Search This Blog

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

PLEASE ACT TODAY!

To Emerald City Clinic Community:

It is imperative you act today. There is a bill on Governor Gregoire's' desk that would allow parents to deny immunizations ONLY with a physician's signature. This would remove parental rights to decline immunizations in this state. There is whole discussion on the NVIC (National Vaccine Information Center) website, www.nvic.org, if you want further information. I am imploring you to flood the governor's office with emails (you can go to the Christine Gregoire website, www.governor.wa.gov, and email her directly), or call her office at 360-902-4111 or fax her at 360-753-4110. There is an example letter with a longer explanation on the NVIC site but following is my personal letter.


Dear Governor Gregoire,

I am writing you as a mother, a Primary Care Naturopathic Physician and Midwife for over 28 years, a supporter of yours, an advocate for health care reform and a personal citizen. I need you to veto bill ESB5005. This puts the decision about immunizations into the wrong hands. This decision, like abortion, is a very personal one and one that is a personal right of each parent to decide. Without going into the controversy of health hazards of immunizations OR any of the politics of the economics of the shots, etc, it is just wrong to prevent parents for any personal reasons to decline immunizations for their children. It smacks of the days of small pox forced immunizations or the inability for women to get Plan B if they want from a pharmacy. Please veto this bill.


Respectfully,


Molly Linton, ND, LM
Emerald City Clinic, Inc., P.S.
1409 NW 85th
Seattle, WA 98117
(206)781-2206
(206)783-3949 fax
d2rmolly@aol.com
www.emeraldcityclinic.com

Monday, April 18, 2011

Upset about mandated childhood vaccination? Please read on....

Dear Washington NVIC Advocacy Team Members,

As you probably know by now, ESB5005 passed the House floor on Friday, March 25th with a final vote of 66 to 29. It had already passed through the Senate in February. We are very grateful to Representative Hinkle for offering our notarization model amendment which attempted to remove the vaccine provider education and signature requirement. This unfortunately did not pass. We are also grateful to all the representatives who passionately debated against this bill.

To watch the debate link here and scroll in 10 minutes and 15 seconds:
http://www.tvw.org/media/mediaplayer.cfm?evid=2011030146&TYPE=V&CFID=3470504&CFTOKEN=76350937&bhcp=1

To see how your own state representative ultimately voted, link to: http://flooractivityext.leg.wa.gov/rollcall.aspx?id=35825&bienId=21.

The House and Senate do not yet have a Conference Committee meeting scheduled to come to final concurrence about the wording of the bill they will present to the Governor. Both versions are posted here: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=5005.

Once the House and the Senate do reach concurrence on the wording of the bill, it will be passed to the Governor for her signature or veto. If she receives the final version of the bill on or before April 18th, she will have five days to sign or veto the bill so we need to act quickly.

Some people from our group met with the Governor’s policy advisor last week. We discussed the problems with ESB5005 and asked the Governor to veto the bill. The discussion went well. We are hopeful that if we can show enough opposition against this bill that we may have a chance to get the Governor to veto ESB5005!

Here is what you can do:

1) Contact Governor Gregoire and ask her to VETO ESB5005

Phone: 360-902-4111
Fax: 360-753-4110
Send an email:
http://www.governor.wa.gov/contact/default.asp
Mailing Address: Governor Christine Gregoire, Office of the Governor, PO Box 40002, Olympia, WA 98504-0002

If you previously wrote a letter to any legislators opposing the bill, just pull that up and readdress it with the request that the governor veto the bill.

Your phone call or voice mail message or could go as easy as this:

Hello. My name is [your name] and I am calling from [your town/city], Washington. I am calling to ask Governor Gregoire to veto ESB5005. I am a parent who believes in informed consent for medical procedures and in parental rights for the citizens of the State of Washington. Please veto ESB 5005.

If you don’t have a previous letter written and you have time, you can further educate the Governor by picking some of these points to share:

· NO OTHER STATE in the entire country burdens a parent financially and emotionally by requiring them to have to visit a doctor and obtain a signature for verification of their religious or philosophical exemption form. This bill is unconstitutional.

· Instead, other states (like Texas) add the requirement of a notarization on an exemption form with a statement that the parent has educated themselves on the risks and benefits of vaccines.

· The proponents who gave testimony in the Senate and House Committee hearings on this bill, misquoted facts and statistics to better justify their position. If the Governor were to look at the actual figures and statistics from the Washington DOH website regarding the percent of exemptions on the vaccines THAT ARE MANDATED IN WASHINGTON, instead of the figures for all vaccines on the CDC recommended list, she would see the difference between the actual numbers of exemptions in our state and those numbers testified to by proponents of this bill.

· You are already well educated on the subject of vaccine risks and benefits.

· You use medical practitioners not on the list of those eligible to sign forms.

· Many doctors are openly hostile to families making educated vaccine choices and aren’t likely to sign the form or flat out throw families out of their practice if they don’t fully vaccinate. Many pediatricians refuse to see patients if they refuse vaccines or ask for a modified vaccine schedule.

· Parents should not have to be reliant on the pharmaceutical/vaccine paradigm of healthcare in order to direct the upbringing of their children.

· Share any other personal reasons why this is important to your family.


2) Inform your own Washington State Representative and Senator that you have asked the Governor to Veto ESB5005 and request that they do the same. You can log on to your Washington state page on http://NVICAdvocacy.org to view this alert and can be directly view to your personal state legislators and their contact information.

3) Please forward this information to everyone you know who cares about this issue, and please sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal at http://NVICAdvocacy.org so you can receive further updates. You can also post this link to your facebook directly for a copy of this alert to share: http://nvicadvocacy.org/members/Resources/WAStopSB5005.aspx

Sincerely Your NVIC Advocacy Washington State Team Directors,
Janelle Hall and Janine Parque
WADirector@NVICAdvocacy.org

Friday, April 15, 2011

Come learn how ABDOMINAL FAT increases your chance of Cardiovascular Disease and Type II Diabetes

Come join us for the Cardiovascular Health Series part 1: Metabolic Syndrome Next Tuesday, April 26th at 7pm: FREE! Learn about what metabolic syndrome is, why it is such an epidemic in the United States and how it affects your cardiovascular health. Dr. Tamara and Dr. Gretchen will be discussing the symptoms associated with it; such as high cholesterol, increased fasting glucose, high blood pressure and abdominal fat.

This session will be held in the classroom space of 1405 85th St, in the same building as Emerald City Clinic. Be sure to call and sign up in advance, as space is limited. 206-781-2206. Both patients and non-patients welcome to join!

We'll see you here!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Bastyr University Presents:


The Department of Nutrition and Exercise Science

Invites you to a Brown Bag Talk

The Links between Diet and Cancer

Thursday, April 14, 2011

TIME: 12-12:50

Room 146

Joseph Gonzales, R.D.

A staff dietitian for the Cancer Project,

a Washington, DC nonprofit organization focused on plant-based nutrition education and research.

Researchers know more about the links between diet and cancer than ever before. Lowering body weight, limiting fat intake, and avoiding animal products can significantly cut cancer risk. Learn how the Cancer Project is advancing cancer prevention and survival through whole-food plant-based nutrition, education, and research.

Learn the benefits of a plant-based diet for cancer prevention and survival. Discuss peer-reviewed research regarding animal products and their potential link to increased cancer risk. Hear how the same diet for cancer prevention aids in the

prevention of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

Katy Huston

Administrative Assistant

Department of Nutrition and Exercise Science

Bastyr University Room 307

14500 Juanita Dr NE Kenmore WA 98028

425 602 3095

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Emerald City Clinic Now Open 1st Saturday of the Month!

Hello Dear ECN Clients,

We here at Emerald City completely understand how difficult it is in these times to miss any work to visit your doctor's office. We'd really like to work with all of you on this, and so are opening our doors the first Saturday of each month! We will have a doctor available for scheduled appointments from 10am-4pm beginning Saturday, May 7th. These are great appointments for taking care of your kids' spring physicals, finally finding out what your allergies really are, or treating yourself to your yearly appointment that has become not-so-yearly with all of your time constraints!

Throughout the day you are also welcome to stop in and purchase pharmacy, call to make appointments, have your emails answered by our front desk diva-- whatever you may need to do on a Saturday that you can't fit into your busy work week!

We anticipate these appointments to fill up fast, so call today to schedule! We'll see you soon!