pentagon, Elaine Grossman, Dec. 12, 2002. (Posted on elist without
URL.)
-------
Jennifer
Van Bergen is a contributing writer for truthout. She has a law degree from
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, and is a faculty member of the
New School University in New York where she teaches in the writing program.
========
Mr. Repost's notes:
Panic
graphic credit here, not on Truthout; in keeping with the fact that
while terrorism is real, a nation infused with fear is in fact congruent with
the interests of the ruling elite, and conducive to utter stupidity among the
masses
"Concentration Camp" photo
from internet site dedicated to researching FEMA detainment camps. Unclear
on authenticity of photo. Photo used on many websites, including Arizona
Indymedia, where the picture above is taken. In any event, the FEMA
program is not in doubt, and much documentation exists in the public
domain. For a recent article to get you on your way for further research, click
here. Also, see this
page on Rex-84.
