Doctors Can Vaccinate Kids in DC Without Parental Knowledge

Dr. Joseph Mercola – by Barbara Loe Fisher

This past year, we have seen many lawmakers in the U.S. and other countries vote to eliminate or severely restrict civil liberties in the name of the public health.^1,2,3 One of the most outrageous legislative actions violating parental and human rights took place in Washington, D.C., in November 2020 when city council officials gave doctors the power to vaccinate children as young as 11 years old and hide what they did from parents.^4,5,6,7,8

The D.C. mayor refused to veto the bill^9,10 and, in January 2021, the U.S. Congress sat on its hands^11,12 and gave tacit approval to enactment of the most dangerous child vaccination law in America.

In a breathtaking violation of medical ethics and several federal laws, the new vaccine concealment law in Washington, D.C., allows doctors to extract “informed consent” from young children too immature to know what informed consent¹³ means or what a vaccine reaction looks and feels like.^14,15,16

The D.C. city council majority, with only three members dissenting, cruelly disempowered parents by voting to make it illegal for a doctor, insurance company or school administrator to divulge a child’s vaccination history in records that can be seen by the child’s mother or father.¹⁷

Parents Won’t Have Information to Protect Child From Injury

An 11-year-old child does not know or understand his or her personal health history but most parent do. If a child has experienced previous vaccine reactions, has severe allergies or other health conditions that could increase vaccine risks,^18,19 parents kept in the dark will not have a way to protect their child from further harm.

Parents who don’t know which vaccines their children have been given will not be able to monitor them for signs of a potentially life-threatening vaccine reaction that requires immediate medical treatment.²⁰ If the child is injured or dies after vaccination, parents will not know they must apply to the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) before the filing deadline expires.²¹

Parents will not know their insurance company has been billed for vaccines. Parents will not know that a school the child attends is in possession of their child’s secret vaccination records even when there is a vaccine exemption for religious belief reasons on file with the school.

This blatant violation of a parent’s moral right and legal responsibility to make medical risk decisions on behalf of a minor child was endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics²² and pushed through by the D.C. city council, while the mayor and the US Congress looked the other way.

Washington, DC, Vaccine Concealment Law Violates Federal Laws

First, D.C.’s vaccine concealment law violates vaccine safety provisions of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a federal law that confirmed vaccine injuries and deaths are real and made preventing vaccine reactions a national priority.

Parents of DPT vaccine-injured children secured vaccine safety provisions in the 1986 Act, which directs doctors and other medical workers to give parents written vaccine benefit and risk information BEFORE a child is vaccinated²³ and also mandates that vaccine providers record which vaccines the child is given in a record the parents can access.

Specifically, the 1986 Act mandates that “health care providers who administer a vaccine” must give a child’s legal representative “a copy of the information materials” developed by the Centers for Disease Control “prior to the administration” of a vaccine.^24,25

The 1986 law also requires each person administering a vaccine to “ensure that there is recorded in such person’s permanent medical record or in a permanent office log or file to which a legal representative shall have access upon request” certain information:

No. 1: the date of administration of the vaccine; No. 2: the vaccine manufacturer and lot number of the vaccine; and No. 3: the name and address and, if appropriate, the title of the health care provider administering the vaccine.”²⁶

These informing and recording vaccine safety provisions were included in the 1986 Act specifically to provide parents with information they need to make well informed vaccine decisions for their minor children; to help parents recognize and prevent vaccine reactions; and to ensure a vaccine reaction is reported to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).^27,28

If a doctor can secretly inject a young child with one or more vaccines and hide the vaccination records, how will parents know what is happening when a vaccine reaction occurs? They won’t have the information they need to take their child to an emergency room or be able to make the connection between the vaccinations and a child’s regression into poor health.

This lack of critical information about their child’s medical history also means parents will likely miss the deadline for filing a claim in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which has awarded more than $4.5 billion to the vaccine injured over the past three decades.²⁹

D.C.’s vaccine concealment law violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, which guarantees parents the legal right to have access to their children’s education records, including health and vaccine records, at the primary and secondary school level.³⁰

Vaccine Concealment Law Violates Informed Consent Rights

D.C.’s vaccine concealment law also violates the long standing ethical principle of informed consent to medical risk taking,³¹ which has governed the ethical practice of human research and medical practice since the Nuremberg Code was published in 1947 after the Doctors’ Trial.^32,33

Informed consent is exercised on behalf of minor children by parents, who are morally and legally responsible for the well-being and financial support for their children until they are old enough to live independently.^34,35,36

Child development specialists have documented how young children and teenagers lack the critical thinking skills and emotional maturity to exercise good judgment when assessing risks.^37,38,39,40, Preadolescents are more susceptible to pressure from peers and authority figures.^41,42,43,44

Vaccine Administrators Have No Liability for Injuries, Deaths

Doctors are the ultimate authority figures in our society today, and many are serving as authoritarian implementers of one-size-fits-all federal vaccine policies and state vaccine mandates.^45,46

Like vaccine manufacturers, doctors and other persons who administer vaccines cannot be held liable in civil court when a child dies or is injured.⁴⁷ Congress passed special legislation in 2020 to make sure that doctors or anyone else who administers a Covid-19 vaccine cannot be sued.⁴⁸

When the risks of vaccination turn out to be 100 percent for a child, it is the mother and father raising that child on a day-to-day basis who will be left with the lifelong consequences — not the doctor who has been given the power to secretly persuade the child to take vaccines, and not the politician who voted to give doctors that power.

The D.C. council sponsor of the bill entitled the “Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act” originally wanted doctors to be able to vaccinate children of any age — no matter how young — without the knowledge or consent of their parents. She argued that minors of any age can get an abortion in Washington, D.C., and get treated for a sexually transmitted disease or substance abuse without the knowledge or consent of their parents.⁴⁹

She told Medscape Medical News that parents with “anti-science” beliefs were not vaccinating their children based on a “disproven belief” that vaccines may cause harm, which puts other people at “extreme risk” for disease.⁵⁰

A dissenting D.C. city council member countered with “Medical professionals and schools should not be permitted to coerce impressionable minors into procedures capable of causing injury or death behind their parents’ back.”⁵¹

Vaccine Concealment Law a Profound Betrayal of Public Trust

The Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights states that:⁵²

“The interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society;” and “For persons who are not capable of exercising autonomy, special measures are to be taken to protect their rights and interests;” and “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.”

It is a profound betrayal of public trust for any city, state or federal government to strip parents of their God-given right to protect their children from harm by allowing a doctor to give a child a pharmaceutical product without getting a parent’s permission.

Science is not perfect, doctors are not infallible, and pharmaceutical products like vaccines come with risks that can be greater for some individuals than others,^53,54,55 which is why parents must retain the human right to exercise informed consent to medical risk taking on behalf of their minor children. Will the vaccine concealment bill that is now law in Washington, D.C., be exported to your state next?

Dr. Joseph Mercola