How the Vaccine-Autism War Ends…

By Kent Heckenlively, J.D.

I’ve handed out somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty copies of the DVD, “VAXXED: From Cover-up to Catastrophe,” the fine documentary by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, Del Bigtree, and Polly Tommey, about the allegations of CDC whistle-blower, Dr. William Thompson, and the allegation of a cover-up of research linking the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine to autism.

Usually this follows a predictable pattern, with me feeling like I’ve essentially thrown another DVD down the black hole of societal indifference.  But sometimes I’m surprised.

The Subtle Change…

This last week, one teacher (I’ll call her Darcy*) I’d given it to, returned it to me with a short note that simply said, “WOW!”  After school ended that day I called Darcy and said I wanted to know more.  She briefly told me she thought it was powerful, but then said she had to rush off, and we’d find some time later to talk about it.

The next day I stopped by her room and she had more time for me.  “Yeah, I thought it was really well-done,” she said, then proceeded to ask me some questions, such as whether I thought the issue would be fixed by breaking up the MMR shot into its individual components, or whether I thought that vaccines should be avoided entirely.

They were wonderful questions, and I struggled to answer them.  I confessed that a lot of my answers had a great deal of vagueness to them, but it wasn’t due to my lack of consideration of the issue.  The problem was the lack of good science done by our public health agencies.

I said that I believed breaking up the MMR vaccines into its individual components was SAFER, but couldn’t say it was SAFE.  As to the vaccine program itself, if you believe the authorities have lied about one portion of it, what makes you believe the rest of it has any validity?  It’s a little like saying you trust that drunk driver who smashed up his car with your kid in it on last Saturday, because it’s Monday, and he says he’s only a weekend drinker.

When it comes to the safety of children, I’m going to have to have a little more information than has presently been provided.  I told her I had a simple answer.  Get rid of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, throw ALL the vaccines back into the regular civil justice system, then let the attorneys work on these cases for the next five years, and take another look.  Our justice system can handle vaccines fine.  The vaccines just need to be in the regular civil justice system, and not in the abomination called “Vaccine Court.”

It was then that our conversation took a deeper turn.  Darcy said, “Everything in that documentary is just like what happened to my nephew.”

That’s when I had to take a breath.  I have known Darcy for more than seven years.  I have seen her in parent-student meetings and she is amazing.  Her love for the students and clear-eyed assessment of their strengths and weaknesses is something I have always admired.  Darcy is one of those teachers who really stands out.  She is always well-dressed, thoughtful, confident, and unlike many teachers, free of drama.

“Your nephew?”  I asked.

She told me the story of her nephew, who suffered a reaction to the MMR vaccine, and developed autism.  Around the same time, she had her own son.  When she took him to the doctor, she asked if he could break up the MMR shots, and the doctor said that was too expensive and the companies didn’t do it.

“I give my own kids these shots,” the doctor lectured her.

“I really felt bullied,” Darcy remembered more than fifteen years later.  “I let my son get those shots, but for the next several weeks I watched him like a hawk.  Thank God nothing happened to him, but I’ve always wondered about that. I feel bad that I let myself be bullied.  If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t put him at risk.”

To say I was floored by her story is an understatement.

“What do you think is going to happen with this issue?” she asked.

It’s a question I get a lot.  “Well, I’m not going to stop talking about it,” I said.  “And it seems to me that the only way the other side can stop us is by shutting us up somehow, whether by shame, or force of law, prison, or maybe even a bullet to the head, like they do in some countries to political dissidents.  But I don’t think that’s going to happen in the United States.  Sure, there will be the social-shaming, and saying we want children to die, but the more extreme measures?  I don’t think so.”

“You’re going to save a lot of kids,” she said.

I was struck by the calm confidence with which she spoke.  I often talk about the value of open discussion, the ability to persuade reasonable people that we have opinions which need to be considered, but until Darcy spoke those words, I wondered if I really believed them.

I think that calmed something in my raging soul, at least for the moment.  I love being a teacher.  I love teaching multiple perspectives to my students.  I love showing them how one advance in science might raise an entire host of new problems that were NEVER anticipated.  I will put myself at the head of the line for not anticipating new problems.

Maybe I’d been speaking to Darcy to simply clarify things in my own mind, but the power of what I’d come up with surprised me.  I had correctly identified the BALANCE OF FORCES.

As long as we keep talking, despite the mainstream media blackout, we will eventually win.  They cannot quiet us, and unfortunately, because of THEIR actions, our ranks continue to grow.  At one point in our conversation I told Darcy, “In the early 2000s I think the scientists at the Centers for Disease Control had a choice.  They had not believed that vaccines were linked to autism, but they investigated the question with a good research plan for both mercury and the MMR shot.  However, when they got the data back, and it confirmed a link, they were faced with a moral choice.  And they made an immoral decision to hide that data.  That’s a crime against humanity.”

And in the midst of me dealing every day with my severely vaccine-injured daughter, I had a moment of clarity.  I will NEVER stop.  The other parents will NEVER stop.  We are patriots who work without pay because it is right.  They are mercenaries.  We are so much stronger than the other side.

I will continue to tell the story. 

This is resistance literature, no different than that told by freedom-fighters all across the globe and throughout history.  The other side believes it is OKAY to cover up harm to children.  WE do not.

I encourage you to look back in history, to oppressive regimes which thought they were invincible.  They have all fallen.  The victims tell their stories throughout the generations.  We will do the same.  Those who perpetrated the atrocities?  They remain strangely silent.  Their own children turn away from them in shame.

Here’s how the Vaccine-Autism war ends. 

We win.  They lose.  The memory of what they have done will cling to their children for generations to come, like the children of Nazi war criminals who were horrified by the crimes of their parents.  And what about us?  We were the resistance.  We were the freedom-fighters.  We fought to protect the future.  And we will tell our stories.

By Kent Heckenlively, J.D.

Please feel free to order Kent’s latest book, INOCULATED: How Science Lost its Soul in Autism, available on-line at Amazon and at BarnesandNoble.com