The headline on an April 10 WorldNetDaily article read “Health pros: De Blasio’s forced vaccinations abuse of power.” But the only “health pro” WND quotes is the article is its old fringe-right anti-vaxxer friend, Jane Orient of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. WND gave Orient unchallenged space to rant against New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio’s order to vaccinate people in order to stop a measles epidemic in the city:
But Dr. Jane Orient, the executive director of the AAPS, argues the Supreme Court already has ruled against such an order.
“The U.S. Supreme Court warned against ‘arbitrary and oppressive’ abuse of police power, going ‘far beyond what was reasonably required for the safety of the public,’ in the 1905 case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts,” she explained.
“This case concerned smallpox vaccination during a deadly epidemic that killed 30 percent or more of persons infected.
“In its vast overreach, New York is ignoring these cautions,” she said.
Orient is misleading: Jacobson v. Massachusetts actually upheld the right of states to enforce compulsory vaccination. It did, however, create a medical exemption to compulsory vaccination, and it ruled that people could not be forcibly vaccinated but could be punished with fines or imprisonment for refusing to do so. Further, the party that made the argument that compulsory vaccination was “arbitrary and oppressive” was plaintiff Henning Jacobson, not the Supreme Court as Orient suggests.
The rest of the WND article rehashes Orient’s and the AAPS anti-vaxxer stance, including the scientifically unsound claim that “vaccines are inevitably unsafe.” As opposed to catching a disease a person could die from?