US Senator Ron Johnson Hosts the Voices of the Vaccine Injured
A Senate hearing is once again being used to give a platform to anti-vaccine influencers.
We have gotten used to anti-vaccine influencers pushing misinformation and propaganda about vaccines on social media, in books, and on TV, etc.
What we will hopefully never get used to is ‘our’ government officials pushing misinformation and propaganda about vaccines in the Senate.
US Senator Ron Johnson Hosts the Voices of the Vaccine Injured
Tragically, that is what we once again have.
I say once again, because we have been here before.
Between 2000 and 2002, Dan Burton held over twenty Congressional hearings trying to prove that there was a link between vaccines and autism.
Arthur Allen, in his book Vaccine The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver, describes Burton’s hearings as:
“…carefully choreographed to generate as much negative feeling toward the vaccination system as possible.”
Hearings in which Dan Burton did not find a link between vaccines and autism.
And like Dan Burton, Sen. Ron Johnson has been giving a platform to the popular anti-vaccine influencers.
In his last hearing, The Corruption of Science and Federal Health Agencies: How Health Officials Downplayed and Hid Myocarditis and Other Adverse Events Associated with the COVID-19 Vaccines, we got to hear from Peter McCullough, James Thorp, Jordan Vaugn, Joel Wallskog, and Aaron Siri.
In his latest hearing, Voices of the Vaccine Injured, Sen. Johnson allowed Brian Hooker, Polly Tommey, and Robert Sullivan to freely regurgitate anti-vaccine talking points that we have refuted a thousand times already.
From talk of the Harvard study and VAERS to the idea that pediatricians are paid huge bonuses that influence their decisions to vaccinate kids, it was nearly two hours of anti-vaccine propaganda.
I say nearly, because surprisingly, the hearing did include two witnesses who were advocates for vaccines.
“Vaccines save lives and keep people healthy. A vaccine likely would have saved my older sister Jessica’s life.”
Statement for the Record Of Eric Stein U.S. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Hearing: Voices of the Vaccine Injured
This includes Eric Stein, whose sister, Jessica, died when she had the flu at age four years, long before routine flu shots were recommended for kids.
Eric, along with the families of other children who had lost a child to the flu, tells how they testified in from of ACIP and pushed for a universal flu shot recommendation for children.
A recommendation that has saved thousands of lives!
“There is no “acceptable loss” when it comes to children and vaccine-preventable diseases. Let me briefly share how my life has changed since losing Joseph. Let me share how incredibly devastating it was to watch my child die in front of me in an ICU room. Let me share how incredibly hard it was to go home that morning and tell his 7-year-old sister that her little brother wasn’t ever coming home. Let me share what it felt like to walk into the funeral home holding my daughter’s hand and preparing her to see her brother laying in a small coffin. Let me share how agonizing it was to sit in my dead son’s room, amongst his toys and clothes, and realize that I would never again read him a bedtime story. Let me share how unbearable it was to stand in a line at the county clinic to get my daughter her monovalent H1N1 vaccine that became available just two weeks after my son died—a vaccine that could possibly have saved his life. Let me share how incredibly painful it has been for my family each and every day to remember that Joseph is never going to graduate college, never going to get married, never going to have a chance to contribute to society.”
SERESE MAROTTA, WITNESS STATEMENT U.S. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Hearing: Voices of the Vaccine Injured
We also heard from Serese Marotta, whose five-year-old son, Joseph, died just before a vaccine became available during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
Not surprisingly, though, we heard even more stories from parents who have come to believe that their children either died or were injured soon after they had received a vaccine.
To start, though, it is clear what Sen. Johnson has planned when he mentions Dissolving Illusions, Turtles All the Way Down, and a Substact by Toby Rogers as providing him “an open-minded review of the history of vaccination, digging back to Edward Jenner, the creator of the small-pox vaccine.”
Popular in anti-vaccine circles, these are all clearly propaganda.
He goes on to talk about the lawsuits against manufacturers of the DPT vaccine in the early and mid 1980s, not understanding that the lawsuits were frivolous and that the DPT vaccine was found to be safe.
Sadly, Sen. Johnson doesn’t seem to have any idea why legislators passed the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act in 1986, creating the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the Vaccine Court.
It wasn’t because vaccine manufacturers needed blanket immunity because vaccines were dangerous.
It was because all the frivolous lawsuits would have put the vaccine manufacturers out of business, and we would have lost our life-saving vaccines!
Sen Johnson also repeats misinformation about the number of vaccines kids got in the 1980s, helping to set up the idea that there was an explosion in the number of vaccines and vaccine doses on the childhood schedule after 1986.
He allows Brian Hooker to say that vaccine trials only lasted a few days, that they haven’t used saline placebos, repeats misinformation about the COVID vaccine trials, brings up the CDC whistleblower, and says the Verstraeten study was flawed.
Sen. Johnson ends by blaming long-COVID on vaccines and allowing Polly Tommey to say that pediatricians are killing kids.
What else?
Sen. Johnson also:
says that we wasted time looking for a genetic component to autism and didn’t find anything, when research has found that genetics plays a major role in the development of autism
makes a big deal about the fact that he hadn’t heard of autism when he was a kid, 70 years ago, which isn’t surprising since the DSM criteria was only broadened about fifty years ago
obviously lobs pre-arranged questions at his witnesses, asking about autism among the Amish, neglecting that Hooker gave him a bad answer
pushes the idea that a possible association of vaccines and autism has been ignored and not well studied and disproven
maintains that improved sanitation dramatically eradicated many childhood diseases before vaccines were developed
allowed Robert Sullivan to mischaracterize both the effectiveness of flu vaccines and how easily it is to treat the flu with anti-virals
allowed Robert Sullivan to mischaracterize how well VAERS works, saying it would miss a novel complication, I guess missing that VAERS caught that the then new Rotashield vaccine was causing intussusception
pushed the conspiracy that ‘they’ don’t want to know the truth about vaccine injuries
All in all, combined with RFK Jr at HHS, all the Trump funding cuts, and the continued rise in outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases, Sen Johnson’s hearing will be especially dangerous, as it will also contribute to the rise in vaccine hesitancy.
References
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Hearings https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations The Corruption of Science and Federal Health Agencies: How Health Officials Downplayed and Hid Myocarditis and Other Adverse Events Associated with the COVID-19 Vaccines https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/the-corruption-of-science-and-federal-health-agencies-how-health-officials-downplayed-and-hid-myocarditis-and-other-adverse-events-associated-with-the-covid-19-vaccines/
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Voices of the Vaccine Injured https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/voices-of-the-vaccine-injured/
Statement for the Record Of Eric Stein Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Regarding Voices of the Vaccine Injured https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Stein-Testimony.pdf
SERESE MAROTTA, WITNESS STATEMENT U.S. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Hearing: Voices of the Vaccine Injured https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Marotta-Testimony.pdf
A few million people who didn’t get the vaccine won’t be testifying today. Because they’re dead.