June 24, 2022

To whom it may concern:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Action to Amend Regulations to Conform to Chapter 1223 of the 2020 Acts of Assembly.

The Virginia Chapter of Children’s Health Defense (VCCHD) is a nonprofit focused on protecting the health of children and establishing safeguards to prevent future harm to children’s health.

VCCHD recognizes that this periodic review is required by law is to ensure compliance with legislation passed in 2020 that requires Virginia’s school children follow the CDC recommended schedule of childhood vaccines in order to attend school.

Had the Virginia Chapter of Children’s Health Defense been in existence at the time this legislation was passed, we would have strongly opposed it for the following reasons:

1. Requiring adherence to the CDC schedule subjects Virginia’s children to a cookie cutter, one size fits all immunization schedule. This is a dangerous approach. Only those children with a medical and/or religious exemption will be exempt. However, these exemptions are under constant attack. Many states have attempted or successfully passed legislation that removes medical and religious exemptions. In Virginia, legislation to remove the religious exemption was recently attempted. Medical exemptions are very difficult to obtain because doctors fear reprisal from medical regulatory bodies that grant medical licenses and board certifications. It is likely that future legislative attempts to remove exemptions will occur again. If successful, ALL Virginia children will be subject to a rigid one size fits all schedule.
2. The CDC schedule is based on recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) – a body made up of unelected officials with numerous conflicts of interest and a history of approving virtually every vaccine that has come before its review.  
3. The requirement to follow the CDC schedule will continuously subject Virginia’s children to an ever increasing number of vaccines as hundreds of vaccines are being developed, many of which will eventually be approved by the CDC and added to the vaccination schedule.
4. Virginia parents have lost the ability to determine which shots they want to give their children. Vaccines, like all medical interventions, should be done on an individual basis and based on the individual child’s health.
5. We believe the primary motivation to implement a requirement to follow the CDC schedule was a desire to facilitate the job of school administrators rather than improve the health of Virginia’s children.

The U.S. Supreme Court recognized that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” and can cause injury and death in some recipients.  The US Government has paid out more than $5 billion to the victims of vaccine injury.  Hundreds of thousands have reported an adverse reaction to vaccination to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) (See http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/vaers/.

We strongly encourage the Board of Health to recognize not only the beneficial impacts of vaccines but to amend its regulations so that they properly acknowledge that negative impacts are possible. This could be accomplished by promoting the adverse events reporting system; voicing support for maintaining exemptions when legislative attempts threaten their existence; ensuring doctors are not threatened with the loss of their licenses when they approve medical exemptions for their patients; and strongly advocating the principals of informed consent.

Thank you again for the opportunity to comment.

Sincerely,

Kathy Blum

President

Virginia Chapter Children’s Health Defense