Doctors Ask Quebec Officials for ‘Truthful, Complete’ COVID Vaccine Info to Let Parents Make Informed Choice for Kids

A vial labelled “Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine” is seen in this photo taken on Jan. 16, 2022. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

A group of 19 doctors and health experts is calling on Quebec’s college of physicians and public health director to provide COVID-19 vaccine information that is “neither promotional nor propagandist” so as to ensure parents who provide consent for their children can give “free and informed consent.”

The group, consisting of doctors, scientists, and pharmacists, co-signed an open letter to the Collège des médecins du Québec (CMQ) and Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) on Oct. 19, emphasizing that those organizations must provide “truthful, factual, complete, and clearly expressed information” on the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines so that parents can make an informed decision on whether or not to let their kids to take the shots.

“For the choice to be informed, all available information (potential benefits and harms, risks, uncertainties) must be provided and conveyed in language that is understandable,” said the letter in French, which was also addressed to Quebec’s Health Minister Christian Dubé and to Dr. Marie-Claude Roy, president of the Association of Pediatricians of Quebec (APQ).

The letter, which stated the need to “go back to science” concerning the vaccination of children, was sent on behalf of the signatories by Réinfo Covid Québec, a collective group of doctors and care providers from the biomedical professions who seek to address concerns about the “current health crisis.”

The signatories include Bernard Massie, former acting director general of the Therapeutics in Human Health Research Centre of the National Research Council of Canada; Patrick Provost, a full professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology within the Faculty of Medicine at Laval University; and Christian Linard, a professor in the Department of Chiropractic at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivieres.

Risks

The letter argues that risk-benefit analysis must consider the age and particularities of the child concerned. It said that mainly adolescents and young men run the risk of developing myocarditis should they take the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. It referred to an “Informed Consent Form (Sub Study C)” to take part in a study funded by BioNTech and Pfizer Inc. to evaluate if a lower dose of the BNT162b2 booster vaccine would provide the same immune response as the standard BioNTech/Pfizer booster dose.

“Myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the lining outside the heart) have occurred in some people who have received BNT162b2,” said the form, developed for a study at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio.

“Cases have mainly been reported in males under 30 years of age and following the second vaccination, however, there have been some cases reported in older males and females as well as following the first vaccination.”

The form, approved in January by an Institutional Review Board, a group regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to “review and monitor biomedical research involving human subjects,” stated that the risk of myocarditis occurring in the course of the study was “rare (between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 10,000 people).”

The BNT162b2 safety data was derived from clinical trials conducted up until September 2021 that included over 49,000 people aged over 12 years who had received at least one dose of the vaccine, as well as some 3,100 children aged 5 to under 12 years who had received at least one dose of the vaccine.

“Some said that myocarditis was ‘rare and benign.’ It is neither as rare nor as benign as we are told,” the letter argued. “Heart disease with a risk of serious recurrence in the medium and long term certainly cannot be described as benign.”

Other risks mentioned in the letter include potential damage to a child’s immune system, risk of damage to ovaries and risk of future infertility in the children, and the possibility of blood clots and damage to organs including the brain years after the vaccine was taken.

The group said vaccine benefits for children “have not been satisfactorily explained” and “even less so demonstrated” by the Quebec government and public health authority. “But the risks are indisputable and sometimes irremediable, thus subjecting children to an unnecessary and unjustified danger.”

“The authorities do not explain some official statistics, including the many COVID-19 deaths among the double or triple vaccinated, sudden deaths among athletes, as well as mortality statistics,” the group added.

“This raises legitimate questions. Has the effectiveness of ‘vaccines’ in healthy people really been demonstrated?”

‘Right to Truth’

In response to the group’s letter, Dubé’s office told the Epoch Times in an email statement in French that the Quebec Immunization Committee (QIC) has written that the usefulness of vaccination against COVID-19 in healthy children from 6 months to 4 years old appears limited, but has decided to offer the vaccine anyway.

“In the case of vaccines against COVID-19, this is an unprecedented situation. Since there is no vaccine available on the private market, government guidance therefore decided to provide it free of charge, since the vaccine was authorized by the QIC,” said spokesperson Marie-Hélène Émond.

“mRNA COVID-19 vaccines for children 6 months to 4 years of age should not be routinely given at the same time as other vaccines and should ideally be given 14 days or more apart,” she added, while saying that the same vaccine is to be used for the entire vaccination series for the same age group.

“It is true that social pressure, caused by different factors, has been exerted on non-vaccinated people, which is distressing,” she said. “Remember that the letter was signed by few physicians compared to the total number of physicians in Quebec.”

Provost said it “would be a shame” if the CMQ, INSPQ, and Quebec Government “ignore our initiative and do not carefully answer to this long-thought-out letter, which contains extremely serious issues to the medical field that need to be addressed.”

“This letter lists several major issues associated with mass vaccination of children, which can only be authorized by the parents, most of whom do not have the scientific background and critical thinking necessary to take this decision,” he said in an email to The Epoch Times on Oct. 27.

“The parents have to be much better (and equally) informed about the risks and benefits of this irreversible (possibly repeated) intervention so that they can make a free and informed consent for their children.”

According to the Oct. 19 open letter, “This is an essential duty of doctors and it is also a legal obligation enshrined in article 10 to 25 of the Civil Code of Quebec.”

“This obligation is inspired by the principle of ‘inviolability of the person’ and his ‘right to truth.’”