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WASHINGTON, D.C. (Liberty Counsel) — Federal law provides that at least until a vaccine is fully approved by the FDA, individuals must have the option to accept or decline the experimental drug.

On March 27, 2020, the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary declared that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use (EUA) of drugs and biological products for COVID-19. That means people must be told the risks and benefits, and they have the right to decline a medication that is not fully licensed. The same section of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that authorizes the FDA to grant EUA also requires the secretary of Health and Human Services to “ensure that individuals to whom the product is administered are informed … of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product.”

All of the COVID-19 mRNA injections (Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna) or vaccines (Johnson & Johnson and Astra Zeneca) have received only EAU authorization and not full FDA approval.

When the FDA grants EUA for a vaccine, many questions about the product cannot be answered because the testing data is unavailable. Therefore, when Congress granted the authority to issue EUAs, it mandated that individuals must be allowed to decide for themselves whether to receive an EUA product. The FDA and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considered this fundamental requirement of choice important enough that even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they reinforced that policy decision when issuing their guidance related to the experimental “vaccines.”

Dr. Amanda Cohn, executive secretary of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, was asked if COVID-19 vaccination can be required. Dr. Cohn responded that under an EUA, “vaccines are not allowed to be mandatory. So, early in this vaccination phase, individuals will have to be consented [sic] and they won’t be able to be mandatory.”

The EUAs for both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA experimental injections and any other EUA vaccine require fact sheets to be given to vaccination providers and recipients. These fact sheets make clear that getting the vaccine is optional. For example, the one for recipients states, “It is your choice to receive or not receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” and if “you decide to not receive it, it will not change your standard of medical care.”

The so-called “vaccines” against COVID-19 have only been approved for experimental use. Much remains unknown about their safety and efficacy. It not only typically takes years to create a new vaccine, but most often, despite the best efforts of scientists, a successful vaccine proves impossible.

For example, scientists (including Dr. Anthony Fauci) tried to create an HIV vaccine for more than 40 years.

Even though the FDA granted EUA for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA injections in December 2020, and most recently Johnson & Johnson, the clinical trials the FDA will rely on to ultimately decide whether to license these vaccines are still underway and are designed to last for approximately two years to collect adequate data to establish if these mRNA injections and vaccines are safe and effective enough for the FDA to license.

Given the uncertainty, the EUAs are explicit that each is “an investigational vaccine not licensed for any indication” and that all “promotional material relating to the COVID-19 Vaccine clearly and conspicuously … state that this product has not been approved or licensed by the FDA, but has been authorized for emergency use by FDA” (emphasis added).

Last week, a coalition of four U.S.-based medical organizations, including the American College of Pediatricians, Catholic Medical Association, Christian Medical and Dental Association, and the National Association of Catholic Nurses–USA, representing approximately 20,000 healthcare professionals, emphasized that free citizens should never be mandated to receive the Coronavirus “vaccine.”

In their statement they said, “Governing authorities must respect an individual’s right to accept or decline a vaccine,” adding that there is “no justifiable moral obligation to accept vaccination. While the pandemic remains a significant public health crisis, the individual rights of American citizens also remains of paramount importance,” the statement reads. “The guarantee of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ includes the right to make individual health care decisions while taking into account our responsibility for the common good.”

“If a vaccine has been developed, tested, or produced with technology that an individual deems morally unacceptable, such as the use of abortion-derived fetal cell lines, vaccine refusal is morally acceptable,” the statement reads. “An individual’s decision to be vaccinated will also depend upon their personal assessment of the medical risks, a choice that should be respected,” their joint statement read.

In addition to this federal law, the FDA includes the Nuremberg Code and the Helsinki Declaration on its website, emphasizing the fact that people cannot be forced to take experimental drugs without their full consent. Learn more at LC.org/Vaccine.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Forcing any person to receive one of these COVID injections is a violation of federal law. The COVID injections are not licensed by the FDA and are still in the investigation and experimental phase. No employer or government may force or coerce anyone to take these injections. Federal law requires full informed consent.”

SOURCE Liberty Counsel

Carbon dioxide emissions must fall by the equivalent of a global lockdown roughly every two years for the next decade for the world to keep within safe limits of global heating, research has shown.

Lockdowns around the world led to an unprecedented fall in emissions of about 7% in 2020, or about 2.6bn tonnes of CO2, but reductions of between 1bn and 2bn tonnes are needed every year of the next decade to have a good chance of holding temperature rises to within 1.5C or 2C of pre-industrial levels, as required by the Paris agreement.

Research published on Wednesday shows that countries were beginning to slow their rates of greenhouse gas emissions before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, but not to the levels needed to avert climate breakdown. Since lockdowns were eased in many countries last year, there have been strong signs that emissions will rise again to above 2019 levels, severely damaging the prospects of fulfilling the Paris goals. — Source

Equivalent of Covid emissions drop needed every two years – The Guardian [PDF Archive]

Disney+ has removed several movies from children’s profiles on its service due to negative stereotypes.

The Walt Disney Company previously showed content warnings on the films for “negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people and cultures” in October but has now removed access to the films for children under 7.

Adults can still view the movies on their Disney+ accounts with the content warnings.  Source

Social movements tap into our most primitive emotions, obscuring the complexities of sociopolitical problems. Reason is traded for ideological fervor and skepticism is swapped with religious dogma. Such was the case in 2020 in the wake of several high-profile cases of alleged police brutality involving black victims. Across the US and Western countries worldwide, activists and average citizens alike vigorously protested against a perceived (but empirically refuted) “epidemic of racist police killings.”

A new survey commissioned by Skeptic Research Center reveals the extent to which the public is misinformed on the issue of police violence. Participants across the political spectrum in the nationally representative survey were asked how many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019. The results were revealing. Overall, nearly half of surveyed liberals (44 percent) estimated roughly between 1,000 and 10,000 unarmed black men were killed whereas 20 percent of conservatives estimated the same.

Most notably, the majority of respondents in each political category believed that police killed unarmed black men at an exponentially higher rate than in reality. Over 80 percent of liberals guessed at least 100 unarmed black men were killed compared to 66 percent of moderates and 54 percent of conservatives. But, according to a close database compiled by Mapping Police Violence, the actual number of black men killed by the police in 2019 is 27.  — Source

One death is too many … however, perceptions are starkly different than reality!