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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAnti-vaccine leader tells parents to fight immunization bill
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.
Wakefields lecture, full of dark warnings of what could happen to the states children and families if vaccines were made mandatory, marked his first foray into Californias 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.
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http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Former-doc-who-linked-vaccines-to-autism-tells-6222613.php
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)onecaliberal
(32,931 posts)The latest measles outbreak has a lot of people wanting this legislation. That's why it will pass easily.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)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
(25,348 posts)..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
(32,931 posts)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
(38,506 posts)SwissTony
(2,560 posts)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
(57,349 posts)...
But vaccine proponents say the damage was done as soon as that first paper was published. And now some are furious that hes started speaking out against SB277.
Andrew Wakefield is a discredited physician from another country who has come here, and now hes 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 years outbreak and may have long-term vision problems now. Thats crazy, she said. And that is Andrew Wakefields 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.