Shillin' Ain't Easy (or Profitable)

By Karen Ernst

World's Worst Couch

I usually find the “Pharma Shill” gambit funny.  It makes me chuckle because I am usually accused of being a so-called pharma shill while sitting on my couch.

Let me introduce you to my couch.  It is nearly twelve years old and has served us well.  It used to have two reclining parts, but those parts stopped working a few years ago.  Because it has been used as a trampoline, some of the springs are broken and there’s a deep indent where one would sit.  I fill in the indent with a Patrick Star pillow, pictured at right.  I won’t give you all the gory details about my couch, but suffice it to say, three boys and one dog have lived with this couch, and they have sometimes been ill.

As you can see, my accomodations and interior design are both very glamorous and clearly part of the "Pharma Shill" lifestyle. 

It is seated in this couch that I have read accusations from anti-vaccine activists and parents that I am being paid by pharmaceutical companies to write comments on Facebook.  I’ve also read that the first-person pro-vax parent stories that appear on both the Moms Who Vax blog and Voices for Vaccine’s Parents Who Vax blog are written on the sly by Ashley Shelby and myself, both of whom have, apparently, “deep ties to pharma lobbyists in Minnesota.”  This would be news, of course, to the very real people who have contributed to our blog over the years. And it's news to Ashley and me, who have yet to even meet a pharma lobbyist in Minnesota.

For the record, neither Ashley nor I have ever received a penny from pharmaceutical companies. Not through Voices for Vaccines (which does not accept contributions from pharmaceutical companies or from the government), not through Moms Who Vax (which, unlike NVIC, accepts no advertising and which has an annual yearly budget of $0), and not for commenting on Facebook. The latter accusation strikes me as particularly bizarre. After all, vaccines account for less than 2% of pharmaceutical companies’ profits. Why would they waste any of that money paying people to write comments on social media, especially when more than 90% of us vaccinate our children already?  It defies logic. But then again, logic has never been the anti-vaxxer's strong suit.

And so they persist, even in the face of the facts.  For the past few weeks, the Vermont Coalition for Vaccine Choice has grown obsessed with Voices for Vaccines, reposting nearly every link we post on their own Facebook page.  Their Facebook page has also been home to suppositions about our fundraising--false assumptions, which I corrected back in May.  I replied and was able to get them to issue a semi-apology and (later, not pictured) a partial retraction.

However, they were so attached to tantalizing idea of Voices for Vaccines employing me as a "Pharma Shill" that they promote the idea, even after apologizing for having made a false statement.

It was all just annoying and eyeroll-inducing, even funny at times, until Ashley and I decided to take on Jenny McCarthy. Apparently, former playmates are sacred cows in anti-vax land.  As of this writing, our Facebook post has 1,980 comments, many of which from anti-vaxxers who are sure that the petition to keep Jenny McCarthy off TV’s The View is some sort of Big Pharma plot.  

And again, people were certain that we were Big Pharma Shills.  Ginger Taylor, whose writings include disparaging Seth Mnookin for being a long-recovered heroin addict, dubbed us “Voices of Vaccines,” I’m assuming because she thinks we are in the thrall of pharmaceutical companies (though her little syntactical sleight of hand is actually hilarious: I'd love to hear the sound of a vaccine's voice).  Then, my favorite mansplainer, Robert Schecter, also made an appearance to ask on as many threads as possible: "Who funds voices for vaccines?"

When I told him Voices for Vaccines is funded by individual small donations, he persisted, not believing my answers and making up his own.

Marsha McClelland sent out an Action Alert asking for more anti-vaccine comments on the thread.  She herself came to the thread many times to tell us her case was closed and to declare victory, but before doing so, she let us know how Pharma hires people to “pose as having sick children due to non vaccination.”  

(The “there are usually underlying reasons” portion of her comment is particularly troubling because I don’t believe that any child deserves to die from a VPD, whether or not that child has an underlying condition.)  She also tagged Erwin Alber.

Erwin Alber is an interesting case.  He as a New Zealander who runs the “Vaccination Information Network” where he promotes the idea that vaccines cause homosexuality and where he falls prey to his own confirmation bias and purposely fabricated graphs.  One of his favorite ploys is comparing vaccination to Nazi experimentation.  Reasonable Hank has dubbed him “The World’s Worst Person” for visiting a whooping cough memorial page to “educate” grieving parents about the horrors of vaccination. There’s no way to overstate how deeply disturbing Erwin Alber's tactics are.

And so I was dismayed when Erwin took Ginger’s bait and appeared on the Voices for Vaccines page, telling us all that we were Nazis, pharma shills, delusional, and insane.  Fortunately for me, he stole one of VFV’s photos, so I was able to ban him with clear conscience.

At that point, the strangest anti-vax infestation ensued.  It began on Erwin’s page, where several people “knew” all about the Big Pharma money connection to VFV.

They came to the VFV thread, per Erwin’s instructions, and they didn’t realize that they shouldn’t also spread their crazy there.  

Anti-vaccinationists are quite convinced that people only advocate for immunizations because they are being paid by Big Pharma (which apparently is too stingy to buy me a new couch.)

The irony, of course, is that people to profit directly from others being afraid of immunizations, and so have a substantial interest in keeping that fear alive. Homeopaths, such as the “Meat Sweats” homeopath Ashley and I heard at the Minnesota Immunization Rule hearing, sell “cures” to “vaccine injuries” that are too vague to even be given a diagnosis.  In other words, they make money selling plain water to people who are frightened by the internet into believing that an illness was caused by vaccines.  Dr. Mercola lives in a multi-million dollar mansion, a showy display of the wealth he’s accumulated by selling completely unregulated supplements, tanning beds, juicers (even though he tells people not to drink fruit juice), and countless other items to people afraid of immunizations.  Dr. Sherri Tenpenny makes money from selling t-shirts and access to articles she did not write to people who are scared by the falsehoods about vaccines she promotes on her DVDs, which she also sells. 

Worst of all are people like Andrew Wakefield and Keri Rivera who sell unproven and sometimes dangerous “cures” for autism to parents who are frightened into believing that vaccines “damaged” their children and made them autistic.  Lastly, Jenny McCarthy.  Let’s face it:  Jenny McCarthy’s career was in the tank before she began protests to “Green Our Vaccines.”

People who profit from fear of immunization (not necessarily those listed above) come together through organizations like the Natural Health Freedom Coalition and the Council for Responsible Nutrition who hire lawyers and lobbyists to ensure that the laws regulating their products and practices are as lax as possible and to fight against any attempt in states to tighten vaccine exemption laws (or in the case of Minnesota, simply modernizing its rule).

The casual anti-vaccine parent has been convinced by these forces that they are collectively the Davids fighting the Goliath of Big Pharma, and that anyone who wants to dispute anti-vaccine misinformation or make their communities safe from preventable disease outbreaks is paid by Goliath.  But that’s not really true at all--none of it is.  Sure, Big Pharma is Big.  However, Big Alterna is big business, too, and they are well-organized.  They take advantage of people’s fears, their inability or unwillingness to properly perform a risk analysis, and their fears of having their freedom limited.  Anti-vaccine parents like to believe they are enlightened and informed because they’ve done their “research,” but really, they’ve just bought into the lies of a well-oiled machine.

Fortunately, for pro-vaccine parents, we don’t need Big Pharma to organize us.  We can organize ourselves and follow the science independent of Big Pharma. But we do need pharmaceutical companies to make our vaccines.  They are not evil for making a profit (albeit small) from the work they do, and the work they do is important.  Without them, millions of children would die each year.  Big Alterna can’t touch that.

But It Gets Nuttier: A Dispatch from the MDH Immunization Rule Hearing

By Karen Ernst

Most of the time, being a pro-vaccine advocate means writing letters or making calls to lawmakers.  For a group of Moms Who Vax, they got a a close, personal view of advocacy when they attended a hearing at the Minnesota Department of Health’s offices in St. Paul.

The hearing was the culmination of over a year’s worth of work by MDH to modernize Minnesota’s immunization rule so that the vaccines required for school matched the vaccines recommended by the CDC schedule. The department is looking to add Hepatitis A and B vaccines to the requirements for childcare and school-based early childhood programs, as well meningococcal and Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis) vaccines to those required for seventh grade entry.  

The science and evidence that officials from the Department of Health presented was stunning and overwhelming.  Speaking for the department, Kris Ehresmann reported that a new polio outbreak had recently occurred in Kenya and that 32 people who were exposed to that outbreak then came to Minnesota.  Fortunately, and probably due to high immunization rates, no Minnesotans came down with polio.* Ehresmann also pointed out the commonsense fact that laws requiring vaccines result in higher vaccination rates.  In order to stress the safety of immunizations, Ms. Ehresmann took everyone on the long journey a vaccine goes on to be placed on the schedule, from the moment the FDA decides whether or not to license it all the way through the collection of data through VAERS and the Vaccines Safety Datalink.

Following Ms. Ehresmann was Dr. Bob Jacobson, a pediatrician at Mayo Clinic in Rochester and head of the Minnesota chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).  Dr. Jacobson began by explaining that advocating for immunizations is personal for him (remember this) because he has four fully vaccinated children and a wife with asthma who needs the cocooning protection offered by flu vaccines and other immunizations.  Bolstering the idea that we do need to require vaccines, Dr. Jacobson pointed out that in his county, the number one risk factor for being underimmunized is being the third of fourth child in a family, since often these families are very busy and vaccines can get lost in the shuffle. He mentioned that often when parents receive notices that the children are missing immunizations, the parents feel embarrassed and angry with themselves for having let them slip.

The last MDH witness was Dr. William Pomputius from Children’s Hospitals of Minnesota.  Dr. Pomputius argued that the state does need a clearly worded and consistently applied policy.  He told the story of Julieanna Metcalf (whom he did not name) and her battle with Hib meningitis, which she contracted because her body is unable to create immunity from immunizations.  Stories like Julieanna’s remind us all how necessary community immunity is.

It gets personal--and a little nutty.

After this official testimony ended, the general public was invited to testify.  The judge asked everyone to keep their comments to five minutes and submit the remainder in writing for the court record.  (We invite everyone to submit their comments to the judge via email or fax: see below).

Several pro-vaccine parents and stakeholders testified.  I testified and shared the stories I have shared other places and noted that most parents already immunize their children and that the new rules do not pose any burden on them whatsoever.  Moms Who Vax founder Ashley Shelby also testified, noting that she never imagined she’d have to be sitting in a hearing like this, testifying for commonsense immunization statutes.  Liz Clapero, a Minnesota mother expecting her second son in September, testified that she fully vaccinates her children, especially since her sister-in-law suffered through the pain and financial hardship posed by meningitis.

Ginny Marso and her husband Harry shared the story of their son Andrew, who was a senior at the University of Kansas when he came down with meningococcal disease.  He lost fingers and suffered multiple amputations, spending 4.5 months in the hospital and costing their insurance $2 million.  She noted that the University of Kansas recommended, but did not require, the meningococcal vaccine.  She also noted that when she traveled to Kenya, a young man recognized her meningitis bracelet and shared with her that his friend died of meningitis. (Note:  Andy is publishing a book soon.)

Other important pro-vaccine voices heard at the hearing were Diane Peterson of the Immunization Action Coalition and Dr. Laurel Ries, a local family physician.

As always, the anti-vaccine brigade was out in full force.  Jody Murrens announced to the room at the beginning of the general comment period that she needed to testify immediately because she had to get home to take care of her vaccine-injured child.  She then proceeded to read directly from the blog of an out-of-state parent who believes her child died from the Hepatitis B vaccine.

Kathryn Loeb spoke for over ten minutes, her testimony consisting mostly of reading the ingredients of vaccines, such as bovine serum extract and polysorbate-80 (also found in ice cream). She also included aborted fetal tissue (note: this is patently false) and thimerosal (not found in any routine childhood immunizations). She noted that many people are afraid to feed their children gluten, so parents would be frightened if they were presented with such a list.  She also advocated for a sign-off form where parents would have to consent to having those ingredients injected directly into their children’s bloodstream--when, of course, the truth is that vaccines are never “injected into the bloodstream.” They are either injected subcutaneously, intramuscularly, given by mouth, or, like FluMist, squirted up the nose.

Patti Carroll, from the Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota, testified that she was upset that the natural health and vaccine safety groups had not been included in the original committee to form the rule changes.  (Both Ashley Shelby and I were the parent representatives on this committee, and I believe that having pro-vaccine parents was the correct decision, since the immunization rule only affects those parents who are already vaccinating their children.)  Patti’s testimony then veered away from the rule under discussion and instead turned to the Pharma Shill Gambit, where she read off various research positions Dr. Jacobson (from above) had participated in and connected them to pharmaceutical company funding.  Her lowest blow was the comment, “He said it was personal--you can say that again.”  I confess that at this point, I stopped taking notes. I was, and remain, appalled that someone would impugn the reputation of a profoundly kind man who has dedicated his life to making sure children don’t die.

But it gets nuttier.

At some point, I learned the lesson that sometimes things sound good in your head, but you should never say them out loud.  I think I was fourteen when I learned that. Kate Birch, the next witness, apparently never learned that lesson.  Kate Birch is a Minneapolis-based homeopath and CEASE certified therapist.  (Googling has taught me that one can become a CEASE therapist in 5 days, and then you are set to cure autism.)  

Ms. Birch’s first assertion was that a baby’s body does not make antibodies until he/she is one year old, so when antigens are injected directly “into the bloodstream” (reminder: vaccines are not injected into the bloodstream), they float around until they settle in the brain or the liver, where they cause some manner of harm.  

And then she shared a story about “curing” a vaccine injury. An eleven-year-old girl came to her after receiving the Tdap.  Ms. Birch said the girl complained of tingling and heart/lung pain. She also developed acne.  At one point, Ms. Birch testified, the girl’s brain became “inflamed” and she was unable to study.  She developed an aversion to all food, “including water.”  Fortunately, Ms. Birch treated her with a homeopathic Tdap preparation.  Afterwards, the girl developed a fever that lasted for two days and she sweated out a “foul, meaty-smelling discharge.” And then she was cured.  Like magic (which makes sense since you’d have to believe in magic to think that homeopathy--which is only water--could cure anything.)

In her lengthy testimony, which ran more than twice as long as the judge asked commenters to speak, Ms. Birch claimed that such “allergic system disruptions” are caused by adjuvants.  She also called for every single response for the 2-3 months following an immunization to be recorded.  Somewhere.

The story that received the most local press was the very sad story told by a mother from Thousand Oaks, California, Karen Kain, about her daughter Lorrin, who had a reaction (possibly Dravet syndrome) to the DTP vaccine (a vaccine now discontinued because of its higher reaction rate) in 1994, and subsequently died in 2009.  It is notable that the two vaccine injury stories that were presented were both from out-of-state and that this one occurred almost 20 years ago.  That’s how rare vaccine reactions are.

I did not stay for the portion after lunch because it promised to be more anti-vaccine testimony, and I had had my fill.  Fortunately, Tim Bolen’s blog gave this report: “Judge Lipman asked whether we still would oppose the proposed rule based on liberty interests even if Minnesota has a philosophical exemption and Anne responded with a yes and gave the reasonings.” So, anti-vaccine activists are not satisfied with being able to opt out of all vaccines because they want to; they also want to choose which vaccines happily vaccinating parents are offered at well-child visits, and they want to decide whether or not they have safe and healthy communities.

Afterward, Liz and I discussed how surreal it was hearing people say the things we had seen all these years all over the internet in all caps.

If you would like to make a comment about the sensibility of requiring vaccines already on the schedule for those children attending childcare and school, please email rulecomments.oah@state.mn.us and reference docket # 8-0900-30570 by Wednesday, July 17, 2013. 

You should be aware of, and perhaps motivated by, the fact that you do not have to be a Minnesota resident to make a comment. Anti-vaccine activists from across the country have been writing in to the judge to protest these immunization rule changes. It's time pro-vaccine voices did the same.

*Editor’s note: Even more recently, polio has once again become endemic in Somalia. Minnesota has the highest population of Somalis outside of Somalia, and there is a great deal of travel between the Twin Cities and Mogadishu.

Anti-Vax Parents vs. Pro-Vax Parents in Minnesota

The Minnesota Department of Health has proposed changes to current state immunization rules. These changes would merely bring Minnesota Immunization Rules into line with current CDC immunization recommendations. Predictably, anti-vaccine parents have protested these changes, which, in fact, do not affect them in any way, since the changes do not touch the philosophical exemption clause (much to my disappointment). There will be a hearing on these changes on June 27th, 2013, because more than twenty-five people asked for one. Chances are the people who asked for this hearing are anti-vaccine voices. And, as is unfortunately routine, those proposing these much-needed changes to immunization law, are hearing almost solely from anti-vaccine voices. Here is an opportunity for pro-vaccine parents to step forward and speak up in favor of vaccines. If you are a Minnesota parent, please write a letter of support regarding these rule changes. And please attend the hearing on June 27th, 2013, at 9:30 am to make your voice heard. 

Below is my letter.

To Whom it May Concern:

I am a Minnesota parent who is fully in support of the Minnesota Department of Health's proposed new immunization rules strengthening Minnesota immunization statutes and bringing them in line with current CDC recommendations. In the past three years, we have seen measles outbreaks in Hennepin County due to undervaccination, as well as one of the highest pertussis rates in the country. As a parent, I find this abominable. The economic cost of these outbreaks is substantial; the human cost is infinitely higher. And these outbreaks are preventable, if parents would vaccinate their children on schedule. 

I am also angry that my fully vaccinated children attend school with children whose parents have chosen not to protect their own offspring with vaccines, and therefore put their immuno-compromised classmates, and the infant siblings of others, at risk of contracting vaccine-preventable disease. There are so few obstacles to anti-vaccine parents and they bear no burden by not vaccinating. That burden is borne by the members of the community, including other children. I find that deeply unfair.

These proposed changes are reasonable and much-needed. I wish they would go further, and make it at least as difficult to opt-out of vaccines as it is to actually keep you kids on the CDC-recommended immunization schedule. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on this matter on June 27th.
Ashley Shelby

Moms Who Vax: Breastfeeding, Baby-Wearing, and Vaxxing

 By Kim Norton-Jurgens

I breastfeed my children until they self-wean – openly in public. I baby wear and partially attachment parent.  I aim for drug-free natural births.  

And I vaccinate my children.

Some of my spare time is spent helping mothers with breastfeeding problems, and this community tends to attract many "natural living" people.  Occasionally I find they assume I don’t vaccinate my own children because I do work in this community.  I don't feel its fair that such assumptions should be made based on the views of a few people on the fringes of some very worthwhile endeavours, like trying to live a healthier life.  To counter these assumptions about me, I'm vocal about the fact that I vaccinate my children. I talk about it on Twitter, I post informative articles on Facebook – and while nobody “likes” my posts or comments, I get personal messages from people thanking me for being brave enough to share what we know is correct. 

             Here in South Africa we have two vaccination schedules – a government one, which is free at state clinics, and a private schedule, which is fairly costly but includes the MMR vaccine rather than just the measles shot.  I chose to use the private schedule.  I know quite a few mothers who use the state schedule and then go to a private clinic for the MMR.  Additionally, I’ve had my children vaccinated for hepatitis A and varicella (chicken pox), which aren’t on either of the schedules.   

For us, here in South Africa, vaccine-preventable diseases are still a threat. When I was a child, there was a boy in my class who had had polio and who wore callipers and used crutches. On the farm I grew up on, one of our employee’s children had had polio.  I can remember friends having measles and my mother keeping us well away from their house.  Here TB is not an abstract threat – we all know someone who has had TB contracted from someone or from drinking unpasteurised milk.   

Unfortunately, if you’re a parent, you’re exposed to so much misinformation and emotional rhetoric about everything from the moment of conception onward that you do always have time to think carefully about the trustworthiness of the information you’re given.  Ironically, the very questions that anti-vaxxers feel one should ask of the medical community are the precise questions they don’t ask of the “natural health” purveyors and anti-vaccine organizations from whom they get their information. 

             What upsets me a lot is that with the relentless misinformation campaign of anti-vaxxers, even the most ardent vaccinator still takes a deep breath before booking the appointment for the MMR.  I know anti-vaxxers claim many other reasons for not vaccinating, but that false autism-MMR connection is the one that gets the most publicity.  Each and every claim made anti-vaccine activists make is so easily debunked – over and over and over—that it is shameful that there are still people who just swallow this information and don’t ask questions. 

             What I do know is that I am doing the best I can to protect my children from preventable diseases.  (I also know that both my son and my daughter will be getting the Gardasil vaccine.) I hope that by sharing this information, I can give courage to other parents who vaccinate to stand up and proudly say that they do, and to counter misinformation when they hear it.  Because vaccination is not a personal choice. 

Kim Norton Jurgens is a mother of two and a Human Resources Manager. She has a degree in business commerce and is married to a journalist. She lives in South Africa.

Editor's Note: Kim shared with us her favorite immunization sites:  "My little arsenal of web sites for sharing reliable information with others includes Anti-Anti-Vax, What's the Harm, QuackWatch, Science-Based Medicine, and Voices for Vaccines."

They Don't Speak for Me: Why We Must Act Now

As a parent who vaccinates your child, you probably don't know that as you are going about your daily life, parenting, working, doing volunteer work, writing the Great American Novel in your spare time (what spare time?), a very small but vocal army is pounding the pavement in your name.

It may surprise you to know that the anti-vaccine movement has long claimed to speak for parents in this country when it comes to vaccines. And it is because they are so vocal and we are so, well, busy living our lives, that legislators, government officials, and even some public health organizations think that anti-vaccine activists who believe the MMR causes autism and that the decline of vaccine-preventable disease is due to "better hygiene" represent parents as a whole, when it comes to immunization in this country.

The vast--vast--majority of us choose to vaccinate our children for two reasons: one, we don't want our children to suffer from a preventable disease, possibly become seriously ill, or even die; and two, we don't want any of those things to happen to our neighbors either. Here's the problem: we don't talk about it. I suspect this is because we consider it commonsense. One mother on this blog wrote a post titled: "There's an Anti-Vaccine Movement?" because it had never occurred to her before she had children that people would willingly forgo something that has nearly eliminated one of the most dreaded diseases in human history (polio) and saved the lives of countless children and adults from other diseases that, if not kept in check by widespread immunization, cause unimaginable amounts of suffering.

We never thought we'd have to advocate for something that saves lives, especially the lives of children.

But here we are, and our complacency and our silence has allowed a fringe minority to sit at the table of public health in our place. And there are now consequences for our silence. In Vermont, a common sense bill that would make it more difficult for parents to "conscientiously object" to vaccines and still be allowed to benefit from the public school system has been derailed and defanged because of a highly organized counterattack from anti-vaccine forces, led notably by Barbara Loe Fisher's National Vaccine Information Center (a cleverly named anti-vaccine activist organization). In Oregon at this moment, legislators are considering a simple addition to immunization law that would require parents who opt-out of vaccines to receive educational materials about the risks of vaccine-preventable diseases. The fact that anti-vaccine activists objects even to this speaks for itself. These are the fears of anti-vaccine parents who do not want any obstacle in their quest to get their kids in school with the general population while not having to get those kids immunized.

Who have these legislators heard from? You guessed it: anti-vaccine parents and activists. And not just those living in Oregon. They are getting e-mails and letters from all over the country from people who will fight tooth and nail to preserve their ability to opt-out of immunization and keep their kids in school.

Who haven't they heard from? Us. The parents who vaccinate. The overwhelming majority of us who vaccinate our children because it's the right thing to do for us personally (our kids are protected) and because it's the right thing to do as human beings who live in a community (we protect others). We are the parents who likely would not dream of sending our sick kid to school and infecting his entire class. We are the ones who used common sense. And we're sitting back letting people who have chosen fear and lies over evidence and science speak in our names.

If I sound a little more passionate than usual, it's because I'm angry. We must rise up as a group and take back the conversation. We must let lawmakers know where we stand. I think back to my high school civics class, where we were taught that lawmakers take each letter they receive and apply that strange political calculus to it that, in the end, makes that single letter speak for 10,000 people. Right now, there are legislators in Oregon who believe that millions of parents do not believe in vaccination and do not want the law changed to better protect the community. Let's prove them wrong. You can write and voice your opinion on SB 132, the Oregon bill currently in committee by visiting this site from the Oregon Pediatric Society. It will take you directly to a form where you can write your note. It needn't be long--although mine was about four paragraphs--and you don't have to be a citizen of the state of Oregon (although if you are, we really need you). Let's do this--let's go letter for letter, and beyond. Let's make sure the people who make our immunization law know that we are here, that we care, that we are the 95%.

Moms Who Vax: A Response to Rep. Mary Franson

By Karen Ernst

Editor's Note: At a committee hearing in the Minnesota State Legislature on January 30th, state representative Mary Franson made comments about autism and vaccines in an otherwise unrelated discussion about whether insurance companies should be compelled to cover services relating to an autism diagnosis. These comments are representative of Franson's ideas about vaccines, as she has sponsored several bills that would weaken current state immunization rules. Below is parent Karen Ernst's response to Franson's comments.

I’m deeply disturbed by Minnesota State Representative Mary Franson’s comments during the House Health and Human Services Policy committee meeting on January 30, 2013.  While discussing funding for autism services, Franson commented: “As a mother of three children, I am very thankful than none of my children have had to experience autism, or my family hasn't had to go through that experience. But also, I'm one of those parents that no longer vaccines [sic] either because of the fear that I have had talking to other parents that have experienced their child becoming--experiencing autism after what they found, what they believed correlated with the vaccinations.”

I know many children on the autism spectrum.  Their parents are grateful that they are who they are and do not wish for them to be different. Their parents also readily protect their children from diseases prevented by vaccinating them.  The fear of autism is spread along with anti-vaccine misinformation, and neither is based on reality.

Stated plainly: vaccines do not cause autism.  Andrew Wakefield, whose poorly designed study was retracted shortly before he lost his license to practice medicine, has gained much financially in promoting the dangerous and erroneous idea that vaccines are linked to autism, but they are not.  Dozens of studies across the globe have shown that vaccines and autism are not related at all.  The science is settled.

One wonders why an elected representative is promoting both thoroughly debunked ideas about vaccines and hurtful sentiments about autism. Let’s hold our representatives to a higher standard and demand that they be grateful for the existence of all children and that they support measures that prevent potentially deadly diseases.

Moms Who Vax: Crazy Vaccine Lady

By Johanna H.

There is a meme that comes around every so often, one that I think is very easy to relate to. It shows a stick figure thoroughly frustrated at the computer who

is resisting going to bed because "someone is wrong on the Internet." I always chuckle when I see it, because there have definitely been those times in discussions on a wide variety of topics where I've just had to step away and let people "be wrong," if they choose to be. But I still post the Facebook links about vaccine safety, what new vaccines may be on the horizon, even though sometimes it feels like maybe I'm either boring the living daylights out of all the poor people who are friends with "that crazy vaccine lady" or even causing fights but continuing to post regarding a controversial parenting decision. 

But this week a friend quietly told me that her children are now fully vaccinated in large part because of the information she was getting from me, but more

importantly because she simply had a counterweight to the anti-vaccine environment that she is surrounded by. Just having someone in her tribe of moms who fully immunizes helped give her the ability to feel confident in a choice to vaccinate her children. My friend is a loving, strong woman who makes educated and mindful decisions. In this case, all she needed was to see someone else making those same choices, too.

This is why I share on Facebook when the latest study on flu vaccine safety comes out, or when there is an update on how close to eradication we are with polio.

Every share, every bit of advocacy helps to create a culture that is more hopeful, more confident, and more at peace. I am The Crazy Vaccine Lady not because I

am so dazzlingly clever or because I’m just that committed to making sure all the "i"s are dotted and "t"s crossed, or even because somewhere somebody on the

Internet (or in the homeschool co-op) is wrong.

I will wear that Crazy Vaccine Lady badge because parents have a right to be afraid of the right things. And speaking parent to parent, mother to mother, is how

lives can be changed, and even how some lives will be saved: one conversation, one parent, one child, one shot at a time.

Johanna H. is a Catholic work-at-home mom who lives in the Northeast with her husband and six children.