Forcing Vaccination on Every Child Undermines Civil Liberties

Forcing Vaccination on Every Child Undermines Civil Liberties

The author's son Chris, at two years old in the summer of 1980, before his 4th DPT shot.

(Courtesy Fisher)


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Barbara Loe Fisher
Author and human rights activist Barbara Loe Fisher is co-founder and president of the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center established in 1982 to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education. She is co-author of the 1985 book DPT: A Shot in the Dark, author of A Guide to Reforming Vaccine Policy and Law, founder and executive editor of the online journal newspaper, The Vaccine Reaction, and a video blog commentator on NVIC.org. She helped secure safety provisions in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and has testified in Congress and state legislatures. She served on the National Vaccine Advisory Committee; Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Forum; the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and Vaccine Policy Analysis Collaborative. She has discussed vaccine science, policy and law on CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, NPR and in USA Today, Washington Post, New York Times and many public forums.
How sharing, hearing, and remembering positive stories can help shape our brains for the better

Across cultures and through millennia, human beings have always told stories. Whether it’s a group of boy scouts around a campfire sharing ghost stories or the paleolithic Cro-Magnons etching pictures of bison on cave walls, researchers believe that storytelling has been universal to human beings since the development of language.

But storytelling was more than just a way for our ancestors to pass the time. Researchers believe that storytelling served an important evolutionary purpose, helping humans learn empathy, share important information (such as where predators were or what berries were safe to eat), as well as strengthen social bonds. Quite literally, storytelling has made it possible for the human race to survive.

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Sarah Watts

Sarah Watts is a health and science writer based in Chicago.

A new type of cancer therapy is shrinking deadly brain tumors with just one treatment

MRI scans after a new kind of immunotherapy for brain cancer show remarkable progress in one patient just days after the first treatment.

Mass General Hospital

Few cancers are deadlier than glioblastomas—aggressive and lethal tumors that originate in the brain or spinal cord. Five years after diagnosis, less than five percent of glioblastoma patients are still alive—and more often, glioblastoma patients live just 14 months on average after receiving a diagnosis.

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Sarah Watts

Sarah Watts is a health and science writer based in Chicago.