MTM - Interview with Rebecca Terrell ; Medical Freedom

Can a government agency decide what goes into your body, or your child’s body? That single question drives a frank conversation with Rebecca Terrell, a nurse and journalist, as we examine vaccine mandates through the lens of medical freedom, bodily autonomy, and informed consent. We separate “what you think about vaccines” from “what the state can force,” and we explain why that distinction matters even for people who generally support vaccination. 

We also dig into how public health messaging works when fear is the tool. We talk herd immunity, how “epidemic” can be defined, and why phrases like “safe and effective” may sound reassuring while still hiding narrow regulatory definitions. Along the way we discuss exemption requests we see in a medical practice, including the ethical line around medical exemptions and how religious exemptions are commonly framed under First Amendment protections, while noting that rules vary by state. 

From there, we zoom out to incentives and trust: conflicts of interest, pharmaceutical influence, and what research questions parents keep asking such as vaccinated vs unvaccinated comparisons and the cumulative impact of the childhood vaccine schedule. We touch on measles history, vitamin A treatment, and how legislative fights like Florida’s Medical Freedom Act connect to older precedent like Jacobson v. Massachusetts. If you care about vaccine policy, parental rights, and medical ethics, this conversation is built to challenge assumptions and sharpen your questions. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to More Than Medicine, where Jesus is more than enough for the ills that plague our culture and our country. Hosted by author and physician, Dr. Robert Jackson, and his wife Carlotta and daughter Annabella. So that's enough because the doctor is dead.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the Country Doctor's Rusty Dusty Scrapbook. I'm privileged today to have with me Rebecca Terrell. Terrell, Terrell, I gotta say it right. Sorry, Miss Rebecca. And um and she's gonna be our our guest today, and I've asked her to come and talk with us a little bit today about vaccine mandates, which has become a big issue all the way around the United States. So, Miss Rebecca, welcome to More Than Medicine.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Well, thank you so much. It's great to be back with you.

Vaccines Versus Mandates

SPEAKER_03 1:02

All right. Well, now let me ask you, I I saw that you had written a uh um an article or a post, I guess you might call it, for the New American, and I was intrigued by that, and I wanted to ask you to make a few comments about that whole issue for us. So if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about your thoughts on the whole issue of uh vaccine mandates.

SPEAKER_04 1:26

Well, yeah, I mean I I'm a nurse, actually. My background, I'm my have an inactive license uh now because I haven't practiced in a long time, but I do have a medical background. And so I'm coming at this from that perspective to say, I I, you know, as far as there's a difference between what do you think about vaccines and what do you think about mandates?

SPEAKER_03 1:48

That's right. Right? That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

It does not matter what I think about personally about vaccines, whether I think that they're good, bad, or indifferent. Yep. Safe, effective, or unsafe and ineffective. That doesn't matter. What matters here is can the government tell you what to inject into your own body? And I think by phrasing the question that way, I've already answered it, haven't I? Sure. Of course, the government should not be able to tell you. And by the government, I mean everyone around, think of the government as a big HOA.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

If you're your neighbors around you and your HOA, if you have the misfortune of living in one of those, can you know, can they tell you what to do what to do on the exterior of your home? Yeah, well, you signed on to that when you bought your home in that in that jurisdiction. Can they tell you what to inject in your body? What medicines to inject in your body? No.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

No, they cannot.

SPEAKER_04 2:42

Well, if the HOA can't, why can the federal government? Why can the state government? Why can the local or county government? It's it's all the same, it's all government.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yep, you're right.

SPEAKER_04 2:51

You know, so when you put it in perspective like that, you can say, okay, regardless of what we think about vaccines. Now, if you want to talk about safe and effective, we can talk about that. If you want to talk about records that we know of, then that makes it even more egregious that the government is mandating these things.

COVID Claims And Definitions

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Mm-hmm. Yep, you're right. And and see, and all of this really became a bigger issue during COVID because governments were mandating a vaccine that was not proven to be safe nor effective. And the vaccine trials for COVID were curtailed before they ever proved that it was effective, and before they proved that it was safe. And they really deceived us by telling us that it was safe and effective, and in the long run, it proved neither to be neither safe nor effective.

SPEAKER_04 3:43

We know that from the Freedom of Information Act's uh releases from Pfizer. We know that it in their in their very limited trials, no, it was not safe.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

No.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

Now, and we have to define those terms too. They will they there are very specific government endorsed definitions of safe and effective. Effective simply means the medicine does what the manufacturer says it's supposed to do, whether it kills you or not, is beside the point. Does the medicine produce that spike protein in your blood? Yes, it does. Then it's effective. That's what the word effective means. So that has nothing to do with the safety. Safety, they have, and you can you might know this specifically. There's a certain percentage, if it goes above a certain percentage of harm in test subjects, then it can't be called safe. But it can be called safe. I can't remember what that percentage is. Do you know that?

SPEAKER_03 4:42

No, but it look it it it depends on the vaccine and it depends on various situations.

SPEAKER_04 4:48

I think you're right. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, they're right there, you say, okay, they're giving you a margin of error where they're using the word safe, I would say rather loosely, because if if I'm putting something in my body or in my children's bodies, I want it to be 100% that it it harmed no one in trials. Yep. And then okay, we can talk about whether my children need it.

Medical Freedom And Nuremberg Code

SPEAKER_03 5:13

That's right. That's right. Or whether I need it. That's right. But then there's the whole issue of being mandated, the whole issue of the government telling me what I have to do.

SPEAKER_04 5:23

Exactly.

Exemptions And Religious Rights

SPEAKER_03 5:24

And you know, medical freedom means that I have autonomy and that that nothing can be put into my body against my will. And see the Nuremberg trials uh uh define that issue very clearly. Uh and and ever since the the Nuremberg trials there's been a clear distinction about what c governments can and cannot do. And every American understands clearly that the government cannot violate my personal physical autonomy, my personal medical freedom. And vaccine mandates by schools, by local governments, state governments, and federal governments are a a serious overreach by those governments. And you know, I I have patients that come into my office all the time asking me to provide them medical exemptions because they don't want their children or themselves to obtain some kind of vaccine.

SPEAKER_04 6:38

But is there rationale for for that? Do they have various rationales?

SPEAKER_03 6:43

Well, sometimes they've had an allergic reaction or some kind of reaction to a vaccine. Sometimes they just don't want the vaccine. They want me to fabricate a medical exemption. And I and unf and unfortunately for them, I say, look, I cannot fabricate a medical exemption.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Right.

SPEAKER_03 7:03

And I tell them, I said, now look, if you have a sincerely held religious belief that that you don't want a vaccine, that's your mi you you have a First Amendment right to a sincerely held religious belief. And I said, Now that's between you and God. You can't you can't just say that you have a sincerely held religious belief when you don't. And I said, But if you have a religious conviction that vaccines in general are are against your religion, then you can just tell them and they don't they cannot um uh uh suspect in any way that your conviction is is not religious and not sincere and not deeply held. And I said, you don't I tell them you don't have to defend it. I said, you don't have to give any scripture verse, you don't have to give any medical reason. All you have to say is that my sincerely held religious conviction is that I I am not willing to take a vaccine because of my religious convictions. And that's all you have to say. You don't have to defend it, you don't have to put scripture in there, you don't and they can't say, well, how often do you go to church? What do or they don't have to talk to your pastor, they don't have to do anything. All you have to do is say, This is my sincerely held religious conviction, bam, done. Nothing more. And and folks folks don't understand that.

SPEAKER_04 8:38

Right, that well, and it it's different in different states, too.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

Yeah, I agree.

Herd Immunity And Fear Messaging

SPEAKER_04 8:43

So, and actually a good place to go for information is the National Vaccine Information Center, uh, which sounds like it would promote vaccines, it actually promotes honesty and vaccine reporting, um, and you're gonna find what the rules are in your states. But the concept behind a mandate is is called herd immunity, the which is the theory that if enough people are vaccinated against a disease, the disease is eradicated. Um, and in our country, a disease is considered eradicated when there's been um, I believe it's a decade it passes and there aren't any uh reports of that disease. Um am I right in saying a decade? I believe that that's correct. And so they've said before that, oh, measles is eradicated, and now because of those anti-vaxxers, measles is back on our shore. Now, this is how they define an epidemic. An epidemic of measles happens when three or more people have it, have confirmed cases. Three. That's a federal guideline. So when they say, oh, epidemic, they're using fear to promote something. If they're using fear to promote something, then you know there's an agenda afoot.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Yep. You better believe it.

Research Gaps And Conflicts Of Interest

SPEAKER_04 10:02

We know because of the and a lot of the research into vaccines, there is not a lot of research into vaccines because all of it, most of it, has to be privately funded. The government just simply won't do it. Vaccines are safe and effective, end of story, you're supposed to shut up and and take it. Um, we know the research that has been done, there are many books on this. Um a lot of all of these childhood allergies, for instance, um, they relate back to vaccines. Um, epidemics of autism are related to vaccines, as shown in the privately funded research.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Right.

SPEAKER_04 10:43

The government refuses. Why doesn't the government just to shut up the anti-vaxxers, why doesn't the government fund a study to show who's healthier, vaccinated or unvaccinated children? That would kind of be the the end of the last, you know, the last word on the subject, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_03 11:01

Yep, it would be, but they've never funded one. And the pharmaceutical companies, of course, are not going to fund that because it would be uh unwise for them because if it sh showed a clear connection to autism, well, that would be the end of their vaccine business.

SPEAKER_04 11:17

There's also never been a study done, never not one ever, on the the combination, the effect of the combination of the vaccine schedule, the current vaccine schedule. Um which is some uh up into the eighties. Uh how many doses now between from the time a child is born until they're 18?

SPEAKER_03 11:34

Well, when I was in medical school, they only had five to seven vaccines. Right. But now, before a child is um seven years old, they get seventy-six vaccines.

SPEAKER_04 11:47

And that is r absolutely ridiculous. And it's things like hepatitis B. What child is sharing heroin needles with heroin users? You know, I mean that and and of course chicken pots. Chicken pots used to be just, you know, a childhood illness, no big deal.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:02

You get a fever for a few days, you stay at home, you get ice cream. And now it is a vicious killer. We must vaccinate, you know, vaccinate against it because there's money to be made. There's a whole lot of money to be made. And it's the the pharmaceutical, a a great deal of the FDA's budget comes from the money that the pharmaceutical companies pay to the agency for reviewing and ultimately approving and promoting. And promoting their products. So it is extremely it's a vested interest, and you'll see on I've done I've done reports on this, which you can find at the new the newamerican.com, about all of the conflicts of interest on these FDA advisory boards and on the the boards that approve medications. Just latent, horrific conflicts of interest. Um, if I had little ones right now, I wouldn't let anybody touch them. Another another fascinate a fascinating aspect of research into this is children who do have the normal childhood illnesses, like for instance, measles. Normally, measles is not a killer. Um, it's not any fun to have it. I don't wish it on anybody, but there have been studies that show a correlation between having measles as a child and having immunity to certain cancers as an adult. That's significant. There's another thing that's extremely significant and no one's looking into it. The epidemic of childhood cancers now that has gone on a very linear slope with the increase in childhood vaccinations.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_04 13:41

And something else nobody's talking about, I mean, when I say nobody's talking about it, Dell Bigtree is talking about it, you know, Children's Health Defense is talking about the National Vaccine Information Center is talking about it, but the mainstream media is certainly not, and certainly not the FDA or the CDC, all of those government bureaucrats who are there just to help you and keep you healthy, right?

Vaccine Schedule And Childhood Illnesses

SPEAKER_03 14:01

Right. But it's because they're financially conflicted by the these organizations. And the medical journals will not talk about it. But if you look at a medical journal, the in any medical journal, it doesn't matter. 50% of a medical journal is pharmaceutical advertisements. And I qu I quit reading medical journals thirty years ago because I was so disgusted with the amount of phartic pharmaceutical advertisements that are in them. These journals are so conflicted. You have to advocate for yourself. What was that about?

SPEAKER_04 15:05

Yes, that was the um, let me see, the Medical Freedom Act. Um I just had it pulled up on my yes, Medical Freedom Act, SB 1756, and it was passed 23 to 15 on Monday. Um it's headed to the Florida House, but I've read too that people aren't too optimistic about it passing the House, which is uh is unfortunate. Uh the most unfortunate thing about this issue, um it's now if it is passed, it would vastly expand vaccine exemptions for public K-12 schools in Florida. Now it says the report here that I'm reading says public K through 12 schools. I don't know what private or parochial schools, you know, have if there are different rules for those.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

But the govern the governor Santas DeSantis and the Attorney General uh Latipo, they're both pushing this legislation.

SPEAKER_04 16:06

Yes, they are. They're freedom lovers. But the sad thing to me about this is we've gotten to a state in this country uh that we have to have legislation like this protecting us from our own government. That's what that is. This is legislation protecting us from our own government. Um we supposedly live in this you know free country. We have to remember this has been going on for well more than 100 years. 1905, Jacobson versus Massachusetts, the Supreme Court upheld a state's mandatory compulsory smallpox vaccination. You know, you have to understand with that the smallpox, and and in that case, by the way, the reason Jacobson, who was refusing to get the smallpox vaccine, he had this would have been a second dose for him and I think his child too. And they had had adverse reactions to the first doses, and the government was still forcing them to take another dose because there was another breakout of smallpox. Now, smallpox is a killer. Smallpox kills uh 20% of the people that are infected, and it leaves the survivors with you know very defing scars.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

But um But what was the vaccine doing to people back then?

SPEAKER_04 17:21

Well, that's the thing. The vaccine is so very uh dangerous. Yeah, it truly is.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

The smallpox vaccine was unpredictable, right? And people died from the smallpox vaccine, and people back then knew it, and entire communities refused to take the smallpox vaccine.

SPEAKER_04 17:42

Yep. Yeah, but the court ruled that requiring the smallpox vaccine did not violate First Amendment rights. Because you the the the and the story here is that you by not being vaccinated, you could be a typhoid Mary and you're spreading it everywhere because you haven't been vaccinated. You could be a carrier. That's what they told all of us, how they tried to guilt us all during COVID. Oh, you're gonna kill your grandmother because you didn't get vaccinated with the COVID vaccine. And again, now remember the government had to change the definition of vaccine so they could call the COVID vaccine a vaccine. So we can't even trust the verbiage anymore.

Florida Medical Freedom Act

SPEAKER_03 18:22

No, you can't trust the government.

SPEAKER_04 18:25

Right, right. But so this started, this was going on back in 1905, and our government was setting up against us.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

Yeah.

unknown 18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

Yeah, there wasn't any option, you know, and that's another thing you know as a doctor, and I know as a nurse. You have uh you have a house full of kids and somebody gets sick. What's the first thing you do? The sick one goes to bed, the other ones aren't sequestered, they're not, you know, put under lock and key. But you keep the healthy ones away from the sick one, hoping it's not gonna spread. Of course it does spread because little kids do spread uh diseases among themselves, but you know, you you treat it, you get over it, and that's and that's that. But um, you know, there was never any talk of well, instead of vaccination you could do this. Or in fact, it was funny. I think I think it was instead of vaccination you could you have to pay a fine. How's that gonna help not spread it?

SPEAKER_03 19:14

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 19:16

Ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_04 19:18

You know, there was no talk of of quarantining the the the unvaccinated, it was just nope, you have to be vaccinated. There's an agenda there.

Jacobson Case And Government Power

SPEAKER_03 19:27

Yep, always an agenda. And the agenda was pushing the vaccine for the financial benefit of the pharmaceutical companies. It's always that way. There's always somebody, you follow the money. And this, like for example, there's a measles outbreak in the upstate of South Carolina where I live right now, and everywhere you look and everywhere you turn, they're pushing that measles vaccine. And and I'm just telling you, nobody's died, nobody's been in the hospital. There have been a bunch of people who've had the measles, but they're pushing those vaccines, and somebody's making a lot of money, and that's the pediatricians and the measles vaccine manufacturer.

SPEAKER_04 20:06

And we can prove what you're saying with historic records. The CDC records, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records, measles had become a non-issue long prior to introductions of the measles vaccine.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

Oh, yeah, measles had practically disappeared before 1940.

SPEAKER_04 20:24

It had. First of all, public health and hygiene had improved, uh, but also doctors had discovered the efficacy of vitamin A in relation to measles and in relation to all uh viruses.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 20:40

And that's why, you know, people in our parents and grandparents' generations always got that spoonful of cod liver oil before they went out into went out to school, right? Because and that cod liver oil was full of vitamin A. Even today, if you end up in the hospital with measles, the first thing they're gonna put in your IV is what?

SPEAKER_03 20:57

Vitamin A. Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 20:59

They know that that's the treatment. That's the treatment for measles, not the measles vaccine. So measles mortality and morbidity had pretty much bottomed out, almost almost completely eradicated in this country. And then they introduced the measles vaccine, and all of a sudden everybody had every measles is a killer, it's gonna kill you if you don't get vaccinated. But you know, this is a result of all of that. There was a the big push, you know, March of Dimes and the polio and all that stuff. And it was this big push with all these government grants, oh, find a solution to polio. And once they quote, find the solution, they have to find a new boogeyman because they want to keep that government money flowing. Yeah, so the researchers are always coming up with a new uh boogeyman, the the next big killer, and that's the way they they kind of run out of things to blame, and that's why chicken box is now this huge killer rather than just this childhood illness.

SPEAKER_03 21:56

Childhood illness, right.

Measles History And Vitamin A

SPEAKER_04 21:57

Now shingles has become this is another effect. To vaccines. Shingles has become this big issue among older people. Do you know why? Because they're not getting every time if you've had if you've had chickenpox as a child, then you have the virus in you dormant that causes shingles, right? Every time you encounter a child who has chickenpox, that's like getting a natural booster for your immunity, and you won't get shingles. We have all these children who are immunized against chickenpox now. We don't have chicken pox rampant where we're getting, as adults, we're getting those boosters, you know, our little our titers. And now shingles is a problem. Well, it's a problem created by government mandates.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

Exactly. Well, let me ask you this what if childhood illnesses were still a big deal? What if diphtheria or hooping cough were still rampant? And there were children who were very, very ill from these illnesses, would it be appropriate for the government to mandate vaccines for those childhood illnesses?

SPEAKER_04 23:08

If the government is practicing medicine, it's doing so without a license. You and I both know only doctors are qualified to practice medicine without a license. The government has no right to tell anybody what to inject in their bodies or in the bodies of children, no matter what's safe and effective, no matter who's sick and not sick, the government has no right to tell you what to inject in your body or in the bodies of your children.

SPEAKER_03 23:34

So my medical freedom, my personal autonomy trumps whatever's happening in the community.

SPEAKER_04 23:43

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 23:44

That's what I believe. That's exactly what I believe.

SPEAKER_04 23:47

And two, I have to say too, okay, you know, you you gave me an if. You gave me a hypothetical.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 23:53

Well, number one, the what's what's rampant in our community now are all of these uh mystifying allergies and um and you know, Asperger syndrome and um all of the other conditions.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

Autism, the various autism spectrum disorder.

SPEAKER_04 24:10

Right, the autism spectrum conditions, those are rampant now. But but we don't know why.

Shingles Theory And Autonomy

SPEAKER_03 24:21

Yeah, we don't know why. It's the it's the multiplicity of vaccines that our children are receiving. When I was in medical school, Rebecca, we never even talked about autism because there was none. It was one in ten thousand. But now autism is one in thirty-eight. And what was different was when I was in medical school, children only got about seven vaccines. Now they get about seventy-six vaccines.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

There's the reason why there's so many autism spectrum disorders. It's the assault on a child's neurologic system before they're even five years old.

SPEAKER_04 24:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 24:58

Yep exactly right. And I'm just telling my parents all the time, I say, listen, you better beware of those vaccines. And do not let the government violate your child's medical freedom, your child's medical autonomous autonomy.

SPEAKER_04 25:14

Amen. And also realize the the power of natural breast milk to uh boosting a child's true immunity, yeah. Uh, and don't fall for all of that the um baby formula that God didn't intend babies to be fed that way. That he he supplies everything that they need in a mother's breast milk.

Final Advice And Closing

SPEAKER_03 25:34

You're exactly right. All right, our time's up, Miss Rebecca. We're at the 26 minute mark and we need to try to wrap it up here. Any final thoughts about medical freedom or or government mandates before we wrap it up?

SPEAKER_04 25:47

Well, I would just encourage everyone to read and please, before you agree to let anything be injected into your baby, read, read, read, read, read. Go to those sources that I've said, Dell Big Tree and the National Vaccine Information Center and Children's Health Defense and look at some of this research that has been done that shows there's just no way, just no way anyone who cares about the the long-term health of their children, there's no way they should be agreeing to the vaccine schedule that the CDC puts out. If you if you feel um scared about um letting the child go completely vaccine free, at least hold off, at least don't let them start from day one, you know, from the child's birthday. They start injecting these things, don't let that happen to your baby.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

And just for my listeners' information, I'm going to interview Dr. Brian Hooker uh Friday of next week about the book Vax Unvax, which he co-authored with uh Bobby Kennedy, and we're going to talk about the connection between vaccines and autism. So I think my listening audience will be delighted to hear that conversation. All right, you're listening to more than medicine. Uh my guest today is Rebecca Terrell. Did I say it right? Terrell. Terrell. One of these days I'm gonna get it right. That's fine.

SPEAKER_04 27:14

I answer to both.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

Bless you, bless you. Well, thank you, Miss Rebecca, for being my my guest today. I hope to have you back again soon.

SPEAKER_04 27:24

Thank you, Dr. Jackson, and God bless you.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

All right. You're listening to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson. Please remember Jesus loves you and your doctor loves you. And until next week, uh, may the Lord bless you real good.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Medicine or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, Instagram, or webpage at JacksonFamily Medistry.com. Also, don't forget to check out Dr. Jackson's books that are available on Amazon. It's those books, Doctor, and Bible 2. That's Father's Biography on Last Over 1. The story of Dr. Dr. Family update is my father's book.