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In his new book “Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines,” attorney Aaron Siri challenges readers to “stop believing in these products and instead start thinking about them.”
In an interview with Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland on CHD.TV, Siri said he hopes to shift the “cultural cognition” around vaccines.
According to Siri, accepting the assurances of pharmaceutical companies, public health officials and others often demands a faith-like belief, since many common claims about vaccine safety and efficacy conflict with the evidence.
By gathering and presenting extensive data from clinical trials and post-licensure marketing studies — much of it uncovered through his legal depositions and lawsuits — Siri told Holland that he wants to push people to evaluate vaccines as consumer products instead of treating them as matters of faith.
“My hope is that [people] walk away going, ‘Wow, I should just treat this like every other product. I need to stop believing. I need to start thinking,’” Siri said.
Book outlines ‘egregious issues’ with safety testing
Siri criticized what he described as “egregious issues” with pre-licensure and post-licensure safety testing for vaccines. He said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves most vaccines without requiring placebo-controlled trials and conducts only limited follow-up safety research.
The number of vaccines given to young children has skyrocketed since the 1970s, and “every single one of those products, as your viewers know, was trialed by a company, except for one. … Knowing … that they would not be responsible for the deaths and serious injuries caused by those products.”
Siri said that because the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act shields companies from liability for vaccine injuries, “they don’t have any economic interest to show that they’re safe before licensure.”
That sets vaccines apart from all other drugs, he said. For all other medications, companies typically conduct multi-year, placebo-controlled trials to prove safety and avoid liability once the drugs are on the market.
Corporations “operate based on what’s going to be best for the bottom line,” he said.
Most childhood vaccines were licensed after a clinical trial that involved only “days or weeks of safety review, maybe up to six,” Siri said. His book examines the trials for all vaccines routinely given to children, allowing readers to review evidence for themselves.
Siri also cited a 2012 Institute of Medicine (IOM) review, commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which surveyed the literature on post-vaccination safety studies in an attempt to confirm vaccine safety. The IOM couldn’t find studies disproving links between certain vaccines and adverse events, including encephalopathy and other serious conditions.
“It’s not me saying that the post-licensure safety literature is vacuous,” he said. “It’s the Institute of Medicine.” The IOM, since renamed the National Academy of Medicine, states that it is an independent, “nonprofit organization committed to nonpartisan, evidence-based leadership.”
Vaccine experts ‘won’t show up at debates’
Holland said that when the “Church of Vaccinology” finds there is no evidence for its claims, it takes “a leap that most of us would call a lie to say … they’re safe.”
Siri agreed, saying government agencies use “the lack of evidence” to assert safety claims. He called this approach “not science.”
Most vaccinologists refuse to publicly debate the data on vaccine safety, he said. “They won’t show up at debates. That’s why they don’t come up to the Senate hearings to debate. … They stay in the background pretty … well.”
He said he often deposes experts for lawsuits, and when confronted with data, “they get emotional … they can’t draw from their intellect. They get angry.”
“I have found the average parent that does not vaccinate … knows more about the underlying products and can speak … more about data and science than the typical infectious disease doctor,” he said.
Vaccine mandates and individual rights
Siri said compulsory vaccination policies violate informed consent and personal freedom, and that his law firm focuses on challenging these violations.
Holland asked Siri why he thought the “‘Vaccines, Amen’ crowd” seemed so determined to coerce others into getting vaccinated and to exclude people who refuse vaccines from schools, jobs and other spaces. “What is that zealotry?” she asked.
“When it’s a religion, when it’s a belief, people who don’t share that belief, they cause discord,” Siri said.
Excluding unvaccinated children from schools and workplaces has sparked activism, he said. Many states allow exemptions and maintain high vaccination rates, meaning vaccine advocates could likely achieve their goals without coercion.
“When you deprive that choice from people, you’re going to create folks who are going to come out and fight you,” he said.
He pointed out that no one protests statins, even though they can be dangerous or ineffective, because people aren’t required to take them — they have a choice.
“But you have a movement with regard to vaccines because those that the mandates affect are not those who want it. … It’s impacting … the very … group of people who really need to avoid this product,” he said.
The phenomenon has spread globally, Holland said.
According to Siri, the pharmaceutical industry has fueled it by funding journals, doctors’ associations, medical schools, trusted health authorities and more, giving them considerable influence in the media.
“Government needs to persuade people on the merits … if they can’t persuade them, that’s where it needs to end,” he said. Everyone should fight government vaccine mandates, whether or not they choose to take vaccines. He said:
“If they don’t fight back now against government overreach, they might be too late. Because if you can’t go to school and you can’t get a job and you can’t leave your home and you can’t go to church and you can’t go on public transportation without getting a medical product you don’t want, then you don’t really have any rights.
“And that’s why I consider the right to informed consent and the right to say no without any coercion a fundamental right, just as important to free speech, freedom of assembly and so forth.”
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The ‘cult’ of vaccines?
Holland asked Siri whether he believed the government’s promotion of vaccines amounted to an “establishment of religion.” Siri said that while he had not made that legal claim, the analogy was apt.
“If I point to some product and I say it does something it cannot do as a basis to throw a child out of school, that’s … religion,” he said.
He said he used the term “religion” metaphorically, not in an anti-religious sense. “These folks hold on to beliefs about these products [that] require you to engage in … faith,” he said.
Siri said people often ask whether it’s more of a cult than a religion. He explained that cults are small fringe groups, while religions typically hold widespread beliefs. He said he hopes growing public scrutiny about vaccines will eventually mean that only “a small fringe group” would continue to hold those beliefs.
Siri urged viewers to share information and engage with elected officials about vaccine policy. If “everybody who understands this issue” would “do one piece … just one [a] few hours once a year. … I think it would make a big difference,” he said.
Watch the interview here:
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- Authors of ‘Astonishing’ Study Showing Unvaccinated Kids Are Healthier Refused to Go Public With Results
- Hep B Vaccines Come With High Risk, Little Benefit — Why Does CDC Recommend Them for Every Newborn?
