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	ask the experts barbara loe fisher

Barbara Loe Fisher is co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center. She received a bachelor of arts degree in English from the University of Maryland and was an editor for New York Life Insurance Company in New York City; director of community relations for Muhlenberg Hospital in New Jersey; and media relations coordinator for the Alexandria Tourist Council in Alexandria, Virginia. She is co-author of DPT: A Shot in the Dark (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), author of The Consumer's Guide to Childhood Vaccines and editor of THE VACCINE REACTION and The Vaccine Hotline newsletters. She served on the National Vaccine Advisory Committee for four years and was appointed to the Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Forum in 1995, where she helped to coordinate five public workshops on vaccine safety issues. She served as the consumer voting member of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee of the FDA from 1999 - 2003.
Barbara has defined and led the national grassroots vaccine safety and informed consent movement in the US, representing parents at scientific and government meetings; testifying in state and federal legislative hearings; speaking at health care conferences and participating in print and broadcast reports on vaccine safety and informed consent issues. The mother of three children, her oldest son, Chris, was left with multiple learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder after a severe reaction to his fourth DPT shot in 1980 when he was two and a half years old.