Air Force Adds Kids to Pentagon's Mandatory H1N1 Vaccine Program 11/20/09 6:45am

Air Force Adds Kids to Pentagon's Mandatory H1N1 Vaccine Program

OUTRAGEOUS!

The parents have no say in this? Mandatory Swine Flu vaccination for kids!?
We don't live in a Dictatorship type country, do we? How can the U.S. Military FORCE Children to get vaccinated against Parents wishes?!

Article:

About 25,000 children in on-base Air Force daycare centers will be forced to receive the H1N1 vaccine or face being barred from school, Truthout has learned following reports from concerned parents.

When a number of Air Force parents opened the November Child Development Center newsletter, they were outraged to learn that their children must receive the H1N1 vaccine. The newsletter article indicates that the Air Force is considering the H1N1 vaccine as part of the required seasonal flu vaccination.

The notification states:

Recently we received guidance from AF regarding the H1N1 vaccination. AF is considering the H1N1 vaccine as part of the required flu immunization. So, all children participating in AF programs must have the H1N1 vaccination as it becomes available. We are currently working w/ Public Health & the Immunization Clinic to provide on-site opportunities for your children to receive the H1N1 vaccine. There must be a minimum of 18 days between the seasonal mist and the H1N1 mist, so the Child Development Program cannot offer the H1N1 vaccine until mid to late November, since we just completed the seasonal flu vaccination. We will continue to provide you w/ updates as the H1N1 becomes available. Children MUST get this vaccine OR have a medical exemption on file. Please see a member of management if you have any questions or speak w/ your child's pediatrician! We are also coordinating to have members of Public Health available to answer your questions - stay tuned for more details.

A parent at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL, speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern for reprisal against herself and her husband, was disturbed by the complete lack of confidence and answers from the center's administrators.

"What I got was a lot of 'shoulds.' It 'should' be fine. There 'should' be no problems with the vaccine."

"If they're not sure," she said, "why should I be?"

This action follows an already controversial decision from the Pentagon announced in September to make the H1N1 vaccine mandatory in all branches of the military's program. That requirement has been put on hold because the Department of Defense's supplier, Novartis, has not been able to deliver the vaccine.

Last month, New York Governor David Paterson suspended mandatory vaccinations of a half million New York healthcare workers, citing a vaccine shortage. However, others point to lawsuits, protests and a restraining order as pulling equal weight in bringing the program to a halt.

Dr. Meryl Nass, a vaccine expert at Mount Desert Island Hospital in Bar Harbor, Maine, who is critical of the development of the H1N1 vaccine and its surrounding policies, said that although "soldiers are subject to mandatory vaccinations, mandatory medical examinations and potentially even mandatory medical procedures - their families did not sign up for this!"

Additionally, Nass notes, "Children need to be especially protected by society, as they are not competent to make vaccination decisions for themselves. This is why there are special requirements to be met before you can perform research on children. You can't bribe parents to offer their kids as experimental subjects, for example."

But for many Air Force parents, household income levels prevent them from finding a true alternative.

In testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee in June, Eliza Nesmith, Chief of the Airman and Family Services Division of the Air Force, stated that "over 50 percent of Air Force spouses currently work outside the home, and 77 percent wish to work outside the home. Typically, military spouses earn less than their civilian counterparts, even though 7 of 10 have some college education."

Nesmith's testimony highlights the degree to which military parents rely on the on-base child care available to them. Child care in the military is heavily subsidized on a sliding scale according to household income. Thus, parents who rely on the subsidized child care are forced to choose between transferring their children to child care they cannot afford or, at least from their standpoint, putting their children's health at risk.

A spokesperson for the Air Force defended the Air Force's action, citing the Air Force Joint Instruction 48-110: "As a condition of employment or attendance at these facilities, schoolteachers, childcare center workers, volunteers, and children attending DODñsponsored primary and secondary schools, childcare centers, or similar facilities are administered appropriate vaccines against communicable diseases unless already immune (based on documented receipt of vaccine series or physicianñdiagnosed illness) or medically/administratively exempt."

Additionally, the Air Force spokesperson said, "For immunization requirements, the Air Force follows the CDC recommendations, which are endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)."

However, while the CDC does recommend the H1N1 vaccine, a CDC spokesperson contradicted the Air Force's rationale for the mandatory vaccine stating, "We have no recommendations for mandatory vaccinations." The FDA, while not a recommendation-issuing body, supports the CDC's voluntary policy.

A spokesman for the Marine Corps said that while they are happy to make the vaccine available to Marine families, they will not be implementing a mandatory program because their jurisdiction to do so "ends with servicemen and women."

The Army is in the midst of developing an H1N1 guidance memo for its child and youth services facilities. Until it is published, the current policy dictates that parents are asked not to bring sick children to the facilities, and if child care center employees determine a child is sick, parents will be called and asked to pick the child up. However, an Army spokesperson said, "Nothing in our forthcoming guidance will require vaccinations."

For Nass, justifying a decision boils down to one simple fact: "Children are not soldiers."

Blackout: Military Personnel Banned From H1N1 Vaccine Sites 11/18/09 6:40am

Blackout: Military Personnel Banned From H1N1 Vaccine Sites

The military is blocked from reading anything about the Swine Flu vaccine?

That is outrageous - in doing that, first it shows there IS something to hide, second that is not representative of a "Free Country".

I am putting this in here, because it has to do with vaccines and trying to get the word out about them.

Thank you to Chenickel, for bringing this to our attention.

Article:

If you want to draw attention to a problem, try hiding it. That's the strategy of several military bases when it comes to the H1N1 vaccine.

Shortly after the Pentagon announced that all Armed Services personnel would soon be facing a mandatory H1N1 vaccination program, I started receiving email from soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors because of a previous story I had written on the anthrax vaccine. Mandatory vaccine programs are a sensitive subject in the military, so it's not a huge surprise that swift and visceral reactions to the program gained speed.

With a vaccine that was so new and little known about it, like many Americans, troops were heading to the web to find answers to their very legitimate questions -- not only for themselves, but for their families who have the option of receiving the vaccine on base. What they found instead is that several websites and blogs with key information asking critical questions had been blocked from their viewing.

Among those that were repeatedly mentioned as blocked sites are the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), the site for Gary Matsumoto's book Vaccine-A, and vaccine expert Dr. Meryl Nass. NVIC is a national, non-profit founded in 1980s that, through public education, advocates "vaccine safety and informed consent protections in the mass vaccination system." Matsumoto's site contains a forum in which thousands upon thousands of service members have posted testimonies regarding their experiences with the anthrax vaccine. And Nass is one of the world's foremost experts on vaccines who has testified in front of Congressional committees -- and, I might add, never has had a malpractice suit brought against her.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sites, however, are all available for military personnel. The official word from governmental agencies is welcome but critics, regardless of whether they were considered experts, are not.

According to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, the only blocking of websites Pentagon-wide was in 2007, when a number of heavy-trafficked sites that "used lots of bandwidth" had to be denied to reduce the wear on networks "to ensure they continued to be available for mission requirements."

That turns out not to be entirely accurate.

Some of you may recall the reporting earlier this year when wired.com's Danger Room blog reported that the Pentagon was blocking not only YouTube, but even their own TroopTube.

When TroopTube launched last November, for instance, it was billed as an answer to the bandwidth and security concerns surrounding other video sites. TroopTube "crunches video files into several sizes and automatically plays the one that best suits viewers' Internet connection speeds," the Associated Press reported at the time. And "a Pentagon employee screens each [upload] for taste, copyright violations and national security issues."

Nonetheless, the public affairs office at the Pentagon further instructed me that "anything that may be blocked at the Service or base level should be addressed there -- it's a local issue."

Since I had the most information (and the most complaints) about Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, that's where I directed my questions. After repeated email and phones calls, nearly two weeks later a spokesperson for Wright-Patterson told me that:

The Air Force general policy is all websites are placed into categories based upon their content and intended audience. All unethical categories are blocked as are any sites that are uncategorized. Currently the sites referenced are blocked because they are uncategorized.

A wholly unsatisfactory answer that side-stepped the question, I took this statement to mean that blocking these websites had nothing to do with bandwidth use as in the Pentagon statement and everything to do with the content.

I asked the follow-up question: Since this is a recent decision to block them, why would they not just be categorized rather than being uncategorized? As a result, they would not be blocked for educational purposes of service personnel who have a mandatory H1N1 vaccination program?

Wright-Patterson did not respond to this question.

Making sure that servicemen and servicewomen consent to the vaccine and are informed is apparently not a concern for the Department of Defense. But the message is very clear for one service member who contacted me: "All you need to know is what we're telling you, so shut up and take the vaccine with no questions asked."

Nass, one of the experts whose site has been blocked, points out the real shame in all of this: "It's unfortunate that the service members who are defending our civil rights are not afforded the same consideration."

Note: If you're on a base that has blocked websites related to the H1N1 vaccine, I'd love to know what sites are blocked and what base you're on. You can post the info in the comments below or contact me directly.