An interview with Voices for Vaccines
July 1st, 2008, 11:33 am · 22 Comments · posted by sammiller
Sources sometimes tell us how frustrating it can be to speak to a reporter for 45 minutes about a complex topic, then see the entire interview boiled down into one small quote for a story. Sorry, guys; it’s the downside of having limited space.
With that in mind, I’ll occasionally post much larger snippets from interviews here, or the entire transcript of an interview, when it’s appropriate and gives the reader a deeper understanding of an issue or a particular perspective.
I spoke to Lisa Randall, the executive director of Voices for Vaccines, about the battleground over vaccines, and how groups like TACA, Generation Rescue, SafeMinds and Moms Against Mercury have raised public skepticism about vaccine ingredients.
Voices for Vaccines is a non-profit under the authority of the Task Force for Child Survival and Development. The Task Force was formed in 1984 “as a collaboration between the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation to achieve the goal of universal child immunization.” Randall has also done consulting for the Immunization Action Coalition.
The interview is after the jump. Questions are paraphrased, and her answers are word-for-word.
Q: How did you get involved with promoting vaccines?
LR: I was a mom and I started to see stuff in the paper that I thought sounded kind of suspicious. I started looking into it and ended up getting very involved. I think it was the idea that people were making really, really important decisions based on information that seemed to be more ideologically driven than factually driven.
This is just my amateur psychologist opinion, but a lot of folks who buy into the idea are kind of friendly to the concept that government in general is not to be trusted. That’s fine if it informs their voting, or the letters to the editor they write, but it’s a shame that it affects health care decisions they make for their kids. I didn’t like the idea that the claims they made seemed to be repeated in the media uncritically.
Over time, particularly in the more national media, the coverage has become a little bit more skeptical. At that time — it must have been 2003 — the coverage was pretty alarming, and something about that just bugged me.
There was also the angle that people were making decisions that affected not just their own families. It was bad enough that they were putting their own children in danger, but when you send somebody into the community without vaccination you lose that herd (immunity).
Q: Has there been any organized movement to counter the vaccine-autism-link claims?
LR: I don’t think that has happened, not to any great extent. There’s not a reason for people to bond together to say ‘no, we don’t believe in this crazy idea.’ The autism parents who believe that vaccines are at fault have a reason to do that, they have a mission. They say they want toxins out of vaccines. I think in their heart of hearts they want vaccines to go away. Like, the rally that’s going on, the theme is “green the vaccines” but if you took out every element to which they’d object you’d be left with saline. They have a lot of misconceptions about what is in the vaccines and why those vaccines are there.
Q: Is this going to be a debate that is settled by science, or has it split permanently into a more partisan dispute where neither side is likely to be swayed by new evidence?
LR: There’s a core group of people for whom more science is just going to be more noise, as long as it doesn’t agree with their preconceptions. I think those are the ones who are loudest in this movement. They’re just so personally invested. We’ve been studying this for years. I’m not a scientist, but there have been bushels of research on this and every time something comes out that doesn’t support (a link) it’s, ‘oh the authors are biased,’ or ‘we think there is a methodology problem that none of the professional reviewers think is a problem.’ The science is probably what has been swaying the people who don’t have a dog in the fight. So it may contibute to the major media sources figuring out, hey, this isn’t really a story over time.
Q: You said the media has become more skeptical, but it seems that the link is out on the forefront more than it has been in the past five years or so.
LR: Jenny McCarthy was kind of a shot in the arm. They weren’t sitting back and preparing to close up shop, by any means.
Q: Are these issues controversial among different autism groups?
LR: There’s no question Autism Speaks is the 800-pound gorilla. They’re so well connected and so well funded you almost can’t compare them with the parents’ groups who don’t make any secret of their theories about autism etiology. I have to say, as far as that universe of smaller groups goes, the TACAs and the SafeMinds and the Generation Rescues, they seem to play pretty nice together. There’s some backbiting below the surface. Generally they seem to pull together, and there are common people involved in a lot of the organizations.
Autism Speaks as a whole tries to walk the line between making the miltant parents angry and having the scientists they’re trying to work with take them seriously. I think they fund a lot of good research, some maybe questionable research, but mostly good research. The more research, the better chance we have of getting away from having to suspect vaccines.
Q: Has this issue helped pro-vaccine groups in any way, raising the profile of immunizations?
LR: Maybe the only positive is it has caused a whole bunch of the stakeholders who promote vaccines to organize themselves a little bit better. So we’ve got some coordinations in place. There’s always going to be a next thing that people are going to be against where vaccines are concerned.
You realize when the consistent findings are across the board, government agrees, academia agrees, obviously industry agrees, non-profits agree — if there’s something to this autism vaccine connection then why do all these people in the vaccine world agree? And the only thing they can respond with is there is everybody has been bought off by Big Pharma. On one of the newsgroups today they were talking about why CNN — there was a few seconds of video on the (Green Our Vaccines) rally today, and then it went away. Well, they change their coverage throughout the day. But someone wrote that they probably took it off to please their Big Pharma masters. It suffuses the rhetoric.
July 1st, 2008 at 12:43 pm
We’d like to know how “just a mom” Lisa Randall came to represent so many pharmas…and is she taking any $ for this role?
July 1st, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Where does Voices for Vaccines revenue come from? Its public record - go check out their tax return.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Lisa Randall makes sense to this autism parent and OC native.
.
I wish that I could say the same for Generation Rescue, TACA, Jenny McCarthy and the like.
July 1st, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I think anyone who attacks Lisa Randall’s character for no reason other than they disagree with her ought to be under suspicion of taking money from, or of being, a toxic tort lawyer or from Jenny McCarthy’s press agent.
July 1st, 2008 at 5:45 pm
“I think anyone who attacks Lisa Randall’s character for no reason other than they disagree with her ought to be under suspicion of taking money from, or of being, a toxic tort lawyer or from Jenny McCarthy’s press agent”.
CharlieZ,
Lisa Randall gets paid money to speak out and tell us all that vaccines are soooo safe. Hey, everyone’s got to make a buck… I just wish that so many kids weren’t being injured in the process.
The problem with Ms. Randall is that in many of her “Letters to the Editor” she actively fights for *NOT REMOVING* thimerosal from vaccines. Yes, that’s right she actively fights to keep a neurotoxin in childhood vaccinations. At some point, you become fair game to have your character attacked… Lisa Randall is there.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:28 pm
This is ridiculous. Can’t Lisa Randall make a living without trashing families with autistic kids and trying to stop research that might help sick children like mine? Lisa desrcibes herself as a “concerned Mom”, but she is am employee of a vaccine company. Let’s be honest Lisa. While you were busy mind reading the intentions of parents at the Greening the Vaccines rally, we were NOT trying to stop all vaccines, but to make them safer for all children. Obviously you have a big problem with making vaccines safe. Maybe YOU can request that your vaccines retain all that good stuff you seem to like so much: formaldehyde, ammonia, aluminum and aborted fetal tissue and you can get 10 vaccines a once if that suits you. Please let the rest of us make sane choices for our children.
July 1st, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Lisa Randall is a an attorney and “policy consultant” for Immunization Action Coalition, or Immunize.org, a group that is funded in part by the CDC and by pharmaceutical companies Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Wyeth, Sanofi Pasteur, Novartis, CSL iotherapies, MedImmune, and Baxter Healthcare Corp. Just a tad biased I would say.
To advocate the injection of toxic waste into children is reckless. “Voices for Pharma” is a more truthful name for your organization.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
The article didn’t mention that Voices for Vaccines is funded by vaccine manufacturers. Probably because it takes away from the “save the children” message and leans toward “don’t stop buying our product”. So let the unvaxed kids run around exposing the “herd”. Most vaccines wear off by the time we are adults. You need some exposure to a “wild virus” once in awhile to “boost” your immunity. Or you could go get a booster shot. Are we all current with our boosters?
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:05 am
Front page of http://www.voicesforvaccines.org:
“We accept no funding from governments or vaccine companies.”
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:41 am
Vocies for ( Keeping Vaccines Toxic) Vaccines accepts money from foundations that promote vaccination and profit from it. Their steering committee including many individulas who hold vaccine patents and directly profit for the efforts of this pathetic organization.
Why didn’t the interviewer ask Lisa why she opposes taking toxic adjuvants out of vaccines and creating safer alternatives? Guess what Lisa- it isn’t saline that is the problem. Why didn’t the reporter ask Lisa what how much money the AAP and the CDC spent on safety testing for vaccines, versus promoting them? Virtually all the adjuvants in vaccines today are the result of grandfathered science that would never pass today’s safety standards. We have the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the world and the unhealthiest generation of children in 50 years. Lisa is lucky that her children are unaffected and she is ” so busy going to soccer games that she does not have time to doubt vaccines” as she said at the IACC meetings. For those of us who saw our healthy, normal children disappear into an abyss of pain and torment after hyper- vaccination, we have had to take the time to educate ourselves -on all sides of the issue.
If VFV really cared about protecting the immunization program they would be fighting to make vaccines as safe as possible in order to re-establish trust, not hysterically fighting transparency and preserving the very same conflicts of interest which have not served our children.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:15 am
absolutely fascinating…do the people who are posting here accusing Lisa of taking money to promote vaccines not see that they are completely reinforcing the image noted in the article: that anti-vaccine parents will unilaterally accuse anyone who disagrees with them of taking money from Big Pharma? I have a great idea: let’s devote all this energy to finding the ACTUAL causes of autism instead of trying to make sure that no one vaccinates their children. I don’t think we need to compound the tragedy of autism with the tragedy of thousands of children dying of diseases that CAN be prevented…by vaccines. Conspiracy theories are a waste of time and money, and they are not going to find a cure for autism, which is what we (should) all want — unless “we” are cynical anti-vaccine ideologues who are exploiting parents of autistic children just to spread lies.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:37 am
I find it very strange that someone should be precluded from advocating vaccinations because they work in the field. Wouldn’t such people have a more informed perspective of vaccines than the average population?
The science on vaccine safety is out there, published in respected, peer-reviewed journals all over the world. If vaccine advocates were lobbying for something with even a hint of perceived danger then you would see many people using evidence of that danger to counter their advocacy.
If peer-reviewed scientific journals contained studies that showed a clear link between autism and vaccines, would you be as skeptical of them as you are now? Would you look at just anecdotal evidence from parents who vaccinated and ended up with healthy children and then decide the science must be wrong?
Would you vaccinate your child if the science demonstrated clear danger of autism?
I believe if you consider how this sort of reasoning would work in that sort of world you might begin to see why your position now is irrational, unproductive, and potentially quite dangerous.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
“do the people who are posting here accusing Lisa of taking money to promote vaccines not see that they are completely reinforcing the image noted in the article: that anti-vaccine parents will unilaterally accuse anyone who disagrees with them of taking money from Big Pharma”?
Megan,
Lisa DOES take money to promote vaccines… We know that. She would agree (unless she is a blatant liar). So, what’s your point again?
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
You know that, do you?
July 4th, 2008 at 6:00 am
My son’s last full sentence July 4th six years ago…
“My name is Tanner. My name is Tanner.”
my son spoke… my son got shots…my son stopped speaking…
Doctors told me it was autism… They told me there was no hope…
I started a Defeat Autism Now protocol and my son said his first words in six years… “Hi Daddy” for father’s day
If it looks like a duck… walks like a duck…quacks like a duck…
Then guess what it is a ….
Smoking is safe….Smoking is healthy… we should all smoke… Right?
It has been said that America is a hopeful nation. We believe in answers. We were the first to fly. We made it to the moon. One group is fighting to bring children out of autism and has some results. The other wants to leave them there and has their results.
I have hope that the government, the medical establishment, the education system, the legal system, the insurance system, our religious community and our American (world) citizens will come to the aid of my son and all the others robbed of their voice, life, and soul.
Go Katie!
July 14th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
The lab tests of “autistic” children are showing vaccine-strain measles in lesions lining their gastrointestinal mucosa. Excessive levels of toxic metals like mercury. Antibodies to myelin basic protein. Autoimmune dysfunction.
Countless parents have reported that their children’s “autistic” symptoms appeared shortly after receiving mercury-containing vaccines or multiple vaccines. And parents report improvements once these sick children are given antivirals, nutritional supplements, chelation to remove metals, IVIG, etc.
Lisa Randall calls these parents liars and denies that these children exist. She wants billions of people to just shut up and take their medicine — regardless of its quality and oversight.
Once you’ve read some CDC and IOM documents obtained through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA), you’ll understand why parents feel that profits are nowadays valued more than people, and bureaucracies work for self-protection instead of improving the health of the children they purport to serve. It’s not paranoia, it’s informed choice.
Nothing is being learned from vaccine injuries… and thus the damage is perpetuated. When it happens to you or your loved ones, you are on your own — and you have to fight the utilitarian good intentions of people like Lisa Randall.
Benefits outweigh risks, but at what percentage is that no longer true, when 51% of children are injured by vaccines?
July 14th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Megan and all you pharma lovers see if
you can find in this IOM scandal truth or
CDC lies and deceit as usual propaganda
keep in mind after getting the IOM to lie for
them the CDC recently they have been warned
by the IOM they the CDC needs to get them some
good legal counsel
If you ever told the IOM looked at this
and found no link. like Paul Harvey says
now for the rest of the story
When you read my excerpts from the leaked
minutes of the IOM meeting then read the
Byron child world exclusive following the
excerpts
JOE ————————– ft worth
This is the proof the CDC bought the IOM
DOES THIS 1ST EXCERPT SOUND LIKE THEY FOUND NO LINK?
IN EXCERPT 2 THEY THE CDC IS ORDERING THE IOM NOT TO FIND
CAUSATION IGNORE THE FIVE GOOD BIOLOGICAL STUDIES
AND PUT ALL THERE CONFIDENCE IN POPULATION BASED
STUDIES THAT WE NOW KNOW HAVE BEEN FAKED AND
ACCORDING TO CONGRESS AND NEIHS WAS FATE-ALLY FLAWED
IN EXCERPT # 3 THEIR MINDS WERE MADE UP BEFORE THEY SAW
ANY STUDIES NOT TO MENTION THEY WERE ORDERED NOT TO FIND
CAUSATION. TO THESE PEOPLE OUR AMERICAN CHILDREN MEAN NOTHING ABSOLUTLY NOTHING
ALL THOUGH IN PRIVATE THEY MAKE STATEMENTS LIKE IT’S A HARD
DECISION WE MAKE KNOWING THAT THEIR WILL HAVE TO BE LAMBS
SACRIFICED FOR THE GOOD OF THE WHOLE. I WONDER IF THAT
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES GUY THAT MADE THAT STATEMENT
KNEW THAT THEY WERE SACRIFICED SO PEOPLE COULD SAVE
FIFTY CENTS TO TWO DOLLARS A CHILD
AND COST THIS NATION 3.2 TO 5 MILLION $$$
FOR THE MAYBE 1 IN 50 WITH A MITOCHONDRIA
—————————————————————————————————————————-
EXCERPT # 1
“We’ve got a dragon by the tail here,” states a committee member in the
transcript. “At the end of the line, what we know is - and I agree -
that
the more negative that presentation [the report] is, the less likely
people
are to use vaccination, immunization, and we know what the results of
that
will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of
the
trap, I think, is the charge.”
—————————————————————————————————————————-
EXCERPT # 2
-When byronchild asked CDC spokesperson Curtis Allen for a copy of the
contract that would detail the agreement between the IOM and the CDC,
Allen
stated that the contract would be available only in a heavily
“redacted” or
blacked-out format.
The IOM stated “no comment” to byronchild about the leaked transcript
or its
use in the pending civil court case.
—————————————————————————————————————————-
EXCERPT # 3
Specifically sited are statements by the IOM’s study director Kathleen
Stratton, PhD, and committee chair Marie McCormick, MD. These
statements,
the law firm says, strongly suggest Stratton and McCormick deliberately
railroaded their committee into specific outcomes (all in italics
directly
from court document):
Dr. McCormick, for example, in speaking of the CDC, noted that the
agency
“wants us to declare, well, these things are pretty safe on a
population
basis.” (See Exhibit 1 at page 33).
“The committee’s bias and predetermination of the causality issues
presented
are found at page 74 in a comment from Dr. Stratton:
Dr. Stratton: “We said this before you got here, and I think we said
this
yesterday, the point of no return, the line we will not cross in public
policy is to pull the vaccine, change the schedule. We could say it is
time
to revisit this but we will never recommend that level. Even
recommending
research is recommendations for policy. We wouldn’t say compensate, we
wouldn’t say pull the vaccine, we wouldn’t say stop the program.”
Similarly, Dr. McCormick, at page 97 in discussing whether autism could
be
associated with vaccines, stated that “we are not ever going to come
down
that it is a true side effect,” despite the fact that the committee had
not
yet considered any evidence on this issue.
July 14th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Megan and all you pharma lovers here is where the CDC uses real science as they understand it to be
Dr. McCormick, for example, in speaking of the CDC, noted that the
agency
“wants us to declare, well, these things are pretty safe on a
population
basis.” (See Exhibit 1 at page 33).
What Walt wants Walt generally gets she later says
DR. WALTER ORENSTEIN LEAVES A LEGACY OF EXCEPTIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT WITH HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE NATIONAL IMMUNIZATION PROGRAM
DR. WALTER ORENSTEIN LEAVES A LEGACY OF 1 in 82 autistic
children 1 in 20.5 boys keep up the good work Walt you have almost made boys extinct 1 in 6 having a neurological learning disability asthma at a all time high child hood diabetes Yea now that’s quite a legacy I will have to admit. Only a terrorist could top that . And by the way Katie Wright you absolutely ROCK
This is where the IOM is justifying lying to the public, after being ordered not to find causation. For you see your not caught in a trap unless you find a link !! they seemed to be more worried about the vaccine program tanking than little body’s all over the place with CDC sponsored mercury bullets in their brain. since when was First do no
harm changed to cover at all cost .
“We’ve got a dragon by the tail here,” states a committee member in the
transcript. “At the end of the line, what we know is - and I agree -
that
the more negative that presentation [the report] is, the less likely
people
are to use vaccination, immunization, and we know what the results of
that
will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of
the
trap, I think, is the charge.”
Here is where the CDC is caught with there pants down and deceiving the public again as usual
When byronchild asked CDC spokesperson Curtis Allen for a copy of the
contract that would detail the agreement between the IOM and the CDC,
Allen
stated that the contract would be available only in a heavily
“redacted” or
blacked-out format.
when you heavily“redacted” or blacked-out format.something it’s
usually true and their hiding something this time the something their hiding is a lost generation courtesy of the CDC, FDA, IOM, and most of all the prestigious AAP, Who needs terrorist ? it seems we have our own home grown
The IOM stated “no comment” to byronchild about the leaked transcript
or its
use in the pending civil court case.
We the public have know right to the IOM report minutes for they are a
non governmental agency FOIA act doe’s not apply here so someone
had to be very disturbed about what they were having to do, and what they were hearing. So where is our senate and congressman’s that should be appalled at this agency committing something worse than
treason after all when they the congress thought they were targeted
for mass poisoning they sang on the court house steps kumbaya
we stand in unity against you It seems they care less for our children
than they do for their own skins some congress excluded and are very
caring for our vaccine damaged children you know who you are! some are HERO’S but most are zero’s. This long but thought out post is finally finished
July 15th, 2008 at 8:08 am
I will bet you thought your health officials wasn’t capable of this kind of fraud boy were you wrong
July 15th, 2008 at 9:00 am
When talking about Thimerosal most of the government agencies won’t ever admit that it is just the tip of the ice berg.
Were not even talking synergy effect of the two salts mixed mercury and aluminum when you mix the two they become super toxins with a killing factor x 10 of brain cells. Then factor in a lot of these kids have high testosterone a Yale university study said for the first time it has been shown that high testosterone causes catastrophic loss of brain cells. They were not looking at our kids per say they were looking at steroids when I talked to the lead author of the study she was amazed that vaccines for children contained mercury and aluminum. Now if that is not bad enough some of these kids start chewing after vaccines, my suspicion was confirmed by Kennedy krieger they said they have noticed that the worse kids were pika kids that chewed everything. So how many years has china been sending lead tainted toys ? so we have three metals mixed and high testosterone killing these kids brain cells not to mention MSG and other toxins in the vaccines and the experts wonder where all this damage is coming from, and keep looking for that elusive gene named autism . . .
so chelation for a lot of these kids would be appropriate and the humane thing to do. And not let them languish in there heavy metal poisoning like the crooked morally bankrupt health authorities are
only allowing them to do.