In our last installment of, "Ginger goes bitchcakes about all the Pharma lies being proffered in Maine," we learned that
Cassandra Grantham of MaineHealth had lied about vaccine safety, claiming that there were several vaxxed/unvaxxed studies and they all showed no increased autism rates in vaccinated kids. Research that is as imaginary as the Power Puff Girls.
I called her out on it and she only dug a deeper hole, and then said she would not talk to me anymore.
So four months ago I decided to go on the fools errand of actually filing complaints against MaineHealth to get the false claims retracted and the company held accountable, just to prove that no one gives a damn... Wanna know what happened?
TL;DR: I filed complaints with every private, public, state and federal authority that might have oversight and no one gives a damn.
Complaints were filed with:
MaineHealth
Maine Public Broadcasting Network
Maine CDC, Maine Immunization Program
Maine Bureau of Insurance
Maine Immunization Coalition
Maine DHHS Fraud Prevention, Maine Attorney General
US Food and Drug Administration
US Food and Drug Administration, Center for Biologics, Evaluation and Research
US Federal Trade Comission
... and the ONLY response I received was from FDA who said they didn't have jurisdiction. No one is manning the gate.
So in short... there you have it. In Maine you can make ANY CLAIM YOU WANT ABOUT VACCINES and no one will do anything about it. Precedent set.
Below are all the letters, for your edification.
So
I wrote a bill to try to put a band-aid on the disaster that is the current vaccine program and a very conscientious State Representative, Beth O'Connor, has introduced it into the Maine Legislature. I revived the
Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice and we are coming together to try to... do something... fix this... a bit... but honestly, until the 1986 act is repealed, our kids are going to continue to get sick and die and remain untreated at the hands of this screwed up program and all we will be able to do is stem the tide and keep our rights to opt out of it.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is going to come to Maine on May 11th and help us get these legislators to understand how badly the vaccine program is broken and that parents need to retain the rights to choose. Perhaps it will get enough people to understand the real problem that they will not put up with the corruption any more. Cross fingers.
The complaints:
To
the Maine Bureau of Insurance
I
would like to file a complaint against MaineHealth for making
fraudulent statements concerning one of their product lines.
MaineHealth,
both on the VaxMaineKids.org web site and during an interview on MPBN
on December 1, have made false vaccine safety claims. I have
contacted VaxMaineKids, MaineHealth and MPBN to ask for a retraction
and correction of the false marketing messages that they are issuing
to the public, but none of the organizations will properly address
the issue.
VaxMaineKids.org
makes the false claims on their web site that:
“THERE
IS NO EVIDENCE THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM.”
And that, “No
other medical study anywhere in the world has ever found a link
between vaccines and autism. Not one.”
(http://www.vaxmainekids.org/mythbuster-series-autism/)
During
an email exchange last summer with Cassandra Grantham, Program
Director of Child Health at MaineHealth, initiated by Ms. Grantham
after I had written about her work, I corrected the misinformation,
sending VaxMaineKids a list with dozens of studies that link vaccines
and autism.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/86-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-Vaccine-Autism-Link
Ms. Grantham failed to correct the false claims on the MaineHealth
web site, and wrote that she was no longer interested in discussing
the matter any further with me.
Ms. Grantham, representing
Maine Health, made further false claims on December 1st
on MPBN's Maine Calling, when she claimed that there were multiple
studies compairing populations of unvaccinated children to children
fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule that have found no
increased risk in autism among fully vaccinated children.
In
fact, no such research exists, as testified to by Dr.
Coleen Boyle,
Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities during the House Oversight & Government Reform
Committee hearing 1
in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of
Autism on
November 29, 2012. In response to a question whether or not autism
risk had been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr.
Boyle stated, "We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
I wrote to Ms. Grantham to ask that she cite her sources or
retract her false claim. In her response, she referred to three
publications as sources for her information, none of which referenced
a vaccinated. v. unvaccinated autism study. In fact, one of her
references, a 2013 report by the Institute of Medicine on the current
US vaccine program, addressed the lack vaccinated v. unvaccinated
research as a whole, and specifically in regard to autism and other
developmental disabilities, and notes that parents and the public
have been asking for this research for some time. The IOM report
recommends against performing such research, because, although they
admit it can be accomplished and would be informative, it would also
be costly, time consuming and difficult.
Ms. Grantham
actually replied to me with information that confirms my allegations
against her false claim by MaineHealth.
I
have further contacted several staff members at MaineHealth to ask
for a retraction and for clarification of their stance on a public
policy. I have received no reply.
Further, I have contacted
both Maine Calling hosts and producers, as well as MPBN management,
to ask for a retraction of these fraudulent claims, but none have
replied.
I have attached the email chains below.
As
MaineHealth is receiving both insurance payments and tax dollars for
delivering vaccines, I believe it may be under the purview of the
Bureau of Insurance to exercise authority over the false claims being
made to the public about product line that MaineHealth is providing
to the public.
Further, it is imperative that the State of
Maine provide oversight in this matter, as the federal 1986 National
Childhood Injury Act has removed the rights of families to sue
corporations like MaineHealth when members are harmed or killed by a
vaccine. The result of this blanket liability protection which has
been in place for decades is that physicians, medical care providers,
health corporations and even government agencies routinely put out
false safety and efficacy information, because there is no mechanism
by which the public may directly hold them accountable for fraudulent
claims. The public's right to take these entities into a civil
court, force them testify under oath, have judgments rendered by a
jury and have remedies be enforced by a judge has been removed. As a
result, misinformation can be circulated by both malicious and merely
uninformed parties, including doctors providing recommendations to
patients in their offices. Bad faith parties and organizations who
wish to make outright fraudulent claims are free to do so with out
fear of legal reprisal from their customers, even if the worst
possible outcome happens and the vaccination that was delivered under
false information and/or coercion results in the death of a
child.
This complaint does not represent the total number of
false statements made by Ms. Grantham and MaineHealth, but is a short
complaint on the easily corrected fraud currently taking place. In
light of their refusal to correct even these extremely obvious false
statements, I believe that a full accounting of their vaccine safety
claims is appropriate.
Further,
Ms. Grantham in her professional, role has been quoted in the
Portland Press Herald as advocating the elimination of the
philosophical vaccine exemption in Maine. This would remove the
right of children to a free and appropriate education if their
parents did not choose to vaccinated as the state requests. As
vaccines are legally classified by the federal government as
“Unavoidably Unsafe” (which means they cannot be made safe for
their intended use) and can result in serious diseases, disorders,
disability, brain damage and death, it a civil rights matter that
parents and individuals be free to exercise their right to informed
consent, and to reject one or more vaccines ones self or ones child.
It is also a civil rights matter that children be allowed equal
access to a free and appropriate public education with out being
impeded by discriminatory policies. In their actions in the last 6
months, I assert that MaineHealth has demonstrated a willingness
commit fraud in order to achieve their goal of removing either
families right to medical informed consent or the right to a public
education for their children to increase vaccine sales.
In no
other area of medicine are these types of false claims on
pharmaceutical products allowed. I hope that The Bureau of Insurance
will take this matter seriously and exercise their authority here to
protect Maine consumers against false vaccine safety
claims.
Attachment:
Subject:
|
False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's Maine
Calling |
Date:
|
Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:45:00 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura Blaisdell <blaisl@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Dodge Patstone
<patsta@mmc.org> |
Ms. Grantham,
This week on MPBN's Maine Calling, in
response to a question about vaccine safety, you made the following
claim:
MPBN:
“Cassandra what kind of research is out there about the safety of
vaccines?”
Cassandra Grantham: “So what's really great is
that is that many different organizations have put a lot of time and
effort into understanding the safety and efficacy behind vaccines and
there have been several recent studies that have actually come out
looking at associations between vaccinations and different situations
that kids may find themselves in, autism being one of them, but many
others. And of course we can't do studies that actually force
families not to immunize their children so that we can look at what
we would call it a randomized controlled trial, it's just not fair.
So what we have been able to do is look back over time at different
populations of children and we've actually found that kids who are
immunized, completely immunized with all of the vaccines according to
the the schedule that Dr. Blaisdell
was
mentioning the one that recommended by the CDC, that they have no
higher risk of getting autism and some of these other developmental
challenges that families face than those kids that delayed or did not
receive any immunizations at all. So we're finding that there is
research that is now delving deeper into this topic and actually
proving that the CDC's recommended schedule is safe and it does work
and it doesn't increase risks of other situations for kids.”
To the best of my knowledge,
this is a false claim, as no such research exists. This as
testified to by
Dr.
Coleen Boyle, Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects
and Developmental Disabilities during the House Oversight &
Government Reform Committee hearing
1 in 88 Children: A Look Into
the Federal Response to Rising Rates of Autism on November 29,
2012. In response to a question whether or not autism risk had
been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr. Boyle stated,
"We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
http://youtu.be/O_GrCAzpA_0?t=9m20s
(please see the notes in the video that addresses the claims made by
Dr. Koren Boggs that such research exists in further detail.)
My
understanding of the history of this topic is that the first such
request for a study was made by the FDA in 1981 after they removed
mercury from over the counter products. FDA declined to ban it
from vaccines, asking CDC to first do a vaccinated v. unvaccinated
study to see if it increased health risks, however CDC declined to
perform the study.
The autism and vaccine injury communities
have been asking for such a retrospective study to be done for more
than a decade now, and health authorities have continued to refuse.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the
Comprehensive
Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of
2007
(
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.2832:)
to force NIH to do such a study, and reintroduced such legislation in
the years since. In response to what he learned from Dr. Boyle
during the 2012 hearings, Rep Bill Posey (R-FL) joined with Maloney
and introduced H.R. 1757, The Vaccine Safety Study Act
(
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2013/04/26/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/E576-1)
that would again compel HHS to perform the study that you claim
already exists.
The bill was not passed, nor to my
knowledge has any vaccinated v. unvaccinated research on autism or
any other developmental disabilities been published since Dr. Boyle
offered her testimony before Congress.
As such it is
appropriate for you to either produce the citation for this research
that the vaccine injury community has been lobbying for, or to
retract your false safety claims on MPBN for the product line you are
representing.
Your false claims are only made more
egregious by the fact that you have publicly stated in the Portland
Press Herald that, "Eliminating the philosophic [vaccine]
exemption is the ultimate goal." It is my belief that you
are purposely lying to the public in order to remove parental rights
and deny Maine children a Free And Appropriate Education in order to
promote sales of a product line whose lack of safety is thoroughly
documented both by the federal government and the product packaging
itself. This type of propaganda sales campaign should not be
tolerated by any responsible medical professional, health
organization, media outlet or legislator.
(
http://www.pressherald.com/2014/08/14/state-legislators-to-seek-stronger-vaccine-laws/)
I
await your response,
Ginger Taylor, MS
Mother of a vaccine injured
child
Co-author of Vaccine
Epidemic
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
RE: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 8 Dec 2014 19:31:25 +0000 |
From:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
To:
|
'Ginger Taylor' <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Hello
Ginger ~
Thank you
for listening to MPBN’s Maine Calling Show – it is great to know
that we have reached such a wide audience with important vaccine
messages. I want to clarify that I do not represent any product
line or company other than MaineHealth, which is a health system
which supports on-time childhood immunizations. I have never
been paid by or consulted for a pharmaceutical or medical
intervention company or agency. Please see below for MaineHealth’s
official statement regarding childhood immunizations.
MaineHealth supports the
health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and
young adults. We believe that vaccinating children on-time, as
recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Family
Physicians (AAFP), and the American College of Obstetrics and
Gynecology (ACOG), is one of the best ways to reduce
vaccine-preventable diseases in our communities and keep children
safe and healthy.
In regards
to my statements about vaccine safety, I based those on these
studies.
1.
http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(13)00144-3/abstract
2.
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/The-Childhood-Immunization-Schedule-and-Safety.aspx
3.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/06/26/peds.2014-1079.abstract
I will not
respond to future emails on this subject.
Furthermore,
I request that you cease and desist using my image on your blog,
Facebook page and other websites you support and represent.
Cassandra
Cassandra
Cote Grantham, MA
Program
Director
Childhood
Immunizations and Raising Readers
Community
Health Improvement
MaineHealth
110
Free Street
Portland,
ME 04101
Phone:
207-661-7578
Fax:
207-661-7547
cotec1@mainehealth.org
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This
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Subject:
|
Re: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:37:29 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
Ms.
Grantham,
None of the citations you offer contain any research
on autism risk, or any other developmental disabilities, in
vaccinated v. unvaccinated children, which is the claim you made on
Maine Calling. Again, no such publish research exists in any
form.
I therefore demand a retraction of the fraudulent
safety claim by yourself, MaineHealth and MPBN.
I will not
cease using your image, as this is a very newsworthy story and the
professional headshot of a medical corporation employee making false
claims about the product safety of the pharmaceuticals that it sells
is fair use of this image.
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
Request for Retraction of False Vaccine Safety Claims on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:12:12 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Mark Vogelzang <mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and
Jonathan Smith <talk@mpbn.net>, Jonathan Smith
<jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
CC:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org>, Laura L. Blaisdell
<BLAISL@mmc.org>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Ms. Rooks,
Mr. Smith and Mr. Vogelzang,
On your December 1 episode of
Maine Calling, Cassandra Grantham, a representative of MaineHealth,
made a fraudulent safety claim on your show. I have copied you
on the my email exchange with her, which details the false claim, my
correction of the false information as supported by the Congressional
testimony of the head of the CDC's Director of the National Center on
Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and my request to Ms.
Grantham for her to cite the multiple studies that she claim exist or
retract her claim.
As you can see, she has failed to produce
any research comparing autism rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated
populations and failed to retract her claim.
I there for
request that Maine Calling retract Ms. Grantham's claim in the same
format which it was offered, noting the false claim on the archived
version of the interview if MPBN chooses to leave it online.
I
further strongly encourage Maine Calling to perform an honest
evaluation on why vaccine rates are low in Maine and falling
nationally. As the educated mother of a vaccine injured child,
I can attest to the real reason. It is because the liability
protection given to the entire vaccine industry in 1986 has resulted
in massive corruption in the vaccine program. Ms. Graham's
behavior on your show is case in point. Medical providers and
medical industry representatives can make any safety claims that they
choose, even completely false claims, because there is no
accountability mechanism in place for the public to hold them
accountable for false claims. Even when a child is killed by a
vaccine after a false claim like this is made to a parent coercing
them into administering a vaccine that they would not have otherwise
agreed to have delivered to their child, there is no recourse to hold
anyone accountable, or even force them to stop making these false
claims. So false claims like this one, once spoken by someone
claiming to hold authority in vaccinated, simply continue to
circulate and be repeated.
No doubt Ms. Grantham's
false claim will now be circulated by those who have heard your
program, even medical professionals who administer vaccines to
children.
The vaccine show you did with these three women on
December 1, was not just about vaccine rejection, it is the REASON
for vaccine rejection. It is a real time example of how and why
vaccine interests are alienating and loosing the public trust by
abusing the public trust. Your guests correctly reported that
the exodus from the vaccine program is being lead by educated parents
who have serious misgivings of the safety and trustworthyness of the
vaccine program, while they themselves were making false claims about
the safety of the vaccine program, thereby proving the untrustworthy
of the vaccine program. And MPBN is participating in this
corruption by allowing false claims to made on your platform with out
challenge or correction.
I hope that the irony that a show you
aired to raise confidence in the vaccination is actually destroying
trust in the vaccination is not lost on you.
Now this
claim of Ms. Grantham is merely one of many problematic statements
made by herself, MaineHealth, VaxMaineKids.org and Dr. Blaisdell, and
I would be happy to go over the false information that they are
sharing with the public under the guise of serving the public if you
decide to do a proper investigation of the fraud taking place in the
vaccine program both in Maine and at the federal level.
But
for now, I await a response on your retraction of this particular
false statement. I cannot imagine that MPBN would allow
any medical professional, industry representative or government
official to make such false claims about any other medical product
line or medical program. I don't expect Maine Calling to allow
this to stand either.
Thank you for your consideration,
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
No
reply from MPBN as of this filing.
Subject:
|
Information Requested on how to file a formal complaint against
a Maine Health staffer for fraudulent claims |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 19:25:15 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
William Caron <Caronw@mainehealth.org>, Kimberly Nemic
<nemeck@mainehealth.org> |
CC:
|
Rebecca Arseneault <rarsenault@fchn.org>, Deborah
Deatrick, MPH <deatrd@mainehealth.org>, Robert Frank
<frankr1@mainehealth.org>, Katie Fullam Harris
<harrik2@mainehealth.org>, Cassandra Grantham
<COTEC1@mmc.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net>,
Joe Lawlor <jlawlor@pressherald.com>, Laura Blaisdell
<blaisl@mmc.org> |
Dear
MaineHealth,
This past week, Cassandra Grantham of MaineHealth
appeared on MPBN's Maine Calling and made a fraudulent vaccine safety
claim. She reported to the public that there are several studies
comparing vaccinated v. unvaccinated children that find no increase
risk of autism and other developmental disabilities in children
vaccinated according to the CDC's recommended schedule.
In
fact, no such research has ever been published.
I
contacted Ms. Grantham and asked that she cite the research she
claims has been undertaken, or retract her statement. She not
only failed to cite such studies, she actually cited a 2013 IOM
report that confirmed that no such research exists in the medical
literature, and that recommended against undertaking such research
because of cost, time and difficulty. She has also failed to
retract her fraudulent claim and says she will not be responding to
me on this matter again.
This is just the latest of several
false vaccine safety research claims that Ms. Grantham has made on
behalf of MaineHealth both in public and on the VaxMaineKids.org web
site, a MaineHealth Childhood Immunizations Program project.
Several of these false statements have been brought to her attention
over the last five months, and she has failed to properly address
them. I can therefore only assume that Ms. Grantham is a bad
faith player and is purposefully misleading of Mainers on vaccine
safety matters
This is made all the more egregious as Ms.
Grantham has been quoted in the Portland
Press Herald as stating that, “Eliminating the philosophic
[vaccine] exemption is the ultimate goal,” of the work your
organization is undertaking. It is unconscionable that
MaineHealth would make fraudulent safety claims in order to advance
the agenda of removing parental rights and depriving children of a
free and appropriate public education if their families decline to
participate in a medical program that presents severe adverse health
risks including disability, brain damage and death.
I wish to
file a formal complaint against Ms. Grantham with MaineHealth.
I believe that it is the duty of MaineHealth to review and retract
Ms. Grantham's false vaccine safety claims and to exercise
disciplinary action against Ms. Grantham, as well as clarify the
organization's position on the rights of parents to receive full and
accurate vaccine safety and efficacy information, and practice
uncoerced informed consent in vaccination.
I have forwarded
the email exchanges with Ms. Grantham and MPBN below for your
review.
I am publicly documenting this process here.
Please
direct me to appropriate contact on this matter so I may offer a full
account of the problem and offer MaineHealth my support in assuring
that it is offering accurate, evidence based information on vaccine
safety to the public.
Thank you,
Ginger Taylor
Brunswick,
Maine
To
the Maine Department of Health and Human Services
I would
like to file a complaint against MaineHealth for making fraudulent
statements concerning one of their product lines.
MaineHealth,
both on the VaxMaineKids.org web site and during an interview on MPBN
on December 1, have made false vaccine safety claims. I have
contacted VaxMaineKids, MaineHealth and MPBN to ask for a retraction
and correction of the false marketing messages that they are issuing
to the public, but none of the organizations will properly address
the issue.
VaxMaineKids.org
makes the false claims on their web site that:
“THERE
IS NO EVIDENCE THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM.”
And that, “No
other medical study anywhere in the world has ever found a link
between vaccines and autism. Not one.”
(http://www.vaxmainekids.org/mythbuster-series-autism/)
During
an email exchange last summer with Cassandra Grantham, Program
Director of Child Health at MaineHealth, initiated by Ms. Grantham
after I had written about her work, I corrected the misinformation,
sending VaxMaineKids a list with dozens of studies that link vaccines
and autism.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/86-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-Vaccine-Autism-Link
Ms. Grantham failed to correct the false claims on the MaineHealth
web site, and wrote that she was no longer interested in discussing
the matter any further with me.
Ms. Grantham, representing
Maine Health, made further false claims on December 1st
on MPBN's Maine Calling, when she claimed that there were multiple
studies comparing populations of unvaccinated children to children
fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule that have found no
increased risk in autism among fully vaccinated children.
In
fact, no such research exists, as testified to by Dr.
Colleen
Boyle,
Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities during the House Oversight & Government Reform
Committee hearing 1
in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of
Autism on
November 29, 2012. In response to a question whether or not autism
risk had been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr.
Boyle stated, "We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
I wrote to Ms. Grantham to ask that she cite her sources or
retract her false claim. In her response, she referred to three
publications as sources for her information, none of which referenced
a vaccinated v.. unvaccinated autism study. In fact, one of her
references, a 2013 report by the Institute of Medicine on the current
US vaccine program, addressed the lack vaccinated v. unvaccinated
research as a whole, and specifically in regard to autism and other
developmental disabilities, and notes that parents and the public
have been asking for this research for some time. The IOM report
recommends against performing such research, because, although they
admit it can be accomplished and would be informative, it would also
be costly, time consuming and difficult.
Ms. Grantham
actually replied to me with information that confirms my allegations
against her false claim by MaineHealth.
I
have further contacted several staff members at MaineHealth to ask
for a retraction and for clarification of their stance on a public
policy. I have received no reply.
Further, I have contacted
both Maine Calling hosts and producers, as well as MPBN management,
to ask for a retraction of these fraudulent claims, but none have
replied.
I have attached the email chains below.
Further,
it is imperative that the State of Maine provide oversight in this
matter, as the federal 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has
removed the rights of families to sue corporations like MaineHealth
when members are harmed or killed by a vaccine. The result of this
blanket liability protection which has been in place for decades is
that physicians, medical care providers, health corporations and even
government agencies routinely put out false safety and efficacy
information, because there is no mechanism by which the public may
directly hold them accountable for fraudulent claims. The public's
right to take these entities into a civil court, force them to
testify under oath, have judgments rendered by a jury and have
remedies be enforced by a judge has been removed. As a result,
misinformation can be circulated by both malicious and merely
uninformed parties, including doctors providing recommendations to
patients in their offices. Bad faith parties and organizations who
wish to make outright fraudulent claims are free to do so without
fear of legal reprisal from their customers, even if the worst
possible outcome happens and the vaccination that was delivered under
false information or coercion results in the death of a child.
This
complaint does not represent the total number of false statements
made by Ms. Grantham and MaineHealth but is a short complaint on the
easily corrected fraud currently taking place. In light of their
refusal to correct even these extremely obvious false statements, I
believe that a full accounting of their vaccine safety claims is
appropriate.
Further,
Ms. Grantham in her professional, role has been quoted in the
Portland Press Herald as advocating the elimination of the
philosophical vaccine exemption in Maine. This would remove the
right of children to a free and appropriate education if their
parents did not choose to vaccinate as the state requests. As
vaccines are legally classified by the federal government as
“Unavoidably Unsafe” (which means they cannot be made safe for
their intended use) and can result in serious diseases, disorders,
disability, brain damage and death, it a civil rights matter that
parents and individuals be free to exercise their right to informed
consent, and to reject one or more vaccines for one’s self or one’s
child. It is also a civil rights matter that children be allowed
equal access to a free and appropriate public education without being
impeded by discriminatory policies. In their actions in the last 6
months, I assert that MaineHealth has demonstrated a willingness
commit fraud in order to achieve their goal of removing either
families’ rights to medical informed consent or the right to a
public education for their children to increase vaccine sales.
In
no other area of medicine are these types of false claims on
pharmaceutical products tolerated. I hope that Maine DHHS will take
this matter seriously and exercise its authority here to protect
Maine consumers against false vaccine safety claims.
Attachment:
Subject:
|
False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's Maine
Calling |
Date:
|
Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:45:00 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura Blaisdell <blaisl@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Dodge Patstone
<patsta@mmc.org> |
Ms. Grantham,
This week on MPBN's Maine Calling, in
response to a question about vaccine safety, you made the following
claim:
MPBN:
“Cassandra what kind of research is out there about the safety of
vaccines?”
Cassandra Grantham: “So what's really great is
that is that many different organizations have put a lot of time and
effort into understanding the safety and efficacy behind vaccines and
there have been several recent studies that have actually come out
looking at associations between vaccinations and different situations
that kids may find themselves in, autism being one of them, but many
others. And of course we can't do studies that actually force
families not to immunize their children so that we can look at what
we would call it a randomized controlled trial, it's just not fair.
So what we have been able to do is look back over time at different
populations of children and we've actually found that kids who are
immunized, completely immunized with all of the vaccines according to
the the schedule that Dr. Blaisdell
was
mentioning the one that recommended by the CDC, that they have no
higher risk of getting autism and some of these other developmental
challenges that families face than those kids that delayed or did not
receive any immunizations at all. So we're finding that there is
research that is now delving deeper into this topic and actually
proving that the CDC's recommended schedule is safe and it does work
and it doesn't increase risks of other situations for kids.”
To the best of my knowledge, this is a
false claim, as no such research exists. This as testified to
by
Dr.
Coleen Boyle, Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects
and Developmental Disabilities during the House Oversight &
Government Reform Committee hearing
1 in 88 Children: A Look Into
the Federal Response to Rising Rates of Autism on November 29,
2012. In response to a question whether or not autism risk had
been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr. Boyle stated,
"We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
http://youtu.be/O_GrCAzpA_0?t=9m20s
(please see the notes in the video that addresses the claims made by
Dr. Koren Boggs that such research exists in further detail.)
My
understanding of the history of this topic is that the first such
request for a study was made by the FDA in 1981 after they removed
mercury from over the counter products. FDA declined to ban it
from vaccines, asking CDC to first do a vaccinated v. unvaccinated
study to see if it increased health risks, however CDC declined to
perform the study.
The autism and vaccine injury communities
have been asking for such a retrospective study to be done for more
than a decade now, and health authorities have continued to refuse.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the
Comprehensive
Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of
2007
(
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.2832:)
to force NIH to do such a study, and reintroduced such legislation in
the years since. In response to what he learned from Dr. Boyle
during the 2012 hearings, Rep Bill Posey (R-FL) joined with Maloney
and introduced H.R. 1757, The Vaccine Safety Study Act
(
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2013/04/26/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/E576-1)
that would again compel HHS to perform the study that you claim
already exists.
The bill was not passed, nor to my
knowledge has any vaccinated v. unvaccinated research on autism or
any other developmental disabilities been published since Dr. Boyle
offered her testimony before Congress.
As such it is
appropriate for you to either produce the citation for this research
that the vaccine injury community has been lobbying for, or to
retract your false safety claims on MPBN for the product line you are
representing.
Your false claims are only made more
egregious by the fact that you have publicly stated in the Portland
Press Herald that, "Eliminating the philosophic [vaccine]
exemption is the ultimate goal." It is my belief that you
are purposely lying to the public in order to remove parental rights
and deny Maine children a Free And Appropriate Education in order to
promote sales of a product line whose lack of safety is thoroughly
documented both by the federal government and the product packaging
itself. This type of propaganda sales campaign should not be
tolerated by any responsible medical professional, health
organization, media outlet or legislator.
(
http://www.pressherald.com/2014/08/14/state-legislators-to-seek-stronger-vaccine-laws/)
I
await your response,
Ginger Taylor, MS
Mother of a vaccine injured
child
Co-author of Vaccine
Epidemic
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
RE: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 8 Dec 2014 19:31:25 +0000 |
From:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
To:
|
'Ginger Taylor' <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Hello
Ginger ~
Thank you
for listening to MPBN’s Maine Calling Show – it is great to know
that we have reached such a wide audience with important vaccine
messages. I want to clarify that I do not represent any product
line or company other than MaineHealth, which is a health system
which supports on-time childhood immunizations. I have never
been paid by or consulted for a pharmaceutical or medical
intervention company or agency. Please see below for MaineHealth’s
official statement regarding childhood immunizations.
MaineHealth supports the
health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and
young adults. We believe that vaccinating children on-time, as
recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Family
Physicians (AAFP), and the American College of Obstetrics and
Gynecology (ACOG), is one of the best ways to reduce
vaccine-preventable diseases in our communities and keep children
safe and healthy.
In regards
to my statements about vaccine safety, I based those on these
studies.
1.
http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(13)00144-3/abstract
2.
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/The-Childhood-Immunization-Schedule-and-Safety.aspx
3.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/06/26/peds.2014-1079.abstract
I will not
respond to future emails on this subject.
Furthermore,
I request that you cease and desist using my image on your blog,
Facebook page and other websites you support and represent.
Cassandra
Cassandra
Cote Grantham, MA
Program
Director
Childhood
Immunizations and Raising Readers
Community
Health Improvement
MaineHealth
110
Free Street
Portland,
ME 04101
Phone:
207-661-7578
Fax:
207-661-7547
cotec1@mainehealth.org
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This
email message, including any attachments, is for the use of the
intended recipient(s) only and may contain information that is
privileged, confidential, and prohibited from unauthorized disclosure
under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient of this
message, any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message
is strictly prohibited. If you received this message in error, please
notify the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the
original message and attachments.
Subject:
|
Re: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:37:29 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
Ms.
Grantham,
None of the citations you offer contain any research
on autism risk, or any other developmental disabilities, in
vaccinated v. unvaccinated children, which is the claim you made on
Maine Calling. Again, no such publish research exists in any
form.
I therefore demand a retraction of the fraudulent
safety claim by yourself, MaineHealth and MPBN.
I will not
cease using your image, as this is a very newsworthy story and the
professional headshot of a medical corporation employee making false
claims about the product safety of the pharmaceuticals that it sells
is fair use of this image.
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
Request for Retraction of False Vaccine Safety Claims on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:12:12 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Mark Vogelzang <mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and
Jonathan Smith <talk@mpbn.net>, Jonathan Smith
<jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
CC:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org>, Laura L. Blaisdell
<BLAISL@mmc.org>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Ms.
Rooks, Mr. Smith and Mr. Vogelzang,
On your December 1 episode
of Maine Calling, Cassandra Grantham, a representative of
MaineHealth, made a fraudulent safety claim on your show. I
have copied you on the my email exchange with her, which details the
false claim, my correction of the false information as supported by
the Congressional testimony of the head of the CDC's Director of the
National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and
my request to Ms. Grantham for her to cite the multiple studies that
she claim exist or retract her claim.
As you can see, she has
failed to produce any research comparing autism rates in vaccinated
and unvaccinated populations and failed to retract her claim.
I
there for request that Maine Calling retract Ms. Grantham's claim in
the same format which it was offered, noting the false claim on the
archived version of the interview if MPBN chooses to leave it
online.
I further strongly encourage Maine Calling to perform
an honest evaluation on why vaccine rates are low in Maine and
falling nationally. As the educated mother of a vaccine injured
child, I can attest to the real reason. It is because the
liability protection given to the entire vaccine industry in 1986 has
resulted in massive corruption in the vaccine program. Ms.
Graham's behavior on your show is case in point. Medical
providers and medical industry representatives can make any safety
claims that they choose, even completely false claims, because there
is no accountability mechanism in place for the public to hold them
accountable for false claims. Even when a child is killed by a
vaccine after a false claim like this is made to a parent coercing
them into administering a vaccine that they would not have otherwise
agreed to have delivered to their child, there is no recourse to hold
anyone accountable, or even force them to stop making these false
claims. So false claims like this one, once spoken by someone
claiming to hold authority in vaccinated, simply continue to
circulate and be repeated.
No doubt Ms. Grantham's
false claim will now be circulated by those who have heard your
program, even medical professionals who administer vaccines to
children.
The vaccine show you did with these three women on
December 1, was not just about vaccine rejection, it is the REASON
for vaccine rejection. It is a real time example of how and why
vaccine interests are alienating and loosing the public trust by
abusing the public trust. Your guests correctly reported that
the exodus from the vaccine program is being lead by educated parents
who have serious misgivings of the safety and trustworthyness of the
vaccine program, while they themselves were making false claims about
the safety of the vaccine program, thereby proving the untrustworthy
of the vaccine program. And MPBN is participating in this
corruption by allowing false claims to made on your platform with out
challenge or correction.
I hope that the irony that a show you
aired to raise confidence in the vaccination is actually destroying
trust in the vaccination is not lost on you.
Now this
claim of Ms. Grantham is merely one of many problematic statements
made by herself, MaineHealth, VaxMaineKids.org and Dr. Blaisdell, and
I would be happy to go over the false information that they are
sharing with the public under the guise of serving the public if you
decide to do a proper investigation of the fraud taking place in the
vaccine program both in Maine and at the federal level.
But
for now, I await a response on your retraction of this particular
false statement. I cannot imagine that MPBN would allow
any medical professional, industry representative or government
official to make such false claims about any other medical product
line or medical program. I don't expect Maine Calling to allow
this to stand either.
Thank you for your consideration,
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
No
reply from MPBN as of this filing.
Subject:
|
Information Requested on how to file a formal complaint against
a Maine Health staffer for fraudulent claims |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 19:25:15 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
William Caron <Caronw@mainehealth.org>, Kimberly Nemic
<nemeck@mainehealth.org> |
CC:
|
Rebecca Arseneault <rarsenault@fchn.org>, Deborah
Deatrick, MPH <deatrd@mainehealth.org>, Robert Frank
<frankr1@mainehealth.org>, Katie Fullam Harris
<harrik2@mainehealth.org>, Cassandra Grantham
<COTEC1@mmc.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net>,
Joe Lawlor <jlawlor@pressherald.com>, Laura Blaisdell
<blaisl@mmc.org> |
Dear
MaineHealth,
This past week, Cassandra Grantham of MaineHealth
appeared on MPBN's Maine Calling and made a fraudulent vaccine safety
claim. She reported to the public that there are several studies
comparing vaccinated v. unvaccinated children that find no increase
risk of autism and other developmental disabilities in children
vaccinated according to the CDC's recommended schedule.
In
fact, no such research has ever been published.
I
contacted Ms. Grantham and asked that she cite the research she
claims has been undertaken, or retract her statement. She not
only failed to cite such studies, she actually cited a 2013 IOM
report that confirmed that no such research exists in the medical
literature, and that recommended against undertaking such research
because of cost, time and difficulty. She has also failed to
retract her fraudulent claim and says she will not be responding to
me on this matter again.
This is just the latest of several
false vaccine safety research claims that Ms. Grantham has made on
behalf of MaineHealth both in public and on the VaxMaineKids.org web
site, a MaineHealth Childhood Immunizations Program project.
Several of these false statements have been brought to her attention
over the last five months, and she has failed to properly address
them. I can therefore only assume that Ms. Grantham is a bad
faith player and is purposefully misleading of Mainers on vaccine
safety matters
This is made all the more egregious as Ms.
Grantham has been quoted in the Portland
Press Herald as stating that, “Eliminating the philosophic
[vaccine] exemption is the ultimate goal,” of the work your
organization is undertaking. It is unconscionable that
MaineHealth would make fraudulent safety claims in order to advance
the agenda of removing parental rights and depriving children of a
free and appropriate public education if their families decline to
participate in a medical program that presents severe adverse health
risks including disability, brain damage and death.
I wish to
file a formal complaint against Ms. Grantham with MaineHealth.
I believe that it is the duty of MaineHealth to review and retract
Ms. Grantham's false vaccine safety claims and to exercise
disciplinary action against Ms. Grantham, as well as clarify the
organization's position on the rights of parents to receive full and
accurate vaccine safety and efficacy information, and practice
uncoerced informed consent in vaccination.
I have forwarded
the email exchanges with Ms. Grantham and MPBN below for your
review.
I am publicly documenting this process here.
Please
direct me to appropriate contact on this matter so I may offer a full
account of the problem and offer MaineHealth my support in assuring
that it is offering accurate, evidence based information on vaccine
safety to the public.
Thank you,
Ginger Taylor
Brunswick,
Maine
To
the Maine Immunization Program
I would
like to file a complaint against MaineHealth for making fraudulent
statements concerning one of their product lines.
MaineHealth,
both on the VaxMaineKids.org web site and during an interview on MPBN
on December 1, have made false vaccine safety claims. I have
contacted VaxMaineKids, MaineHealth and MPBN to ask for a retraction
and correction of the false marketing messages that they are issuing
to the public, but none of the organizations will properly address
the issue.
VaxMaineKids.org
makes the false claims on their web site that:
“THERE
IS NO EVIDENCE THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM.”
And that, “No
other medical study anywhere in the world has ever found a link
between vaccines and autism. Not one.”
(http://www.vaxmainekids.org/mythbuster-series-autism/)
During
an email exchange last summer with Cassandra Grantham, Program
Director of Child Health at MaineHealth, initiated by Ms. Grantham
after I had written about her work, I corrected the misinformation,
sending VaxMaineKids a list with dozens of studies that link vaccines
and autism.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/86-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-Vaccine-Autism-Link
Ms. Grantham failed to correct the false claims on the MaineHealth
web site, and wrote that she was no longer interested in discussing
the matter any further with me.
Ms. Grantham, representing
Maine Health, made further false claims on December 1st
on MPBN's Maine Calling, when she claimed that there were multiple
studies comparing populations of unvaccinated children to children
fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule that have found no
increased risk in autism among fully vaccinated children.
In
fact, no such research exists, as testified to by Dr.
Colleen
Boyle,
Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities during the House Oversight & Government Reform
Committee hearing 1
in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of
Autism on
November 29, 2012. In response to a question whether or not autism
risk had been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr.
Boyle stated, "We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
I wrote to Ms. Grantham to ask that she cite her sources or
retract her false claim. In her response, she referred to three
publications as sources for her information, none of which referenced
a vaccinated v.. unvaccinated autism study. In fact, one of her
references, a 2013 report by the Institute of Medicine on the current
US vaccine program, addressed the lack vaccinated v. unvaccinated
research as a whole, and specifically in regard to autism and other
developmental disabilities, and notes that parents and the public
have been asking for this research for some time. The IOM report
recommends against performing such research, because, although they
admit it can be accomplished and would be informative, it would also
be costly, time consuming and difficult.
Ms. Grantham
actually replied to me with information that confirms my allegations
against her false claim by MaineHealth.
I
have further contacted several staff members at MaineHealth to ask
for a retraction and for clarification of their stance on a public
policy. I have received no reply.
Further, I have contacted
both Maine Calling hosts and producers, as well as MPBN management,
to ask for a retraction of these fraudulent claims, but none have
replied.
I have attached the email chains below.
Further,
it is imperative that the State of Maine provide oversight in this
matter, as the federal 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has
removed the rights of families to sue corporations like MaineHealth
when members are harmed or killed by a vaccine. The result of this
blanket liability protection which has been in place for decades is
that physicians, medical care providers, health corporations and even
government agencies routinely put out false safety and efficacy
information, because there is no mechanism by which the public may
directly hold them accountable for fraudulent claims. The public's
right to take these entities into a civil court, force them to
testify under oath, have judgments rendered by a jury and have
remedies be enforced by a judge has been removed. As a result,
misinformation can be circulated by both malicious and merely
uninformed parties, including doctors providing recommendations to
patients in their offices. Bad faith parties and organizations who
wish to make outright fraudulent claims are free to do so without
fear of legal reprisal from their customers, even if the worst
possible outcome happens and the vaccination that was delivered under
false information or coercion results in the death of a child.
This
complaint does not represent the total number of false statements
made by Ms. Grantham and MaineHealth but is a short complaint on the
easily corrected fraud currently taking place. In light of their
refusal to correct even these extremely obvious false statements, I
believe that a full accounting of their vaccine safety claims is
appropriate.
Further,
Ms. Grantham in her professional, role has been quoted in the
Portland Press Herald as advocating the elimination of the
philosophical vaccine exemption in Maine. This would remove the
right of children to a free and appropriate education if their
parents did not choose to vaccinate as the state requests. As
vaccines are legally classified by the federal government as
“Unavoidably Unsafe” (which means they cannot be made safe for
their intended use) and can result in serious diseases, disorders,
disability, brain damage and death, it a civil rights matter that
parents and individuals be free to exercise their right to informed
consent, and to reject one or more vaccines for one’s self or one’s
child. It is also a civil rights matter that children be allowed
equal access to a free and appropriate public education without being
impeded by discriminatory policies. In their actions in the last 6
months, I assert that MaineHealth has demonstrated a willingness
commit fraud in order to achieve their goal of removing either
families’ rights to medical informed consent or the right to a
public education for their children to increase vaccine sales.
In
no other area of medicine are these types of false claims on
pharmaceutical products tolerated. I hope that the Maine
Immunization Program will take this matter seriously and perform its
duty in this case to protect Maine consumers against false vaccine
safety claims.
Attachment:
Subject:
|
False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's Maine
Calling |
Date:
|
Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:45:00 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura Blaisdell <blaisl@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Dodge Patstone
<patsta@mmc.org> |
Ms. Grantham,
This week on MPBN's Maine Calling, in
response to a question about vaccine safety, you made the following
claim:
MPBN:
“Cassandra what kind of research is out there about the safety of
vaccines?”
Cassandra Grantham: “So what's really great is
that is that many different organizations have put a lot of time and
effort into understanding the safety and efficacy behind vaccines and
there have been several recent studies that have actually come out
looking at associations between vaccinations and different situations
that kids may find themselves in, autism being one of them, but many
others. And of course we can't do studies that actually force
families not to immunize their children so that we can look at what
we would call it a randomized controlled trial, it's just not fair.
So what we have been able to do is look back over time at different
populations of children and we've actually found that kids who are
immunized, completely immunized with all of the vaccines according to
the the schedule that Dr. Blaisdell
was
mentioning the one that recommended by the CDC, that they have no
higher risk of getting autism and some of these other developmental
challenges that families face than those kids that delayed or did not
receive any immunizations at all. So we're finding that there is
research that is now delving deeper into this topic and actually
proving that the CDC's recommended schedule is safe and it does work
and it doesn't increase risks of other situations for kids.”
To the best of my knowledge, this is a
false claim, as no such research exists. This as testified to
by
Dr.
Coleen Boyle, Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects
and Developmental Disabilities during the House Oversight &
Government Reform Committee hearing
1 in 88 Children: A Look Into
the Federal Response to Rising Rates of Autism on November 29,
2012. In response to a question whether or not autism risk had
been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr. Boyle stated,
"We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
http://youtu.be/O_GrCAzpA_0?t=9m20s
(please see the notes in the video that addresses the claims made by
Dr. Koren Boggs that such research exists in further detail.)
My
understanding of the history of this topic is that the first such
request for a study was made by the FDA in 1981 after they removed
mercury from over the counter products. FDA declined to ban it
from vaccines, asking CDC to first do a vaccinated v. unvaccinated
study to see if it increased health risks, however CDC declined to
perform the study.
The autism and vaccine injury communities
have been asking for such a retrospective study to be done for more
than a decade now, and health authorities have continued to refuse.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the
Comprehensive
Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of
2007
(
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.2832:)
to force NIH to do such a study, and reintroduced such legislation in
the years since. In response to what he learned from Dr. Boyle
during the 2012 hearings, Rep Bill Posey (R-FL) joined with Maloney
and introduced H.R. 1757, The Vaccine Safety Study Act
(
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2013/04/26/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/E576-1)
that would again compel HHS to perform the study that you claim
already exists.
The bill was not passed, nor to my
knowledge has any vaccinated v. unvaccinated research on autism or
any other developmental disabilities been published since Dr. Boyle
offered her testimony before Congress.
As such it is
appropriate for you to either produce the citation for this research
that the vaccine injury community has been lobbying for, or to
retract your false safety claims on MPBN for the product line you are
representing.
Your false claims are only made more
egregious by the fact that you have publicly stated in the Portland
Press Herald that, "Eliminating the philosophic [vaccine]
exemption is the ultimate goal." It is my belief that you
are purposely lying to the public in order to remove parental rights
and deny Maine children a Free And Appropriate Education in order to
promote sales of a product line whose lack of safety is thoroughly
documented both by the federal government and the product packaging
itself. This type of propaganda sales campaign should not be
tolerated by any responsible medical professional, health
organization, media outlet or legislator.
(
http://www.pressherald.com/2014/08/14/state-legislators-to-seek-stronger-vaccine-laws/)
I
await your response,
Ginger Taylor, MS
Mother of a vaccine injured
child
Co-author of Vaccine
Epidemic
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
RE: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 8 Dec 2014 19:31:25 +0000 |
From:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
To:
|
'Ginger Taylor' <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Hello
Ginger ~
Thank you
for listening to MPBN’s Maine Calling Show – it is great to know
that we have reached such a wide audience with important vaccine
messages. I want to clarify that I do not represent any product
line or company other than MaineHealth, which is a health system
which supports on-time childhood immunizations. I have never
been paid by or consulted for a pharmaceutical or medical
intervention company or agency. Please see below for MaineHealth’s
official statement regarding childhood immunizations.
MaineHealth supports the
health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and
young adults. We believe that vaccinating children on-time, as
recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Family
Physicians (AAFP), and the American College of Obstetrics and
Gynecology (ACOG), is one of the best ways to reduce
vaccine-preventable diseases in our communities and keep children
safe and healthy.
In regards
to my statements about vaccine safety, I based those on these
studies.
1.
http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(13)00144-3/abstract
2.
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/The-Childhood-Immunization-Schedule-and-Safety.aspx
3.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/06/26/peds.2014-1079.abstract
I will not
respond to future emails on this subject.
Furthermore,
I request that you cease and desist using my image on your blog,
Facebook page and other websites you support and represent.
Cassandra
Cassandra
Cote Grantham, MA
Program
Director
Childhood
Immunizations and Raising Readers
Community
Health Improvement
MaineHealth
110
Free Street
Portland,
ME 04101
Phone:
207-661-7578
Fax:
207-661-7547
cotec1@mainehealth.org
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This
email message, including any attachments, is for the use of the
intended recipient(s) only and may contain information that is
privileged, confidential, and prohibited from unauthorized disclosure
under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient of this
message, any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message
is strictly prohibited. If you received this message in error, please
notify the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the
original message and attachments.
Subject:
|
Re: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:37:29 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
Ms.
Grantham,
None of the citations you offer contain any research
on autism risk, or any other developmental disabilities, in
vaccinated v. unvaccinated children, which is the claim you made on
Maine Calling. Again, no such publish research exists in any
form.
I therefore demand a retraction of the fraudulent
safety claim by yourself, MaineHealth and MPBN.
I will not
cease using your image, as this is a very newsworthy story and the
professional headshot of a medical corporation employee making false
claims about the product safety of the pharmaceuticals that it sells
is fair use of this image.
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
Request for Retraction of False Vaccine Safety Claims on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:12:12 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Mark Vogelzang <mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and
Jonathan Smith <talk@mpbn.net>, Jonathan Smith
<jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
CC:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org>, Laura L. Blaisdell
<BLAISL@mmc.org>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Ms.
Rooks, Mr. Smith and Mr. Vogelzang,
On your December 1 episode
of Maine Calling, Cassandra Grantham, a representative of
MaineHealth, made a fraudulent safety claim on your show. I
have copied you on the my email exchange with her, which details the
false claim, my correction of the false information as supported by
the Congressional testimony of the head of the CDC's Director of the
National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and
my request to Ms. Grantham for her to cite the multiple studies that
she claim exist or retract her claim.
As you can see, she has
failed to produce any research comparing autism rates in vaccinated
and unvaccinated populations and failed to retract her claim.
I
there for request that Maine Calling retract Ms. Grantham's claim in
the same format which it was offered, noting the false claim on the
archived version of the interview if MPBN chooses to leave it
online.
I further strongly encourage Maine Calling to perform
an honest evaluation on why vaccine rates are low in Maine and
falling nationally. As the educated mother of a vaccine injured
child, I can attest to the real reason. It is because the
liability protection given to the entire vaccine industry in 1986 has
resulted in massive corruption in the vaccine program. Ms.
Graham's behavior on your show is case in point. Medical
providers and medical industry representatives can make any safety
claims that they choose, even completely false claims, because there
is no accountability mechanism in place for the public to hold them
accountable for false claims. Even when a child is killed by a
vaccine after a false claim like this is made to a parent coercing
them into administering a vaccine that they would not have otherwise
agreed to have delivered to their child, there is no recourse to hold
anyone accountable, or even force them to stop making these false
claims. So false claims like this one, once spoken by someone
claiming to hold authority in vaccinated, simply continue to
circulate and be repeated.
No doubt Ms. Grantham's
false claim will now be circulated by those who have heard your
program, even medical professionals who administer vaccines to
children.
The vaccine show you did with these three women on
December 1, was not just about vaccine rejection, it is the REASON
for vaccine rejection. It is a real time example of how and why
vaccine interests are alienating and loosing the public trust by
abusing the public trust. Your guests correctly reported that
the exodus from the vaccine program is being lead by educated parents
who have serious misgivings of the safety and trustworthyness of the
vaccine program, while they themselves were making false claims about
the safety of the vaccine program, thereby proving the untrustworthy
of the vaccine program. And MPBN is participating in this
corruption by allowing false claims to made on your platform with out
challenge or correction.
I hope that the irony that a show you
aired to raise confidence in the vaccination is actually destroying
trust in the vaccination is not lost on you.
Now this
claim of Ms. Grantham is merely one of many problematic statements
made by herself, MaineHealth, VaxMaineKids.org and Dr. Blaisdell, and
I would be happy to go over the false information that they are
sharing with the public under the guise of serving the public if you
decide to do a proper investigation of the fraud taking place in the
vaccine program both in Maine and at the federal level.
But
for now, I await a response on your retraction of this particular
false statement. I cannot imagine that MPBN would allow
any medical professional, industry representative or government
official to make such false claims about any other medical product
line or medical program. I don't expect Maine Calling to allow
this to stand either.
Thank you for your consideration,
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
No
reply from MPBN as of this filing.
Subject:
|
Information Requested on how to file a formal complaint against
a Maine Health staffer for fraudulent claims |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 19:25:15 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
William Caron <Caronw@mainehealth.org>, Kimberly Nemic
<nemeck@mainehealth.org> |
CC:
|
Rebecca Arseneault <rarsenault@fchn.org>, Deborah
Deatrick, MPH <deatrd@mainehealth.org>, Robert Frank
<frankr1@mainehealth.org>, Katie Fullam Harris
<harrik2@mainehealth.org>, Cassandra Grantham
<COTEC1@mmc.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net>,
Joe Lawlor <jlawlor@pressherald.com>, Laura Blaisdell
<blaisl@mmc.org> |
Dear
MaineHealth,
This past week, Cassandra Grantham of MaineHealth
appeared on MPBN's Maine Calling and made a fraudulent vaccine safety
claim. She reported to the public that there are several studies
comparing vaccinated v. unvaccinated children that find no increase
risk of autism and other developmental disabilities in children
vaccinated according to the CDC's recommended schedule.
In
fact, no such research has ever been published.
I
contacted Ms. Grantham and asked that she cite the research she
claims has been undertaken, or retract her statement. She not
only failed to cite such studies, she actually cited a 2013 IOM
report that confirmed that no such research exists in the medical
literature, and that recommended against undertaking such research
because of cost, time and difficulty. She has also failed to
retract her fraudulent claim and says she will not be responding to
me on this matter again.
This is just the latest of several
false vaccine safety research claims that Ms. Grantham has made on
behalf of MaineHealth both in public and on the VaxMaineKids.org web
site, a MaineHealth Childhood Immunizations Program project.
Several of these false statements have been brought to her attention
over the last five months, and she has failed to properly address
them. I can therefore only assume that Ms. Grantham is a bad
faith player and is purposefully misleading of Mainers on vaccine
safety matters
This is made all the more egregious as Ms.
Grantham has been quoted in the Portland
Press Herald as stating that, “Eliminating the philosophic
[vaccine] exemption is the ultimate goal,” of the work your
organization is undertaking. It is unconscionable that
MaineHealth would make fraudulent safety claims in order to advance
the agenda of removing parental rights and depriving children of a
free and appropriate public education if their families decline to
participate in a medical program that presents severe adverse health
risks including disability, brain damage and death.
I wish to
file a formal complaint against Ms. Grantham with MaineHealth.
I believe that it is the duty of MaineHealth to review and retract
Ms. Grantham's false vaccine safety claims and to exercise
disciplinary action against Ms. Grantham, as well as clarify the
organization's position on the rights of parents to receive full and
accurate vaccine safety and efficacy information, and practice
uncoerced informed consent in vaccination.
I have forwarded
the email exchanges with Ms. Grantham and MPBN below for your
review.
I am publicly documenting this process here.
Please
direct me to appropriate contact on this matter so I may offer a full
account of the problem and offer MaineHealth my support in assuring
that it is offering accurate, evidence based information on vaccine
safety to the public.
Thank you,
Ginger Taylor
Brunswick,
Maine
To
the Maine Immunization Coalition
I would
like to file a complaint against MaineHealth, which I believe is a
member of the Maine Immunization Coalition and whose web site,
VaxMaineKids.org is supported by your coalition, for making
fraudulent statements concerning one of their product lines.
MaineHealth,
both on the VaxMaineKids.org web site and during an interview on MPBN
on December 1, have made false vaccine safety claims. I have
contacted VaxMaineKids, MaineHealth and MPBN to ask for a retraction
and correction of the false marketing messages that they are issuing
to the public, but none of the organizations will properly address
the issue.
VaxMaineKids.org
makes the false claims on their web site that:
“THERE
IS NO EVIDENCE THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM.”
And that, “No
other medical study anywhere in the world has ever found a link
between vaccines and autism. Not one.”
(http://www.vaxmainekids.org/mythbuster-series-autism/)
During
an email exchange last summer with Cassandra Grantham, Program
Director of Child Health at MaineHealth, initiated by Ms. Grantham
after I had written about her work, I corrected the misinformation,
sending VaxMaineKids a list with dozens of studies that link vaccines
and autism.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/86-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-Vaccine-Autism-Link
Ms. Grantham failed to correct the false claims on the MaineHealth
web site, and wrote that she was no longer interested in discussing
the matter any further with me.
Ms. Grantham, representing
Maine Health, made further false claims on December 1st
on MPBN's Maine Calling, when she claimed that there were multiple
studies comparing populations of unvaccinated children to children
fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule that have found no
increased risk in autism among fully vaccinated children.
In
fact, no such research exists, as testified to by Dr.
Colleen
Boyle,
Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities during the House Oversight & Government Reform
Committee hearing 1
in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of
Autism on
November 29, 2012. In response to a question whether or not autism
risk had been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr.
Boyle stated, "We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
I wrote to Ms. Grantham to ask that she cite her sources or
retract her false claim. In her response, she referred to three
publications as sources for her information, none of which referenced
a vaccinated v.. unvaccinated autism study. In fact, one of her
references, a 2013 report by the Institute of Medicine on the current
US vaccine program, addressed the lack vaccinated v. unvaccinated
research as a whole, and specifically in regard to autism and other
developmental disabilities, and notes that parents and the public
have been asking for this research for some time. The IOM report
recommends against performing such research, because, although they
admit it can be accomplished and would be informative, it would also
be costly, time consuming and difficult.
Ms. Grantham
actually replied to me with information that confirms my allegations
against her false claim by MaineHealth.
I
have further contacted several staff members at MaineHealth to ask
for a retraction and for clarification of their stance on a public
policy. I have received no reply.
Further, I have contacted
both Maine Calling hosts and producers, as well as MPBN management,
to ask for a retraction of these fraudulent claims, but none have
replied.
I have attached the email chains below.
It
is imperative that vaccine promotional programs are accurate in their
claims, as the federal 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has
removed the rights of families to sue corporations like MaineHealth
when members are harmed or killed by a vaccine. The result of this
blanket liability protection which has been in place for decades is
that physicians, medical care providers, health corporations and even
government agencies routinely put out false safety and efficacy
information, because there is no mechanism by which the public may
directly hold them accountable for fraudulent claims. The public's
right to take these entities into a civil court, force them to
testify under oath, have judgments rendered by a jury and have
remedies be enforced by a judge has been removed. As a result,
misinformation can be circulated by both malicious and merely
uninformed parties, including doctors providing recommendations to
patients in their offices. Bad faith parties and organizations who
wish to make outright fraudulent claims are free to do so without
fear of legal reprisal from their customers, even if the worst
possible outcome happens and the vaccination that was delivered under
false information or coercion results in the death of a child.
This
complaint does not represent the total number of false statements
made by Ms. Grantham and MaineHealth but is a short complaint on the
easily corrected fraud currently taking place. In light of their
refusal to correct even these extremely obvious false statements, I
believe that a full accounting of their vaccine safety claims is
appropriate.
Further,
Ms. Grantham in her professional, role has been quoted in the
Portland Press Herald as advocating the elimination of the
philosophical vaccine exemption in Maine. This would remove the
right of children to a free and appropriate education if their
parents did not choose to vaccinate as the state requests. As
vaccines are legally classified by the federal government as
“Unavoidably Unsafe” (which means they cannot be made safe for
their intended use) and can result in serious diseases, disorders,
disability, brain damage and death, it a civil rights matter that
parents and individuals be free to exercise their right to informed
consent, and to reject one or more vaccines for one’s self or one’s
child. It is also a civil rights matter that children be allowed
equal access to a free and appropriate public education without being
impeded by discriminatory policies. In their actions in the last 6
months, I assert that MaineHealth has demonstrated a willingness
commit fraud in order to achieve their goal of removing either
families’ rights to medical informed consent or the right to a
public education for their children to increase vaccine sales.
I
would hope that the Maine Immunization Coalition's work to increase
vaccine uptake rates would not include offering disinformation to the
public to obtain their consent to vaccinate, and that you will
correct your member's false safety claims, insisting they retract
these fraudulent statements, which only further erode trust in the
vaccine program you are promoting.
Attachment:
Subject:
|
False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's Maine
Calling |
Date:
|
Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:45:00 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura Blaisdell <blaisl@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Dodge Patstone
<patsta@mmc.org> |
Ms. Grantham,
This week on MPBN's Maine Calling, in
response to a question about vaccine safety, you made the following
claim:
MPBN:
“Cassandra what kind of research is out there about the safety of
vaccines?”
Cassandra Grantham: “So what's really great is
that is that many different organizations have put a lot of time and
effort into understanding the safety and efficacy behind vaccines and
there have been several recent studies that have actually come out
looking at associations between vaccinations and different situations
that kids may find themselves in, autism being one of them, but many
others. And of course we can't do studies that actually force
families not to immunize their children so that we can look at what
we would call it a randomized controlled trial, it's just not fair.
So what we have been able to do is look back over time at different
populations of children and we've actually found that kids who are
immunized, completely immunized with all of the vaccines according to
the the schedule that Dr. Blaisdell
was
mentioning the one that recommended by the CDC, that they have no
higher risk of getting autism and some of these other developmental
challenges that families face than those kids that delayed or did not
receive any immunizations at all. So we're finding that there is
research that is now delving deeper into this topic and actually
proving that the CDC's recommended schedule is safe and it does work
and it doesn't increase risks of other situations for kids.”
To the best of my knowledge, this is a
false claim, as no such research exists. This as testified to
by
Dr.
Coleen Boyle, Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects
and Developmental Disabilities during the House Oversight &
Government Reform Committee hearing
1 in 88 Children: A Look Into
the Federal Response to Rising Rates of Autism on November 29,
2012. In response to a question whether or not autism risk had
been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr. Boyle stated,
"We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
http://youtu.be/O_GrCAzpA_0?t=9m20s
(please see the notes in the video that addresses the claims made by
Dr. Koren Boggs that such research exists in further detail.)
My
understanding of the history of this topic is that the first such
request for a study was made by the FDA in 1981 after they removed
mercury from over the counter products. FDA declined to ban it
from vaccines, asking CDC to first do a vaccinated v. unvaccinated
study to see if it increased health risks, however CDC declined to
perform the study.
The autism and vaccine injury communities
have been asking for such a retrospective study to be done for more
than a decade now, and health authorities have continued to refuse.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the
Comprehensive
Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of
2007
(
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.2832:)
to force NIH to do such a study, and reintroduced such legislation in
the years since. In response to what he learned from Dr. Boyle
during the 2012 hearings, Rep Bill Posey (R-FL) joined with Maloney
and introduced H.R. 1757, The Vaccine Safety Study Act
(
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2013/04/26/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/E576-1)
that would again compel HHS to perform the study that you claim
already exists.
The bill was not passed, nor to my
knowledge has any vaccinated v. unvaccinated research on autism or
any other developmental disabilities been published since Dr. Boyle
offered her testimony before Congress.
As such it is
appropriate for you to either produce the citation for this research
that the vaccine injury community has been lobbying for, or to
retract your false safety claims on MPBN for the product line you are
representing.
Your false claims are only made more
egregious by the fact that you have publicly stated in the Portland
Press Herald that, "Eliminating the philosophic [vaccine]
exemption is the ultimate goal." It is my belief that you
are purposely lying to the public in order to remove parental rights
and deny Maine children a Free And Appropriate Education in order to
promote sales of a product line whose lack of safety is thoroughly
documented both by the federal government and the product packaging
itself. This type of propaganda sales campaign should not be
tolerated by any responsible medical professional, health
organization, media outlet or legislator.
(
http://www.pressherald.com/2014/08/14/state-legislators-to-seek-stronger-vaccine-laws/)
I
await your response,
Ginger Taylor, MS
Mother of a vaccine injured
child
Co-author of Vaccine
Epidemic
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
RE: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 8 Dec 2014 19:31:25 +0000 |
From:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
To:
|
'Ginger Taylor' <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Hello
Ginger ~
Thank you
for listening to MPBN’s Maine Calling Show – it is great to know
that we have reached such a wide audience with important vaccine
messages. I want to clarify that I do not represent any product
line or company other than MaineHealth, which is a health system
which supports on-time childhood immunizations. I have never
been paid by or consulted for a pharmaceutical or medical
intervention company or agency. Please see below for MaineHealth’s
official statement regarding childhood immunizations.
MaineHealth supports the
health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and
young adults. We believe that vaccinating children on-time, as
recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Family
Physicians (AAFP), and the American College of Obstetrics and
Gynecology (ACOG), is one of the best ways to reduce
vaccine-preventable diseases in our communities and keep children
safe and healthy.
In regards
to my statements about vaccine safety, I based those on these
studies.
1.
http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(13)00144-3/abstract
2.
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/The-Childhood-Immunization-Schedule-and-Safety.aspx
3.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/06/26/peds.2014-1079.abstract
I will not
respond to future emails on this subject.
Furthermore,
I request that you cease and desist using my image on your blog,
Facebook page and other websites you support and represent.
Cassandra
Cassandra
Cote Grantham, MA
Program
Director
Childhood
Immunizations and Raising Readers
Community
Health Improvement
MaineHealth
110
Free Street
Portland,
ME 04101
Phone:
207-661-7578
Fax:
207-661-7547
cotec1@mainehealth.org
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This
email message, including any attachments, is for the use of the
intended recipient(s) only and may contain information that is
privileged, confidential, and prohibited from unauthorized disclosure
under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient of this
message, any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message
is strictly prohibited. If you received this message in error, please
notify the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the
original message and attachments.
Subject:
|
Re: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:37:29 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
Ms.
Grantham,
None of the citations you offer contain any research
on autism risk, or any other developmental disabilities, in
vaccinated v. unvaccinated children, which is the claim you made on
Maine Calling. Again, no such publish research exists in any
form.
I therefore demand a retraction of the fraudulent
safety claim by yourself, MaineHealth and MPBN.
I will not
cease using your image, as this is a very newsworthy story and the
professional headshot of a medical corporation employee making false
claims about the product safety of the pharmaceuticals that it sells
is fair use of this image.
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
Request for Retraction of False Vaccine Safety Claims on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:12:12 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Mark Vogelzang <mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and
Jonathan Smith <talk@mpbn.net>, Jonathan Smith
<jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
CC:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org>, Laura L. Blaisdell
<BLAISL@mmc.org>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Ms.
Rooks, Mr. Smith and Mr. Vogelzang,
On your December 1 episode
of Maine Calling, Cassandra Grantham, a representative of
MaineHealth, made a fraudulent safety claim on your show. I
have copied you on the my email exchange with her, which details the
false claim, my correction of the false information as supported by
the Congressional testimony of the head of the CDC's Director of the
National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and
my request to Ms. Grantham for her to cite the multiple studies that
she claim exist or retract her claim.
As you can see, she has
failed to produce any research comparing autism rates in vaccinated
and unvaccinated populations and failed to retract her claim.
I
there for request that Maine Calling retract Ms. Grantham's claim in
the same format which it was offered, noting the false claim on the
archived version of the interview if MPBN chooses to leave it
online.
I further strongly encourage Maine Calling to perform
an honest evaluation on why vaccine rates are low in Maine and
falling nationally. As the educated mother of a vaccine injured
child, I can attest to the real reason. It is because the
liability protection given to the entire vaccine industry in 1986 has
resulted in massive corruption in the vaccine program. Ms.
Graham's behavior on your show is case in point. Medical
providers and medical industry representatives can make any safety
claims that they choose, even completely false claims, because there
is no accountability mechanism in place for the public to hold them
accountable for false claims. Even when a child is killed by a
vaccine after a false claim like this is made to a parent coercing
them into administering a vaccine that they would not have otherwise
agreed to have delivered to their child, there is no recourse to hold
anyone accountable, or even force them to stop making these false
claims. So false claims like this one, once spoken by someone
claiming to hold authority in vaccinated, simply continue to
circulate and be repeated.
No doubt Ms. Grantham's
false claim will now be circulated by those who have heard your
program, even medical professionals who administer vaccines to
children.
The vaccine show you did with these three women on
December 1, was not just about vaccine rejection, it is the REASON
for vaccine rejection. It is a real time example of how and why
vaccine interests are alienating and loosing the public trust by
abusing the public trust. Your guests correctly reported that
the exodus from the vaccine program is being lead by educated parents
who have serious misgivings of the safety and trustworthyness of the
vaccine program, while they themselves were making false claims about
the safety of the vaccine program, thereby proving the untrustworthy
of the vaccine program. And MPBN is participating in this
corruption by allowing false claims to made on your platform with out
challenge or correction.
I hope that the irony that a show you
aired to raise confidence in the vaccination is actually destroying
trust in the vaccination is not lost on you.
Now this
claim of Ms. Grantham is merely one of many problematic statements
made by herself, MaineHealth, VaxMaineKids.org and Dr. Blaisdell, and
I would be happy to go over the false information that they are
sharing with the public under the guise of serving the public if you
decide to do a proper investigation of the fraud taking place in the
vaccine program both in Maine and at the federal level.
But
for now, I await a response on your retraction of this particular
false statement. I cannot imagine that MPBN would allow
any medical professional, industry representative or government
official to make such false claims about any other medical product
line or medical program. I don't expect Maine Calling to allow
this to stand either.
Thank you for your consideration,
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
No
reply from MPBN as of this filing.
Subject:
|
Information Requested on how to file a formal complaint against
a Maine Health staffer for fraudulent claims |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 19:25:15 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
William Caron <Caronw@mainehealth.org>, Kimberly Nemic
<nemeck@mainehealth.org> |
CC:
|
Rebecca Arseneault <rarsenault@fchn.org>, Deborah
Deatrick, MPH <deatrd@mainehealth.org>, Robert Frank
<frankr1@mainehealth.org>, Katie Fullam Harris
<harrik2@mainehealth.org>, Cassandra Grantham
<COTEC1@mmc.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net>,
Joe Lawlor <jlawlor@pressherald.com>, Laura Blaisdell
<blaisl@mmc.org> |
Dear
MaineHealth,
This past week, Cassandra Grantham of MaineHealth
appeared on MPBN's Maine Calling and made a fraudulent vaccine safety
claim. She reported to the public that there are several studies
comparing vaccinated v. unvaccinated children that find no increase
risk of autism and other developmental disabilities in children
vaccinated according to the CDC's recommended schedule.
In
fact, no such research has ever been published.
I
contacted Ms. Grantham and asked that she cite the research she
claims has been undertaken, or retract her statement. She not
only failed to cite such studies, she actually cited a 2013 IOM
report that confirmed that no such research exists in the medical
literature, and that recommended against undertaking such research
because of cost, time and difficulty. She has also failed to
retract her fraudulent claim and says she will not be responding to
me on this matter again.
This is just the latest of several
false vaccine safety research claims that Ms. Grantham has made on
behalf of MaineHealth both in public and on the VaxMaineKids.org web
site, a MaineHealth Childhood Immunizations Program project.
Several of these false statements have been brought to her attention
over the last five months, and she has failed to properly address
them. I can therefore only assume that Ms. Grantham is a bad
faith player and is purposefully misleading of Mainers on vaccine
safety matters
This is made all the more egregious as Ms.
Grantham has been quoted in the Portland
Press Herald as stating that, “Eliminating the philosophic
[vaccine] exemption is the ultimate goal,” of the work your
organization is undertaking. It is unconscionable that
MaineHealth would make fraudulent safety claims in order to advance
the agenda of removing parental rights and depriving children of a
free and appropriate public education if their families decline to
participate in a medical program that presents severe adverse health
risks including disability, brain damage and death.
I wish to
file a formal complaint against Ms. Grantham with MaineHealth.
I believe that it is the duty of MaineHealth to review and retract
Ms. Grantham's false vaccine safety claims and to exercise
disciplinary action against Ms. Grantham, as well as clarify the
organization's position on the rights of parents to receive full and
accurate vaccine safety and efficacy information, and practice
uncoerced informed consent in vaccination.
I have forwarded
the email exchanges with Ms. Grantham and MPBN below for your
review.
I am publicly documenting this process here.
Please
direct me to appropriate contact on this matter so I may offer a full
account of the problem and offer MaineHealth my support in assuring
that it is offering accurate, evidence based information on vaccine
safety to the public.
Thank you,
Ginger Taylor
Brunswick,
Maine
To
the Maine Department of Health and Human Services
I would
like to file a complaint against MaineHealth for making fraudulent
statements concerning one of their product lines.
MaineHealth,
both on the VaxMaineKids.org web site and during an interview on MPBN
on December 1, have made false vaccine safety claims. I have
contacted VaxMaineKids, MaineHealth and MPBN to ask for a retraction
and correction of the false marketing messages that they are issuing
to the public, but none of the organizations will properly address
the issue.
VaxMaineKids.org
makes the false claims on their web site that:
“THERE
IS NO EVIDENCE THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM.”
And that, “No
other medical study anywhere in the world has ever found a link
between vaccines and autism. Not one.”
(http://www.vaxmainekids.org/mythbuster-series-autism/)
During
an email exchange last summer with Cassandra Grantham, Program
Director of Child Health at MaineHealth, initiated by Ms. Grantham
after I had written about her work, I corrected the misinformation,
sending VaxMaineKids a list with dozens of studies that link vaccines
and autism.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/86-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-Vaccine-Autism-Link
Ms. Grantham failed to correct the false claims on the MaineHealth
web site, and wrote that she was no longer interested in discussing
the matter any further with me.
Ms. Grantham, representing
Maine Health, made further false claims on December 1st
on MPBN's Maine Calling, when she claimed that there were multiple
studies comparing populations of unvaccinated children to children
fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule that have found no
increased risk in autism among fully vaccinated children.
In
fact, no such research exists, as testified to by Dr.
Colleen
Boyle,
Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities during the House Oversight & Government Reform
Committee hearing 1
in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of
Autism on
November 29, 2012. In response to a question whether or not autism
risk had been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr.
Boyle stated, "We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
I wrote to Ms. Grantham to ask that she cite her sources or
retract her false claim. In her response, she referred to three
publications as sources for her information, none of which referenced
a vaccinated v.. unvaccinated autism study. In fact, one of her
references, a 2013 report by the Institute of Medicine on the current
US vaccine program, addressed the lack vaccinated v. unvaccinated
research as a whole, and specifically in regard to autism and other
developmental disabilities, and notes that parents and the public
have been asking for this research for some time. The IOM report
recommends against performing such research, because, although they
admit it can be accomplished and would be informative, it would also
be costly, time consuming and difficult.
Ms. Grantham
actually replied to me with information that confirms my allegations
against her false claim by MaineHealth.
I
have further contacted several staff members at MaineHealth to ask
for a retraction and for clarification of their stance on a public
policy. I have received no reply.
Further, I have contacted
both Maine Calling hosts and producers, as well as MPBN management,
to ask for a retraction of these fraudulent claims, but none have
replied.
I have attached the email chains below.
Further,
it is imperative that the State of Maine provide oversight in this
matter, as the federal 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has
removed the rights of families to sue corporations like MaineHealth
when members are harmed or killed by a vaccine. The result of this
blanket liability protection which has been in place for decades is
that physicians, medical care providers, health corporations and even
government agencies routinely put out false safety and efficacy
information, because there is no mechanism by which the public may
directly hold them accountable for fraudulent claims. The public's
right to take these entities into a civil court, force them to
testify under oath, have judgments rendered by a jury and have
remedies be enforced by a judge has been removed. As a result,
misinformation can be circulated by both malicious and merely
uninformed parties, including doctors providing recommendations to
patients in their offices. Bad faith parties and organizations who
wish to make outright fraudulent claims are free to do so without
fear of legal reprisal from their customers, even if the worst
possible outcome happens and the vaccination that was delivered under
false information or coercion results in the death of a child.
This
complaint does not represent the total number of false statements
made by Ms. Grantham and MaineHealth but is a short complaint on the
easily corrected fraud currently taking place. In light of their
refusal to correct even these extremely obvious false statements, I
believe that a full accounting of their vaccine safety claims is
appropriate.
Further,
Ms. Grantham in her professional, role has been quoted in the
Portland Press Herald as advocating the elimination of the
philosophical vaccine exemption in Maine. This would remove the
right of children to a free and appropriate education if their
parents did not choose to vaccinate as the state requests. As
vaccines are legally classified by the federal government as
“Unavoidably Unsafe” (which means they cannot be made safe for
their intended use) and can result in serious diseases, disorders,
disability, brain damage and death, it a civil rights matter that
parents and individuals be free to exercise their right to informed
consent, and to reject one or more vaccines for one’s self or one’s
child. It is also a civil rights matter that children be allowed
equal access to a free and appropriate public education without being
impeded by discriminatory policies. In their actions in the last 6
months, I assert that MaineHealth has demonstrated a willingness
commit fraud in order to achieve their goal of removing either
families’ rights to medical informed consent or the right to a
public education for their children to increase vaccine sales.
In
no other area of medicine are these types of false claims on
pharmaceutical products tolerated. I hope that Maine DHHS will take
this matter seriously and exercise its authority here to protect
Maine consumers against false vaccine safety claims.
Attachment:
Subject:
|
False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's Maine
Calling |
Date:
|
Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:45:00 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura Blaisdell <blaisl@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Dodge Patstone
<patsta@mmc.org> |
Ms. Grantham,
This week on MPBN's Maine Calling, in
response to a question about vaccine safety, you made the following
claim:
MPBN:
“Cassandra what kind of research is out there about the safety of
vaccines?”
Cassandra Grantham: “So what's really great is
that is that many different organizations have put a lot of time and
effort into understanding the safety and efficacy behind vaccines and
there have been several recent studies that have actually come out
looking at associations between vaccinations and different situations
that kids may find themselves in, autism being one of them, but many
others. And of course we can't do studies that actually force
families not to immunize their children so that we can look at what
we would call it a randomized controlled trial, it's just not fair.
So what we have been able to do is look back over time at different
populations of children and we've actually found that kids who are
immunized, completely immunized with all of the vaccines according to
the the schedule that Dr. Blaisdell
was
mentioning the one that recommended by the CDC, that they have no
higher risk of getting autism and some of these other developmental
challenges that families face than those kids that delayed or did not
receive any immunizations at all. So we're finding that there is
research that is now delving deeper into this topic and actually
proving that the CDC's recommended schedule is safe and it does work
and it doesn't increase risks of other situations for kids.”
To the best of my knowledge, this is a
false claim, as no such research exists. This as testified to
by
Dr.
Coleen Boyle, Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects
and Developmental Disabilities during the House Oversight &
Government Reform Committee hearing
1 in 88 Children: A Look Into
the Federal Response to Rising Rates of Autism on November 29,
2012. In response to a question whether or not autism risk had
been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr. Boyle stated,
"We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
http://youtu.be/O_GrCAzpA_0?t=9m20s
(please see the notes in the video that addresses the claims made by
Dr. Koren Boggs that such research exists in further detail.)
My
understanding of the history of this topic is that the first such
request for a study was made by the FDA in 1981 after they removed
mercury from over the counter products. FDA declined to ban it
from vaccines, asking CDC to first do a vaccinated v. unvaccinated
study to see if it increased health risks, however CDC declined to
perform the study.
The autism and vaccine injury communities
have been asking for such a retrospective study to be done for more
than a decade now, and health authorities have continued to refuse.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the
Comprehensive
Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of
2007
(
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.2832:)
to force NIH to do such a study, and reintroduced such legislation in
the years since. In response to what he learned from Dr. Boyle
during the 2012 hearings, Rep Bill Posey (R-FL) joined with Maloney
and introduced H.R. 1757, The Vaccine Safety Study Act
(
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2013/04/26/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/E576-1)
that would again compel HHS to perform the study that you claim
already exists.
The bill was not passed, nor to my
knowledge has any vaccinated v. unvaccinated research on autism or
any other developmental disabilities been published since Dr. Boyle
offered her testimony before Congress.
As such it is
appropriate for you to either produce the citation for this research
that the vaccine injury community has been lobbying for, or to
retract your false safety claims on MPBN for the product line you are
representing.
Your false claims are only made more
egregious by the fact that you have publicly stated in the Portland
Press Herald that, "Eliminating the philosophic [vaccine]
exemption is the ultimate goal." It is my belief that you
are purposely lying to the public in order to remove parental rights
and deny Maine children a Free And Appropriate Education in order to
promote sales of a product line whose lack of safety is thoroughly
documented both by the federal government and the product packaging
itself. This type of propaganda sales campaign should not be
tolerated by any responsible medical professional, health
organization, media outlet or legislator.
(
http://www.pressherald.com/2014/08/14/state-legislators-to-seek-stronger-vaccine-laws/)
I
await your response,
Ginger Taylor, MS
Mother of a vaccine injured
child
Co-author of Vaccine
Epidemic
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
RE: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 8 Dec 2014 19:31:25 +0000 |
From:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
To:
|
'Ginger Taylor' <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Hello
Ginger ~
Thank you
for listening to MPBN’s Maine Calling Show – it is great to know
that we have reached such a wide audience with important vaccine
messages. I want to clarify that I do not represent any product
line or company other than MaineHealth, which is a health system
which supports on-time childhood immunizations. I have never
been paid by or consulted for a pharmaceutical or medical
intervention company or agency. Please see below for MaineHealth’s
official statement regarding childhood immunizations.
MaineHealth supports the
health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and
young adults. We believe that vaccinating children on-time, as
recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Family
Physicians (AAFP), and the American College of Obstetrics and
Gynecology (ACOG), is one of the best ways to reduce
vaccine-preventable diseases in our communities and keep children
safe and healthy.
In regards
to my statements about vaccine safety, I based those on these
studies.
1.
http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(13)00144-3/abstract
2.
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/The-Childhood-Immunization-Schedule-and-Safety.aspx
3.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/06/26/peds.2014-1079.abstract
I will not
respond to future emails on this subject.
Furthermore,
I request that you cease and desist using my image on your blog,
Facebook page and other websites you support and represent.
Cassandra
Cassandra
Cote Grantham, MA
Program
Director
Childhood
Immunizations and Raising Readers
Community
Health Improvement
MaineHealth
110
Free Street
Portland,
ME 04101
Phone:
207-661-7578
Fax:
207-661-7547
cotec1@mainehealth.org
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This
email message, including any attachments, is for the use of the
intended recipient(s) only and may contain information that is
privileged, confidential, and prohibited from unauthorized disclosure
under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient of this
message, any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message
is strictly prohibited. If you received this message in error, please
notify the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the
original message and attachments.
Subject:
|
Re: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:37:29 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
Ms.
Grantham,
None of the citations you offer contain any research
on autism risk, or any other developmental disabilities, in
vaccinated v. unvaccinated children, which is the claim you made on
Maine Calling. Again, no such publish research exists in any
form.
I therefore demand a retraction of the fraudulent
safety claim by yourself, MaineHealth and MPBN.
I will not
cease using your image, as this is a very newsworthy story and the
professional headshot of a medical corporation employee making false
claims about the product safety of the pharmaceuticals that it sells
is fair use of this image.
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
Request for Retraction of False Vaccine Safety Claims on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:12:12 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Mark Vogelzang <mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and
Jonathan Smith <talk@mpbn.net>, Jonathan Smith
<jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
CC:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org>, Laura L. Blaisdell
<BLAISL@mmc.org>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Ms.
Rooks, Mr. Smith and Mr. Vogelzang,
On your December 1 episode
of Maine Calling, Cassandra Grantham, a representative of
MaineHealth, made a fraudulent safety claim on your show. I
have copied you on the my email exchange with her, which details the
false claim, my correction of the false information as supported by
the Congressional testimony of the head of the CDC's Director of the
National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and
my request to Ms. Grantham for her to cite the multiple studies that
she claim exist or retract her claim.
As you can see, she has
failed to produce any research comparing autism rates in vaccinated
and unvaccinated populations and failed to retract her claim.
I
there for request that Maine Calling retract Ms. Grantham's claim in
the same format which it was offered, noting the false claim on the
archived version of the interview if MPBN chooses to leave it
online.
I further strongly encourage Maine Calling to perform
an honest evaluation on why vaccine rates are low in Maine and
falling nationally. As the educated mother of a vaccine injured
child, I can attest to the real reason. It is because the
liability protection given to the entire vaccine industry in 1986 has
resulted in massive corruption in the vaccine program. Ms.
Graham's behavior on your show is case in point. Medical
providers and medical industry representatives can make any safety
claims that they choose, even completely false claims, because there
is no accountability mechanism in place for the public to hold them
accountable for false claims. Even when a child is killed by a
vaccine after a false claim like this is made to a parent coercing
them into administering a vaccine that they would not have otherwise
agreed to have delivered to their child, there is no recourse to hold
anyone accountable, or even force them to stop making these false
claims. So false claims like this one, once spoken by someone
claiming to hold authority in vaccinated, simply continue to
circulate and be repeated.
No doubt Ms. Grantham's
false claim will now be circulated by those who have heard your
program, even medical professionals who administer vaccines to
children.
The vaccine show you did with these three women on
December 1, was not just about vaccine rejection, it is the REASON
for vaccine rejection. It is a real time example of how and why
vaccine interests are alienating and loosing the public trust by
abusing the public trust. Your guests correctly reported that
the exodus from the vaccine program is being lead by educated parents
who have serious misgivings of the safety and trustworthyness of the
vaccine program, while they themselves were making false claims about
the safety of the vaccine program, thereby proving the untrustworthy
of the vaccine program. And MPBN is participating in this
corruption by allowing false claims to made on your platform with out
challenge or correction.
I hope that the irony that a show you
aired to raise confidence in the vaccination is actually destroying
trust in the vaccination is not lost on you.
Now this
claim of Ms. Grantham is merely one of many problematic statements
made by herself, MaineHealth, VaxMaineKids.org and Dr. Blaisdell, and
I would be happy to go over the false information that they are
sharing with the public under the guise of serving the public if you
decide to do a proper investigation of the fraud taking place in the
vaccine program both in Maine and at the federal level.
But
for now, I await a response on your retraction of this particular
false statement. I cannot imagine that MPBN would allow
any medical professional, industry representative or government
official to make such false claims about any other medical product
line or medical program. I don't expect Maine Calling to allow
this to stand either.
Thank you for your consideration,
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
No
reply from MPBN as of this filing.
Subject:
|
Information Requested on how to file a formal complaint against
a Maine Health staffer for fraudulent claims |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 19:25:15 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
William Caron <Caronw@mainehealth.org>, Kimberly Nemic
<nemeck@mainehealth.org> |
CC:
|
Rebecca Arseneault <rarsenault@fchn.org>, Deborah
Deatrick, MPH <deatrd@mainehealth.org>, Robert Frank
<frankr1@mainehealth.org>, Katie Fullam Harris
<harrik2@mainehealth.org>, Cassandra Grantham
<COTEC1@mmc.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net>,
Joe Lawlor <jlawlor@pressherald.com>, Laura Blaisdell
<blaisl@mmc.org> |
Dear
MaineHealth,
This past week, Cassandra Grantham of MaineHealth
appeared on MPBN's Maine Calling and made a fraudulent vaccine safety
claim. She reported to the public that there are several studies
comparing vaccinated v. unvaccinated children that find no increase
risk of autism and other developmental disabilities in children
vaccinated according to the CDC's recommended schedule.
In
fact, no such research has ever been published.
I
contacted Ms. Grantham and asked that she cite the research she
claims has been undertaken, or retract her statement. She not
only failed to cite such studies, she actually cited a 2013 IOM
report that confirmed that no such research exists in the medical
literature, and that recommended against undertaking such research
because of cost, time and difficulty. She has also failed to
retract her fraudulent claim and says she will not be responding to
me on this matter again.
This is just the latest of several
false vaccine safety research claims that Ms. Grantham has made on
behalf of MaineHealth both in public and on the VaxMaineKids.org web
site, a MaineHealth Childhood Immunizations Program project.
Several of these false statements have been brought to her attention
over the last five months, and she has failed to properly address
them. I can therefore only assume that Ms. Grantham is a bad
faith player and is purposefully misleading of Mainers on vaccine
safety matters
This is made all the more egregious as Ms.
Grantham has been quoted in the Portland
Press Herald as stating that, “Eliminating the philosophic
[vaccine] exemption is the ultimate goal,” of the work your
organization is undertaking. It is unconscionable that
MaineHealth would make fraudulent safety claims in order to advance
the agenda of removing parental rights and depriving children of a
free and appropriate public education if their families decline to
participate in a medical program that presents severe adverse health
risks including disability, brain damage and death.
I wish to
file a formal complaint against Ms. Grantham with MaineHealth.
I believe that it is the duty of MaineHealth to review and retract
Ms. Grantham's false vaccine safety claims and to exercise
disciplinary action against Ms. Grantham, as well as clarify the
organization's position on the rights of parents to receive full and
accurate vaccine safety and efficacy information, and practice
uncoerced informed consent in vaccination.
I have forwarded
the email exchanges with Ms. Grantham and MPBN below for your
review.
I am publicly documenting this process here.
Please
direct me to appropriate contact on this matter so I may offer a full
account of the problem and offer MaineHealth my support in assuring
that it is offering accurate, evidence based information on vaccine
safety to the public.
Thank you,
Ginger Taylor
Brunswick,
Maine
Subject:
|
RE: 10328 FW: Consumer complaint concerning false vaccine
safety claims made by MaineHealth |
Date:
|
Mon, 15 Dec 2014 15:44:31 +0000 |
From:
|
CBER OCOD Consumer Account <cberocod@fda.hhs.gov> |
To:
|
'Ginger@GingerTaylor.com' <Ginger@GingerTaylor.com> |
Dear Ms. Taylor:
Thank you for your inquiry to the Food and
Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and
Research (CBER). CBER, one of seven centers within FDA, is
responsible for the regulation of biologically-derived products,
including blood intended for transfusion, blood components and
derivatives, vaccines and allergenic extracts, and cell, tissue and
gene therapy products.
We
appreciate your concerns and please know that ensuring the safety and
effectiveness of vaccines is one of FDA’s top priorities.
Unfortunately, we will be unable to assist you with your complaint
against MaineHealth. FDA regulates the manufacturing of biological
products including vaccines; however, the Agency does not regulate
the general practices for home health care, healthcare systems,
pharmacies, hospitals, or physicians.
We hope this information has been helpful.
If you should have any other
questions or concerns regarding this subject, please feel free to
contact a representative from FDA's Consumer Affairs Branch within
CBER at ocod@fda.hhs.gov.
Sincerely,
Jill Burkoff
Consumer Safety Officer
Consumer Affairs Branch
Division of Communication and Consumer
Affairs
Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research
US Food and Drug Administration
Follow us on Twitter: FDA
CBER
This
communication is consistent with 21 CFR 10.85 (k) and constitutes an
informal communication that represents my best judgment at this time
but does not constitute an advisory opinion, does not necessarily
represent the formal position of FDA, and does not bind or otherwise
obligate or commit the agency to the views expressed.
Subject:
|
Re: 10328 FW: Consumer complaint concerning false vaccine
safety claims made by MaineHealth |
Date:
|
Mon, 15 Dec 2014 13:48:55 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <Ginger@GingerTaylor.com> |
To:
|
CBER OCOD Consumer Account <cberocod@fda.hhs.gov> |
Ms.
Burkhoff,
Thank you for your quick response.
I know
that the FDA has gone after several companies for making false
claims, on supplements especially, and inappropriate use. What
department or departments of the FDA are responsible for those
oversight actions?
Subject:
|
RE: 10340 FW: 10328 FW: Consumer complaint concerning false
vaccine safety claims made by MaineHealth |
Date:
|
Tue, 16 Dec 2014 18:16:09 +0000 |
From:
|
CBER OCOD Consumer Account <cberocod@fda.hhs.gov> |
To:
|
Ginger@GingerTaylor.com <Ginger@GingerTaylor.com> |
Dear Ms. Taylor:
Thank you for your follow-up inquiry.
All vaccines are required to include a true
statement of information in brief summary relating to side effects,
contraindications, and effectiveness in accordance with Title 21 of
the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 202.1(e)(1). A copy of the
regulation is available at:
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2014/aprqtr/pdf/21cfr202.1.pdf.
Information on FDA’s surveillance of
advertising practices is also available on CBER’s website at:
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ComplianceActivities/Enforcement/UntitledLetters/UCM091551.
CBER's Advertising and Promotional Labeling
Branch (APLB) is responsible for protecting the public health by (1)
regulating advertising and promotional labeling materials for CBER
products to ensure that the information about the risks and benefits
of regulated products are communicated in a truthful, accurate,
science-based, non- misleading and balanced manner and is in
compliance with pertinent federal laws and regulations; and (2)
evaluating proposed proprietary names to avoid potential medication
errors related to look-alike and sound-alike proprietary names and
mitigating other
factors that contribute to medication
errors, such as unclear label abbreviations, acronyms, dose
designations, and error prone label and packaging design. Additional
information on advertising and promotional labeling is available on
the CBER website at:
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Advertising
LabelingPromotionalMaterials/ucm164120.htm
and
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Advertising
LabelingPromotionalMaterials/ucm117616.htm.
Federal regulations specify what can and
cannot be included in the advertising and marketing of prescription
drug products. This information can be found in Title 21 of the
Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Section 202.1
(http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2014/aprqtr/pdf/21cfr202.1.pdf)
and 203
(http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_08/21cfr203_08.html).
In addition to FDA regulations, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
has requirements for advertisements of health products targeting
consumers. You may wish to contact the FTC for more information on
their regulations (http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/contact.shtm).
It is important to note that FDA regulations
apply to advertising and promotion by or on behalf of the drug
product manufacturer. FDA does not have jurisdiction over the
statements of other persons. For accurate information, we suggest
that consumers refer to FDA’s website and the FDA approved labeling
for drug products.
We hope this information has been helpful.
Sincerely,
Jill Burkoff
Consumer Safety Officer
Consumer Affairs Branch
Division of Communication and Consumer
Affairs
Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research
US Food and Drug Administration
Follow us on Twitter: FDA
CBER
This communication is consistent with 21
CFR 10.85 (k) and constitutes an informal communication that
represents my best judgment at this time but does not constitute an
advisory opinion, does not necessarily represent the formal position
of FDA, and does not bind or otherwise obligate or commit the agency
to the views expressed.
Subject:
|
Re: 10340 FW: 10328 FW: Consumer complaint concerning false
vaccine safety claims made by MaineHealth |
Date:
|
Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:29:05 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <Ginger@GingerTaylor.com> |
To:
|
CBER OCOD Consumer Account <cberocod@fda.hhs.gov> |
Ms.
Burkhoff,
This is very helpful. I will review what you
have send and will be back in touch if I have more questions.
Thank
you,
Bold in letter from Ms. Burkhoff above is mine:
FDA does not have jurisdiction over the statements of other persons.
To
the Food and Drug Administration
I would
like to file a complaint against MaineHealth for making fraudulent
statements concerning one of their product lines.
MaineHealth,
both on the VaxMaineKids.org web site and during an interview on MPBN
on December 1, have made false vaccine safety claims. I have
contacted VaxMaineKids, MaineHealth and MPBN to ask for a retraction
and correction of the false marketing messages that they are issuing
to the public, but none of the organizations will properly address
the issue.
VaxMaineKids.org
makes the false claims on their web site that:
“THERE
IS NO EVIDENCE THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM.”
And that, “No
other medical study anywhere in the world has ever found a link
between vaccines and autism. Not one.”
(http://www.vaxmainekids.org/mythbuster-series-autism/)
During
an email exchange last summer with Cassandra Grantham, Program
Director of Child Health at MaineHealth, initiated by Ms. Grantham
after I had written about her work, I corrected the misinformation,
sending VaxMaineKids a list with dozens of studies that link vaccines
and autism.
(http://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/86-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-Vaccine-Autism-Link)
Ms. Grantham failed to correct the false claims on the MaineHealth
web site, and wrote that she was no longer interested in discussing
the matter any further with me.
Ms. Grantham, representing
MaineHealth, made further false claims on December 1st
on MPBN's Maine Calling, when she claimed that there were multiple
studies comparing populations of unvaccinated children to children
fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule that have found no
increased risk in autism among fully vaccinated children.
In
fact, no such research exists, as testified to by Dr.
Colleen
Boyle,
Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities during the House Oversight & Government Reform
Committee hearing 1
in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of
Autism on
November 29, 2012. In response to a question whether or not autism
risk had been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr.
Boyle stated, "We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
I wrote to Ms. Grantham to ask that she cite her sources or
retract her false claim. In her response, she referred to three
publications as sources for her information, none of which referenced
a vaccinated v.. unvaccinated autism study. In fact, one of her
references, a 2013 report by the Institute of Medicine on the current
US vaccine program, addressed the lack vaccinated v. unvaccinated
research as a whole, and specifically in regard to autism and other
developmental disabilities, and notes that parents and the public
have been asking for this research for some time. The IOM report
recommends against performing such research, because, although they
admit it can be accomplished and would be informative, it would also
be costly, time consuming and difficult.
Ms. Grantham
actually replied to me with information that confirms my allegations
against her false claim by MaineHealth.
I
have contacted several staff members at MaineHealth to ask for a
retraction and for clarification of their stance on a public policy.
I have received no reply.
Further, I have contacted both Maine
Calling hosts and producers, as well as MPBN management, to ask for a
retraction of these fraudulent claims, but none have replied.
I
have attached the email chains below.
It is imperative that
the FDA provide oversight in this matter, as the federal 1986
National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has removed the rights of
families to sue corporations like MaineHealth when members are harmed
or killed by a vaccine. The result of this blanket liability
protection which has been in place for decades is that physicians,
medical care providers, health corporations and even government
agencies routinely put out false safety and efficacy information,
because there is no mechanism by which the public may directly hold
them accountable for fraudulent claims. The public's right to take
these entities into a civil court, force them to testify under oath,
have judgments rendered by a jury and have remedies be enforced by a
judge has been removed. As a result, misinformation can be
circulated by both malicious and merely uninformed parties, including
doctors providing recommendations to patients in their offices. Bad
faith parties and organizations who wish to make outright fraudulent
claims are free to do so without fear of legal reprisal from their
customers, even if the worst possible outcome happens and the
vaccination that was delivered under false information or coercion
results in the death of a child.
This complaint does not
represent the total number of false statements made by Ms. Grantham
and MaineHealth but is a short complaint on the easily corrected
fraud currently taking place. In light of their refusal to correct
even these extremely obvious false statements, I believe that a full
accounting of their vaccine safety claims is appropriate.
Further,
Ms. Grantham in her professional, role has been quoted in the
Portland Press Herald as advocating the elimination of the
philosophical vaccine exemption in Maine. This would remove the
rights of children to a free and appropriate education if their
parents did not choose to vaccinate as the state requests. As
vaccines are legally classified by the federal government as
“Unavoidably Unsafe” (which means they cannot be made safe for
their intended use) and can result in serious diseases, disorders,
disability, brain damage and death, it a civil rights matter that
parents and individuals be free to exercise their right to informed
consent, and to reject one or more vaccines for one’s self or one’s
child. It is also a civil rights matter that children be allowed
equal access to a free and appropriate public education without being
impeded by discriminatory policies. In their actions in the last 6
months, I assert that MaineHealth has demonstrated a willingness
commit fraud in order to achieve their goal of removing either
families’ rights to medical informed consent or the right to a
public education for their children to increase vaccine sales.
In
no other area of medicine are these types of false claims on
pharmaceutical products tolerated. I hope that the FDA will take
this matter seriously and exercise its authority here to protect
consumers against false vaccine safety claims.
Attachment:
Subject:
|
False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's Maine
Calling |
Date:
|
Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:45:00 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura Blaisdell <blaisl@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Dodge Patstone
<patsta@mmc.org> |
Ms. Grantham,
This week on MPBN's Maine Calling, in
response to a question about vaccine safety, you made the following
claim:
MPBN:
“Cassandra what kind of research is out there about the safety of
vaccines?”
Cassandra Grantham: “So what's really great is
that is that many different organizations have put a lot of time and
effort into understanding the safety and efficacy behind vaccines and
there have been several recent studies that have actually come out
looking at associations between vaccinations and different situations
that kids may find themselves in, autism being one of them, but many
others. And of course we can't do studies that actually force
families not to immunize their children so that we can look at what
we would call it a randomized controlled trial, it's just not fair.
So what we have been able to do is look back over time at different
populations of children and we've actually found that kids who are
immunized, completely immunized with all of the vaccines according to
the the schedule that Dr. Blaisdell
was
mentioning the one that recommended by the CDC, that they have no
higher risk of getting autism and some of these other developmental
challenges that families face than those kids that delayed or did not
receive any immunizations at all. So we're finding that there is
research that is now delving deeper into this topic and actually
proving that the CDC's recommended schedule is safe and it does work
and it doesn't increase risks of other situations for kids.”
To the best of my knowledge, this is a
false claim, as no such research exists. This as testified to
by
Dr.
Coleen Boyle, Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects
and Developmental Disabilities during the House Oversight &
Government Reform Committee hearing
1 in 88 Children: A Look Into
the Federal Response to Rising Rates of Autism on November 29,
2012. In response to a question whether or not autism risk had
been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr. Boyle stated,
"We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
http://youtu.be/O_GrCAzpA_0?t=9m20s
(please see the notes in the video that addresses the claims made by
Dr. Koren Boggs that such research exists in further detail.)
My
understanding of the history of this topic is that the first such
request for a study was made by the FDA in 1981 after they removed
mercury from over the counter products. FDA declined to ban it
from vaccines, asking CDC to first do a vaccinated v. unvaccinated
study to see if it increased health risks, however CDC declined to
perform the study.
The autism and vaccine injury communities
have been asking for such a retrospective study to be done for more
than a decade now, and health authorities have continued to refuse.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the
Comprehensive
Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of
2007
(
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.2832:)
to force NIH to do such a study, and reintroduced such legislation in
the years since. In response to what he learned from Dr. Boyle
during the 2012 hearings, Rep Bill Posey (R-FL) joined with Maloney
and introduced H.R. 1757, The Vaccine Safety Study Act
(
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2013/04/26/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/E576-1)
that would again compel HHS to perform the study that you claim
already exists.
The bill was not passed, nor to my
knowledge has any vaccinated v. unvaccinated research on autism or
any other developmental disabilities been published since Dr. Boyle
offered her testimony before Congress.
As such it is
appropriate for you to either produce the citation for this research
that the vaccine injury community has been lobbying for, or to
retract your false safety claims on MPBN for the product line you are
representing.
Your false claims are only made more
egregious by the fact that you have publicly stated in the Portland
Press Herald that, "Eliminating the philosophic [vaccine]
exemption is the ultimate goal." It is my belief that you
are purposely lying to the public in order to remove parental rights
and deny Maine children a Free And Appropriate Education in order to
promote sales of a product line whose lack of safety is thoroughly
documented both by the federal government and the product packaging
itself. This type of propaganda sales campaign should not be
tolerated by any responsible medical professional, health
organization, media outlet or legislator.
(
http://www.pressherald.com/2014/08/14/state-legislators-to-seek-stronger-vaccine-laws/)
I
await your response,
Ginger Taylor, MS
Mother of a vaccine injured
child
Co-author of Vaccine
Epidemic
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
RE: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 8 Dec 2014 19:31:25 +0000 |
From:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
To:
|
'Ginger Taylor' <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Hello
Ginger ~
Thank you
for listening to MPBN’s Maine Calling Show – it is great to know
that we have reached such a wide audience with important vaccine
messages. I want to clarify that I do not represent any product
line or company other than MaineHealth, which is a health system
which supports on-time childhood immunizations. I have never
been paid by or consulted for a pharmaceutical or medical
intervention company or agency. Please see below for MaineHealth’s
official statement regarding childhood immunizations.
MaineHealth supports the
health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and
young adults. We believe that vaccinating children on-time, as
recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Family
Physicians (AAFP), and the American College of Obstetrics and
Gynecology (ACOG), is one of the best ways to reduce
vaccine-preventable diseases in our communities and keep children
safe and healthy.
In regards
to my statements about vaccine safety, I based those on these
studies.
1.
http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(13)00144-3/abstract
2.
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/The-Childhood-Immunization-Schedule-and-Safety.aspx
3.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/06/26/peds.2014-1079.abstract
I will not
respond to future emails on this subject.
Furthermore,
I request that you cease and desist using my image on your blog,
Facebook page and other websites you support and represent.
Cassandra
Cassandra
Cote Grantham, MA
Program
Director
Childhood
Immunizations and Raising Readers
Community
Health Improvement
MaineHealth
110
Free Street
Portland,
ME 04101
Phone:
207-661-7578
Fax:
207-661-7547
cotec1@mainehealth.org
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This
email message, including any attachments, is for the use of the
intended recipient(s) only and may contain information that is
privileged, confidential, and prohibited from unauthorized disclosure
under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient of this
message, any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message
is strictly prohibited. If you received this message in error, please
notify the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the
original message and attachments.
Subject:
|
Re: False Vaccine Safety Claims made by MaineHealth on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:37:29 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org> |
CC:
|
Laura L. Blaisdell <BLAISL@mmc.org>, Mark Vogelzang
<mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and Jonathan Smith
<talk@mpbn.net>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
Ms.
Grantham,
None of the citations you offer contain any research
on autism risk, or any other developmental disabilities, in
vaccinated v. unvaccinated children, which is the claim you made on
Maine Calling. Again, no such publish research exists in any
form.
I therefore demand a retraction of the fraudulent
safety claim by yourself, MaineHealth and MPBN.
I will not
cease using your image, as this is a very newsworthy story and the
professional headshot of a medical corporation employee making false
claims about the product safety of the pharmaceuticals that it sells
is fair use of this image.
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
Subject:
|
Request for Retraction of False Vaccine Safety Claims on MPBN's
Maine Calling |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:12:12 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
Mark Vogelzang <mvogelzang@mpbn.net>, Jennifer Rooks and
Jonathan Smith <talk@mpbn.net>, Jonathan Smith
<jpsmith@mpbn.net> |
CC:
|
Cassandra Grantham <COTEC1@mmc.org>, Laura L. Blaisdell
<BLAISL@mmc.org>, Rep. Andrea Boland
<sixwings@metrocast.net>, Andrea Patstone
<PATSTA@mainehealth.org> |
Ms.
Rooks, Mr. Smith and Mr. Vogelzang,
On your December 1 episode
of Maine Calling, Cassandra Grantham, a representative of
MaineHealth, made a fraudulent safety claim on your show. I
have copied you on the my email exchange with her, which details the
false claim, my correction of the false information as supported by
the Congressional testimony of the head of the CDC's Director of the
National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and
my request to Ms. Grantham for her to cite the multiple studies that
she claim exist or retract her claim.
As you can see, she has
failed to produce any research comparing autism rates in vaccinated
and unvaccinated populations and failed to retract her claim.
I
there for request that Maine Calling retract Ms. Grantham's claim in
the same format which it was offered, noting the false claim on the
archived version of the interview if MPBN chooses to leave it
online.
I further strongly encourage Maine Calling to perform
an honest evaluation on why vaccine rates are low in Maine and
falling nationally. As the educated mother of a vaccine injured
child, I can attest to the real reason. It is because the
liability protection given to the entire vaccine industry in 1986 has
resulted in massive corruption in the vaccine program. Ms.
Graham's behavior on your show is case in point. Medical
providers and medical industry representatives can make any safety
claims that they choose, even completely false claims, because there
is no accountability mechanism in place for the public to hold them
accountable for false claims. Even when a child is killed by a
vaccine after a false claim like this is made to a parent coercing
them into administering a vaccine that they would not have otherwise
agreed to have delivered to their child, there is no recourse to hold
anyone accountable, or even force them to stop making these false
claims. So false claims like this one, once spoken by someone
claiming to hold authority in vaccinated, simply continue to
circulate and be repeated.
No doubt Ms. Grantham's
false claim will now be circulated by those who have heard your
program, even medical professionals who administer vaccines to
children.
The vaccine show you did with these three women on
December 1, was not just about vaccine rejection, it is the REASON
for vaccine rejection. It is a real time example of how and why
vaccine interests are alienating and loosing the public trust by
abusing the public trust. Your guests correctly reported that
the exodus from the vaccine program is being lead by educated parents
who have serious misgivings of the safety and trustworthyness of the
vaccine program, while they themselves were making false claims about
the safety of the vaccine program, thereby proving the untrustworthy
of the vaccine program. And MPBN is participating in this
corruption by allowing false claims to made on your platform with out
challenge or correction.
I hope that the irony that a show you
aired to raise confidence in the vaccination is actually destroying
trust in the vaccination is not lost on you.
Now this
claim of Ms. Grantham is merely one of many problematic statements
made by herself, MaineHealth, VaxMaineKids.org and Dr. Blaisdell, and
I would be happy to go over the false information that they are
sharing with the public under the guise of serving the public if you
decide to do a proper investigation of the fraud taking place in the
vaccine program both in Maine and at the federal level.
But
for now, I await a response on your retraction of this particular
false statement. I cannot imagine that MPBN would allow
any medical professional, industry representative or government
official to make such false claims about any other medical product
line or medical program. I don't expect Maine Calling to allow
this to stand either.
Thank you for your consideration,
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Media
Director
HealthChoice.org
Facebook
Twitter
818-402-9672
No
reply from MPBN as of this filing.
Subject:
|
Information Requested on how to file a formal complaint against
a Maine Health staffer for fraudulent claims |
Date:
|
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 19:25:15 -0500 |
From:
|
Ginger Taylor <GTaylor@HealthChoice.org> |
To:
|
William Caron <Caronw@mainehealth.org>, Kimberly Nemic
<nemeck@mainehealth.org> |
CC:
|
Rebecca Arseneault <rarsenault@fchn.org>, Deborah
Deatrick, MPH <deatrd@mainehealth.org>, Robert Frank
<frankr1@mainehealth.org>, Katie Fullam Harris
<harrik2@mainehealth.org>, Cassandra Grantham
<COTEC1@mmc.org>, Jonathan Smith <jpsmith@mpbn.net>,
Joe Lawlor <jlawlor@pressherald.com>, Laura Blaisdell
<blaisl@mmc.org> |
Dear
MaineHealth,
This past week, Cassandra Grantham of MaineHealth
appeared on MPBN's Maine Calling and made a fraudulent vaccine safety
claim. She reported to the public that there are several studies
comparing vaccinated v. unvaccinated children that find no increase
risk of autism and other developmental disabilities in children
vaccinated according to the CDC's recommended schedule.
In
fact, no such research has ever been published.
I
contacted Ms. Grantham and asked that she cite the research she
claims has been undertaken, or retract her statement. She not
only failed to cite such studies, she actually cited a 2013 IOM
report that confirmed that no such research exists in the medical
literature, and that recommended against undertaking such research
because of cost, time and difficulty. She has also failed to
retract her fraudulent claim and says she will not be responding to
me on this matter again.
This is just the latest of several
false vaccine safety research claims that Ms. Grantham has made on
behalf of MaineHealth both in public and on the VaxMaineKids.org web
site, a MaineHealth Childhood Immunizations Program project.
Several of these false statements have been brought to her attention
over the last five months, and she has failed to properly address
them. I can therefore only assume that Ms. Grantham is a bad
faith player and is purposefully misleading of Mainers on vaccine
safety matters
This is made all the more egregious as Ms.
Grantham has been quoted in the Portland
Press Herald as stating that, “Eliminating the philosophic
[vaccine] exemption is the ultimate goal,” of the work your
organization is undertaking. It is unconscionable that
MaineHealth would make fraudulent safety claims in order to advance
the agenda of removing parental rights and depriving children of a
free and appropriate public education if their families decline to
participate in a medical program that presents severe adverse health
risks including disability, brain damage and death.
I wish to
file a formal complaint against Ms. Grantham with MaineHealth.
I believe that it is the duty of MaineHealth to review and retract
Ms. Grantham's false vaccine safety claims and to exercise
disciplinary action against Ms. Grantham, as well as clarify the
organization's position on the rights of parents to receive full and
accurate vaccine safety and efficacy information, and practice
uncoerced informed consent in vaccination.
I have forwarded
the email exchanges with Ms. Grantham and MPBN below for your
review.
I am publicly documenting this process here.
Please
direct me to appropriate contact on this matter so I may offer a full
account of the problem and offer MaineHealth my support in assuring
that it is offering accurate, evidence based information on vaccine
safety to the public.
Thank you,
Ginger Taylor
Brunswick,
Maine
12/22/2014
Per
Maura Squire FDA New England
Phone
call: She spoke to her supervisor, Mr. Eliot, an he reports that my
complaint is not under FDA jurisdiction. He referred me to: FTC,
State Of Maine, Better Business Bureau
To
the Federal Trade Commission: via web site
12/22/14
I would
like to file a complaint against MaineHealth for making fraudulent
statements concerning one of their product lines.
MaineHealth,
both on their VaxMaineKids.org web site and during an interview on
Maine Public Broadcasting (MPBN) on December 1, have made false
vaccine safety claims. I have contacted VaxMaineKids, MaineHealth
and MPBN to ask for a retraction and correction of the false
marketing messages that they are issuing to the public, but none of
the organizations will properly address the issue.
VaxMaineKids.org
makes the false claims on their web site that:
“THERE
IS NO EVIDENCE THAT VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM.”
And that, “No
other medical study anywhere in the world has ever found a link
between vaccines and autism. Not one.”
(http://www.vaxmainekids.org/mythbuster-series-autism/)
During
an email exchange with Cassandra Grantham, Program Director of Child
Health at MaineHealth, initiated by Ms. Grantham after I had written
about her work, I corrected the misinformation, sending VaxMaineKids
a list with dozens of studies that link vaccines and autism.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/86-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-Vaccine-Autism-Link
Ms. Grantham failed to correct the false claims on the MaineHealth
web site.
Ms. Grantham, representing MaineHealth, made further
false claims on December 1st
on MPBN's Maine Calling, when she claimed that there were multiple
studies comparing populations of unvaccinated children to children
fully vaccinated according to the CDC schedule that have found no
increased risk in autism among fully vaccinated children.
In
fact, no such research exists, as testified to by Dr.
Colleen
Boyle,
Director of CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental
Disabilities during the House Oversight & Government Reform
Committee hearing, 1
in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of
Autism on
November 29, 2012. In response to a question whether or not autism
risk had been studied in vaccinated v. unvaccinated children Dr.
Boyle stated, "We have not studied vaccinated v. unvaccinated."
I wrote to Ms. Grantham to ask that she cite her sources or
retract her false claim. In her response, she referred to three
publications as sources for her information, none of which referenced
such a study. In fact, one of her references, a 2013 report by the
Institute of Medicine on the current US vaccine program, addressed
the lack vaccinated v. unvaccinated research in regard to autism, and
notes that parents and the public have been asking for this research
for some time.
It
is imperative that the FTC provide oversight in this matter, as the
federal 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has removed the
rights of families to sue corporations like MaineHealth when members
are harmed or killed by a vaccine.
Ms.
Grantham, in her professional, role has been quoted in the Portland
Press Herald as advocating the elimination of the philosophical
vaccine exemption in Maine. This would remove the right of children
to a free and appropriate education if their parents did not choose
to vaccinate as the state requests. I assert that MaineHealth has
demonstrated a willingness commit fraud in order to achieve their
goal of removing either families’ rights to medical informed
consent or the right to a public education for their children to
increase vaccine sales.
So doctors... feel free to claim that vaccines are made of rainbows and unicorn tears if you think you patients will believe you... cause no one cares if you lie.
Update 2017. I tried again, with more success this time to get Maine to police MaineHealth. They opened an inquiry, made a nonsense judgement, and closed the case. All communications are here:
