Confessions of the Vaccine-Educated

Amber Weiss
8 min readSep 23, 2019

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Originally posted to Facebook on September 10th, 2019

VULNERABLE POST by Amber Weiss, PA-C, LAc
Confession: I am vaccine-educated. You might not know this by looking at me. After all, I did my Physician Assistant training at Stanford Medical School, where I got the same 2 hours of training about vaccines as my colleagues. During my training at Stanford, I recall learning how to read the CDC schedule, where to find updated schedules (since we are regularly adding more vaccines), and how to make parents feel like flat-earther, science-hating, child-endangering idiots if they have questions about vaccines.

Over time, because of my interests in autoimmunity and integrative medicine, I began to read medical journal articles that mentioned vaccines as possible contributors to chronic disease. As life would have it, I also met mothers and parents who told me that their children were injured by vaccines. These were good moms, people that I trusted and respected. Some were my patients, wanting nothing more than to fix the damage that they watched occur within days or weeks of giving vaccines.

As someone with an open mind, a passion for health, a fierce dedication to truth, a willingness to follow the road less traveled, and a relentless love of freedom, the topic of vaccines piqued my interest. I have since spent over 1,000 hours studying risks, benefits and alternatives to vaccines and have come to the conclusion that they are neither as safe nor as effective as the pharmaceutical industry, our government or our media would have us believe. As a result, I support freedom of personal choice regarding vaccines. I am Pro-Choice. There, I said it. Feel free to unfriend me now, or keep reading. Before you decide that I’m a fringe lunatic, you may want to read this article or watch this video that summarizes my concerns about vaccine safety:
RFK Jr Article: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/…/americans-can-handle…/…
Vaccine Safety Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt-CZN48rR8.

While vaccines do help to lower the incidence of a variety of short-term and sometimes serious infections (such as measles), not all children tolerate vaccines well. Some develop immediate reactions and some experience the new onset of what becomes a chronic condition.

On Monday, September 9th, Governor Newsom signed a pair of bills, SB276 and SB714 that will collectively eliminate 99% of legitimate medical exemptions. You have no doubt heard stories of the hypothetical immunosuppressed child with cancer who could contract a disease from an unvaccinated child. It is scary to have a child with cancer or who is immunosuppressed, but to date, I know of no actual case of an immunosuppressed child dying after catching a vaccine-preventable illness from an unvaccinated child. But I have now heard hundreds of stories of babies and children who have died or suffered immune or neurological consequences as a result of routine vaccination.

Here are some stories that you probably have never heard. These are the stories of some of the patients that I have worked with (names and identifying details have been changed to protect their privacy). These are some of the medically fragile children you won’t hear about in the news:

💥 Sandra is a 12 year old girl with severe food allergies to milk and peanuts and mysterious, chronic joint pain. She had seizures within several hours after each of 3 different rounds of vaccines, including the MMR. Her aunt developed a seizure disorder after a round of travel vaccines. Sandra’s mother developed psoriatic arthritis following adult vaccinations required for work. Sandra’s doctor agreed that the risk of the vaccines outweighed the risks of the infections and wrote a medical exemption that will be invalidated with SB276. Sandra will now be required to get several of the vaccines that resulted in seizures in order to go to school because her parents can’t afford to homeschool or move out of the state. Video of news coverage of MMR and seizures (including case won in vaccine court): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDz4QBd9rS8.
Video of another child developing seizures after vaccines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbNL_wVLdlQ.
Seizures occur in about 1 in 640 children vaccinated with MMR — about 5 times more often than seizure from measles infection https://physiciansforinformedconsent.org/measles/vrs/.
More info on vaccines and seizures: https://www.learntherisk.org/seizures/

💥 Ethan is a 6 year old boy who started speaking around 15 months. Before his 18 month vaccinations, Ethan was saying about a dozen different words and was happy and playful. On the night of his 18 month vaccines, he developed a high-pitched scream for several hours. He lost all speech and stopped making eye contact, no longer wanting to engage or cuddle. He was eventually diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder. He has improved significantly with functional medicine and is now in a mainstream classroom. His medical exemption will be invalidated with SB276. Since he does not have an IEP, his parents will be forced to get him fully vaccinated to stay in school.
Videos by parents of children like Ethan #hearthiswell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOtk6vxVg0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLwfDr5OKlI
Triplets developing severe pervasive developmental disorder on the same day after pneumococcal vaccine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1EHEq5zLG0

💥 Harmony is a healthy, thriving, unvaccinated 3 year old girl. Her older sister has Crohn’s disease and Hashimoto’s. Harmony’s mother has lupus (two of the mom’s sisters have it too). Harmony’s father and grandfather both have severe psoriasis. Harmony’s grandmother has rheumatoid arthritis and severe asthma. There is an abundance of research that shows that vaccines can trigger autoimmunity (predominantly due to aluminum adjuvants). Numerous studies have found that autoimmune diseases have a genetic predisposition. Harmony’s family believes that the risk of developing autoimmunity is greater than the risk for the infections for which vaccines are available. Her doctor agreed and wrote a medical exemption based on strong family history of autoimmunity. This medical exemption will be invalidated with SB276 and our government will force her parents to vaccinate her against medical advice. If you knew you would have a high likelihood of developing a debilitating, longevity-reducing autoimmune disorder as a result of routine vaccination, would you want the right to opt-out?
Research articles about autoimmunity induced by vaccine adjuvants: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28059022. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5256113/. Videos on mechanism of action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfraYYGYDA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf8sw3n7xrE.
Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute: https://www.cmsri.org/.
Excellent book on Vaccines & Autoimmunity (filled with research articles): https://www.amazon.com/Vaccines-Autoimmunity-…/…/ref=sr_1_2…

💥 Jessica and Veronica are 8 year old twins with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. They were fully vaccinated on time and both started limping painfully around age 2. They were treated for several years with medication. The mom stopped vaccinating them by age 3 when she learned about the link between vaccines and autoimmunity. The girls have been receiving holistic care for the past couple years and have weaned off their meds. They love playing softball and going to school. With the new law, they will lose their medical exemptions and be forced to catch up on vaccines or leave their beloved school.
Video of a story similar to Jessica and Veronica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuWXUr_Movc.
It is estimated that 1 in 12 women in the US will develop an autoimmune condition in her lifetime. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078757/

💥 Maria has 2 children, but she would have had 3. Her son Carlos, who was always vaccinated on time, was found dead in his crib 2 days after receiving 8 shots on the morning of his 1 year birthday (Hep B, Hib, PCV13, Polio, MMR, Varicella (Chickenpox), Hep A and Influenza). He had just received a clean bill of health from the pediatrician earlier that week. Maria now has a baby boy, Mateo, who is unvaccinated and has a medical exemption. With SB276, Maria will be forced to risk sacrificing another baby boy for the “greater good”.
A heart-wrenching video about Nicholas Catone who died after his 18 month vaccines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpRAbfhIhlo
Here are 10 stories of children who died after routine vaccinations:
https://docs.google.com/…/1zmzgZckWPSHJYqs6UBTevUUHGW…/edit….
Here is a video about Evee who died after her 6 month shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch…
Here is the story of Christopher Bunch who died at age 14 after an HPV shot: https://christopherbunch.org/

The CDC schedule now recommends 72 doses of 16 vaccines by age 18 (a child in 1983 would have received 24 doses of 7 vaccines; a child in 1960 would have received only 5 doses). The combined current schedule has NEVER been tested for safety. The Institute of Medicine states in their 2013 study on vaccine safety, “Studies designed to examine the long-term effects of the cumulative number of vaccines or other aspects of the immunization schedule have not been conducted.” With SB276, medically fragile children like those above will be forced to undergo complete, mandatory vaccination with the majority of these vaccines if they want to stay in school.

Vaccine injuries are not rare, and vaccines are guaranteed to cause harm to some children — in fact, vaccines are labeled by the U.S. Supreme Court as “unavoidably unsafe.” According to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), more than 35,000 reports of vaccine reactions are reported every single year in the U.S.(in 2018 there were 60,000) — events ranging from swelling to seizures, hospitalization, permanent disability and death. Additionally, it is estimated only around 1% of adverse reactions are ever reported, and doctors are not encouraged to admit, diagnose, or report vaccine injuries. Side effects are not “one in a million” — that refers only to anaphylactic shock. Seizures can happen in 1 in 640 doses of certain vaccines, 1 in 250 for siblings of a child with a previous seizure, and seizures caused by vaccination can cause lifelong epilepsy in children. The truth is vaccine reactions encompass DOZENS of specific conditions and injuries — epileptic seizures, brain inflammation, neurological disability, intestinal damage, onset of severe allergies, loss of previously acquired skills, etc. These are listed by manufacturers of the vaccines in the package inserts, but NONE are considered “contraindications” by the CDC. All vaccine-injured children (and their siblings), are at an increased risk for permanent disability and should therefore be protected by California law.

The debate is not on the merit of certain vaccines or all vaccines but on who has the right to make medical decisions for a child — parents along with the child’s doctor or the State?

One size-fits-all does not work for t-shirts and it certainly doesn’t work for medicine. I believe that medical decisions around vaccines should be made between parents and a trusted physician who is knowledgeable about vaccines risks/benefits, not by an unelected public health officer who has never met nor examined the child. I am not a “hysterical anti-vaxxer”. I support vaccines for those that need or want them. I am pro-informed consent, pro-science, and against removing protections for medically fragile children who have valid medical exemptions under the current law (SB277). Approximately 4,000 children in California have medical exemptions written by doctors who have weighed the risks and benefits after taking in-depth histories, reviewing family history documentation, and examining these children. To date, the CA Medical Board has found NO evidence of fraud regarding medical exemptions.

I stand with the thousands of parents of vaccine-injured children in my outrage that the Democratic party has sold out in order to push a pharmaceutical agenda that will destroy the doctor-patient relationship and result in further harming of some of our most vulnerable children.

Regardless of your beliefs about vaccines, if you have concerns about government overreach or protecting medically fragile children, you may want to open your mind and look beyond the bumper sticker slogans that ignore the reality of vaccine injuries.

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Amber Weiss is a Stanford-trained Physician Assistant, working at a Functional Medicine practice in Santa Cruz, California. She is an advocate for medical freedom and full informed consent.

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