| Friend,
Have you ever heard of VaxTeen? VaxTeen is an organization that encourages teenagers to receive vaccinations without parental consent. The group also provides information about state consent laws, vaccine information from the CDC, and guides teenagers on how to get vaccinated and how to talk to “anti-vaxxer parents.” It provides this information on its website through the lens of appearing like a grass-roots organization. Looks can be deceiving. The founder of VaxTeen is a member of the Unity Consortium’s Teen Advisory Council, whose members include Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Sanofi Pasteur. Another VaxTeen partner, Keep Up the Rates, was launched by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID), whose strategic partners are AstraZeneca, Janssen Therapeutics, Moderna, Merck, Sanofi Pasteur, Bavarian Nordic, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Yet another VaxTeen partner, Stronger Keep Up the Rates, is a national advocacy campaign whose goal is to “stop the spread of harmful misinformation” and is supported by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, whose sponsors include Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Avantor, Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Lilly, Abbvie, Genentech, Samsung Biologics, and Twist Biopharma. While VaxTeen seems, on its surface, to be grass-roots, after a bit of digging, it looks like yet another marketing campaign by big pharma. We encourage you to please consider sharing this expose on your social media posts and forwarding this to any interested parents. ###
|