Swine Flu Forced Immunization Threatens Civil Liberties in France, New York State
By Barbara Lock, MDSeptember 08, 2009
According to the French publication Liberation, government strategies to combat the H1N1 influenza pandemic in France threaten to seriously curb individual liberties, without clear benefit.
Under the plan, criminal suspects could be detained for as long as six months without formal charges or a hearing, children could be tried as adults, and suspects would no longer be assured of the right to call a lawyer within 24 hours, according to the AFP. Health care workers would be required to become vaccinated against swine flu. 
Public opposition to the plan has emerged. Speaking of the plan to vaccinate health care workers, Deputy Social Specialist of the Commission on Social Affairs Jean-Marie Leguen said, "And if half of them refuse, what are we going to do then....These are decisions that put our liberties at risk. Everything was done without debate, without the least knowledge of the members of parliament."
"They are obsessed with questions of public order. How will the locations where treatment and vaccines are stored be secured? This is symptomatic of a Republic where everything is centralized, in which the the president has not launched a single initiative," said an unnamed expert at a press conference. "He has not yet asked to consult with the political parties or the unions."
Emmanuel Hirsch, responsible for Ethics in the Public Domain (l’Espace éthique à l’Assistance publique) said "There are ethical and democratic issues that are inserted in the management of a pandemic. You can't get around them." But professor Jean-Philippe Derenne, former chief of service of the department of Pulmonology at l’hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière said "I am shocked; there was no discussion. Everything happened among a group of "experts", no one else was consulted."
In the United States, New York State passed emergency legislation in August requiring that all health care workers be vaccinated against influenza, both garden-variety and swine flu as vaccines remain available. Health care workers in New York appear to be the only U.S. population subjected to mandatory immunization outside of military populations. It is not clear what the consequences will be for a doctor, nurse or technician who refuses to be vaccinated. Members of the military will be vaccinated against swine flu starting in October, according to Army Lt. Col. (Dr.) Wayne Hachey, director of preventive medicine for Defense Department health affairs. Military family members will also be offered the vaccine.
While many studies report a reduction in influenza-like-illness self-reported by patients among those vaccinated compared to those not vaccinated, this has not translated into an improved length and quality of life, nor a significant reduction in health care expenditures. While the Australian government has ordered 21 million doses of vaccine, enough for every citizen, there are no public plans for enforced or universal vaccination in Australia. And in fact, an economic evaluation suggested that universal vaccination of persons age 50 to 65 in Australia would only reduce the number of cases influenza like illnesses per year by 3,124. While these numbers are projected instead of prospectively documented, that means that an additional one person out of 1100 would be saved a flu-like illness, and one person out of 240,000 would be spared death from that flu-like illness. The evidence that mass immunizations will adequatly protect the population is simply not there.
And year-over-year vaccinations against influenza for healthy people also do not appear to protect people. The authors of the meta-analysis "protection against influenza after annually repeated vaccination" sought to determine whether year-after-year vaccination against flu confers more or less benefit than a one-time vaccination against flu and found that there is no difference!
Swine flu appears to be most lethal in persons who are severely obese, pregnant, or for adults and children with certain chronic underlying medical conditions such as cerebral palsy. These people should be the first to be offered, and should accept, the H1N1 influenza virus vaccine. Because a universal or global vaccination strategy for influenza is unlikely to work, the loss of personal autonomy and civil liberty that would go along with enforced vaccination cannot be justified.
Please read our legal disclaimer.
Write a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.
Bookmark with:
What are these?