By AlaskaWatchman.com

COVID vaccine pic

On Dec. 28, the Alaska Vaccine Allocation Advisory Committee will take public comment on how to rollout the next phase of COVID vaccinations.

The public has opportunity to share comments about this next phase, which includes vaccinating those ages 75 years and older and front line health “essential workers.”

The Alaska Vaccine Allocation Advisory Committee will use these comments, along with recommendations from CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, to inform their own recommendations on how to distribute Alaska’s allocation of vaccines within the state.

You can provide your input in the following ways:

  • Due to the number of participants already signed up to provide comments live during the meeting, written comments are strongly encouraged and may be submitted at form.jotform.com/203526539420149
  • Written comments for all phases of allocation planning will be accepted on an ongoing basis.
  • Participate in the public comment meeting on Monday, Dec. 28, from 4-5 p.m. through Zoom.
  • You may call in to the meeting at 253-215-8782, using webinar ID: 828 6699 4770
  • The public comment session will also be shared on the DHSS Facebook page.

Alaska seeks public comment on COVID vaccine roll out

Joel Davidson
Joel is Editor-in-Chief of the Alaska Watchman. Joel is an award winning journalist and has been reporting for over 24 years, He is a proud father of 8 children, and lives in Palmer, Alaska.


9 Comments

  • Michael S Totten says:

    Ya Alaska! Take those death shots! The rest of us will watch!

  • NAV says:

    Take your vaccine and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine

  • Margit Brooks says:

    No me, nope…..I watch tho

  • NAV says:

    For those of you who think you can dictate a medical procedure on an unwilling individual without their consent!!! Pay attention to informed consent and HANGING !!! Notice LEGAL document!!!

    Nuremberg Code Establishes the Principle of Informed Consent

    Legal document

    By: Nuremberg Military Tribunal

    Date: August 19, 1947

    Source: Excerpt of the verdict in the case of U.S.A. v. Karl Brandt et al. (“Doctors Trial”), contained in Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10 (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), vol. 2, pp. 181-183.

    About the Author: After World War II (1939–1945), the Allied nations established a series of International Military Tribunals, mostly at Nuremberg, Germany, to try several high-ranking Nazis as war criminals. These trials sought to bring to justice those responsible for the atrocities of the Holocaust. Among the defendants were physicians who had either ordered or performed the torture or murder of prisoners in numerous Nazi concentration and death camps.

    INTRODUCTION

    Since ancient times, beneficence has been a key principle of the medical profession, enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath and subsequent codes of medical ethics. Beneficence entails that physicians must always put the needs and welfare of patients first. By extension, bioscientists must always put the needs and welfare of human research subjects first. However, until the verdict was handed down in the Nuremberg “Doctor’s Trial,” the specific rights of human subjects of modern biomedical research were not codified.

    Twenty-three physicians, including Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, were charged as defendants at Nuremberg. The most notorious offender, Josef Mengele of Auschwitz, escaped and was never brought to trial. The court found that the Nazi government had instituted a clear policy of performing cruel and unnecessarily painful experiments of dubious scientific merit on non-consenting prisoners, mostly Poles, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the handicapped. The trial, under judges Walter B. Beals, Harold L. Sebring, Johnson T. Crawford, and Victor T. Swearingen, all Americans, lasted from December 9, 1946, to August 20, 1947. Seven defendants were acquitted, sixteen were convicted; seven, including Brandt, were sentenced to be hanged.

    One of the most important outcomes of the Doctor’s Trial was the portion of the verdict subtitled “Permissible Medical Experiments,” which defined the concept of informed consent and marked the beginning of international jurisprudence and regulation in this aspect of biomedical research ethics.

    Its ten enumerated principles became known as the “Nuremberg Code.” Informed consent is what allows human research subjects to be active and voluntary participants rather than victims or unwilling tools of the scientific process.

    PRIMARY SOURCE
    PERMISSIBLE MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS
    The great weight of the evidence before us is to the effect that certain types of medical experiments on human beings, when kept within reasonably well-defined bounds, conform to the ethics of the medical profession generally. The protagonists of the practice of human experimentation justify their views on the basis that such experiments yield results for the good of society that are unprocurable by other methods or means of study. All agree, however, that certain basic principles must be observed in order to satisfy moral, ethical and legal concepts:
    1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
    This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.

    The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.

    2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.

    3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.

    4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.

    5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.

    6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

    7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.

    8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.

    9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

    10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probably cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.
    Of the ten principles which have been enumerated our judicial concern, of course, is with those requirements which are purely legal in nature—or which at least are so clearly related to matters legal that they assist us in determining criminal culpability and punishment. To go beyond that point would lead us into a field that would be beyond our sphere of competence. However, the point need not be labored. We find from the evidence that in the medical experiments which have been proved, these ten principles were much more frequently honored in their breach than in their observance. Many of the concentration camp inmates who were the victims of these atrocities were citizens of countries other than the German Reich. They were non-German nationals, including Jews and “asocial persons,” both prisoners of war and civilians, who had been imprisoned and forced to submit to these tortures and barbarities without so much as a semblance of trial.

    In every single instance appearing in the record, subjects were used who did not consent to the experiments; indeed, as to some of the experiments, it is not even contended by the defendants that the subjects occupied the status of volunteers. In no case was the experimental subject at liberty of his own free choice to withdraw from any experiment. In many cases experiments were performed by unqualified persons; were conducted at random for no adequate scientific reason, and under revolting physical conditions. All of the experiments were conducted with unnecessary suffering and injury and but very little, if any, precautions were taken to protect or safeguard the human subjects from the possibilities of injury, disability, or death. In every one of the experiments the subjects experienced extreme pain or torture, and in most of them they suffered permanent injury, mutilation, or death, either as a direct result of the experiments or because of lack of adequate follow-up care.

    Obviously all of these experiments involving brutalities, tortures, disabling injury, and death were performed in complete disregard of international conventions, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, and Control Council Law No. 10. Manifestly human experiments under such conditions are contrary to “the principles of the law of nations as they result from the usages established among civilized peoples, from the laws of humanity, and from the dictates of public conscience.”
    Whether any of the defendants in the dock are guilty of these atrocities is, of course, another question.

    SIGNIFICANCE

    For two decades after the Nazi atrocities came to light, a false and self-satisfied optimism pervaded the Western world that such cruel mockeries of good science could only happen under dictatorships such as Hitler’s. While indeed the Nazi abuses of human research subjects were the worst, other blatant and unjustifiable violations of the principle of informed consent continued to occur throughout the West. Two examples are the study of syphilis among African-American men in Tuskegee, Alabama, funded by the federal government from 1932–1972, and the study of hepatitis among children at the Willowbrook State School for the Retarded, Staten Island, funded by New York State from 1955–1972.

    As these abuses were gradually exposed, various governmental and professional agencies, both national and international, moved to counteract them and to prevent future occurrences. The Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association in 1964, the U.S. National Research Act in 1974, the Belmont Report of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1979, and the Common Rule of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 1991 can all be seen as corollaries to the Nuremberg Code.

  • Michael C Coons says:

    I was on the testimony, on 28 Dec with the ACIP committee. First off. To those that do not want to take the vaccine, fine, do what you want. I do not, nor will not demean you, so shut the hell up on your demeaning those whom choose to take the vaccine, period!
    Now, what happened last night. Teachers, electrical, fisheries, court workers, on and oncalled in demanding they get ahead of the line. Although none came out and said to hell with seniors that want the vaccine, not one of them mentioned seniors at all!.
    I think there was maybe 10 people that called wanting seniors to get first shot, I quit listening the last 5-10 minutes as I was making calls for the Governor to disregard the ACIP recommendations if they keep with the CDC recommendations.
    There are approximately 140,000 seniors in Alaska, 19 to 20% of the population. So, let’s do a bit of math. According to polls, 1/3 of people nation-wide will not take the vaccine. So, let’s take 1/3rd away from that 140,000 so now that is 93,800. Then according to the VA, there are 30,000 vets in Alaska (I think that is low), so, let’s say all 30,000 wait for the Vat to get the vaccine (vets may wait a long time), and say all 30,000 are 60 and above). Now that 93,800 is 63,800. Then say we take away the 200 deaths (vast majority seniors), and those have had the virus and now immune (this per State dashboard) 6778 so now the total is 56,822.
    So, if all 56,822 get the vaccine with the upcoming doses coming (numbers unknown at this time), but let’s assume that this could be done if we get 30,000 doses each month,with two shot Moderna or Pfizer, we could have herd immunity of seniors in 4 months total. That isn’t counting the second dose number in addition to more for 1st dose of others. So, within the next 2 months 56,822 seniors could have had the first vaccine and now a 50% immunity until the second dose that gives 95%.
    After seniors are protected. then the fear that people will pass the virus to seniors is over. Then the non-seniors that want the vaccine can start and that along with those 37,628 that are now immune from having the virus, minus the 33% that will refuse, we can have herd immunity easily by late spring.
    Now, as to those selfish people that testified yesterday. That means the fishery workers will be immune by fishing season. The teachers that don’t teach now by face to face and still refuse to do so, along with the NEA and Alaska teachers unions can be covered by late spring and able to teach physically at least the last couple months of the school year (these teachers are the most selfish of them all IMHO). All those others that have been working the past 10 months, that haven’t gotten the virus because of what they have been doing to protect themselves will be able to burn their masks after “sacrificing” for just a few more months!
    According to the hearing yesterday, the ACIP committee will come out with their recommendations by 30 Dec, this Wednesday. Will they protect seniors, all seniors that want the vaccine, or will they support selfish so called “essential workers” that have self defined themselves as such and allow more seniors to be ill, fill up the beds in hospitals and or die? Will the ACIP by not supporting seniors, in essence, go along with an form of genocide of seniors because we aren’t “essential”? If they do the latter, I call on the Governor to refuse the recommendation and order that all future vaccines go to all Alaskans 60 and above, first and until all are 100% that want the vaccine are covered! Let the “young”, middle aged”, healthy continue “mitigating” and making all the “sacrifices” that they have said they supported prior to the vaccine coming out! Let those age groups get the herd immunity numbers up until they can get the vaccine, thus we will need less vaccine!
    I ask that all that read this actually support the 140,000 Alaskan Seniors!

  • Mike Layman says:

    It’s admirable that someone wants to speak for Seniors, but as one of those; we’re not interested. No long winded dissertation, no disputable facts or other extraneous b.s, just NO WE’RE NOT INTERESTED.

  • NAV says:

    This judgment established a new standard of ethical medical behavior for the post World War II human rights era. Amongst other requirements, this document enunciates the requirement of voluntary informed consent of the human subject. The principle of voluntary informed consent protects the right of the individual to control his own body. The principles established by this code for medical practice now have been extended into general codes of medical ethics.

    The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. 1947 Nuremburg Code, BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL No 7070 Volume 313: Page 1448, 7 December 1996.

    Further, the International Community has also adopted the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights which asserts three fundamental rights:

    Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention (such as masks or vaccines) is only to be carried out with the prior free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice. Scientific research should only be carried out with the prior, free, express, and informed consent of the person concerned. The information should be adequate, provided in a comprehensible form and should include modalities for withdrawal of consent. Consent may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without any disadvantage or prejudice. In appropriate cases of research carried out on a group of persons or a community, additional agreement of the legal representatives of the group or community concerned may be sought. In no case should a collective community agreement or the consent of a community leader or other authority substitute for an individual’s informed consent. Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights.            As the Second Circuit Court of Appeals articulated in the case Abdullahi v. Pfizer, Inc., 562 F. 3d 163, 176 (Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit) (2009) “Courts are obligated to examine how the specificity of the norm compares with 18th-century paradigms, whether the norm is accepted in the world community, and whether States universally abide by the norm out of a sense of mutual concern. By eschewing this inquiry, the district court did not engage the fact that norms of customary international law are “discerned from myriad decisions made in numerous and varied international and domestic arenas” and “[do] not stem from any single, definitive, readily-identifiable source.” Abdullah v. Pfizer, Inc., op. cit., citing Flores, 414 F.3d at 247-48. “[T]he existence of a norm of customary international law is one determined, in part, by reference to the custom or practices of many States, and the broad acceptance of that norm by the international community. Agreements that are not self-executing or that have not been executed by federal legislation, including the ICCPR, are appropriately considered evidence of the current state of customary international law.” See Khulumani, 504 F.3d at 284 (Katzmann, J., concurring). Abdullah v. Pfizer, Inc., supra.The Appellate Court went on to say that “[t]he ICJ Statute permits, and Sosa encourages, among other things, that courts consider “international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law.” ICJ Statute, supra, at art. 38(1); Sosa, 542 U.S. at 734, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (“[W]here there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations.”) Abdullah v. Pfizer, Inc., at 176-177, quoting The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. at 700, 20 S.Ct. 290). One wonders if the state of Washington even qualifies as a “civilized nation”. There is no consent involved at all in the mandate issued by Weisman and adopted by Inslee. It is mandatory without the opportunity for consent, and such a mandate is anathema to the concept of ordered liberty. As Justice Cardozo articulated in the seminal case Palko v. Connecticut, 302 US 319, 324-35 (1937): “The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment makes it unlawful for a state to abridge by its statutes the freedom of speech which the First Amendment safeguards against encroachment by the Congress,” De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 364; Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242, 259; or the like freedom of the press, Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233 ; Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U.S. 697, 707; or the free exercise of religion, Hamilton v. Regents, 293 U.S. 245, 262; cf. Grosjean v. American Press Co., supra; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510; or the right of peaceable assembly, without which speech would be unduly trammeled , De Jonge v. Oregon, supra; Herndon v. Lowry, supra; or the right of one accused of crime to the benefit of counsel, Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45. In these and other situations immunities that are valid as against the federal government by force of the specific pledges of particular amendments have been found to be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, and thus, through the Fourteenth Amendment, become valid as against the states.” Palko, supra.