This is a much belated post that wraps up the state and federal responses to MaineHealth, and Vax Maine Kids false vaccine safety claims, made on MPBN in late 2014.
By way of reminder, Cassandra Grantham, representing Vax Maine Kids, claimed that there are "several" vaccinated v. unvaccinated studies that show that the product line her company is selling, vaccines, are safe, because fully vaccinated children have no higher autism rates than unvaccinated children.
No such research exists.
The initial post about her interview, including my emails to and from Ms. Grantham confronting her on her fraud, is here:
The follow up post, the one where I document trying to get state and federal authorities to hold MaineHealth accountable for their fraud, is here:
Well after all that, I tried one more time to get Maine to do the right thing. They did not do the right thing.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Licensing and Regulatory Services determined that my concerns and allegations, "do not meet the criteria for an on-site investigation."
Of course why a false claim on the radio, about research that the federal government has stated does not exist, would require an "on-site investigation," is completely beyond me.
My request for an explanation of why this odd ruling was made has gone unanswered.
My complaint:
To
the Maine Department of Health and Human Services
Division
of Licensing and Regulatory Services
Complaint
against MaineHealth for making false product safety claims on
pharmaceuticals sold and administered by their corporation.
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, 2014, 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. (The list now stands at 108 research papers.
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 1, 2014 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
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message, any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message
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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
 |
| Click for larger version |
Request for explanation:
From:
Ginger Taylor
[mailto:ginger@mainevaxchoice.org] Sent:
Wednesday, February 22, 2017 5:33 PMTo:
Peebles, Diannah RCc:
Sherwood, CherylSubject:
Re: FW: Maine Medical Center 20323
Ms. Peebles,
Thank you.
I
will publishing on this soon, and I do have a follow up question.
I reported fraudulent safety claims made by an employee of
MaineHealth on MPBN, and on their web site. Why was this handled as
if I was reporting a safety violation in a facility? Why would a
false claim on the radio and in public warrant a facility inspection,
and why was this not investigated properly to see if indeed
MaineHealth, via VaxMaineKids, is making fraudulent safety claims?
I
see this ruling as nonsensical. Can you explain this to me?
Ginger
Taylor, MS
Director
Maine Coalition for Vaccine
Choice
207-200-8469
Subject:
|
RE: FW: Maine Medical Center 20323 |
Date:
|
Thu, 23 Feb 2017 13:22:03 +0000 |
From:
|
Peebles, Diannah R <Diannah.R.Peebles@maine.gov> |
To:
|
'Ginger Taylor' <ginger@mainevaxchoice.org> |
Dear
Ms. Taylor,
I
only generate the letter per what is entered into our system.
This
was forwarded to my supervisor today.
Thank
you.
Diannah
Peebles
Office
Asscociate II
Acute
Care Team
(207)
287-5016
Maine Center for Disease
Control and Prevention – Preserve ~Promote~ Protect
No response from her supervisor was recieved.
