TheHealthRanger | September 20, 2010
Pharmaburger is episode one of “Food Investigations,” the new mini documentary series that reveals shocking truths about foods. See FoodInvestigations.com for all episodes. Created by Mike Adams the Health Ranger.
Infowars.com
August 13, 2010
Paul Joseph Watson
http://www.infowars.com/
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Scientific dictatorship wants lobotomized, subservient public
The establishment media and the scientific dictatorship are promoting brain-eating vaccines that virtually lobotomize people and rewire their minds into a state of subservient compliance so that their natural instinct to get angry and rebel against the tyranny being imposed upon them is neutered and sterilized.
“Academics say they are close to developing the first vaccine for stress — a single jab that would help us relax without slowing down,” reports the Daily Mail.
Dr Robert Sapolsky, professor of neuroscience at Stanford University in California, says the vaccine is intended to impose a state of “focused calm” by altering brain chemistry.
The proposals ominously hark back to George Lucas’ 1971 dystopian chiller TXH 1138, in which the population is controlled and subjugated through the use of special drugs to suppress emotion.
Feeling stress, getting angry, expressing emotion and displaying passion are all innate, natural and vital aspects of human behavior. Reacting with stress to dangerous or uncomfortable situations is an essential and healthy response, and is one shared by just about every living thing on the planet.
Scientists are now telling us that getting angry, upset and passionate is abnormal and needs to be “treated” through a fresh dose of pharmaceutical drugs and injections that will virtually lobotomize us into submissive compliance. This is blatantly a part of the full spectrum assault on our minds, our bodies and our nervous system through the contamination of our food and water supply.
The new research on brain-altering vaccines dovetails with proposals to add lithium to the water supply in order to treat “mood disorders”.
People globally are already being bombarded with sodium fluoride, a cancer causing neurotoxin, through the water supply, toothpaste, and many foods.
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
The first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water on Earth was found in Germany’s Nazi prison camps. The Gestapo had little concern about fluoride’s supposed effect on children’s teeth; their alleged reason for mass-medicating water with sodium fluoride was to sterilize humans and force the people in their concentration camps into calm submission.
As a growing number of people worldwide begin to educate themselves about what they are putting in their bodies and how they are under chemical and biological attack from the foods they eat, the establishment in getting increasingly desperate in trying to maintain a sick and weak populace, even telling them that injecting the toxic poison mercury into their bloodstream will be beneficial to their health.
The effort to chemically lobotomize the public is part of the elite’s drive to create a sub-species of drugged up, dumbed-down slaves who don’t have the intelligence or the energy to resist the control measures being imposed on them by their population-reduction obsessed masters. While the elite will be free to enjoy
Infowars is promoting a new viral Google search term in order to attract much needed attention to this grave issue.
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Robert Wanek
YouTube
December 18, 2009
The flyers consisted of simple medical studies that disprove vaccine safety claims by the CDC. On December 16th Breckenridge High School was holding a free vaccination clinic for all willing students, I signed up on the 14th and intended to enter the science room to hand out educational flyers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3_wxy7wHac
When I began handing them out I was physically pushed around by my principal, this didn’t stop me from handing out many more flyers to the waiting students, some of which changed their mind and began to leave the line. After being threatened with arrest and removal from school property, I went back to class.
When I was dismissed at 1:30 I ran back to the clinic. After being physical blocked by a public health official I slid under her arm and began peacefully offering nurses more information. This is when my science teacher Scott Wermerskirchen Assaulted me by pushing, bumping, grabbing, and aggressively ‘bearhugging’ me in an attempt to get my video camera.
The whole altercation was captured on multiple security cameras and seen by over 20 witnesses. The school is refusing to release any video footage, and has not taken action against this teacher. However, the punishment for handing out flyers was a 2 day out of school suspension which was issued to me. This is ludicrous unjust and downright fascist.
Contact the school with your opinions
218-643-2694
(Principal Bettin)
bettind@breckenridge.k12.mn.us
Superintendent Schmidt
schmidtw@breckenridge.k12.mn.us
Every student in this film has given me WRITTEN CONSENT to film and broadcast them, although I did not operate the camera, I therefore avoided breaking any rules.
On May 11, 1987, The London Times, one of the world’s most respected newspapers, published an explosive article entitled, “Smallpox vaccine triggered AIDS virus.”
The story suggested the smallpox eradication vaccine program sponsored by the WHO (World Health Organization) was responsible for unleashing AIDS in Africa. Almost 100 million Africans living in central Africa were inoculated by the WHO (World Health Organization). The vaccine was held responsible for awakening a “dormant” AIDS virus infection on the continent.
An advisor to the WHO admitted, “Now I believe the smallpox vaccine theory is the explanation for the explosion of AIDS.”
Robert Gallo, M,D., the co-discoverer of HIV, told The Times, “The link between the WHO program and the epidemic is an interesting and important hypothesis.
I cannot say that it actually happened, but I have been saying for some years that the use of live vaccines such as that used for smallpox can activate a dormant infection such as HIV.” Despite the tremendous importance of this story, the U.S. media was totally silent on the report, and Gallo never spoke of it again.
In September 1987, at a conference sponsored by the National Health Federation in Monrovia, California, William Campbell Douglass, M.D., bluntly blamed the WHO for murdering Africa with the AIDS virus.
In a widely circulated reprint of his talk entitled “W.H.O. Murdered Africa” , he accused the organization of encouraging virologists and molecular biologists to work with deadly animal viruses in an attempt to make an immunosuppressive hybrid virus that would be deadly to humans.
From the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (Volume 47, p.259, 1972), he quoted a passage that stated: “An attempt should be made to see if viruses can in fact exert selective effects on immune function. The possibility should be looked into that the immune response to the virus itself may be impaired if the infecting virus damages, more or less selectively, the cell responding to the virus.”
According to Douglass, “That’s AIDS. What the WHO is saying in plain English is Let’s cook up a virus that selectively destroys the T-cell system of man, an acquired immune deficiency.'” The entire article can be read on google.com (“WHO Murdered Africa”).
In his 1989 book, ‘AIDS: The End of Civilization,’ Douglass claims the WHO laced the African vaccines. He blames “the virologists of the world, the sorcerers who brought us this ghastly plague, and have formed a united front in denying that the virus was laboratory-made from known, lethal animal viruses. The scientific party line is that a monkey in Africa with AIDS bit a native on the butt. The native then went to town and gave it to a prostitute who gave it to a local banker who gave it to his wife and three girl friends, and wham – 75 million people became infected with AIDS in Africa. An entirely preposterous story.”
Canwest News Service
September 29, 2009
B.C. might suspend the seasonal flu shots as early as today, in the wake of a Canadian study that suggests people who get the flu vaccine are twice as likely to contract the H1N1 virus.
Several news outlets reported the preliminary findings of the study, which is still under peer review. Researchers found that those who received the seasonal flu vaccine in the past were more likely to catch H1N1.
While the research was initially met with much skepticism from health officials, several provinces, including Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia, have suspended seasonal flu shots for anyone younger than 65, the Globe and Mail newspaper is reporting in its Monday editions.
Updated: Sep 22, 2009 03:26 PM CDT
In year’s past, Quad City hospitals highly recommended the flu shot to employees. This year, they’re a requirement. If you work for Genesis or Trinity, whether you’re a doctor in the back or a greeter up front, you must get a seasonal flu shot. Adminstators say it’s all about protecting their patients.
“If you have staff that perhaps have influenza, have influenza-like symptoms or they haven’t manifested yet and they’re caring for patients, we’re putting our patients at risk,” Erin Lounsberry with Trinity Regional Health System said.
With H1N1 in our midst and hospitals planning for a major seasonal flu outbreak, local hospitals aren’t taking any chances. A letter to employees at Trinity says the only exceptions will be for medical reasons. In that case, the employee has to have a doctor’s note.
Ken Croken with Genesis Health System says it’s the same at their hospitals. “The most common medical exemption for a flu vaccine is an allergy to egg or egg product because generally the flu vaccine is made of eggs,” he explained.
If an employee does not have a medical reason and refuses to get the flu shot there will be consequences. In the most extreme case it will be termination.
“This is not if you refuse to get a flu shot then you’re fired. If somebody has a clean record and they don’t have any corrective action on their employee record then it will be noted in their file,” Lounsberry said.
So far Trinity says any concern over the flu shot requirement has been minimal. Genesis notes none. They’re also encouraged because last year, when the flu shot was not a requirement, at least 90 percent of employees got one anyway.
Alan G. Philips is an attorney with the following credentials:
– he’s one of the few American lawyers whose practice includes vaccine exemption and waiver issues;
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he advises other attorneys seeking help for their own clients on vaccine exemptions;
– he co-founded Citizens for Healthcare Freedom (CHF) as “a grassroots, nonprofit organization supporting an exciting new Consumer Health Freedom Act in North Carolina” where he lives and practices law;
– he “may be the only attorney in the US with a website dedicated to vaccine exemptions” – vaccinerights.com;
– he authored “The Authoritative Guide to Vaccine Legal Exemptions;” and
– he’s written numerous articles and publications on vaccinations and immunizations, including “Dispelling Vaccination Myths: An Introduction to the Contradictions Between Medical Science and Immunization Policy,” published in 1996 and most recently updated in 2007.
Given the possibility of universally mandated untested, experimental, toxic, and extremely dangerous Swine Flu vaccinations this fall, Philips’ work is especially relevant and vital.
In its entirety, it can be accessed at www.vaccinerights.com/. A brief account follows below, focusing on 10 myths and truths, which he explains plus some additional information. More than ever, information is vital for protection against vaccines that can cause annoying to life-threatening autoimmune diseases, even the illnesses they’re designed to prevent.
Of special concern is their effect on children. In America and elsewhere, they’re over-immunized enough to destroy their immune systems, leaving them vulnerable to a lifetime of serious health disorders.
No one should voluntarily or otherwise take any vaccine, let alone one as untested and dangerous as for H1N1. But make no mistake. The dominant global media are readying a high intensity fear-mongering campaign to convince the unwary to jeopardize their health and well-being by doing it. Just say NO!!
In America, laws in place empower the Health and Human Services and/or Defense secretaries to declare a national emergency and order mass vaccinations. Legally, individual states can resist, but not likely when enough pressure is applied.
Under the proposed, but not enacted, October 2001 Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA), states are advised on how to exercise extraordinary emergency powers without regard to civil liberties issues. Individual ones have adopted some of its provisions and may add more later given the power of Washington and the media to force them.
The WHO is also empowered under the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) to address but not mandate global vaccinations. But it has enough influence to compel nations to go along in case of a “declared” pandemic threat, even without evidence to prove one.
Suspicious H1N1’s Origins
On April 24, AP reported that
“Health officials are investigating a never-before-seen form of the flu that combines pig, bird and human viruses…. (It’s) a growing medical mystery because it’s unclear how (affected people) caught the virus. None (of seven cited had) contact with pigs.” Nor had others reportedly affected in other US cities.
The “intercontinental” mixture included North American Swine Flu, North American Avian Flu, human H1N1 flu, and a fourth H3N2 strain found in Asia and Europe.
Suspicions about a synthetic laboratory-made virus have surfaced. Writing in NewsMax.com, Dr. Russell Blaylock quoted an unnamed viroligist saying: “Where the hell it got all these genes we don’t know.” According to Blalock: “Debate continues over the possibility that swine flu is a genetically engineered virus.”
Dallas County Medical Director Dr. John Carlo voiced concern about the possibility that:
“This strain of swine influenza (may have been) cultured in a laboratory….something that’s not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world….”
Recently interviewed on Russia Today TV, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen cited a University of Wisconsin lab conducting joint influenza vaccine research with drug company FluGen. On March 24, Reuters reported that:
“FluGen, Inc., an emerging leader in the development, production and delivery of influenza vaccines and related products, today announced it has secured exclusive rights to a novel, patent-protected vaccine-delivery technology (that) painlessly delivers seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines.”
Madsen believes “the Swine Flu virus began in a lab,” the objective being profits for vaccine makers with products “that may not actually be safe.” Many noted experts share that view about all vaccines.
NutriMedical founder Dr. William Deagle reported that 6-8% of Swine Flu DNA matches no virus on record. He believes more lethal strains may appear in the fall.
Project Camelot “provide(s) a vehicle for researchers and whistleblowers to get their stories out.” Interviewed on its Whistleblower Radio show, Burk Elder Hale claimed that a senior drug company biochemist (unnamed to protect him) told him:
“….an aerosoled precursor has been put into the air and almost everyone has breathed it into their lungs. (When Swine Flu) vaccines (are) administered in the fall, (they’ll) be activated when (their) constituents come into contact with the aerosoled precursor in the body and will cause a rapid spread of the H1N1 influenza A virus. The biochemist is very upset about the matter….and is a very reliable source that needs our utmost protection.”
Catherine Austin Fitts is a former high-level US government official and Wall Street insider. She’s now the editor of Solari.com and runs Solari, Inc. as an “online media company focusing on ethical investment and preserving family wealth.”
Admitting she’s no expert, she wrote this about Swine Flu on July 22:
“I believe one of the goals of the swine flu vaccine is depopulation. Perhaps it is the goal of a swine flu epidemic as well, whether bio-warfare or hype around a flu season….Lowering immune systems and increasing toxicity levels combined with poor food, water and terrorizing stress will help do the trick….a plague can so frighten and help control people that they will accept the end of their current benefits….without objection. And a plague with proper planning can be highly profitable. Whatever the truth (about) swine flu and related vaccines….it can be used (to) control (a) situation that is quickly shifting out of control.”
“In short, an epidemic can be used to offset the inflation of capital with increasing deflation of the value and income of labor and continual demand destruction. (What’s coming next is the) meaner face of ‘the establishment against the rest of society.’ ”
The possibility of a diabolical depopulation scheme can’t be dismissed. The idea’s been around for decades, including from the 1974 Henry Kissinger project – National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200). It was backed by powerful economic interests to cull the world population of useless feeders so corporate giants could exploit world resources unimpeded.
Kissinger’s scheme was to make birth control a prerequisite for US aid. He wanted the annual death rate doubled and for a population decline in the hundreds of millions by 2000. Poor third world women in countries like Brazil were involuntarily sterilized. Millions were harmed then. Perhaps today’s toll from mandatory global Swine Flu vaccinations will be billions.
Yet US laws were passed to prevent it. In 1986, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) required:
– giving parents written information on vaccine benefits and risks so they could decide on what was safe for their children;
– maintaining a permanent record of all vaccines given children, including producer names and lot numbers;
– keeping up to date medical records of all vaccinations given children; and
– recording all serious health problems after vaccinations were administered and notifying the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) immediately.
At issue is whether federal laws and constitutional and Nuremberg protections will help. Nuremberg requires voluntary consent with full disclosure of known risks and avoidance of experimental treatments if there’s any reason to believe harm may result. The Fifth Amendment protects against abusive government authority in stating that “No person shall….be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law….” The Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” Harming human health is cruel and abusive. Mandating suspect drugs violates Nuremberg, the US Constitution, and other protective laws. Whether they’ll be enforced is another matter.
Dispelling Vaccination Myths with Truths
Myth No. 1: Vaccines are safe
Under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Reporting System) was established. Annually, it reports about 11,000 serious vaccine reactions, including up to 200 deaths and many more permanent disabilities.
Far more alarming is the following;
– the FDA estimates that only 1% of serious adverse reactions are reported;
– CDC says it’s 10%;
– medical school students testified before Congress that they’re told not to report these incidents;
– according to the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), only one in 40 New York doctors reported adverse vaccine reactions or deaths;
– international studies show vaccines cause up to 10,000 US SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) deaths annually, and at least half of them are from vaccines;
– another study determined that 3000 US children die annually from vaccines;
– poor reporting in America suggests that annual adverse vaccine reactions, in fact, number from 100,000 – one million;
– since 1988, the government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) paid families of affected children $1.2 billion in damages;
– as authorized by the 2006 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, HHS Secretary Sebelius, granted drug companies legal immunity (except for impossible to prove willful misconduct) to proliferate dangerous, untested Swine Flu vaccines globally;
– vaccines are legally mandated in all 50 US states, though legally avoidable in most (under normal circumstances) as explained below;
– in settling vaccine damage suits, drug companies impose gag orders to keep vital information from the public; and
– insurers refuse to cover adverse vaccine reactions because of the high potential liability they’d face.
Truth No. 1
Vaccinations cause high numbers of severe reactions, permanent disabilities, and deaths as well as an enormous personal and public cost. Virtually none of this gets reported.
Myth No. 2: Vaccines are very effective
Medical literature documents significant numbers of vaccine failures for measles, mumps, small pox, pertussis, polio and Hib-causing bacterial meningitis and pneumonia. In 1989, Oman experienced a widespread polio outbreak six months after completing a population-wide immunization program. In Kansas (in 1986), 90% of 1300 reported pertussis cases were “adequately vaccinated,” and 72% of Chicago pertussis incidents in 1993 had been as well.
Truth No. 2
Evidence shows that vaccinations are an unreliable and dangerous way to prevent illness and disease.
Myth No. 3: Low US disease rates are attributable to vaccines
From 1850 – 1940, well before mandatory vaccination programs, the British Association for the Advancement of Science reported a 90% decrease in childhood diseases due to improved sanitation and hygiene practices. By 1945, US medical authorities noted a 95% drop in deaths from the leading childhood infectious diseases (diphtheria, pertussis, scarlet fever and measles), well before mass-immunizations began.
A recent WHO report found that third world disease and mortality rates had no direct correlation with immunization programs, but closely relate to hygiene and diet standards.
Truth No. 3
No evidence links vaccines with infectious disease declines. Proper hygiene and diet practices may be far more effective.
Myth No. 4: Sound immunization theory and practice prove the effectiveness of vaccines
Although vaccines stimulate antibody production, no evidence suggests that alone assures immunity. A 1950 British Medical Council-published study found no relationship between antibody count and disease incidence. Natural immunization involves many bodily organs and systems. Artificially producing antibodies can’t achieve it.
Research also shows how squalene adjuvants harm the human immune system, making it susceptible to numerous illnesses and diseases ranging from very annoying to life threatening. In addition, the “herd immunity” notion of mass-immunizations effectiveness is largely discredited. Just the opposite is true as evidence shows that fully vaccinated populations have experienced epidemics numerous times in the past.
Further, vaccine effectiveness “remains scientifically unproven” because no double blind studies have been conducted to do it. Significantly, recent disease outbreaks have affected more vaccinated children than unvaccinated ones. And the common practice of “one size fits all” is troublesome. It lets tiny new-borns get the same dosage as a five year old. It tolerates dubious quality control practices producing what’s known as “Hot Lots” – ones associated with disproportionately high death and disability rates.
Shockingly, the FDA refuses to act preventatively against them. In fact, individual vaccine lots have almost never been recalled even when associated with severe adverse reactions. Instead, they’re administered under the assumption that all recipients respond the same, regardless of race, ethnicity, genetic makeup, or other characteristics.
A recent New England Journal of Medicine-reported study found that a significant number of Romanian children receiving polio vaccine contracted the disease. Evidence linked antibiotic injections to it. One innoculation raised the polio risk eight-fold; two – nine shots, 27-fold, and 10 or more 182-fold.
New research may reveal other unknown hazards, but public safety won’t be addressed until government health officials act responsibly, report accurately, and adequately protect their populations from vaccines they never should allow.
Truth No. 4
Many supposed vaccine truths have, in fact, been proved false.
Myth No. 5: Childhood diseases are extremely dangerous
False. Even CDC data show a 99.8% pertussis recovery rate during the 1992-94 period. One Cincinnati Children’s Hospital infectious diseases expert said at the time: “The disease was very mild, no one died, and no one went to the intensive care unit.”
Nearly always, childhood infectious diseases “are benign and self-limiting. They usually impart lifelong immunity, whereas vaccine-induced immunization (when achieved) is only temporary.” In fact, it can increase vulnerability later on by postponing better tolerated childhood illnesses until adulthood when death rates (though still low) are far higher.
Most important is that nearly all common infectious diseases are rarely dangerous, and, in fact, can develop strong, healthy adult immune systems when they’re most needed. In addition, few people know that children who didn’t contract measles have a higher incidence of skin diseases, degenerative bone and cartilage ones, and tumors while ovarian cancer is higher among mumps-free adult women. The human immune system benefits from common childhood infectious diseases. Freedom from them may be harmful later on.
Truth No. 5
Childhood disease dangers are greatly exaggerated to scare parents into getting their children vaccinated with unsafe drugs.
Myth No. 6: Polio vaccinations were very successful
False again. In 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered the most serious post-war public health problem. A year later, six New England states reported sharp rises ranging from more than double in Vermont to a 642% increase in Massachusetts. Other states also were badly impacted enough for Idaho and Utah to halt immunizations due to increased incidence and death rates.
In his 1962 congressional testimony, Dr. Bernard Greenberg, Biostatistics Department head at the University of North Carolina, reported sharp polio increases from 1957 to 1959 and a Public Health Service whitewash that suppressed it. In 1985, the CDC reported that 87% of US cases between 1973 and 1983 were caused by the vaccine. Later it added that it caused nearly all imported cases, and most of the victims were fully vaccinated.
Further, misdiagnosing, poor reporting, and cover-ups suggest that the actual number of vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP) cases “may be 10 to 100 times higher than that cited by the CDC.”
In 1977, even Jonas Salk admitted that mass inoculations caused most polio cases since 1961.
Truth No. 6
The Salk vaccine proved highly dangerous. Information about it was suppressed, and declines in the disease were well underway when mass-immunizations were begun. In Europe, they occurred in countries that used, then rejected the vaccine proving it was never needed in the first place. Showing also that the same is true for other diseases, including Swine Flu with the WHO and CDC admitting that most cases are mild, unthreatening, and generally pass without treatment, let alone risking dangerous unneeded vaccines.
Myth No. 7: Lack of an initial adverse reaction proves vaccines are safe
Documented long-term health problems include arthritis, chronic headaches, rashes indicative of disease, non-healing skin lesions, seizures, autism, anemia, multiple sclerosis, ALS, cancer, and many others. Ingredients common to all vaccines are at issue. Squalene adjuvants are a biological time bomb that can harm or destroy the human immune system.
Other ingredients are known toxicants and carcinogens, including thimersol (a mercury derivative), aluminum phosphate, formaldehyde, phenoxyethanol, and numerous gastrointestnal toxicants like liver toxicants, cardiovascular and blood toxicants, and reproductive toxicants. “Chemical ranking systems rate many vaccine ingredients among the most hazardous substances” known, even in microscopic doses.
“Millions of children (and adults) are partaking in an enormous crude experiment, and no sincere, organized effort is being made to track the negative side effects or to determine the long-term consequences.”
Dr. Bart Classen’s epidemiological research found vaccines as the cause of 79% of insulin type I diabetes cases in children under 10. The sharp rise in numerous other diseases may also be linked with mass-immunizations. California’s autism rate skyrocketed 1000% in the last 20 years. In the 1990s, MMR vaccine usage in Britain (for measles, mumps and rubella) occurred at the same time autism rose sharply. The January 2000 Journal of Adverse Drug Reactions reported that no adequate testing was done, so the vaccine never should have been licensed.
The Autism Society says: “Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and is the result of a neurological disorder that affects the normal functioning of the brain….”
According to the CDC and National Vaccine Information Center, one in every 150 US children develop the disease. Tens of millions are affected worldwide, making it more common than pediatric cancer, incurable type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes and AIDS combined. In the early 1940s, prior to mass immunizations, autism was so rare that few doctors ever encountered it. Today it’s a global pandemic.
Truth No. 7
Long-term vaccination reactions have been suppressed and ignored in spite of the alarming correlation between their use and the rise of autoimmune and other diseases. Vaccines aren’t for protection. They’re for profit and other nefarious purposes. Avoiding them is essential to protecting human health and well-being.
Myth No. 8: Vaccines are the only available disease prevention option
“Historically, homeopathy has proven many times…more effective than allopathic (conventional) medicine in the treatment and prevention of disease.” During the 1849 US cholera outbreak, homeopathic hospitals documented a 3% death rate compared to 48 – 60% in conventional ones. It’s as true today, and recent epidemiological studies show homeopathic remedies far superior to vaccines in preventing diseases. They’re safe, effective, and toxin and side effect-free, yet most insurers won’t cover them.
Truth No. 8
Alternative treatments and remedies have been safe and effective for generations, yet the medical establishment and governments attack and spurn them.
Myth No. 9: “Vaccinations are legally mandated and unavoidable…”
All states require them. However, laws vary by state, legal exemptions exist, and all states offer one or more of the following:
– all states allow medical exemptions for persons susceptible to adverse reactions; parents can cite this for their children based on family history;
– 48 states offer religious exemptions but may require membership in an established religious organization; “according to federal precedent, personal religious beliefs may be sufficient for a religious exemption regardless of which religious organization you belong to, or whether or not you belong to an organized religion at all;” in addition, the Supreme Court defined religion broadly for legal purposes; and
– 17 states allow philosophical or personal exemptions.
All public and private schools must comply with federal and state vaccination laws and permit legal exemptions.
Truth No. 9
Some vaccines are mandated, but most, perhaps all, US citizens may use legal exemptions to avoid them. In a recent article, however, Phillips states:
“All non-medical exemptions in the US are ultimately provided conditionally. That is, states have the right to require immunization for everyone, legally exempt or not, during an (emergency) outbreak, other than (for) those” with medical exemptions.
Myth No. 10: Governments place public health concerns above all others
Vaccination history shows “documented instances of deceit portraying vaccines as mighty disease conquerors, when in fact vaccines have had little or no discernible impact – or have even delayed or reversed – pre-existing disease declines….Conflicts of interest are the norm in the vaccine industry.” Government agencies like the FDA and CDC are stacked with corporate officials who return to high-paying industry jobs provided they place profit considerations over public health and safety.
In November 2000, concern over this and adverse reactions got the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) to pass a unanimous resolution at its 57th meeting calling for a moratorium on mandatory childhood vaccinations and for doctors to insist on “truly informed consent for (their) use….”
In October 1999, Dr. Bart Classen, founder and CEO of Classen Immunotherapies, told Congress:
“It is clear….that the government’s immunization policies are driven by politics and not by science. I can give numerous examples where employees of the US Public Health Service….appear to be furthering their careers by acting as propaganda officers to support political agendas. In one case….employees of a foreign government, who were funded and working closely with the US Public Health Service, submitted false data to a major medical journal. The true data indicated the vaccine was dangerous; however, the false data” indicated no risk.
In addition, “four letters from the FDA/Public Health Service….clearly reveal(ed) that the anthrax vaccine” approved for US military personnel was done “without the manufacturer performing a single controlled clinical trial.” They’re essential to determine safety and effectiveness. Failure to conduct them proved devastating to the health and well-being of recipients and still does today. Besides, all vaccines are unsafe and some are extremely dangerous.
US military forces receive many or all of the following vaccinations:
– three shots for hepatitis B;
– two for hepatitis A;
– annually for influenza so all military personnel will get Swine Flu shots;
– all military personnel must have documented proof of receiving MMR vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella; those without them them get single doses;
– two varicella (chicken pox) shots;
– smallpox doses every ten years;
– three for polio for adults never vaccinated; those fully vaccinated get a booster shot;
– tetanus-diphtheria and pertussis vaccinations for personnel who haven’t have them in the past 10 years;
– tetanus every 10 years;
– typhoid vaccinations in either oral or injectable forms;
– a multiple dose series for anthrax;
– yellow fever every 10 years in some cases;
– three for rabies and later boosters;
– tuberculosis screening and shots;
– single pneumococcal doses;
– meningococcal vaccinations every five years before deployment to certain regions; and
– three Japanese encephalitis doses in some cases.
Multiple vaccinations for all US military personnel practically assures damage to their immune systems and severe health problems later on.
Truth No. 10
Public health officials approve dangerous vaccines on unsuspecting recipients and profit handsomely for their efforts.
Final Comments
All vaccines are biological weapons that weaken or destroy the human immune system. They often fail to protect against diseases they’re designed to prevent and often cause them. The H1N1 vaccine is experimental, untested, toxic, extremely dangerous, and essential to avoid even if mandated.
In a December 1994 Medical Post article, Dr. Guylaine Lanctot said:
“The medical authorities keep lying. Vaccination has been a disaster on the immune system. It actually causes a lot of illnesses. We are actually changing our genetic code through vaccination….100 years from now we will know that the biggest crime against humanity was vaccines.”
Dr. Viera Scheibner is internationally known as perhaps the leading expert on adverse vaccine reactions. Her analysis concluded that “there is no evidence whatsoever of the ability of vaccines to prevent any diseases. To the contrary, there is a great wealth of evidence that they cause serious side effects.”
Nonetheless, immunization programs proliferate because the profit potential is enormous despite growing numbers of reputable scientific figures citing concerns.
Currently, over 200 new vaccines are being developed “for everything from birth control to (curbing) cocaine addiction.” Around half of them are in clinical trials using human guinea pigs putting their health and safety on the line unwittingly.
New delivery systems are also being developed that include nasal sprays, mosquitoes, and genetically engineered fruits containing vaccine viruses. With every country in the world a potential buyer, health and safety considerations are suppressed for the sake of profits. Unless somehow this madness is stopped, the harm to our children and society will be catastrophic.
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session — only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly “embargoed.” There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
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| Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage — and even death — in both animals and humans. | |
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency’s massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines — thimerosal — appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. “I was actually stunned by what I saw,” Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants — in one case, within hours of birth — the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.
Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. “You can play with this all you want,” Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results “are statistically significant.” Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting’s first day, was even more alarmed. “My gut feeling?” he said. “Forgive this personal comment — I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on.”
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry’s bottom line. “We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits,” said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. “This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country.” Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that “given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let’s say, less responsible hands.” Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared that “perhaps this study should not have been done at all.” He added that “the research results have to be handled,” warning that the study “will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group.”
In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children’s health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to “rule out” the chemical’s link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten’s findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been “lost” and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.
Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants — but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines — including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to eleven-year-olds.
The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government’s vaccine-related documents — including the Simpsonwood transcripts — and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the “Eli Lilly Protection Act” into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003 — but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. “The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists,” says Dean Rosen, health policy adviser to Frist.
Even many conservatives are shocked by the government’s effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. “Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic,” his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. “This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin.” The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of “institutional malfeasance for self protection” and “misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.”
The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical.
I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the government’s need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. “Why should we scare people about immunization,” Waxman pointed out at one hearing, “until we know the facts?”
It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading scientific research and talking with many of the nation’s pre-eminent authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation — those born between 1989 and 2003 — who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. “The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage,” Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. “Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in twenty-five years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children.”
More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.
Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis — a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. “If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis,” scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world’s authorities on mercury toxicity, “then where are all the twenty-year-old autistics?” Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative “load” of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It’s a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received — but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.
What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore — and cover up — the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines — and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children’s vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.
“You couldn’t even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe,” says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. “It’s just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage.”
Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage — and even death — in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected — a fact Lilly didn’t bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal’s safety “did not check with ours.” Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative “unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs.”
In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it “poison.” In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly’s own studies discerned that thimerosal was “toxic to tissue cells” in concentrations as low as one part per million — 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as “nontoxic” and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.
In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within twenty-four hours of birth, and two-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck’s vaccine programs, warned the company that six-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, “especially when used on infants and children,” noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. “The best way to go,” he added, “is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives.”
For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this “cost consideration,” Merck ignored Hilleman’s warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received eleven vaccinations — for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time they reached first grade.
As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. “What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?” Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. “Why didn’t CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?”
But by that time, the damage was done. At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, infants routinely received three inoculations that contained a total of 62.5 micrograms of ethylmercury — a level 99 times greater than the EPA’s limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies — including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health — suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.
Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that don’t require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of CDC’s top vaccine advisers, told me, “I think if we really have an influenza pandemic — and certainly we will in the next twenty years, because we always do — there’s no way on God’s earth that we immunize 280 million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials.”
But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee’s chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and was part of a team that developed the measles vaccine and brought it to licensure in 1963. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.
Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC “routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines,” even though they have “interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight.” The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine “had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.”
Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that he “would make money” if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist’s direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. “It provides no conflict for me,” he insists. “I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It’s offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It’s just not the way it works.”
Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children’s health, proud of their “partnerships” with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children’s health. They are often resentful of questioning. “Science,” says Offit, “is best left to scientists.”
Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. “I’m not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now,” Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, “will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use” of thimerosal in child vaccines.
If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines — which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense — over to a private agency, America’s Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC “wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe,” Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM’s Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. “We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect” of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee’s chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was “inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation” between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result “Walt wants” — a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.
For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. “We’ve got a dragon by the tail here,” said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee member. “The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization — and we know what the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I think is the charge.”
Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. “Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal,” Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. “In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety.” Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal’s risks.
In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and — in a startling position for a scientific body — recommended that no further research be conducted.
The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were “fatally flawed” by “poor design” and failed to represent “all the available scientific and medical research.” CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because “an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?”
Under pressure from Congress and parents, the Institute of Medicine convened another panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the way the VSD had been used in the Verstraeten study, and urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.
So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a “very significant relationship” between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.
As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines — the kind of population that scientists typically use as a “control” in experiments — Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three — including one child adopted from outside the Amish community — had received their vaccines.
At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. “After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism,” says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. “The fact that Iowa’s 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children’s vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone.” Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in thirty-two other states.
But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries — some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders “under review.”
I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. “The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence,” says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. “The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It’s bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you’ve ever seen.”
It’s hard to calculate the damage to our country — and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases — if Third World nations come to believe that America’s most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It’s not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America’s enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers — many of them sincere, even idealistic — who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world’s poorest populations.
Global Research comments: This story has been updated to correct several inaccuracies in the original, published version. As originally reported, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations before 1989, but the article failed to note that they were innoculated a total of eleven times with those vaccines, including boosters. The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms – an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA’s limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. Finally, because of an editing error, the article misstated the contents of the rotavirus vaccine approved by the CDC. It did not contain thimerosal. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.
An earlier version of this story stated that the Institute of Medicine convened a second panel to review the work of the Immunization Safety Review Committee that had found no evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism. In fact, the IOM convened the second panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program, including those raised by critics of the IOM’s earlier work. But the panel was not charged with reviewing the committee’s findings. The story also inadvertently omitted a word and transposed two sentences in a quote by Dr. John Clements, and incorrectly stated that Dr. Sam Katz held a patent with Merck on the measles vaccine. In fact, Dr. Katz was part of a team that developed the vaccine and brought it to licensure, but he never held the patent. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.
CLARIFICATION: After publication of this story, Salon and Rolling Stone corrected an error that misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms ? an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA’s limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. At the time of the correction, we were aware that the comparison itself was flawed, but as journalists we considered it more appropriate to state the correct figure rather than replace it with another number entirely.
Since that earlier correction, however, it has become clear from responses to the article that the forty-percent number, while accurate, is misleading. It measures the total mercury load an infant received from vaccines during the first six months, calculates the daily average received based on average body weight, and then compares that number to the EPA daily limit. But infants did not receive the vaccines as a ?daily average? ? they received massive doses on a single day, through multiple shots. As the story states, these single-day doses exceeded the EPA limit by as much as 99 times. Based on the misunderstanding, and to avoid further confusion, we have amended the story to eliminate the forty-percent figure.
Correction: The story misattributed a quote to Andy Olson, former legislative counsel to Senator Bill Frist. The comment was made by Dean Rosen, health policy adviser to the senator. Rolling Stone and Salon.com regret the error.
Kennedy Report Sparks Controversy
“Deadly Immunity,” our story about the link between mercury in vaccines and the dramatic rise in autism among children [RS 977/978], sparked intense reaction from the medical establishment and several leading news organizations. The story, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — part of an ongoing collaboration with Salon.com — documented the government’s efforts to conceal alarming data about the dangers of vaccines.
What is most striking is the lengths to which major media outlets have gone to disparage the story and to calm public fears — even in the face of the questionable science on the subject. In a segment on World News Tonight titled “A Closer Look,” ABC pointed out that Kennedy is “not a scientist or a doctor” and dismissed his extensive evidence as nothing more than “a few scientific studies.” The network also trotted out its medical editor, Dr. Timothy Johnson, to praise the “impeccably impartial Institute of Medicine” and to again state that Kennedy is not a scientist.
The New York Times, in a front-page story on the subject, devoted only one line to Kennedy’s article, which it said accused public-health officials and drugmakers of “conspiring” to hide the data on autism — a word that our story neither used nor implied. (The Wall Street Journal, in an op-ed attacking the article, was even more misleading, using the word “conspiracy” four times.) The Times then went on, for more than a full page, to portray concerns over vaccines as nothing more than the misguided fears of parents who suffer from “scientific illiteracy,” unable to understand the medical studies that prove immunizations to be safe. It depicted studies reviewed by the Institute of Medicine as definitive without even bothering to address the host of serious questions raised about their validity: conflicting diagnoses of autism, mixed-up data from HMOs and research skewed to exclude many sick kids.
Rolling Stone and Salon fact-checked the article thoroughly before publication, insisting on primary documentation for every statement in the story, and posted links to the most significant materials online to enable readers to judge for themselves. The final article contained six errors. These ranged from inadvertently transposing a quote and confusing a drug license for a patent to relying on a figure that incorrectly calculated an infant’s exposure to mercury over six months, rather than citing the even more dangerous amount injected on a single day. (The mistakes were corrected online as soon as they were discovered and can be viewed in detail at both RollingStone.com and Salon.com.)
It is important to note, however, that none of the mistakes weaken the primary point of the story. The government’s own records show that it has failed to do the science necessary to put to rest reasonable concerns about vaccines. If the scientists had simply done their job rather than covering their tracks, there would be no controversy today. Instead, the government cannot even provide a definitive figure of the number of cases of autism among American children — a number obviously critical to any serious scientific investigation — and yet expects the public to believe that it has ruled out any link between vaccines and an illness it does not even track.
“Science,” as one doctor in our story insisted, “is best left to scientists.” But when the scientists fail to do their job, resorting to closed-door meetings and rigged studies, others in society have not only a right but a moral obligation to question their work. In the coming years, further research may indeed demonstrate that mercury in vaccines is not responsible for the rise in autism. For now, though, we can only raise a very real and legitimate alarm — and hope that the government’s well-documented mishandling of its own research did not needlessly jeopardize the health of hundreds of thousands of children.
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