* Note Leicester (pronounced Lester) is a city in England. During the 19th century, it successfully contained smallpox epidemics using methods of quarantine and sanitation despite not adhering to UK smallpox mandatory vaccination policies that were popular at the time. Leicester is a reminder that there is a broader ecology of health beyond vaccination in mitigating infectious disease and improving health.

(Thanks to The Great Leicester Declaration Scientific Review Committee including Brian Hooker PHD, James Neuenschwander MD, Christina Parks PHD, James Lyons-Weiler PHD, John Witcher MD, Krishna Doniparthi MD, Neil Miller Investigative Science Journalist, Jeremy R. Hammond, Independent Science Journalist). Doctors & the public are encouraged to sign & share.

The Great Leicester Declaration: As medical professionals, scientists, public health specialists, professionals in non-medical fields, and citizens, we are concerned by the unacceptably high number of observed adverse events and deaths in people after receiving the COVID vaccine, and the medical community’s denialism of vaccine injury and vaccine-related death. We feel this is an injustice as the effect of vaccine injuries on ordinary individuals and families can be devastating.

We believe that for medicine and public health institutions to retain the trust of the public as guardians of health, there needs to be:

1. Formal recognition by the medical community about the risks of vaccine-related injury and death,

2. Public health resources devoted to increased research on the etiology of and risk reduction of vaccine-related injury and death,

3. Increased transparency on vaccine safety and cost-benefit analysis done for public health recommendations, including access to raw data underlying clinical studies and other evidence that health authorities use as a basis for national health policy for review and replication by independent researchers and scientists,

4. Proper redress is given to and an end to gaslighting by the medical community for the individuals and families with life-altering adverse effects after COVID vaccine receipt,

5. The repeal of COVID vaccine mandates and a renewed formal commitment to the medical ethical precept of informed consent in light of serious risks,

6. A broader view and more consideration are given to established protocols, innovative treatments, and the recognition of natural immunity for mitigating infectious diseases.

Medical and public health institutions have been remiss in their responsibilities and imprudent to the public by ignoring alarming safety signals regarding COVID vaccine and the increasing reports of vaccine injury and deaths in the populace.

Public health could have taken a more prudent course by reexamining its policies and doing a case-by-case analysis of each COVID vaccine injury and death case. But instead, it has relied upon downplaying vaccine injury and having the callousness to expand COVID vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and young children.

As of November 23, 2022, as reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), there are over 33,000 reported deaths, over 26,000 cases of myocarditis, over 61,000 permanent disabilities, and over 41,000 severe allergic reactions after receipt of the COVID vaccine.

While VAERS data are not proof of a causal association, the system’s purpose is to identify safety signals, and these abnormal numbers are alarming – critical safety thresholds have been breached. Additionally, equivalent vaccine injury numbers have been seen in Europe and other areas, lending credence to safety concerns.

Beyond the unprecedented numbers, the totality of evidence suggests a causal relationship between the COVID vaccine and injuries. The Bradford-Hill criteria have long been used in epidemiology to make sense of observational data and to establish a plausible belief in causality. These criteria have been met.

The rates of COVID vaccine injuries and deaths far exceed any previous vaccine administered to the public. A temporal correlation is seen between these injuries and receipt of the shot. A dose-response effect is seen as the proportion of vaccine adverse effects increases with the number of shots. Neither a temporal correlation nor a dose-response would be seen if the COVID vaccines were indeed safe.

To bolster the concerns, numerous papers show how the COVID vaccine can lead to these adverse effects on a biological level. Numerous papers establish a relationship between the COVID vaccines and myocarditis. A new paper showed impaired CD4+ and CD8+T cell activation in mice after multiple COVID boost vaccine doses.

There is a concern in the medical community about giving COVID vaccines to young children and adolescents, demographics that were never at serious risk from COVID, and a call for rational harm-benefit calculation by health authorities. A study done on 301 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 who had received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine showed that 29.24% of participants experienced cardiovascular complications such as tachycardia, palpitations and 2.33% suffered myopericarditis.

Moreover, public health's assessment of vaccine injury among the public is likely grossly underdiagnosed. Medical professionals commonly believe that all vaccines are “safe and effective,” and it means that most medical professionals will fail to recognize and report vaccine injuries. The data corroborates this concern as a previous Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, Inc. assessment noted that fewer than 1% of vaccine-related adverse events are reported to VAERS.

Neither does public health’s safety assessment consider that the COVID vaccine utilizes mRNA technology that has never been administered to the human population until the government-driven COVID mass vaccination campaign. It is not comparable to previous generations of vaccines. The relatively untested nature of this technology raises uncertainty about long-term effects, but long-term studies and data do not exist.

Public health can offer no adequate alternative effects seen in the VAERS data. Neither does it fully understand the mechanisms of COVID vaccine injury nor its actual rates in the populace. And neither does it have good reasons to extend COVID vaccination to children and adolescents.

The reality of COVID vaccine injury calls into question the cost-benefit analysis done by public health that dramatically understates the risk to the public and offers a one-size-fits-all policy that recommends the same action for a child with a previous COVID infection as it does for a 70-year-old with multiple co-morbidities. These facts raise ethical questions about whether public health is calculating the societal cost-benefit accurately and whether the public is being given genuine informed consent.

The preponderance of the evidence indicates that we must exercise caution for the public's good. Therefore, public health must revisit COVID vaccination policies and repeal the use of vaccine mandates.

It is time for the medical profession to recognize the reality of vaccine injury formally. We believe that it is immoral for medical professionals and institutions to deny, downplay, and dismiss the evidence for vaccine injuries and deaths. It is well-accepted that all drugs and medical interventions carry an element of risk, but the same standard has not been applied to vaccination.

The principle of informed consent has been recognized as a fundamental and inalienable human right since the Nuremberg Code and is the foundation for trust in a doctor-patient relationship. Hiding or dismissing risk from vaccines, especially for the reasons of the “greater good” utilitarian argument or ideology, is ethically wrong.

Vaccine-injured individuals and families experiencing vaccine-related deaths commonly report gaslighting from medical professionals who tell them their symptoms do not exist and deny the reality of COVID vaccine harms. This is a double failure and an injustice from the medical establishment.

In this post-COVID time, when we see unprecedented government and corporate intrusion into medicine, it is essential to remember that the patient comes foremost in medicine. Therefore, it is an ethical failure to prioritize government and corporate interest over the patient’s health and to deny vaccine injury and death in a manner that undermines the principle of informed consent.

In light of the above problems, we hope that formal recognition of vaccine injury and death by the medical community can lead to efforts to help the vaccine-injured and their families, improvements in vaccine safety, increased transparency on clinical trial data, identification of contraindications in the vulnerable segments of the populace, and medical education provided to clinicians that enables them to diagnose vaccine-related injury and death.

An important implication of these facts is that COVID vaccine mandates need to be repealed. Given the vaccine injury and deaths concerns and the fact that the vaccines neither prevent nor stop transmission, the cost-benefit analysis from a scientific standpoint does not support mandates.

But the argument against vaccine mandates goes beyond just the science. These mandates have unfairly hurt untold scores of people with legitimate concerns with the COVID vaccine. Moreover, the government-led attempt to institute COVID vaccination as a condition for employment and as a condition for education represents the worst assault on civil rights in our history, since slavery.

Public health has lost its focus. In its reductionistic focus on eliminating infectious diseases (which in the case of COVID may be unattainable), it has forgotten the human cost borne by the populace and that exercising human freedom for self-actualization is the ultimate goal of human health. Thus, medicine must expand its definition of health and well-being to incorporate the value of human freedom and bodily autonomy in the health equation.

We assert that the right to medical freedom is fundamental to human health and well-being and a core pillar of human rights — the individual right to be fully able to exercise one’s free will and rational mind to determine whether a medical intervention makes sense for one’s circumstances and risk tolerance without undue coercion or threat of retaliation from either medical authorities or the state.

We decry the government's behavior during the pandemic as inimical to human freedom and health. In addition, we denounce government messaging that aims to promote vaccination as a "civic duty" but uses censorship against criticism and propaganda to incite hate against those choosing not to vaccinate.

We further denounce government messaging that is scientifically untrue to promote vaccination, such as the term "pandemic of the unvaccinated" (which was never scientifically established), and deliberately omit material evidence. For example, the government told the public we needed "vaccination to keep society safe" when the data suggested that vaccinated individuals readily get infected and transmit the infection just as the unvaccinated. Herd immunity cannot be obtained from an experimental vaccine that does not prevent disease or transmission.

We need solidarity and respect in health, not division—proper health cannot be built on a pillar of hate. Just as victory could not be won against terrorists by sowing hatred against Muslims, we cannot prevail against the pandemic threat nor obtain health security by sowing hatred against our fellow citizens who logically choose not to take the vaccine or to get booster shots continually.

Finally, we need a more comprehensive medical practice and research scope to deal with infectious diseases. Many treatments and protocols were unexplored, deemphasized, or prohibited during the height of the pandemic in favor of COVID vaccine development. We all saw the limits of the reductionistic focus on vaccination as the sole solution. A wider scope of treatments could better prepare us to deal with future pandemics and expand medicine’s ability to deal with its current challenges, such as the widespread incidence of chronic diseases in society.

Public health has unfairly deemphasized the role of natural immunity and nutraceuticals in a self-serving manner to promote vaccination. Natural immunity is superior in effectiveness whether or not the infected person ever developed the clinical disease and nutraceuticals in dealing with COVID. Natural immunity from SARS-CoV-2 infection has been shown in multiple studies to provide more robust and longer-lasting immunity than the vaccine. In addition, research has shown the importance of nutrition, including maintenance of vitamin D sufficiency, in preventing severe COVID.

We can do more for health than just vaccines. It's time to move away from a constricted definition of health that solely emphasizes “vaccination only” and towards a broader one that recognizes the multiple systems, such as the microbiome, nervous system, the role of epigenetics, the effect of environmental toxins, nutritional status, and the ability to self-actualize, that interplay in our health and well-being.

Moreover, there are research-based philosophies and integrative disciplines different than vaccination that can enhance immune function and improve health. There is a fast-growing shift among medical doctors toward practicing a more holistic, functional approach with their patients that integrate these principles and philosophies.

We believe in the reform of our national vaccine programs and in a new promise to the American people, one that promotes health while at the same time respecting individuals' rights and bodily autonomy, and we welcome an open dialogue to bring an expanded definition of health and wellness that the medical community can embrace.

We look forward to a brighter future of optimal health and well-being that creates a more prosperous world for all humankind.

1 https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-prod...

2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9419896/

3 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › 36338436

4 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com › doi › 10.1111 › sji.13242

5 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › 36006288

6 https://digital.ahrq.gov/ahrq-funded-projects/elec...

7 https://research.unc.edu/human-research-ethics/res...

8 https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/new-data-on-covi...

9 https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-shifts-pandemic-goals-away-from-reaching-herd-immunity/ar-AAQCZMW

10 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2118946

11 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34452582/