One hundred and seventeen unvaccinated employees from Houston Methodist Hospital filed a lawsuit Friday alleging their employer has no right to force them to get vaccinated against the deadly Coronavirus, COVID-19. They join ‘a growing list of employees challenging compulsory immunizations at businesses, colleges and other workplaces essential to the country’s reopening. Vaccine mandates have faced mounting resistance from anti-vaccination groups and some Republican politicians, even as health officials promote the proven safety of the vaccines and millions of Americans line up to get the shots every week.’
Jared Woodfill, a Houston-area attorney and conservative activist, filed the lawsuit against the hospital. It states that ‘Houston Methodist’s vaccine mandate violates a set of medical ethics standards known as the Nuremberg Code, which was designed to prevent experimentation on human subjects without consent. The code was created after World War II in response to the medical atrocities Nazis committed against prisoners in concentration camps.’
“Methodist Hospital is forcing its employees to be human ‘guinea pigs’ as a condition for continued employment,” the complaint states. It adds that the mandate “requires the employee to subject themselves to medical experimentation as a prerequisite to feeding their families.” Elsewhere, it falsely characterizes the coronavirus vaccines as an “experimental COVID-19 mRNA gene modification injection.”
This particular lawsuit mirrors similar suits filed by Siri & Glimstad — ‘a New York firm that has done millions of dollars of legal work for one of the nation’s foremost anti-vaccination groups.’ Siri & Glimstad have sent warning letters to a sheriff’s department in North Carolina, a nursing home in Wisconsin, Rutgers University, as well as other schools.
A Texas-based nonprofit group founded by former daytime television producer Del Bigtree, the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), campaigns against vaccine mandates by spreading misinformation about them. They regularly advertise Siri and Glimstad’s services.
“If you or anyone you know is being required by an employer or school to receive a covid-19 vaccine, ICAN is offering to support legal action on your behalf to challenge the requirement,” reads an advertisement on a blog run by Children’s Health Defense, a group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that spreads what Kennedy’s family members say is anti-vaccine misinformation.
President and CEO of Houston Methodist, Marc Boom, refuted his employees’ claims by stating that it’s completely ‘legal for health-care institutions to require vaccines. Houston Methodist has done so for the flu vaccine for more than a decade.’
“As health-care workers, it is our sacred obligation to do whatever we can to protect our patients, who are the most vulnerable in our community,” Boom said in an email Saturday. “We proudly stand by our employees and our mission to protect our patients.”
