THE CHICAGO PRINCIPLES

The American Rally for Personal Rights, to be held in Chicago’s Grant Park this coming Wednesday, May 26, is not intended to be a one-day effort. It marks the birth of the Center for Personal Rights, dedicated to the same principles as the rally itself. Those principles have been reduced to a statement that has been dubbed “The Chicago Principles on Vaccination Choice:”

We, the people who affirm our belief in personal rights, in order to promote the general health and welfare for ourselves and our children and to establish justice, advocate the following principles:



1. Vaccination choice based on complete and accurate information is a fundamental human right. 



2. The right to conscientious objection from vaccination mandates, namely the right to a philosophical exemption, is a fundamental human right. 



3. Laws that make education, employment, daycare and public benefits contingent on vaccination status, except in the most extreme of public health emergencies, violate the fundamental human right to vaccination choice.



4. When vaccination is used as a preventive medical intervention for healthy individuals, the precautionary principle must apply. If there is no public consensus about the need for or safety of certain vaccines, they should neither be recommended nor mandated for universal use. 



5. Individuals who are in a position to evaluate, recommend and mandate vaccines must be free of all actual and perceived conflicts of interest.

CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION IN THE UNITED STATES



1. Congress should conduct oversight hearings on the national vaccine program, including mandates for the military and immigrants, examining vaccine safety, conflicts of interest, suppression of science, evidence of vaccine injury, and comparative empirical data from countries with differing vaccine schedules.



2. Congress should immediately initiate a study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations for long-term heath outcomes. Such a baseline study has never been done, suggesting that the vaccine schedule as a whole is an experiment on human subjects. This bill is called the “Comprehensive Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act” and was originally co-sponsored by Rep. Maloney (D.- N.Y.) and Rep. Osborne (R. – Ne.).



3. Congress should create an independent Agency for Vaccine Safety Research. This agency must be completely separate from the Centers for Disease Control, which promotes federal vaccination recommendations for state mandates. This bill is called the “Vaccine Safety and Public Confidence Assurance Act” and was originally co-sponsored by Rep. Weldon (R.-Fl.) and Rep. Maloney (D.- N.Y.) 



4. Congress should abolish the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program or make it optional. The Program has failed in its purpose to quickly, generously and administratively compensate families for vaccine injury and to improve vaccine safety. 


5. Vaccine manufacturers should be subject to ordinary tort liability and civil trials for vaccines. All statutes that shield vaccine manufacturers from ordinary tort liability for vaccine products, such as the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act (1986) and the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (2005), violate the U.S. Constitution’s Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury in civil cases.

If you support this statement, please go here to sign the on-line petition. And join us Wednesday in Chicago (or on-line if you can’t be there in person).