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On Tuesday, March 7, several PFF members joined a hearing at the Capitol in Madison to oppose some vaccine mandates. The next day, this biased article appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Below is PFF’s response to the article. Today we learned that Wisconsin’s legislature voted to stop the mandates as we hoped.

The mission of Physicians for Freedom is factual, rational and respectful debate on health and other policy. We are non-partisan and unaffiliated with any interests to minimize bias and follow the evidence, wherever it leads, to truth. Even so, we sometimes find ourselves in stormy partisan waters.

That happened Tuesday at a hearing of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules in the Capitol. The hearing addressed two basic questions: 1) What are the pros and cons of some vaccine policies, and 2) Should the state mandate those policies?

Ideally this would be resolved according to common sense principles with no partisan politics. If evidence clearly shows a mandate necessary to achieve big benefits, then there is reason to deny our fundamental right to make our own medical decisions.

But Covid revealed deep partisan divisions where none should be. At Tuesday’s hearing, three government medical authorities presented pro-mandate data followed by several others presenting the con side, and the representatives clearly divided along party lines. We think the anti-mandate evidence was stronger and more coherent, but others might disagree. So maybe Question 1 ended in a draw.

What about Question 2? Yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS) article by Molly Beck provides decisive and disturbing evidence on whether the state should use force to compel vaccines against our will.

Ms. Beck cites the physician manager of the state’s immunization program, saying “that requiring students to be vaccinated against meningitis makes sense because many already are.” Let’s get this straight. Our state authority says the more we freely choose to do something, the more they should force us to do it. By that logic, there should be broad support to mandate breathing, eating, rooting for the Packers… The truth, of course, is that mandates only “make sense” when liberty fails.

This is a tell. It reveals something very disturbing about our would-be mandators. They do not view their power as something to limit so we may live more freely. They look for opportunities to use force and restrict our freedom. But they don’t say that. They claim only to want safety for our children. In fact they want power—power that steals our freedom to decide how to keep our kids safe.

Let’s do more factual, rational analysis of Ms. Beck’s article. You may think she and the MJS do objective reporting, but their article proves otherwise. Tara Czachor, founder of Wisconsin United for Freedom, gave powerful, coherent testimony full of well documented evidence, but Ms. Beck referred to her “debunked theories about [vaccine] safety.” Many joined Ms. Czachor in citing serious vaccine side effects, yet no one at the hearing refuted, let alone debunked those claims.

Is it objective reporting to dismiss as “debunked” something not debunked? Can we dismiss Ms. Beck’s article just by saying she’s “debunked”? Since no one at the hearing debunked the many reports of serious vaccine side effects, we at PFF invite Ms. Beck to do so.

The most glaring flaw in Ms. Beck’s “reporting” is her failure to mention Dr. Pierre Kory, who testified right after Ms. Czachor. Dr. Kory is an internationally recognized authority on Covid and vaccine injuries. Dr. Kory was by far the most famous person at the hearing, and his testimony and follow-up Q&A ran longer than Ms. Czachor’s. Yet the article never even mentions his name. This is no chance omission. This would be like the MJS doing a story on a banquet where LeRoy Butler and Brett Favre spoke, but only mentioning Butler. Readers would wonder why they left out Favre, as we should wonder about Dr. Kory.

But we don’t need to wonder because by looking rationally at the evidence, we understand. The Beck article is not reporting: It’s propaganda. That answers Question 2: No, we do not want our government mandating these vaccine policies—not just because we disagree on the science, and not just because we think individual parents care more about their children than bureaucrats. It’s also because we do not trust them with our liberty.

To come together at the truth, to restore trust in authorities, in the media and in each other, we must hold each other accountable to the process of factual, rational and respectful debate. It is the best path to truth, peace, freedom and health.