A FEW WEEKS AGO, the deadline arrived for submitting comments to the CDC’s proposed changes to the MMR Vaccine Information Sheets. The initial reporting of the events are here.
Like most American citizens, Ms. Bernadette Pajer and I do not enjoy having any of Constitutional Rights trampled. We are therefore not going to stand by while our, and other American citizen’s rights protected by the First Amendment are denied by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention without a fight. There appears to be no length to which CDC will not go to continue to manipulate the perception of risks of vaccine injury, while doing nothing to minimize that risk.
Ironically, just prior to the deadline for Public Comments, Atty. Jim Moody put out a call for anyone who ran into troubles having their comments published to contact him because, in his view, redaction of invited public comments is among the weakest flanks those controlling the public’s perceptions of vaccine risk from within CDC could possibly make. Others have called the CDC’s decision to publish PART of our comments but to redact others, well, “stupid”.
Ms. Pajer and I are sorry to have to share with my readers the letters sent to CDC by Mr. Moody to rectify their wrongdoing. Mary Holland, a Legal Scholar at New York University School of Law, reports to us that her comments have yet to even appear, redacted or otherwise. {UPDATE 1/26 – MARY’S COMMENTS APPEARED THREE DAYS AFTER OUR LETTER WENT OUT}
When government agencies interfere with their employees’ communications on matters of national security, that’s one thing. When those same government agencies attempt to interfere with OUR ability to communicate with each other, that’s a completely different matter altogether.
Mr. Moody’s letter appears below. It provides some information on the nature of the content that CDC decided was too dangerous for a pair of American citizens to communicate to other American citizens. (Here is PDF of the letter:170123-jam-cdc-improper-redactions).
We will not disclose further the exact comments in the redacted sections because we feel that we have already communicated them to the public via the CDC’s public comment forum. CDC must stop interfering in those communications.
We hope we can look forward to CDC backing down and publishing ALL of the public comments, unredacted. Let’s not forget that the topic that we were attempting to engage CDC and the rest of the interested public dealt matters that we felt (and feel) are very important and relevant: CDC’s proposed weakening of the MMR Vaccine Information Sheets. That is, further denial of true informed consent, which is another issue, for another day. We also provide a link to CDC’s Proposed MMR VIS Revisions after the letter, so you can go there and read at least some of your fellow American’s thoughts on the weakening of vaccine risk information.Note that CDC has received 344 comments (upper right-hand corner) but only 275 have been posted (left-hand bottom). So Mary Holland’s comment is one of 75 CDC has not posted.
If you are looking for the public comments, CDC updated their website DURING the final 24 hours of the public comment period, and this is the result- more obfuscation:
Not to worry. They left the back door open: https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=CDC-2016-0094.