From DPT to COVID Shots: Freedom and Informed Consent

In this striking conversation with Barbara Loe Fisher we speak about the history of vaccine policy in the United States as well as the implications of informed consent and what this means for us all.  Barbara Loe Fisher is co-founder and president of the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC.org), a U.S. charity established in 1982 by parents of DPT vaccine injured children to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and defend the ethical principle of informed consent to medical risk taking.  Barbara worked to secure vaccine safety and research provisions in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and has testified in Congress and state legislatures. She is co-author of the seminal 1985 book DPT: A Shot in the Dark, founding executive editor of the online journal newspaper The Vaccine Reaction, and a video blog commentator.  For more than two decades, Barbara served as a consumer member on vaccine advisory committees at the CDC and FDA and vaccine safety public engagement projects sponsored by federal agencies and the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences.  She has coordinated six international public conferences on vaccination, including the Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination: Protecting Health and Autonomy in the 21st Century held online in 2020.  One of the world's leading non-medical experts on vaccine science, policy, law and ethics, she has been quoted in numerous print and broadcast news reports. Between 1985 and 2015, she debated more doctors on the subject of vaccination than any other American. A natural rights activist defending the informed consent ethic and freedom of thought, speech and conscience, she was featured in the 2011 documentary The Greater Good, the 2020 movie 1986: The Act, and a two hour conversation on "Highwire" in January 2024 to set the record straight about the history of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.  The mother of three children and a grandmother, her oldest son suffered a brain inflammation and encephalopathy within hours of his fourth DPT shot in 1980 when he was two and a half years old and was confined to a special education classroom throughout his public school education.  National Vaccine Information Center: https://www.nvic.org Current and past editions of the magazine can be found at: https://pathwaystofamilywellness.org/