There is growing interest in simplifying recommendations to vaccinate Americans against influenza. The article discusses interviews with 35 stakeholders from the medical, public health, educational, insurance, and vaccine industry sectors to assess the potential for policy change, and discusses questions posed to the interviewees on current and future influenza vaccination policy and barriers to policy change.

Note that 35 people who have an interest in forcing vaccinations upon the populace can drive an entire public policy that relies upon surrender to force (for the other 300+ million). Reader Rob P. writes this:

They are unelected. They are totally unaccountable to the public who is effected by their policies. There is no recourse or way to appeal. They are immune to lawsuits. The state always becomes more powerful. The industries gain monopolies or are guided by the government in what they should produce based on what is covered by the state welfare money. The quality of product or even whether it is needed is irrelevant. The hand picked ‘professionals’, such as the doctors who require special state licensing to qualify, are to be the ‘oversight’ and guide policy based on statistical data that is skewed by data collected by begging the question. The herd is herded. Franz Kafka couldn’t imagine it.

The way that this country and many others creates and forces such policies on the public is highly elitist in a fascistic kind of way. It is true ‘corporatism’ — representatives from labor, professional NGOs, state bureaucrats, and industry all get together and choose for the other 330+ million of us.

Note that the writer is named “Orac.” Really? Orac? And this moron is so unconvinced of his own trash writing that he can’t even put his name to the crap he writes, and this is supposed to be taken seriously? Apparently, some people who parrot this tripe just like to see their own opinions in print, no matter what the source. My real name, my biography, where I live, and my job/career are clearly conveyed along with every single thing I publish.

If the believers of this Orac person would have dared to check further, they might have discovered an entire archive written under a pseudonym attacking every and any choice outside of the mainstream medical establishment, from acupuncture, to chiropractic, no any non-chemotherapy cancer treatment, to … yes, supplements.

Now, back to the article. I love how the tediously conventional, pro-state vaccination nation mongers in the mainstream media deem individual thinkers and dissenters of the non-scientific, vaccine-pushing, Big Pharma state to be “anti-vaccine” and … “alternative medicine quackery.” Can they get any more idiotic than this? Oh, and those folks of choice who own their bodies and make decisions regarding their bodies are deemed to be “anti-vaccine loons” because they they don’t want their healthy body, or the healthy bodies of their loved ones, to be stuffed with the government-patented, high-profit, untested, unproven, toxin-loaded drugs of the Big Government-Big Pharma, corporate-state regime? How dare they!

Why do people go so fucking crazy over the decisions of others to treat their bodies with loving care, according to their acquisition of knowledge and careful consideration? The crazed vaccination pushers are to the health and wellness paradigm what the neocons are to foreign policy, and what the jack-booted, machine-gun thugs in black are to the community of “serve and protect.” They are sick, crazed, and obsessed with the decisions others make regarding their own lives, and they couch their aggression and defense of the conventional garbage in collective, unscientific terms (such as “herd immunity”). The folks who wish to avoid vaccines churn out no such aggression or hostility. They just want to be left alone, and always, they are forced to defend themselves, and their bodies, from the agents of the government-medical-Big Pharma establishment.

Let’s think of the others who are considered to be lunatics by the pro-state aggressors and blind adherents of the establishment’s conventional wisdom: (1) anti-war, “non-patriot” lunatics (2) anti-TSA, anti-Patriot Act quacks (3) the financial meltdown, conspiratorial nutbags (Tom Woods, Lew Rockwell, and Peter Schiff – shame on all of you!) (4) the anti-Federal Reserve, conspiracy theorist loons (5) anti-social, homeschooling weirdo freaks, and, oh … (6) and Ron Paul.

Looking at this article, is anything more funny than attacking “alternative medicine?” Really? The definition of alternative is “something available as another opportunity,” or “choice,” or “behavior that is considered unconventional and is often seen as a challenge to traditional norms.” And the problem with that is…? The problem is that the pushers of collective thinking can’t stand a dissident outlier.

Those who deny the Government’s junk juice just want to be left the fuck alone. Is that hard to understand? I used to end posts like this with, “I pity these people…” I don’t pity them anymore. I just live my own life peacefully, and I’ll be damned if my beautiful, healthy body will ever be their slave, or their experimental pincushion, or a collective victim of their hysterical, hateful hyper-aggression.

So, I was wearing a skirt and slightly slumped back in my chair (my bad; my chiropractor would frown) when the Ergo Expert comes into my humble office. She starts taking notes, and asks, “How tall are you?” 5’3″, I said. She looks down at me and wrinkles her forehead and smiles: “You are all legs. I’ve never seen legs like that on a woman your height.” I said, “Yeah, I love it, but the unfortunate trade-off is that I have no torso. My legs connect directly to my boobs.” She thought it was funny.

They are fixing me up with some equipment to sit me up higher, raise my monitor, place my feet on an adjustable footrest, etc. Additionally, my surgeon will sign a “medical need” form which will allow me to finally get what I have always wanted: a stand-up work station. Thus I will have two docking stations for my laptop, and I will be able to easily switch between docking stations and thus move between sitting and standing positions throughout the day. I have wanted this for a long time, but unfortunately, due to the cost of a custom build, it is required that you have a medical need, such as surgery, a chronic condition, etc.

Truly, though on the surface the whole ‘ergonomic thing’ may seem a bit politically correct, it’s great that companies are starting to care about the day-to-day working conditions of their employees. The constant repetitive motions we often do, on the job, can often be injurious, or even debilitating, because our bodies did not evolve to be fully capable of handling our 21st-century, repititious work habits.

As I have pointed out to Lew Rockwell in the past, when I first started covering these topics (health tyranny, the medical establishment, food freedom, food politics) on my own blog and Lew’s website in about 2003 or so, I received a lot of vicious hate mails and attacks from LRC readers, and even fellow libertarian writers and Austrian economists, who could not understand why I would attack “the glorious free market.” It took a long time for dogmatic libertarians (often deemed libertarianoids, by me) to understand that GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are not a product of the free market, and neither is the ginormous industrial food machine that uses its political power and its sponsored quasi-government agencies to advance its own agenda and crush its smaller (mostly local) competitors. The violence of the Industrial Food Machine goes well beyond the well-known savage and totalitarian acts of Monsanto. It took a long time for these folks to discover that Big Pharma is not the free market, and neither is the Medical Establishment or Big Cancer.

In fact, I am actually humored by the attacks that still occur, on the part of a few of my fellow libertarians who should be my partners in freedom, as they step up their puerile attacks on me on their forums and facebook threads. How can I not enjoy the panorama of fools and smile whenI am consistently Facebook tagged and attacked for doing something so egregious as indicating my passions in terms of my choices, writing about them, and then offering others potential alternatives to the system and choices they have been roped into by the coercive establishment? Persuasion and the offering of alternatives aren’t coercive acts – they are voluntary options.

It took many years for the emails to swing the other way (from a dash of hate to a lot of love), but when it did, there was an instant light bulb followed by a swarm of “Karen, now I get it” emails in my inbox each day. The amount of those kind of emails that I now receive has grown exponentially. The turn of events has been priceless.

My one great anchor, I believe, is that I plant one foot solidly in my occupation and the other foot in my passion, without having to find myself in a position where I am compelled to negotiate my principles to ensure my libertarian survival. Doing so allows me the freedom to stick to my guns without having to worry about who I am pissing off and whether or not I am blowing a potential paid opportunity or making the “right” allies. Quite frankly, in my libertarian world, I couldn’t give a frickin’ hoot about forging allies and acceptance and long-term job prospects. LewRockwell.com author Gary North has written more than once about “the calling” vs “the occupation.” Here is a link to Gary’s philosophy on handling both the job and the passion. Gary writes:

I define “calling” as follows: the most important thing that you can do in which you would be most difficult to replace. I define “occupation” as the way you put bread on the table. Sometimes these can be the same, but not very often. The most important thing is your calling. Your occupation should support your calling.

When I first read those words in 2006, I felt like they were scripted for me. Yes, I get paid for a lot of what I do in my ‘second job,’ and yes, I still do a lot of work for free, too. Crazy? Maybe. But perhaps not. I often turn down a lot of paid work to do what I want to do - some of that for free - because time is short, life moves fast, and I have no time or inkling to sell my soul to the highest bidder. Sometimes I just want to get the message out there, whether or not there is any monetary compensation. Hence I have my occupation, which is definitely still a passion, but mostly, it provides me with the education that undergirds a lot of my knowledge, and, more importantly, it is a funding mechanism for the rest of what I want to accomplish in my one term here on earth (sorry Shirley MacLaine). Thus my occupation allows me to be flexible in terms of my calling.

But folks are coming to my website and LewRockwell.com, and they are learning about why this issue is so important across the board. Ultimately, isn’t that what we are here for?

CORRECTION: Reason’s “food politics” archive actually extends back to 2007. However, historically, Reason has done a sparse job of covering food politics, eco-agriculture/small-scale farming, and the government-corporate state’s war on the non-industrial food movement through coercive and violent political actions. Most of the website’s coverage, until the last year+, extends to topics centered around defending food choice (the free market for fast food, the war on obesity and its assault on market choices, etc.).

Miss Lenhart is suing CVS for false imprisonment, defamation, etc. Good for her. This reminds me of a time several years ago, after each of my two shoulder reconstructions, when I was given Demerol, also an opioid, under some very liberal pain management by my orthopedic surgeon. Once I left the hospital, he wrote me a prescription for Demerol, and there was only one place within a decent range of my home that would fill it (a local hospital pharmacy). When I showed up to pick up the prescription, sealed in a plastic armour jacket and sling from the waist up, with my two elderly parents in tow, I was treated suspicious and with disdain. Thanks to Charles Everett for the link.