“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
— William Wilberforce
On Dec. 4, 2018, Italy’s Minister of Health, physician Giulia Grillo, dismissed all 30 members of the Italian Ministry of Health’s health advisory board, the Consiglio Superiore di Sanità (CSS) or Higher Health Council. According to an article in Il Globo newspaper, “The CSS is the country’s most important committee of technical-scientific experts, who advise […]
The Chinese government has imposed a fine of more than $1.3 billion on a Changchun Changsheng Biotechnology Co. Ltd. of Jilin Sheng, China for manufacturing faulty rabies vaccines.1 The company was found to have falsified production and inspection data for 113,000 of its Vero cell-based human rabies vaccines.2 According to the AFP news service, food and drug […]
Families who marched in the streets for “Libera” (Freedom) last year, which helped elect a new government in Italy this year, were recently reassured by a top government official that parents will be not be forced to give their children vaccines as a condition of attending school.1 On July 5, 2018, Italy’s new health minister […]
Thousands of people in Warsaw, Poland marched in protest to forced vaccinations of children earlier this month in observation of International Vaccine Injury Awareness Day on June 3, 2018.1 2 Poland’s childhood vaccination schedule requires a total of 11 vaccinations, including vaccinations against tuberculosis, hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio…
A number of countries—namely Italy, France and Romania—have passed legislation to expand vaccine mandates and punish families refusing to comply. Others, such as the U.K., do not have compulsory vaccination laws but parents are facing more pressure and disapproval from physicians and government health officials…
The Constitutional Court in Colombia recently ruled that mandating the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is unconstitutional. However, the precedent-setting judicial decision went beyond HPV vaccine mandates and affirmed the ethical principle of informed consent to medical risk taking. According to the Court, which is the highest judicial…
Following a hotly contested public debate, the Italian parliament has given final approval to a law mandating full compliance with government-sanctioned vaccines for all school children in Italy up to 16 years of age. Under the new ruling, small children without the proper…
Many people are unaware that in 1986 Congress gave the U.S. vaccine industry a shield from product liability that is unlike any other in existence. In most cases, if a pharmaceutical product injures or kills a person, the manufacturer of that product can be held financially accountable in a civil court of law.
U.S. public health officials commonly advocate vaccinations for Americans traveling abroad, but most foreign countries “recommend” rather than “mandate” vaccinations for visitors. Cholera vaccine, for example, has a limited and transient effectiveness for reducing illness and does not prevent transmission of infection. Because of this and the extremely low risk of infection for travelers…
In the U.S., the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been a subject of controversy from the very beginning after Merck’s Gardasil vaccine was licensed in 2006. Japan is one of the many nations raising concerns about HPV vaccine following persistent reports that girls are suffering severe adverse effects after getting vaccinated. Here is what happened in Japan in a nutshell.