Movimento anti vacinas O que defendem?

A Vaccine Choice Canada é a maior organização no país do movimento anti vacinas. Ted Kuntz, o presidente desta associação, é psicoterapeuta há mais 25 anos, conselheiro e autor de vários best-sellers.

Nesta edição do jornal Milénio Stadium tivemos a oportunidade de o ouvir, tentando assim entender a perspetiva daqueles que se opõem veementemente à vacinação para fazer frente à pandemia que atacou o mundo este ano: Covid-19.

Ted Kuntz explica-nos de forma categórica a sua posição contra a eventual obrigatoriedade desta vacina – acredita que não houve tempo suficiente para que ela fosse devidamente testada, afirmando que não sabemos as consequências que esta nos trará no futuro.

Quando questionado se o preocupava o facto de a rejeição desta vacina poder colocar em jogo a vida de milhões de pessoas em todo o mundo, Ted Kuntz defende que esta imunização não evitará a transmissão do vírus, mas sim apaziguará os sintomas severos e por isso Ted considera que a saúde pública não está em risco.

Por fim, quisemos perceber até que ponto a liberdade de alguém se negar a uma vacina – que a ciência diz surgir para nos ajudar a travar este vírus mundial – põe em causa a liberdade do outro, que quer poder viver sem ser infetado. A resposta de Ted está na última pergunta.

Há muito mais nesta entrevista, onde encontramos as teorias defendidas por quem é contra as vacinas.

Milénio Stadium: Vaccine Choice Canada is based on a principle: Citizens must be properly informed and make decisions regarding their health care. This includes, in your perspective, whether or not to take vaccines. In the case of the anti-covid-19 vaccine, do you maintain this position?

Ted Kuntz: Informed consent is not just a principle, it is a human and Charter right and the foundation of modern ethical medicine. Coercive vaccine policies would mean that individuals no longer have self-determination over their own body or that of their children. Instead, industry and unelected government agents would have the authority to impose medical interventions upon healthy citizens. This action would establish a very dangerous precedent.

While the context of the current debate is about a COVID vaccine, the potential impact goes well beyond this. Such policies would extinguish the right of Canadians to decide what goes into one’s body and the bodies of our children. If you cannot voluntarily decide life altering matters, you are being deprived of your inalienable right to life and liberty, rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Our current medical ethics support the right that no one should be forced to undergo an invasive medical procedure without his or her informed consent. We condemned the forced sterilization of individuals with developmental disabilities, and Nazi practices that included involuntary euthanasia, experimentation and sterilization. We’ve also condemned ideological policies such as residential schools for our First Nations.

In spite of these experiences, the pharmaceutical lobby is once again encouraging legislators to impose regulations and restrictions that would eliminate our fundamental right to voluntary and informed consent.

MS: Does it concern you if the rejection of this vaccine contributes to the continuation of the pandemic, with millions of people infected and millions dying from it around the world?

TK: What many people are not aware of is that the COVID vaccines currently under development are not required to prevent either infection or transmission of the COVID virus. The vaccine is only intended to reduce the severity of symptoms should an infection occur. Therefore, being vaccinated for COVID would not alter the safety of public spaces.

Further, given COVID – 19 has mild or no symptoms in over 80% of individuals who test positive for COVID, there is no benefit to these individuals receiving a COVID vaccine. What is disconcerting is that the only option being promoted by our governments and pharmaceutical industry is the injection of foreign toxins and genetically manufactured mRNA, a never before utilized technology with unknown and potential life-altering consequences.

Further, the question overstates the risk of mortality of COVID. According to the latest CDC data, COVID – 19 is a low lethality illness. The overall lethality of COVID-19 is about 0.1% and thus in the range of a moderate seasonal influenza.  What is also not being acknowledged is that safe and effective treatments for COVID are now available. Based on CDC data, the survivability of COVID -19 is:

•   0 – 19 years 99.997%
• 20 – 49 years 99.98%
• 50 – 69 years 99.5%

According to a report recently published by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms – “Only 3.3 per cent of Canada’s deaths attributed to COVID-19 have been of people under the age of 60, which is 374 people in a population of 37.5 million.” Such a condition does not warrant the indiscriminate mandating of a vaccine and the subsequent violation of charter rights and freedoms.

MS: Do you believe scientific information and the guarantees given by scientists are not enough?

TK: Scientific data is absolutely critical to making an informed decision. Unfortunately, ideology rather than evidence is driving the COVID vaccine agenda.

Any guarantee offered by a scientist is of no value as these individuals would experience no consequence for being wrong. Further, COVID vaccine manufacturers have been granted immunity by governments and therefore will not be legally or financially liable for any harm or deaths caused by their products.

The result of this legal immunity is that no one would be held accountable when injuries and deaths occur. A consequence of this legal immunity is that there is no legal or financial incentive for the vaccine industry to make their products as safe as possible. Combine this reality with the growing effort to take away the right of individuals to voluntary and informed consent and you have a very dangerous situation. Unfortunately, this is the state of the world today.

MS: If COVID vaccines are as safe as claimed, why would COVID vaccine manufacturers require immunity?

TK: It is also important to recognize that Health Canada does not conduct its own clinical trials to determine vaccine safety and efficacy. Instead, Health Canada relies on the data provided by the vaccine manufacturers. 

There is no evidence that the COVID vaccines will be tested for mutagenicity and carcinogenicity. Health Canada also holds the opinion that it is not necessary to test a COVID vaccine against a neutral placebo prior to bringing these products to market. The lack of a neutral placebo undermines confidence in the safety of the product.

Given that vaccines are products given to healthy individuals, the level of safety testing ought to be even more rigorous than is required with all other pharmaceutical products. This is not the case. The safety testing of the COVID vaccine products under development is less rigorous, incomplete, and protocols have been intentionally designed to prevent identifying long-term adverse effects.

Vaccines are not benign medical products. Vaccination is an invasive medical procedure that delivers complex biochemical drugs by injection.

The normal timeline for the development of a vaccine product is 5 – 10 years. It is impossible to know the efficacy and safety profile of a new vaccine using never before utilized technology in 10 months.

Any guarantees of scientists would be speculative rather than based on substantive data. This brief period of pre-licensing monitoring is not long enough to reveal whether the COVID vaccine will cause autoimmune, neurological or developmental disorders, life threatening allergies, infertility, cancer, and other serious disorders. These disorders will only become apparent after a few years.

Normal safety protocols for vaccines involve testing in animals prior to human testing. With the COVID vaccine, manufacturers have been permitted to bypass prior animal testing. This means the COVID vaccine testing is effectively human experimentation.

It is also important to recognize that Canada is one of only two G20 Nations (the other is Russia) without a national vaccine injury compensation program. This means that if you are injured or killed by a COVID vaccine in Canada, there is no compensation.

MS: What can make someone not want to follow the World Health Organization’s guidelines?

TK: Scientific evidence. Critical thinking. Informed consent.

Questioning the claims of the World Health Organization, an organization whose largest funder is Bill Gates,  an investor with significant financial conflicts of interest, is not anti-science. Rather, questioning and demanding clinical evidence of vaccine safety and effectiveness by an independent body without intellectual or financial conflicts of interest demonstrates a strong pro-science attitude, as well as being characteristic of responsible parents and health consumers.

The arguments used to legitimize, legalize and implement COVID vaccination mandates are ideological constructs and not evidence-based medicine. What is missing in such decisions is a robust risk-benefit analysis for each individual patient. A one-size-fits-all policy is ideology rather than individualized medicine.

Indeed, the failure of the vaccine industry to provide clinical and biological evidence of long-term vaccine safety and efficacy is fundamentally anti-science. Saying that there is no need to conduct long-term safety trials with inert placebos prior to licensure is irresponsible, dangerous, and unethical.

MS: Although nothing is defined yet, there are several speculations saying we may need to show proof of vaccination to travel or go to the movies next year, for example. What do you think about these possibilities? 

TK: These are egregious violations of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as violations of international agreements including the Nuremberg Code and the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights. These violations should be vigorously opposed.

Public Health officials and those advocating for mandates or coercive measures do not fully understand they are supporting polices that undermine our rights and freedoms. Canada is a signatory to ‘The Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights.’ Article 6 describes consent as:

“Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be expressed and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.

In no case should a collective community agreement or the consent of a community leader or other authority substitute for an individual’s informed consent.”

This means that consent must be voluntary, free and informed, and that the consent can be withdrawn at any time without disadvantage or prejudice.

According to the Nuremberg Code, informed voluntary consent means that:

“the person involved… should be able to exercise free power of choice,  without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress,  over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion.”

Any coercive measures as restrictions on travel, access to businesses or services would be a clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights  and the Nuremberg Code, developed in response to the violations of the Nazi regime in Germany.

MS: To what extent does the freedom from not taking this vaccine conflict with the freedom of those who do not want to be infected?

TK: It is impossible to avoid exposure to viruses and bacteria. The human being is in a co-creative symbiotic relationship with viruses and bacteria at all times.

The COVID vaccines under development will not prevent infection or transmission of the virus.  Therefore, being vaccinated for COVID would  not alter the safety of public spaces.

Vaccination is an invasive medical procedure. We hold the principle that where there is risk, there must be choice.

What is being encouraged by vaccine mandates advocates is the elimination of choice, which is essential to freedom.

What is central to your question is whether or not we wish to live in a free society. To deny choice is effectively to deny freedom. I choose freedom.

Catarina Balça/MS