Admitting That Vaccine Injured Children Are Acceptable Losses

by Ginger Taylor

I have actually found something new on the internet.  In seven years of blogging, I have never seen someone actually be honest about their belief that vaccine injured children are "acceptable losses."  I am a little bit stunned.

Now we all know this is true.  Every parent of a vaccine injured child clues in pretty fast that their child is one of the discarded.  As soon as their doc stops actually trying to heal them after their vaccine injury, stops being interested in medical symptoms you report, stops treating the family like a valued customer... you start to get it.  But everyone keeps up the pretense that your kid is still worth something, if only in lip service, while they are given the shaft.

Then along comes Rick Jones at CFO magazine to say what we all know to be fact, in an article entitled, "The Value of Life: Why an ethically complicated calculation can help determine the value of your company’s risk reduction programs."  That vaccine injured children are acceptable losses.

"The lives saved and dollar benefits from vaccines are hard to calculate, but it’s safe to say that these and other immunizations have greatly improved the quantity and quality of life for millions of people -- at the tragic, yet accepted cost of a few. "

Leave it to a heartless financial rag to have the balls to say what Offit and Mnookin and Gorski are to cowardly to say.

"I don't give a shit about your child, I only care about the bottom line, my agenda and 'The Program'."  (what ever their particular program is)

I can't remember the last time I read something that felt so freeing!  You don't care about my children!  Thank you Mr. Jones!  Thank you for admitting that you don't give a damn about my children!

I know you expect me to rail on the morally bankrupt Mr. Jones, but I am not going to do that.  In fact, I sincerely praise the man for speaking the truth.

Because I would rather deal with Voldemort than Delores Umbridge.  You know that Tom Riddle's alter ego is all about his own program and is happy to step over your dead children on the way to his vision of the perfect society, you reject him outright, and are not manipulated one bit into signing onto his value system.  But Umbridge, smiling so pleasantly in her pretty pink dress, pretending to care about your child... she is the true monster in the story, is she not?  She does what He Who Shall Not Be Named could never do... get a naive and trusting public to sign on to the mutilation and death of the innocent in the name of 'order' and 'the greater good'.

So I say this with out an ounce of irony to Mr. Jones:

Thank you Rick for admitting that you don't care that my son was given severe brain damage from the DTaP vaccine.  You might be a bastard, but you are an honest bastard, which makes you a better man than most of the people defending and working in the vaccine program in my book.

Of course, this is with the caveat that I whole heatedly reject your value system and hope you will take a hard look at yourself and see if you still have a soul left to salvage... happy to talk with you any time about how destructive this world view is if you are looking to rebuild your humanity.

BUT...

If the bottom line continues to be how you judge what is good and what is bad, you might take a second look at the vaccine program again and really check and see if your cost benefit analysis is actually based on fact.  'Cause if you do your own survey of your own vaccinated v. unvaccinated workers/family members, you might find that the vaccinated are costing you way more due to life long, chronic conditions than even the occasional hospital stay for a child who has the complications from the measles would.  You do know that NO ONE keeps track of vaccine adverse reaction rates or costs, right?  That they are not factored into any risk analysis or cost/benefit ratio in existence anywhere?  That HRSA that runs the vaccine program has released a statement saying that vaccines cause:

"encephalopathy [that] may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures.  Some children who have been compensated for vaccine injuries may have shown signs of autism before the decision to compensate, or may ultimately end up with autism or autistic symptoms, but we do not track cases on this basis."

And that there is absolutely no data to back up the claim that the current vaccine program is doing more good than harm?  Your wrote that, "There is no doubt that vaccines have the potential to do harm to a very small portion of the population."  Pediatrics reports that 54% of American kids are chronically ill, developmentally disabled and obese, with no research on how such an aggressive program might be exacerbating this horrid epidemic of sick children... so how do you know that only a "very small" portion of the population is harmed by vaccines?  Did you ask for proof of that claim by those who make it before you wrote this article?  That is what a good CFO does, right?  Checks the facts so risk analysis is accurate as possible?

Either way... feel free to call me and I will be at your disposal.

My comment on his post for CFO.com:

I am the mother of a vaccine injured child (not compensated by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which is largely corrupt and uses every excuse, valid and invalid, to actually prevent from recognizing and compensating vaccine injury), and as shocking as this might be to hear, I am happy to see this article published. 

To actually see in black and white, what parents of vaccine injured children know is true, that our children are not valued by society and are considered "acceptable losses" for the gain you have gotten from the vaccine program, is a refreshing change from the lies usually told surrounding vaccine injury... either that vaccine injury does not exist, or that those who are vaccine injured are valued, while only given feigned compassion and lip service rather than the help they need and deserve. 

To know that you don't care what happens to the minority (including my precious son)  as long as it works out for the fortunate is of course, absolutely morally repugnant... but the fact that you will admit, out loud, that killing children and giving them brain damage is acceptable to you, actually gives people fair warning that this is what they are getting involved in when they choose to participate in the current vaccine program.  It is a huge wake up call that their child is merely a commodity to the world, and the vaccine program, and when they suffer adverse reactions, they will be simply thrown away.

Please take this statement at face value, because I don't mean this sarcastically at all.  Thank you for being honest in your devaluation of my son and of those vulnerable to vaccine injury.  It is going to save the lives and health of a lot of children whose parents will see what the world really thinks of their kids, and prevent them from becoming used for cannon fodder by being drafted into public health's "war on communicable disease".

I wish more people were as honest, so that parents could truly have informed consent before their kids get hurt.

 And just because WAY too many things are disappearing from the internet, a copy of the full article here:

| January 31, 2012 | CFO.com | US

The Value of Life, Statistically Speaking

Why an ethically complicated calculation can help determine the value of your company’s risk reduction programs.

Rick Jones

How much are you worth? I’m not asking about your money or property but your ultimate physical asset -- you. At the individual level, life is valued as priceless. But at a societal or business level, our lives and safety do have price tags. This is the reality associated with having finite resources to reduce risk. So the real cost-benefit question is how much can a society or a company afford to do to save lives and reduce injuries? The statistical value of life is a term developed from answering this question.  

Here’s an example how the value of a statistical life can be computed. Suppose a state government decides to reduce the speed limit on its roads. The general correlation between highway speed limits and auto deaths is well known; highway safety statisticians estimate that if the maximum speed limit is reduced to 50 miles per hour, 20 lives would be saved each year. However, in order to enforce the new law, additional resources will be required, costing the state $120 million per year. So it costs the state $120 million each year to save 20 lives or $6 million per life. This is the value of a statistical life related to this highway risk reduction program.  

Statistical life values can be useful tools to help measure the value of your risk reduction programs either through direct calculations or by comparing your calculations with other industry estimates. The comparison can provide a valuable benchmark with various situations that you can use to judge and perhaps justify programs to others in senior management and the board.  

The methodologies used to compute these cost-benefit statistics vary, but they all stem from two basic components: the estimated lives saved and the costs associated with the programs. The calculations are a blend of science and statistics that often require detailed research and analysis, and they can also be interpreted and applied differently depending on the activities involved. For example, in a 2010 report relating to engine emissions, the Environmental Protection Agency applied a mean value of a statistical life at $9.1 million. The Food and Drug Administration works with a figure around $8 million, and other government agencies use numbers around $6 million.

The fact that these numbers differ makes sense. Not all risk reduction programs are equally efficient at reducing risk and, of course, the calculations contain statistical uncertainty. Yet in addition to these sources of variation there can be ethical issues that have the potential to transform the technical analyses into philosophical debates.  

Are all lives saved worth the same amount? Is saving the lives of children equivalent to saving senior citizens? Is it worth saving or extending the life of a person for a period of years if that person requires ongoing and intensive medical care? In dealing with saving lives, the “type” of life being saved and the quality of remaining life may be variables in the analysis. The point is, depending on the situation, ethical judgments can be included in the analyses that in effect, answer these questions.  

While making these decisions on the surface may sound unfair or elitist, they are made one way or another when only finite resources are available to reduce risk. And since this is always the case, virtually every health, safety, or other risk management program contains decisions related to these ethical issues.  

For example, either as a parent or a child, most likely you have been exposed to programs that contain some of these issues. Inoculating children to prevent infectious disease transmission is good for society from both health and financial perspectives, but some initially healthy children may suffer adverse reactions, injury, or even death. For vaccines, the enormous societal benefits trump the tragedies of the few. And in order to keep the vaccine costs affordable, the U.S. government administrates and pays all vaccine compensation claims through its Vaccine Lawsuit Injury Compensation program. Inoculation requirements and the accepted reasons to opt out vary by state. In 2011, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program received over 1,000 new claims and awarded 250 plaintiffs more than $228 million for injuries and deaths from the vaccines administered to both adults and children.  

There is no doubt that vaccines have the potential to do harm to a very small portion of the population. But just look at what vaccines have done for us. Polio is no longer a threat in most of the world. Measles, chicken pox, pertussis (whooping cough), and of course smallpox, the former serial killer, have been virtually eliminated. The lives saved and dollar benefits from vaccines are hard to calculate, but it’s safe to say that these and other immunizations have greatly improved the quantity and quality of life for millions of people -- at the tragic, yet accepted cost of a few. 

Value of statistical life and also statistical injury calculations provide metrics you can compare with other industry or government produced calculations. Together these results can help you answer the question “Are we doing ‘enough’ to reduce risk with our available resources?” And perhaps more importantly answer the question: “Should we do more?”

Rick Jones has spent the past 30 years applying risk analysis and management techniques to industrial and business problems. He has presented at several conferences and is the author of numerous articles and technical research papers. His third book, 20% Chance of Rain: Exploring the Concept of Risk, was recently published.