I was interviewed by USA Today on April 23rd, 2019 about my thoughts on vaccines given my advocacy on pharmaceutical drug safety as a result of my husband's death due to a prescribed antidepressant. For the record, I am not ANTI-vaccine or pharmaceutical drug, I am PRO unbiased information and transparency about the drugs we take, including some of the newer vaccines including flu, HPV and shingles.

I see many parallels between the back and forth about whether to get certain vaccines, and/or whether they should be mandatory, and the discussion about how flippantly antidepressants are prescribed, often without adequate thought or disclosure on side effects and whether it is even appropriate for someone to be prescribed or take an antidepressant. Both the vaccine industry and the antidepressant industry use a similar playbook. First, they will attack anyone who questions or is critical about their drugs. If you question vaccines, you are labeled an anti-vaxxer. The same thing happened in the beginning when antidepressants started to show a link to suicide and violence. Sceptics or really anyone who pushed back and asked questions were called “Scientologists.” This personally happened to me on multiple occasions, including after I was invited by the late Senator Ted Kennedy to testify before the US Senate about ways to improve the FDA and post market drug approval process. I will never forget when I was collecting my bags afterwards from Senator Dodd’s office. He informed me that the national lobbyist for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI)'stopped by all the Senators offices and told them not to believe a word I said in the hearing because I was a Scientologist. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Luckily, we were able to have a face-to-face meeting with the NAMI lobbyist to address this name-calling.

Being informed and well-educated on the inherent problems of the pharmaceutical and vaccine industries does not make us a “cult", "conspiracy theorist" or "anti" anything. This sort of name calling is NOT productive to any polarizing issue. We need to be able to have conversations especially when there is controversy or questions about transparency and general information.

Unfortunately, I don't think the rise of measles cases is helping the issue. It's too easy to play the blame game. However, we need to continue to connect the dots, keep an eye on the growing number of new vaccines being introduced, and talk about whether all of them are truly essential and the side effects of certain of them and how do we know what to do. We need to ask who’s controlling the narrative? Is it the pharma companies? The science? The court rooms? Insurance companies? The government? There are a lot of powerful entities at play with lots of money at stake. In the end, it’s about asking questions and being willing to have conversations even if they challenge your belief system or go against the norm.

All of us want to protect our families and their health, don’t we? So then, shouldn’t our having unbiased (to the extent possible) information available to us so that we can make educated decisions on any possible harms, dangers and the efficacy of pharmaceuticals and vaccines, be something we ALL want and should strive for and insist upon?”

https://www.usatoday.com/…/vaccine-measles-big-…/3473144002/